The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Report in: Das Goetheanum, vol. 3, no. 6

Rudolf Steiner

Remembering the Druids

The second of the lecture series that I was invited to give by friends of anthroposophy in England this summer took place in Penmaenmawr (North Wales). It was a beautiful thought of Mr. Dunlop's, a long-standing custodian of spiritual knowledge and current member of the Anthroposophical Society, to choose this location. It is located on the west coast of England, where the island of Anglesey is just off the coast.

One lived completely in the spiritual atmosphere that emanates from what the ruined places of worship of prehistoric Druidic service still say today. In the mountains around Penmaenmawr and on the island of Anglesey, these promising stones lie in places where one can still see the careful selection today. Places where nature reveals many of its secrets to man.

Unhewn stones were arranged in a ring (in the cultic structures now called Cromlech) and covered by a larger stone, so that they enclosed a small space. In other places, larger circles were formed from such stones, the actual Druid circles.

You can find two such circles by climbing one of the mountains near Penmaenmawr. You walk along a path that offers wonderful views of the mountains and the sea at many points. You reach the uppermost area of the mountain, where the summit surface slopes gently, so that you are surrounded by a ring wall, as if by nature, over which you can see the most magnificent landscape everywhere. There are two such stone rings lying next to each other, one larger and one smaller.

History sees in these formations monuments over graves and also allows them to be considered as a kind of place of pilgrimage, as places where meetings were held to organize the affairs of the people, etc.

What I have to say about these places may be considered fantastic from the point of view of present-day thought; for me, however, it is the result of spiritual insight, of which I have often spoken in this weekly, and is of the same character as any currently accepted knowledge. A visit to Penmaenmawr provides ample inspiration to talk about these things.

The Druidic service had its time of decline. In this time, it certainly revealed some rather ugly aberrations. In its heyday, it consisted of institutions through which an ancient humanity sought in its own way to fathom the secrets of nature in order to order life in its own sense. The Druidic cult sites served the purpose of what history, which adheres to the external, speaks of. But they also served other purposes. The sun cast shadows on these stone structures; and the path of the heavenly body could be read from the directions and shapes of the shadows at different times of the year and day. From what was seen, the connections between the earth and celestial events were interpreted. The power of the sun is present in growth, in life and death, in all living things. As Druid priests, they observed the change of the sun's activity in the course of time by the way it showed itself through the place of worship. What they interpreted was knowledge of the sun's activity, which is reflected in the products of the earth in a living way. The Druid priest received a kind of inspiration there. Reading the secrets of nature was part of his ministry.

Then came to this solar inspiration what he, equipped with it, had to see as the effect of the moon. In those days, the causes of what is present in the living things of the earth were sought in the sun and moon. The sun brings forth burgeoning life. But what it brings about would stretch into infinity if it were extended everywhere. The way in which the moon absorbs its effects and transforms them, casting them back onto the earth, captures what wants to grow immeasurably in plants, in animals, in all of nature, shaping it within limits.

In the minds of the Druid priests, these life-giving, form-shaping forces became images, in which their wisdom consisted. They owed the inspiration to what they had to see as lunar effects their kind of knowledge of nature. They saw the result of these lunar effects in the shaping of forces with which the plant took root in the substances of the solid earth, with which it penetrated the air when forming leaves, and then, when the flowers unfolded, it strove freely towards the being of the sun.

This shaping of forces was seen in the images of living spiritual beings in all forms of natural existence. It was not abstract natural laws that were thought to be effective; living spiritual beings, in secret relationship to the sun and moon, were seen to be effective in the roots, leaves and flowers of plants. The spiritual realm was seen as the cause of the physical realm.

But the forces of the world reveal themselves in many different ways. In the roots of the plants, the nature spirits work in a beneficial way within the limits assigned to them by the sun and moon. But they can break out of these limits. What contracts the salts of the earth in the root in order to incorporate them into the plant form can leave the limits of the plant and become independent. Then it proliferates into the gigantic. Instead of the narrow root nature, it takes hold of the vastness of natural events. It lives in the products of frost, in the wild effects that emanate from the cold of the earth. The root spirits develop into the frost giants. What the leaf brings to the plant of the air in the way of form, lives, emancipated from its narrow boundaries, as storm and wind giants. And what the blossom and fruit release in the plant in the way of solar power becomes, proliferating independently, the fire giants.

Thus arose in the north of Europe an understanding of nature that saw the Frost, Storm and Fire Giants where we see “forces of nature” today.

During our stay in Penmaenmawr, we became aware of the natural effects that arose from the earth, lived in the air, and streamed down from the sun and radiated. Every hour, glorious sunlight often alternated with cloudburst-like rainstorms. The memory could truly awaken to the natural giants that revealed themselves to the ancient Druid priests.

