The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Since it has been requested that I speak about the therapeutic principles that have grown out of the anthroposophical world view on one of our evenings, I am very happy to comply with this request, but it is difficult to speak briefly about this subject in particular. It is difficult because the subject is an extremely broad one and it is hardly possible to give a proper idea of the essentials in a very short lecture, which can only be aphoristic. On the other hand, certain considerations that have to be made are somewhat remote from general human consciousness. Nevertheless, I will try to explain the things that are important as generally as possible this evening.

The fact that there is also a medical current within the anthroposophical movement certainly does not stem from the fact that we as anthroposophists want to be everywhere and want to poke our noses into everything. That is certainly not the case. But as the Anthroposophical movement sought to make its way in the world, physicians also joined the movement, physicians who were seriously striving, and a large, relatively large number of such physicians had come to a more or less clear awareness of how shaky the views of today's officially accepted medicine actually are, and how the foundations for the actual understanding of disease processes and their healing are often lacking.

Official science lacks these foundations because what today claims validity, scientific validity, actually only wants to rely on the natural science that is generally used today. And this natural science, in turn, only believes it is walking securely with what it can determine in a mechanical, physical or chemical way in external nature. And it then applies what it finds through physics and chemistry about external natural processes to where it wants to come to an understanding of the human being. But even if a kind of concentration, microcosmic concentration of all world processes, is contained in the human being, the external physical and chemical processes in the human organism itself are never present in the form in which they take place outside in nature. Man takes up into himself the substances of the earth, which are not merely passive substances, but which are actually always imbued with natural processes and phenomena. A substance only appears on the surface to be something that is at rest. In reality, everything in the substance is alive and in motion. And so man also takes up into his organism these processes, this weaving and living, as they take place chemically and physically in nature, but he transforms it immediately in his organism, he makes it into something else in his organism.

What becomes of the natural processes in the human organism can only be understood by truly and truly observing human beings. But today's natural science, by wanting to rely solely on the physical and chemical, actually excludes from its field of study what actually takes place in the human being as human, and also, for example, in the physical body of the human being as human. For nothing takes place in the physical body that is not at the same time influenced by etheric, astral or ego processes. But because natural science completely disregards these ego processes, these astral processes, this etheric life and weaving, it does not actually get anywhere near the human being. Therefore, this natural science cannot really look into the human interior in such a way that it can clearly see how the external chemical and physical processes in the human being then continue to work, how they continue to work in the healthy person, and how they continue to work in the sick person.

But how can one judge the effect of a remedy in the right way if one cannot understand how some natural thing that we introduce into the organism, or with which we treat the organism, continues to work in the human organism.

And so we can say that the greatest conceivable progress in the medical field in modern times has actually only been made in the field of surgery, where it is a matter of external, one might say mechanical, handling.

On the other hand, in the field of actual therapy – not in my opinion, but precisely in the opinion of those doctors who have become aware of all this – there is great confusion because one cannot see the connection between any natural thing and its effect on the disease if one actually excludes the human being from scientific observation due to one's particular view of natural science.

Now, since anthroposophy is based precisely on getting to know the human being in his innermost being, both insofar as he is a supersensible being and insofar as he is a sensual being, knowledge can also be gained from anthroposophy about treating people with these or those natural remedies in the event of illness.

In fact, we are already faced with a certain limit to our knowledge in medicine if we only ask about the actual nature of the disease. What is the disease? Based on today's scientific knowledge, this question: What is the disease? — cannot be answered at all. Because, according to these scientific views, what is the sum of all the processes that take place in a healthy person? From the head, from the outermost end of the head to the last end of the toes on the foot, these are the natural processes. But what then are the processes that take place in the liver, kidneys, head, heart, wherever, during an illness? They are natural processes. Everything that is a healthy process is a natural process; everything that is a disease process is also a natural process. Why is it that, under the one kind of process, the human being is healthy and under the other kind of process, he is sick?

The point is that one does not speak in generalities, speaking so nebulously: Well, the healthy natural processes are normal, the unhealthy natural processes are not normal. — There really comes “in due time”, when one knows nothing, “a word”!