And what was often seen in a terrible way in the nature beings that had grown into the gigantic, the druid priests sought to entice beneficial effects from it again. What worked from within the plant through the sun and moon shaped it into root, leaf, blossom; what played itself out in the independently become gigantic: in the sap content of the ripening, dew; in the formations that arise on the earth through wind and weather; in what is formed by charring, burning, etc. as a result of the fiery. Human art finds in this that with which it can treat plants from the outside. What is often harmful, when used in the right way, becomes a remedy. The Druid priest becomes a healer.

He wrests the powers of the giants, the enemies of the gods, where they become harmful, in order to put them back into the service of the gods.

The Druid service thus ordered life through the way it connected with the spirit of nature. The spirit quest, to introduce the spirit into earthly life, is what these stones lying around speak of in a haunting way. It was therefore deeply satisfying to be able to talk about the spirit quest in the very atmosphere of these memories, in a way that seems appropriate to the present day.

But even if anthroposophy initially has its roots in the insights already gained into the spiritual world, these are only its roots. Its branches, leaves, flowers and fruits grow into all fields of human life and activity. With the thoughts that reveal the essence and laws of spiritual existence, it reaches into the depths of the creative human soul, and its artistic powers are evoked by the call. Art receives all-round inspiration. It allows the warmth that radiates from the contemplation of the spiritual to flow into the hearts: and the religious sense awakens in true devotion to the divine in the world. Religion receives a deep internalization. It opens its sources, and the human will, borne by love, can draw from them. It brings human love to life and thus becomes creative in impulses of moral action and genuine social practice. It fertilizes the view of nature through the driving seeds of spiritual insight, thereby transforming mere knowledge of nature into true knowledge of nature.

In all of this, anthroposophy generates a wealth of life tasks. These tasks can only reach the broader circles of human life if they start from their point of origin in a caring society.

The leadership of the Goetheanum in Dornach called upon those individuals who believe that the anthroposophy cultivated at this Goetheanum seeks to correspond to the characterized tasks to bring the long-standing attempts to form anthroposophical societies to a satisfactory conclusion in a Christmas conference.

The call was answered in a way that could not have been expected. Seven to eight hundred people appeared at the “laying of the foundation stone” of the “General Anthroposophical Society”. What they did will be described in this supplement to the “Goetheanum” bit by bit.

It fell to me to open and preside over the meetings. And it became easy for my heart – this opening. The Swiss poet Albert Steffen sat next to me. The assembled anthroposophists looked to him with grateful souls. It was on Swiss soil that they had gathered to found the Anthroposophical Society. In Albert Steffen, they have long had a leading member in Switzerland to whom they look up with true enthusiasm. I saw in him Switzerland in one of her noblest sons; my first word was to give him and our Swiss friends the warmest greetings, and the second was to ask him to open the meeting.

It was a deeply moving beginning. Albert Steffen, the wonderful painter in words, the poetic visualizer, spoke. One heard and saw soul-stirring images like visions before one.

The laying of the foundation stone of the Goetheanum in 1913 stood there before the soul's eye. I cannot find words to express how it was for me in my soul when I saw this process, in which I was privileged to work ten years ago, in Steffen's painting.

The work at the Goetheanum, in which hundreds of devoted hands moved and hundreds of enthusiastic hearts beat, conjured up artistically perfect words before the mind.

And - the burning of the Goetheanum: the whole tragedy, the pain of thousands, they trembled when Albert Steffen spoke to us.

And then, in the foreground of another picture: the essence of anthroposophy itself, transfigured by the poet soul of Albert Steffen. In the background are its enemies, not being criticized, but simply presented with the creative power.

“Ten Years of the Goetheanum”; Albert Steffen's words about it went deep - one felt it - into the hearts of those gathered.

After this dignified prelude, it fell to me to speak of the form that the Anthroposophical Society will now have to take.

What should take the place of a conventional statute was to be said. A description of what people in a purely human context - as an anthroposophical society - would like to accomplish should take the place of such a “statute”. Anthroposophy is cultivated at the Goetheanum, which since the fire has only had makeshift rooms made of wood. What the leaders of the Goetheanum understand by this care and what effect they expect it to have on human civilization should be stated. Then how they envision this care in a free university for spiritual science. Not principles to which one should profess, but a reality in its own way should be described. Then it should be said that anyone who wants to contribute to what is happening at the Goetheanum can become a member.

The following is proposed as a “statute”, which is not a “statute” but a description of what can arise from such a purely human and vital social relationship:

1. The Anthroposophical Society shall be an association of people who wish to cultivate the soul life in the individual human being and in human society on the basis of a true knowledge of the spiritual world.

2. The core of this Society consists of those individuals and groups who were represented at the Christmas Conference at the Goetheanum, Dornach, 1923. They are imbued with the conviction that a true science of the spiritual world, developed over many years and already published in important parts, really does exist at the present time and that today's civilization lacks the cultivation of such a science. The Anthroposophical Society is to have this task. It will try to solve this task by making the Anthroposophical spiritual science cultivated at the Goetheanum in Dornach, with its results for fraternity in human coexistence, for the moral and religious as well as for the artistic and general spiritual life in the human being, the center of its endeavors. ¹

3. The personalities assembled in Dornach as the basis of the Society recognize and approve of the view of the Goetheanum leadership, represented by the Executive Council formed at the founding meeting, regarding the following: “The anthroposophy cultivated at the Goetheanum leads to results that can serve as a stimulus for the spiritual life of every human being, regardless of nation, class or religion. They can lead to a social life truly built on brotherly love. Their appropriation as a basis for life is not tied to a scientific level of education, but only to an unbiased human nature. Their research and the appropriate evaluation of their research results, however, are subject to spiritual scientific schooling, which is to be attained in stages. These results are as exact as the results of true natural science. If they are generally recognized in the same way as the latter, they will bring about the same progress in all areas of life, not only in the spiritual but also in the practical realm."

4. The Anthroposophical Society is not a secret society, but a completely public one. Anyone can become a member, without distinction of nationality, class, religion, scientific or artistic conviction, who sees something justified in the existence of such an institution as the Goetheanum in Dornach as a free school of spiritual science. The Society rejects all sectarian aspirations. It does not regard politics as part of its remit.

5. The Anthroposophical Society sees a center of its work in the School of Spiritual Science in Dornach. This will consist of three classes. Society members who have been members for a period of time to be determined by the leadership of the Goetheanum will be admitted to the School upon application. They will then enter the first class of the School of Spiritual Science. Admission to the second and third classes will follow if applicants are deemed suitable by the leadership of the Goetheanum.

6. Every member of the Anthroposophical Society has the right to participate in all lectures, other presentations and meetings organized by it under the conditions to be announced by the board.

7. The establishment of the School of Spiritual Science is initially the responsibility of Rudolf Steiner, who is to appoint his co-workers and his eventual successor. 8. All the Society's publications will be public, as are those of other public societies.²

The publications of the School of Spiritual Science will make no exception to this public nature; however, the leadership of the School claims that from the outset it disputes the legitimacy of any judgment about these writings that is not based on the training from which they emerged. In this sense, it will not grant any judgment that is not based on corresponding preliminary studies, as is usual in the recognized scientific world. Therefore, the writings of the School of Spiritual Science will bear the following note: “Printed as a manuscript for members of the School of Spiritual Science, Goetheanum Class... No one will be granted competence to judge these writings who has not acquired the foreknowledge claimed by this school through them or in a way recognized by it as equivalent. Other judgments will be rejected insofar as the authors of the corresponding writings do not enter into discussion of them.

9. The aim of the Anthroposophical Society shall be to promote spiritual research, and the aim of the School of Spiritual Science shall be to carry out this research. Dogmatism in any field shall be excluded from the Anthroposophical Society.

10. The Anthroposophical Society holds an ordinary annual meeting at the Goetheanum every year, at which the Executive Council gives a full report. The agenda for this meeting is announced by the Executive Council with the invitation sent to all members six weeks before the conference. The Executive Council can convene extraordinary meetings and set the agenda for them. It shall send invitations to the members three weeks in advance. Applications from individual members or groups of such members must be submitted one week before the meeting.

11. Members may join together in smaller or larger groups in any local or professional field. The Anthroposophical Society has its seat at the Goetheanum. From there, the Executive Council is to provide members or groups of members with what it regards as the tasks of the Society. It deals with the officials elected or appointed by the individual groups. The individual groups take care of the admission of members; however, the confirmations of admission are to be submitted to the Executive Council in Dornach and signed by it in confidence with the group officials. In general, each member should join a group; only those for whom it is absolutely impossible to find admission to a group should be admitted as members in Dornach itself. 12. The membership fee is determined by the individual groups; however, each group is required to pay [15 francs] for each of its members to the central administration at the Goetheanum.

13. Each working group shall draw up its own statutes; however, these shall not contradict the statutes of the Anthroposophical Society.

14. The Society's organ is the weekly journal “Goetheanum”, which for this purpose shall include a supplement containing the official communications of the Society. This enlarged edition of the “Goetheanum” will be distributed only to members of the Anthroposophical Society.³

The opening meeting on the morning of December 25 was closely connected with the festivities on the morning of the 25th, which bore the name: “Laying of the Foundation Stone of the General Anthroposophical Society”.

This could only be an ideal and spiritual laying of the foundation stone. The soil in which the “foundation stone” was laid could only be the hearts and souls of the personalities united in the Society; and the foundation stone itself must be the attitude that springs from the anthroposophical way of life. This attitude forms, in the way it is demanded by the signs of the present time, the will to find the way to the contemplation of the spirit and to life from the spirit through human soul-penetration. I would like to start here, with which I tried to shape the “foundation stone” in verse form and give the further description of the opening meeting in the next issue of this newsletter.

Human soul!
You live in the limbs
That carry you through the world of space
Into the being of the spiritual sea:
Practice spirit-remembering
In the depths of the soul,
Where in the ruling
Creator of the world
the own I
in the God-I
reveals itself;
And you will truly live
in the human-world-being.