The problem is that if you only apply general natural science, as is common today, you approach the human being in such a way that you prefer not to approach the living human being at all, but rather the corpse. You take some piece of the organism here or there and imagine what healthy or diseased natural processes are taking place within it. And so you don't really care whether you take tissue from the head or the liver or the big toe or something like that. Everything can be traced back to the cell. Histology, the study of tissue, has actually become the most highly developed of all human studies. Well, if you go into the smallest parts and omit all the interrelationships of forces, then, just as all cows are grey in the dark, all organs in the human being are the same. But then you get a nocturnal “grey cow science”, not a real science that deals with the specificity of the individual organs in the human being.

What must serve as the basis for this, I only dared to express a few years ago, although it has occupied me for more than thirty to thirty-five years now. But one usually only imagines that spiritual science comes to its results so easily. One need only look into the spiritual world and one would discover everything, whereas it is more difficult when one has to work in laboratories, in physics cabinets or in a clinic; there one must make an effort — at least that is what one thinks. In spiritual science, one only has to look into the world of the spirit and one can discover everything. But it is not like that. Especially conscientious spiritual research requires more effort and, above all, more responsibility than working in a laboratory or at a clinic or an observatory. And so it is that although the first conception of what I now want to briefly indicate in principle was before me about thirty-five years ago, I was only able to express it a few years ago, after everything had been processed and, above all, verified in the context of the entire official natural science of the present day. And it was precisely under the influence of these principles about the structure of the human being that the therapeutic current within our anthroposophical movement came into being.

We must not forget that, even when we have a person before us in their physical form, we must distinguish three distinct limbs. These three different limbs can be named in a variety of ways. However, the best way to approach them is to characterize them by saying that the human being has, as the one system of their physical being, the nerve-sense system, which is mainly localized in the head.

The human being has a second system, the rhythmic system; this includes breathing and blood circulation. But it also includes, for example, the rhythmic activities of digestion and so on. This is the second system of the human being.

And the third system of the human being is the connection between the movement system, the limb system and the actual metabolic system. This connection will be immediately clear to you when you consider that it is precisely through the movement of the limbs that the metabolism is promoted, and that actually the limbs are always connected with the metabolic organs in a very organic way. Anatomy will also show you this immediately. Just see how the legs continue inwardly into the metabolic organs and how the arms also continue inwardly. So that we can distinguish three systems in the human being: the nerve-sense system, localized mainly in the head; the rhythmic system, localized mainly in the chest, around the heart; and the metabolic-limb system, localized mainly in the limbs and the attached metabolic organs.

But we must not imagine this human anatomy in the way that a professor once did in an attempt to discredit the anthroposophical movement. He did not try to penetrate what was actually meant by this structure, but he tried to blacken this structure of the human being and said: These anthroposophists claim that the human being consists of three systems, the head, the trunk - chest and stomach - and the limbs. Yes, of course, you can immediately ridicule a thing in this way.

For it is not the case that the nervous-sensory system is only in the head. It is mainly in the head, but it then extends over the whole organism, so that the human being has spread his head organization over the whole organism. Similarly, the rhythmic system extends up and down over the whole organism. Man is thus, again, a rhythmic system in space, and also a metabolic-limb system. When you move your eyes, the eyes are limbs. These systems are not juxtaposed in space, but are structured into one another. They are interlocking, and one must become accustomed to precise thinking if one wants to properly assess this structure of the human being.

Now the two systems, the first and the third, the nervous sense system and the limb metabolism system, are actually polar opposites. What the one produces, the other destroys; what the other destroys, the one produces. So they work in completely opposite ways. And the middle system, the rhythmic system, establishes the relationship between the two. There is a kind of oscillation between the two, so that a harmony can always take place between the destruction of one system and the building of the other. If we consider the metabolic system, for example, the metabolic system naturally works with its greatest intensity in the human abdomen. But what is going on in the human abdomen must evoke a polar opposite activity in the human head, in the nerve-sense system, if the human being is to be healthy.