For the Father-Spirit of the heights rules
in the depths of the world, generating being:
You power-spirits
Let from the heights resound
What finds the echo in the depths;
This speaks:
From the divine, humanity exists.
The spirits in the east, west, north, south hear this:
May human beings hear it.

Human soul!
You live in the heartbeat of the heart and lungs,
which guides you through the rhythm of time
into your own soul being:
Practice spiritual reflection
in soul balance,
where the surging world-becoming-deeds
unite the own I
to the World-I
unite;
And you will truly feel
in the work of the human soul.

For the Christ-will rules in the surrounding
in the rhythms of the world, bestowing soul;
You spirits of light
Let the east inspire
What is formed by the West;
This speaks:
In the Christ, life becomes death.
The spirits in the east, west, north, and south hear this:
May human beings hear it.
Human soul!
You live in the resting head,
Which opens up to you the thoughts of the world from the reasons of eternity.
the world thoughts:
Practice spirit-seeing
In thought-rest,
Where the eternal divine goals of world-being-light
To one's own self
To free will
Give;
And you will think truly
in human spirit reasons.

For the spirit world thoughts prevail
in the world being, light-invoking:
you soul-spirits
let from the depths request,
what is heard in the heights:
This speaks:
In the spirit's world-thoughts, the soul awakens. This is heard by spirits in the east, west, north, and south: May men hear it.

At the turning point of time
the light of the world's spirit
entered the earthly stream of being;
night-darkness
had been fully developed;
day-bright light
shone in human souls;
light,
which warmed
the poor hearts of the shepherds;
light,
which enlightened
the wise heads of the Magi.

Divine light,
Christ-sun
Warmth
Our hearts;
Enlighten
Our minds;
That good will come
From what we
From our hearts,
What we
From our minds
Want to lead.

• 1. The Anthroposophical Society is linked to the Anthroposophical Society founded in 1912, but seeks to create an independent starting point for the goals set at that time, one that corresponds to the true spirit of the present.
• 2. The conditions under which one comes to the School for training have been publicly described and will continue to be published.
• 3. Members may purchase the bulletins individually. The conditions for doing so can be found at the beginning of this first issue. Everything that relates to the implementation of the statutes in detail will be given in a special “rules of procedure”. These will be included in one of the next numbers of the announcements.

The Anthroposophical Society will, if the intentions of the Christmas Conference are carried out, in the future have to fulfill the esoteric aspirations of its members as far as possible. This fulfillment should be sought by incorporating three classes of school into the general society.

It is in the nature of spiritual knowledge that it first addresses such results to people who are found by personalities who know the ways to spiritual insight. It is a prejudice to think that such results can only be recognized by those who are able to find them themselves. This prejudice then gives rise to the other, that people who have such an acknowledgment indulge in a blind belief in authority. By asserting this prejudice, one accuses a society like the anthroposophical one of consisting of uncritical worshippers of leading personalities.

But just as you don't need to be a painter to feel the beauty of a picture, you don't need to be a spiritual researcher to understand a great deal of what the spiritual researcher has to say. Through the abilities present in him, the spiritual researcher steps forward before the worlds in which spiritual beings live and spiritual processes occur. He sees these spiritual beings and processes; and he also sees how the beings and processes of the physical world emerge from the spiritual.

He then has the further task of shaping certain areas of his visualizations into ideas that do not depend on special abilities but are accessible to ordinary consciousness. These ideas are self-founded for everyone who brings them to life in his soul. One cannot shape such ideas out of mere intellectual capacity; one can only form them by imprinting spiritual vision upon them. But once they are there through the spiritual researcher, everyone can receive them and find their foundation in them. No one needs to accept them on mere blind faith. If many people believe that what is presented by the spiritual researcher in the form of an idea is not understandable in itself, it is only because they have lost the way to such understanding. They have become accustomed to considering as proved only what is supported by sense perception, and have no sense that ideas can be mutually self-proving. They are like a person who knows that all heavy objects on earth are supported and who therefore believes that the earth itself must also be supported in space.

Now, however, a personality who attains vision in the spirit without first receiving the results of vision in the form of ideas must be specially destined for this by fate. For all others, comprehension of the content of ideas in that region of the spiritual world which can be given expression in this form is the necessary preliminary to arrive at direct vision.

Again, it is only a prejudice if anyone believes that one suggests to oneself the vision of a spiritual world after first having received the picture of such a world in the form of an idea. Just as little as one can speak of suggestion when one sees a person whom one has only heard of before, so little can one do so when one hears the effect of the spiritual world, which appears with all the qualities of reality, after one has first understood it in ideas.

It will therefore generally be the case that people first get to know the spiritual world in the form of ideas. This is how spiritual science is cultivated in the general anthroposophical society.

But there will be personalities who want to participate in the presentations of the spiritual world that arise from the idea form to forms of expression that are borrowed from the spiritual world itself. And there will also be those who want to get to know the paths to the spiritual world in order to travel them with their own soul.

The three classes of the “School” will be there for such personalities. The works will reach an ever higher degree of esotericism in ascending order. The “School” will guide the participant into the realms of the spiritual world that cannot be revealed through the form of ideas. Here it becomes necessary to find means of expression for imaginations, inspirations and intuitions.

Then the fields of artistic, educational, ethical life, etc. will be led into the areas where they can receive illumination and creative impulses from esotericism.

The constitution of the “school” and its division into sections will be discussed in the next issue of the newsletter.

(continued in the next issue).

We cannot establish branches of the Goetheanum wherever souls long for anthroposophy. We are a poor society.

We will only be able to enable those individuals who are far away from the Goetheanum to participate in its work by continuing in written correspondence what happens at the Goetheanum itself. We shall have to discuss how to organize this written correspondence. It will enable those who are unable to spend a certain length of time at the Goetheanum to participate in the classes there. In addition, this correspondence will be facilitated by the visits that the leaders of life at the Goetheanum, or those closely associated with them in various places, will make wherever possible.

But if the School of Spiritual Science is to flourish with its esoteric life, all this must be held together by the genuine anthroposophical spirit.

The leadership at the Goetheanum must strive not to isolate itself in any way from the spiritual life of the present day, but to look out with full participation for everything that is revealed in this spiritual life for the true further development of humanity.

Therefore, the management will be organized in such a way that individual personalities will take over the administration of individual sections, which are already possible and which will hopefully flourish in ever more active work.

The central focus will be the General Anthroposophical Section, which will initially incorporate the Pedagogical Section. I myself will be responsible for leading this section. A Medical Section will ensure that anthroposophy can fertilize the art of healing. Dr. Ita Wegman will be in charge of this section. From the very beginning, medicine has been closely connected with the central task of human knowledge. Anthroposophy will prove its vitality by restoring this connection. Dr. Ita Wegman's clinical-therapeutic institute is a model for this endeavor and its practical application.

Anthroposophy must be particularly concerned with artistic life. For a number of years, we have seen a burgeoning artistic life in the cultivation of eurythmy, declamation and recitation. Music is closely connected with this. This life will be cultivated in a separate section. Marie Steiner has devoted herself to this work with the greatest commitment. She has been appointed to lead this section by the General Anthroposophical Society itself.

The visual arts were influenced by the construction of the Goetheanum. The central works that have been developed on this basis have given rise to a style that will undoubtedly still have many opponents by its very nature. Naturally, it can only express itself imperfectly at the moment. But it will be better understood when people become more familiar with anthroposophy in general. Miss E. Maryon helped me in the development of this style in a way that befits the leader of the sculpture section.

There used to be a concept of “beautiful sciences”. They bridged the gap between actual science and works of human creative imagination. The view that a more recent period has developed of “science” has pushed the “beautiful sciences” completely into the background. I will be speaking about “beautiful sciences” at the “Goetheanum” soon. We in the Anthroposophical Society are fortunate to have a wonderful representative of the “beautiful sciences” among us: Albert Steffen. He is called upon not only to lead the Section for “beautiful sciences”, but also to revive this branch of human creativity, which has been pushed aside to the detriment of civilization. Furthermore, the personalities working among us allow us to form a section for mathematical and astronomical views, headed by Dr. L. Vreede, and a natural science section, headed by Dr. Günther Wachsmuth. The astronomical field is particularly important for anthroposophy, and the natural science section is intended to show how genuine knowledge of nature is not in contradiction to, but in full harmony with, anthroposophy. With the book he is about to publish, Dr. G. Wachsmuth has proven himself to be the right leader of this section. (To be continued in the next issue.)

Those who join this school as members are in a completely different position than those who join the Anthroposophical Society. You become a member of this school after being a member of the Society for a sufficiently long time. You have come to know what anthroposophy wants, what it truly is. You have been able to form an opinion about what it can be worth to you. However, this means that the intention to join the school can be associated with the assumption of a range of duties and the awareness that one wants to be a representative of anthroposophical work.

In contrast to the way in which Anthroposophy is presented within the Anthroposophical Society, it is not only absurd, but also quite tasteless when the opposing side repeatedly makes the defamatory accusation that Anthroposophy wants to exert a suggestive influence on anyone. Anyone who is in Anthroposophy knows this very well, or at least can know it. When members who have left the Society claim this, they usually know themselves that what they claim is objectively untrue. In the Society, no one is led to anthroposophy with blinders on. Therefore, they cannot become a member of the School without fully understanding the context of what anthroposophy sees as its task.

Everyone should judge for themselves whether they want to become a member of the school based on what they have come to know as a member of the Anthroposophical Society. When the school's leadership speaks of the duties that its members take on, they can be completely clear about what is meant. It is not intended to imply anything other than that the school's leadership cannot fulfill its tasks if such duties are not taken on. The relationship between each member of the school and the leadership remains completely free, even if such duties are taken on. This is because the school leadership must also enjoy the freedom to act in accordance with the natural conditions of their work. They would not have this freedom if they were not allowed to say to those who are free to join or not to join the school: If I am to work with you, then you must take on the obligation to fulfill this or that condition.