Now, if you imagine that this intense activity, which is actually the activity of the human digestive system, extends to the nerve-sense system due to its intensity being too strong and too great, so that the activity which should actually be in the metabolic system, encroaches on the nerve-sense system, then you have two, albeit natural processes, for my sake, but you can immediately see how the one natural process becomes abnormal. It just belongs in the metabolic system, and it breaks through, as it were, into the nerve-sense system.

This is how the various forms of a disease arise that is treated by medicine today as a somewhat neglected disease, but, I would say, by a large part of humanity as a less neglected disease, because these various forms of the disease are known everywhere. This is how what is known as the various forms of migraine arises. And in order to understand migraine in its various forms, one must grasp this process, which, in its intensity, as it is there, is supposed to take place in the metabolic system and which breaks through into the nervous sense system, so that the nerves and the senses themselves are treated in such a way that the metabolism shoots into them instead of remaining in its actual place.

The reverse can take place. The process that is supposed to be most intense in the nerve-sense system, which is quite contrary to the metabolic process, can in turn break through in a certain way after the metabolic system. So that in the metabolic system, instead of there being only a very subordinate nerve-sense process, an intensified nerve-sense process takes place, so that, as it were, what belongs to the head breaks through and occurs in the abdomen, head activity thus occurs in the abdomen. When this happens, the dangerous disease of abdominal typhus arises in the person.

Thus, by thoroughly understanding this threefold human being, we can see how the process of illness develops out of the healthy process in the human organism. If our head, with its nervous-sense system, were not organized as it is, we could never have typhoid fever. If our abdomen were not organized as it is, we could never have migraine. But the activity of the head should remain in the head, and the activity of the abdomen in the abdomen. If they break through, then these types of disease arise.

And as with these two particularly characteristic forms of disease, one can point to other forms of disease that always arise from a certain activity that belongs to a certain organ system asserting itself in a different place, in a different organ system.

If you proceed only anatomically, you see how the smallest parts are arranged in the organism's tissue. But you do not see this effect of polar opposite activity. You can only study the nerve cell to see that it is organized in the opposite way to, say, the liver cell. If you can see the whole organism in such a way that it appears to you in its threefold structure, then you also notice how the nerve cell is a cell that constantly wants to dissolve, that constantly wants to be broken down if it is to be healthy, and how a liver cell is something that constantly wants to be built up if it is to be healthy. These are polar activities. They interact in the right way when they are properly distributed in the organism, and they interact in the wrong way when they penetrate each other.

The rhythmic system is in the middle and always wants to create a balance between the opposing polar activities of the nervous-sensory system and the metabolic-limb system.

I would now like to select a specific example to give you a sense of how – I can of course only discuss it in aphorisms – we can find the relationship between the healing agent taken from nature and its forces and the forces of illness and health at work within the human being.

[IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW]

Let us turn our attention to a very specific ore found in nature, the so-called antimony ore. Antimony has an extraordinarily interesting property when you look at it externally. It forms in nature in such a way that, so to speak, skewers arise, rod-shaped, spear-like structures that lie next to each other, so that one finds the antimony ore in nature in such a way that, if I draw it schematically, one could draw it something like this. It grows almost like a mineral moss or a mineral lichen. You can see that, to a certain extent, this mineral wants to arrange itself in thread-like form. It can be seen even more clearly how this mineral, this ore, wants to arrange itself in thread-like form when it is subjected to a certain physical-chemical process. Then it becomes even more fibrillar. It arranges itself in very thin fibers. But what is particularly significant is what happens when this antimony is subjected to a certain kind of combustion process. You get a white smoke that can attach itself to walls and then become shiny, mirror-like.* This is called antimony mirror. It is not very well respected today, but it was used a great deal in ancient medicine, precisely because of the ancient knowledge from which I have repeatedly spoken to you in the morning lectures. This antimony mirror, that is, what develops only from the combustion process and can be deposited on walls, making them shiny as glass, is something extraordinarily important.

Another property is added to all this. I will just emphasize this: If you subject antimony to certain electrolytic processes and bring it to the so-called electrolytic cathode, you only need to exert a small influence on the cathode after you have brought the antimony and subjected it to the electrolytic process, and you get a small antimony explosion. In short, this antimony has the most interesting properties imaginable.