This should actually be self-evident and need not be stated. But it must be said, because all too often we hear: Those who join the school must give up some of their “human freedoms”. When this is said by members of the society, it is not surprising when malicious opponents spread the slander that Anthroposophy is gradually turning its adherents into will-less tools of what some people with bad intentions want. Anyone who has taken an interest in the Society's work for a sufficiently long time knows that Anthroposophy would lose all meaning the moment it undertook anything that went against the independent, level-headed, insightful will of its members. Anthroposophy cannot truly achieve its goals with will-less tools. For, in order to truly come to it, it requires precisely the free will of those involved. (Continued in the next issue.)

The members of the school will, if the conditions set out are accepted by them, make the Anthroposophical Society what only its existence can give it. The starting point of the school's work will have to be the Goetheanum. Initially, the work to be done by the school will have to be carried out here. But ways and means will also be found for the members of the school scattered throughout the world to participate fully. This will not be achieved by a rush to obtain transcripts of everything said at the Goetheanum in every possible way. We experienced the development of such a rush when, about a year ago, the slogan was issued that new life had to come into the society.

We will not advance by such impetuosity. On Friday, February 15, I will give my first lecture at the Goetheanum for the School of Spiritual Science. Those members who have been provisionally notified of their admission to the School by the Executive Council will be present. Those who have applied for admission and have not yet been notified do not need to consider themselves as not accepted. The whole structure of the School, including membership, will only develop gradually.

But as the School's work progresses, it will also become clear how the Goetheanum itself must ensure that the work can be disseminated. The means and ways will also be sought where the School's center is to be created. One will then turn to those individuals and groups in a possible way that announce that they are seeking membership. But we should bear in mind that we at the Goetheanum cannot cope if existing institutions simply say: We are here and we now want to join the Goetheanum and its School for Spiritual Science. This statement as such is of course good, and everything that happens in this direction will be warmly welcomed by the leadership at the Goetheanum. But it must not be understood to mean: We are coming to you at this moment, so transform us to be members of the School of Spiritual Science. This could lead to everyone continuing to do what they have been doing so far, only baptizing it in the name of this School.

What is achieved at the Goetheanum through the work of the Executive Council can only gradually flow into the individual institutions. This Executive Council should not see its task as “organizing”, but rather as working. Then it will be its task to bring the results of its work to those who want them in the best possible way. No matter how well one organizes, in a society such as the anthroposophical one, nothing has actually been achieved by it. Such a society lives only through the work that is done in it. The best guarantee for the society's prosperity lies in the participation of all its members in the work at the Goetheanum. And the executive council will endeavor to make everything that is done by the members the society's concern.

The Executive Council of the Anthroposophical Society at the Goetheanum is striving to establish the sections already mentioned, but it would like to add a further one. This will be possible if the intentions of the Executive Council meet with a positive response on the part of the General Anthroposophical Society. In every age, young people have been in a certain opposition to old age. This gypsy truth comforts many people about the life phenomena within today's youth.

But this consolation could easily become a disaster.

We should understand the young from the “spirit of the present” in both their questionable aberrations and their all too justified striving for something other than what the old give them.

First of all, there is the youth that is pushed into an academic career by the circumstances of life. They are offered “science”. Solid, secure, fruitful science for the outer life. It would be nonsense, in the manner of many laymen, to rail against this science. But youth still freezes spiritually in the face of this science before it comes to recognize its solidity, its security, its fertility for the outer life.

Science owes its greatness to the strong opposition it has faced since the mid-19th century. At that time, people realized how easily man can sail into the uncertainty of knowledge when he rises from the lowlands of research to the heights of a world view. It was believed that chilling examples of such a rise had been experienced.

And so they wanted to free “science” from world view. It should stick to the “facts” in the valleys of nature and avoid the high roads of the mind.

When they were opposing the world view, they got a certain satisfaction out of the opposition. The opponents of worldviews in the mid-19th century were happy in their fighting mood.

Today's youth can no longer share this happiness. They can no longer stir up satisfying feelings in their souls by experiencing the fight against the “insecurity” and “crush” of worldviews.

For today there is simply nothing left to fight against. It is impossible to free “science” from “worldview.” For the worldview has died in the meantime.

But young people's feelings have made a discovery. Not at all a discovery of the intellect, but one that comes from the whole, undivided human nature.

Young people have discovered that without a worldview, it is impossible to live a dignified human life. Many of the old have heard the “evidence” against the worldview. They have submitted to the power of the evidence. The youth no longer pays intellectual heed to this power of evidence; but they instinctively sense the powerlessness of all intellectual proof where the human heart speaks from an invincible urge.

Science presents itself to young people in a dignified way; but it owes its dignity to its lack of world view. Young people long for a world view. But science needs young people.

At the Goetheanum, we would like to understand young people in such a way that we can seek the paths to a worldview with them. And we hope that in the light of the worldview, a true love for science will be generated. We don't want to lose science in world view reverie, but rather to gain it through a waking spiritual experience.