If we introduce a certain moderate dosage of antimony into the human organism, we can study the various processes to see how the same forces that behave as I have described in antimony actually do experience their continuation in the human organism, and how they take on all kinds of forms of force and all kinds of forms of action there.

These forms of activity – I cannot, of course, go into the details and evidence here, I just want to briefly sketch out the inner connections – these processes that occur in the human organism are particularly strong, for example, wherever blood coagulates. So they strengthen and promote blood clotting. But if we now examine the human organism using methods that also belong to the threefold structure of the human organism, which gradually allow us to look into the human being and recognize how the individual systems in the various organs behave, if we look into the human organism in this way, we find that what lives in antimony does not merely live outside in the mineral antimony, but that it is actually a context of forces that lives in the human organism itself, that is always present in the human organism, in a healthy organism, and that it also takes on forms in the sick human organism, as I have explained to you now.

This antimony process, I would like to say, which is present in the human organism itself, is polar opposite to another process. It is opposed to the process that occurs wherever the plastically active forces, for example the cell-forming forces, the cell-rounding forces, occur, where that which actually forms the cell substance of the human organism occurs. I would like to call these forces, because they are preferably contained in the protein substance, for example, the albuminizing forces. And so we have in the human organism the forces that we find outside in nature, in antimony in particular, when we subject the antimony to combustion, for example, and bring it up to the antimony level. The forces that work outside in the antimony, we also have them working in the human organism. But we also have the opposite forces at work, the albuminizing forces, which bring the antimony forces to a standstill, remove them.

These two systems of forces, the albumino- and antimonio-metallizing forces, now counteract each other in such a way that they must be in a certain equilibrium in the human organism. It must now be recognized that, for example, the process which I described to you earlier in principle and which underlies abdominal typhus, is essentially due to the fact that the equilibrium between these two systems of forces is disturbed.

In order to gain a true insight into the human organism, we need to be able to draw on what I have just discussed from a wide range of perspectives – albeit non-medical – in these morning lectures during this course.

We have seen how the human being not only has this physical body, but also an etheric or formative forces body, an astral body, an ego organization. And just yesterday I was able to explain to you how the physical body and the formative forces body, on the one hand, and the I and the astral body, on the other, are intimately connected, but how the astral body and the formative forces body or ether body are more loosely connected, because they separate every night.

This connection, which consists of the interplay of the forces of the astral body and the etheric body, is now radically disturbed in abdominal typhus. In the case of abdominal typhus, the astral body becomes weak and is unable to work intensively into the physical body because it works for itself, causing a preponderance that effectively pushes down the nerve-sense organization, which is mainly subject to the astral body. Instead of being transformed into the metabolic organization, it remains as such, as astral activity. The astral body works for itself. It does not properly work into the ether body. This is how the symptoms of the disease arise, which give the symptoms of typhoid fever.

Now, what occurs in antimony is that the antimony, so to speak, denies its mineral nature, becomes crystallized in a bourgeois way, that even the antimony mirror, where it is deposited, appears like snow flowers on a window, thus also showing the inner crystallization power as in nature, this crystallization power This crystallization power, which becomes active in antimony, works when we process it in the appropriate way as a medicine and introduce it into the organism, so that it supports this organism, so that it can push its astral body with its forces in the right way into the etheric body, and bring these bodies back into the right relationship.

With the remedy made from antimony in the appropriate way, we support the process that is opposed to the typhoid process. And in this way, with the antimony remedy in particular – to which, depending on whether the disease takes this or that course, other substances must be added, which in turn have a similar relationship to the human organism – one can fight the disease with this remedy, to which other substances are added, disease by stimulating and supporting the processes in the organism, so that it develops its own, I might say antimonizing power, which then tends to bring about the right rhythm in the interaction of the etheric body and the astral body.

Thus, anthroposophical observation leads us to see the relationship between what works outside in nature, in natural things, as I have shown you with the example of antimony, and what works inside the human organism. You can follow these albuminous forces, which have a plastic, rounding effect, and the forces that work along lines, right into the germ cell.