The leadership of the Anthroposophical Society asks young people if they want to understand it too. If it finds this understanding, then the “Section for the Spiritual Striving of Youth” can become something vital. (To be continued in the next issue.

It is true that the Goetheanum does not gain anything in its funds from the fact that it receives share capital from Futurum in liquidation in this way; but the spiritual gain achieved by connecting the clinic to the Goetheanum is so significant that I hope our members who are shareholders will understand.

It would also ensure that those members who are shareholders and who depend on their dividends would not suffer a further reduction due to further depreciation.

I must confess that it was only with a heavy heart that I wrote these lines. But I have to say: precisely because I feel so strongly let down by the personalities who approached all kinds of foundations when I held no office in the Anthroposophical Society and who have then more or less withdrawn, I decided to take over the chairmanship of the Anthroposophical Society at the Christmas Conference. I must then do everything to enable those institutions, such as the Dr. Wegman Clinic, to be run entirely in the sense that I regard as anthroposophical. It was only with the greatest reluctance that I decided at the time to take over the chairmanship of Futurum, which was not founded on my initiative. I was not supported in any way by the people who took this initiative. My warnings went unheeded. Now that I myself hold the presidency of the Anthroposophical Society, I will no longer allow anything to be done that is not in line with pure anthroposophical principles. People will say: Why did I say “yes” to these things back then? Well, those who inaugurated them might say today, if I had intervened in any other way, If we had been allowed to go our own way at the time, we could now rebuild the Goetheanum with the income from the Futurum shares. We had to give people the opportunity to show what they could do. It is enough with the one case; the impact of the Christmas Conference will ensure that it does not repeat itself.

With kind regards
Rudolf Steiner

The first event of the School of Spiritual Science took place during the Christmas Conference and immediately after it. It emerged from the Section, of which Dr. Ita Wegman, M.D., is the leader. This event was divided into two parts. In the last days of the Christmas Conference, the practising physicians who were present as members of the Society met and formulated questions that interested them, which I then made the subject of corresponding discussions. The leadership of the School of Spiritual Science will try to find a continuation of what has been initiated with it, according to the possibilities available to it. As soon as it is in a position to do so, it will indicate in a letter to those interested the way in which it would like to accomplish this.

Following the Christmas Conference, a course for younger doctors and medical students took place in the same section. The main topic of discussion here was the inner orientation in the soul of someone who wants to devote themselves to medicine. This course was given in response to the spiritual needs of medical students coming to the Goetheanum. It aimed to provide a suggestive presentation of what those in the medical profession strive to know about the world and humanity; but it also aimed to uncover the sources of true medical ethos, of 'medical conviction'. Due to the brevity of the event, it was only possible to give hints for a guide. But the hope remains that what has been initiated with this will also be continued in the sense indicated above.

The assemblies of the first class of the Free University have begun for the general anthroposophical section.

There was now an inner necessity to organize a course on eurythmy in the Section for the Speaking and Musical Arts, headed by Mrs. Marie Steiner. The practising eurythmists and teachers living in Dornach, those who teach eurythmy from out of town and are able to do so, members of the Anthroposophical Society's Executive Council, and a few people interested in music and eurythmy have taken part.

The content will be made known in an appropriate way as soon as possible. Here we shall only speak in a few sentences about intention and attitude. The art of eurythmy has so far developed “sound” eurythmy to a certain extent. We are our own harshest critics and know that in this field, everything that can be achieved now is just a beginning. But what has been started must be further developed.

We have not yet come as far with sound eurythmy, the “visible singing”, as we have with speech eurythmy, the “visible word”. If the beginnings we have had so far are to be developed along the right lines, further training must take place right now - at the stage at which sound eurythmy has been practiced. This is what this course is intended to provide. But in doing so, the essence of the musical itself had to be pointed out. For in eurythmy, music becomes visible; and one must have a sense of where this has its true source in human nature if one wants to make its essence visible.

In tone eurythmy, what lives in music in the inaudible becomes visible. It is precisely here that the greatest danger of becoming unmusical exists. I hope to have shown in the lectures of this course that when music overflows into movement, the urge arises to cast off everything unmusical in 'music' and to carry only 'pure music' over into the realm of the visible. However, anyone who believes that the musical aspect ceases with the transfer of the audible into visible movement and form will have reservations about sound eurythmy as a whole. Such a view alone is not artistic in its deepest essence. For anyone who experiences art within themselves must take pleasure in every expansion of artistic sources and forms. And it is simply the case that music, like all true art, wells up from the innermost part of the human being. And this can reveal its life in the most diverse ways. What wants to sing in a person also wants to be expressed in movement forms; and only what lies within the human organism as possibilities for movement is brought out of it in sound and tone eurythmy. It is the human being himself who reveals his essence there. The human form can only be understood as arrested movement; and it is only through movement that the meaning of the form is revealed. One could say that anyone who disputes the legitimacy of tone and sound eurythmy is refusing to allow the whole human being to come to expression. Now materialism rejects the appearance of the spirit in human knowledge; the rejection of eurythmy as a legitimate art alongside and in connection with the other arts will probably have its origin in a similar attitude.

It is to be hoped that eurythmists have received some inspiration from this course and that something can be contributed to the further development of our eurythmic art.

(continued in the next issue).

The announcement of the “Section for the Spiritual Striving of Youth” at the Goetheanum has met with an encouraging response from young people. Representatives of the “Free Anthroposophical Society” and younger members living at the Goetheanum have expressed to the Executive Council of the Anthroposophical Society their wholehearted willingness to take part in the Council's intentions.

I see in both expressions valuable starting points for a good part of the work of our Society. If it can build a bridge between older and younger people of our age, then it will accomplish an important task.

What can be read between the lines of the two letters can be put into words: our youth speaks in a tone whose timbre is new in the development of humanity. One feels that the soul's eye is not directed towards the continuation of what has been inherited from the past and can be increased in the present. It is turned towards the irruption of a new life from the regions where not time is developed but the eternal is revealed.

If the older person wants to be understood by the youth today, he must let the eternal prevail as the driving force in his relationship to the temporal. And he must do this in a way that the youth understands.

It is said that young people do not want to engage with old age, do not want to accept anything from the insight gained from it, from the experience matured by it. - The older person today expresses his displeasure at the behavior of young people.

It is true: young people separate themselves from old age; they want to be among themselves. They do not want to listen to what comes from old age.

One can become concerned about this fact. Because these young people will one day grow old. They will not be able to continue their behavior into old age. They want to be really young. They ask how you can be “really young”. They will no longer be able to do that when they themselves have entered old age.

Therefore, the older person says, youth should abandon its arrogance and look up to old age again, to see the goal towards which its mind's eye must be directed.

By saying this, one thinks that it is up to youth not to be attracted to the older person.

But young people could do nothing other than look up to the older person and take them as a role model if they were really “old”. For the human soul, and especially the young soul, is such that it turns to what is foreign to it in order to unite it with itself.

Now, however, young people today do not see something in the older person that seems both alien to them as a human being and worth appropriating. This is because the older person of today is not really “old”. He has absorbed the content of much, he can talk about much. But he has not brought this much to human maturity. He has grown older in years; but in his soul he has not grown with his years. He still speaks from the old brain as he spoke from the young. Youth senses this. It does not feel “maturity” when it is with older people, but rather its own young state of mind in the aged bodies. And so it turns away, because this does not appear to it to be truth.

Through decades of knowledge in the field of knowledge, older people have developed the opinion that one cannot know anything about the spiritual in the things and processes of the world. When young people hear this, they must get the feeling that the older person has nothing to say to them, because they can get the “not knowing” themselves; they will only listen to the old person if the “knowledge” comes from him. Talking about “not knowing” is tolerable when it is done with freshness, with youthful freshness. But to hear about the “not knowing” when it comes to the brain that has grown old, that deserts the soul, especially the young soul.

Today, young people turn away from older people not because they have grown old, but because they have remained young, because they have not understood how to grow old in the right way. Older people today need this self-knowledge.

But one can only grow old in the right way if one allows the spirit in the soul to unfold. If this is the case, then one has in an aged body that which is in harmony with it. Then one will be able to offer young people not only what time has developed in the body, but what the eternal reveals out of the spirit.

Wherever there is a sincere search for spiritual experience, there can be found the field in which young people can come together with older people. It is an empty phrase to say: you have to be young with young people. No, as an older person among young people, you have to understand the right way to be old.

Young people like to criticize what comes from older people. That is their right. Because one day they will have to carry that to which the old have not yet brought in the progress of humanity. But one is not a real older person if one merely criticizes as well. Young people will put up with this for a while because they do not need to be annoyed by the contradiction; but in the end they will get tired of the “old young” because their voice is too rough and criticism has more life in youthful voices.

In its search for the spirit, anthroposophy seeks to find a field in which young and old people can happily come together. The Executive Council of the Anthroposophical Society can be pleased that its announcement has been received by young people in the way that it has been. But the active members of the Anthroposophical Society will not leave the Executive Council in the lurch either. Because at the same time as I am receiving approval from one side, I am also receiving a letter from the other side that contains words to which anyone who belongs to the Anthroposophical Society with their heart must listen. “The day may come when we ‘young people’ will have to break away from the Anthroposophical Society, just as you once had to break away from the Theosophical Society.”

This day would come if we in the Anthroposophical Society are unable to realize in the near future what is meant by the announcement of a “Youth Section”. Hopefully the active members of the Anthroposophical Society will go in the direction of the Executive Council at the Goetheanum, so that the day may come when it can be said of the “young”: We must unite more and more closely with Anthroposophy.

This time I have spoken to the older members of the Anthroposophical Society about the “youth”; in the next issue I would like to tell the youth what is on my mind.