For those who have really acquired knowledge in this field – however unpleasant it is for them to say so, because they know that they will arouse the hatred and antipathy of the corresponding people – and who can see into the workings of the human organism, the otherwise truly most wonderful microscopic examinations of the ovum, of the germ cell, seem extraordinarily amateurish. They observe the ovum as such on the outside, the development of the so-called centrosomes – you can read about this in any embryology book – without knowing how these albuminizing forces, which also control the whole organism, work in opposition, polar opposition to the antimonizing forces. The rounding of the ovum as such is caused by the albumino-coagulating force; the centrosomes after fertilization are caused by the antimonio-coagulating processes.

But this happens in the whole human body. And by preparing the remedy in the right way and knowing, through the diagnosis, where the human organism needs support, we supply the human organism with the forces it needs to counteract a disease process.

By introducing anthroposophical perspectives into medicine, we are actually achieving the goal of considering the real and correct relationship between the macrocosm, the whole world, and the human being. And just as I have pointed out antimony to you – I would of course have to say a lot about antimony if I wanted to discuss it scientifically in detail now, but I just want to hint at the principles – and the processes that it can bring forth, that it has within it when it is treated in one way or another, I could now for example, I could also show you the whole behavior within nature and its processes, let us say for that which is called quartz as a mineral, silicic acid, silicea, which is mixed with granite as one of its components, which crystallizes transparently in its deposits and is so hard that it can no longer be scratched with a knife, and is precisely a component of granite. If this substance is treated in a certain way, when it is administered to the organism – in the right dosage, of course, which must be determined by diagnosis – it acquires the property of supporting whatever is to take effect in the nerve-sense system, whatever the organism is to muster in the nerve-sense system as the inherent forces of this nerve-sense system. So that one can say: what the senses are actually supposed to do, one supports when one administers this remedy, which is prepared from silicon, from quartz, to the person in the right way. One must then, depending on the secondary symptoms, add other substances, but in the main it is about the effect of what lies in the silicic acid formation process. When this silicic acid formation process is introduced into the human organism, it supports an activity in the nerve-sense system that is too weak. It then has the right strength. Now, when this nerve-sense activity becomes too weak, the digestive activity breaks through to the head. Migraine-like conditions arise. If we now support the sense activity, the nerve sense activity in the right way with a remedy that has been produced in the right way from silicic acid, from quartz, Silicea, then the nerve sense system in the migraine patient becomes so strong that it can in turn push back the broken-through digestive process.

[IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW]

I am, of course, presenting these things to you somewhat crudely, but you will see what is important from this. It is essential to really understand the healthy and sick human organism, not only in terms of its cellular composition, but also in terms of the forces that act in the same sense or in a polar or rhythmic way in this human organism, in order to then seek out that which can combat this or that pathological process in the human organism when it is at work in nature.

Thus, for example, we can find how the process contained in phosphorus is a process in the external nature that, when introduced into the human organism, has a supportive effect on a certain kind of internal inability of the human organism: namely, when the human organism, in relation to certain forces that should always be at work within it when it is healthy, becomes incapable of allowing these forces to work in the right way, when it has too little strength to allow certain forces to work within it that are actually a kind of organic combustion process that is always present when substances are transformed in the human organism. Organic combustion processes occur with every movement, with everything that a person does, even with those things that are done internally. Now, the human organism can become too weak to regulate these organic combustion processes in the right way. They must be inhibited in a certain way. If they are not inhibited enough, they develop in a vehement way. The organic combustion processes actually always have an immeasurable, unlimited intensity by themselves, otherwise there would immediately be too much fatigue here or there, or one would not be able to get any further than a moving person. These organic combustion processes actually have, I want to say, unlimited intensity, and the organism must continually have the possibility to inhibit them.

If these inhibiting forces are absent, either in an organ system or in the whole organism, if the organism has become too weak to inhibit its organic combustion processes in the right way, then tuberculosis arises in its most diverse forms. I would say that it is only through this organic powerlessness, through this inability to inhibit the combustion processes, that the suitable breeding ground for the bacilli is created; these can then be found on this breeding ground.

Nothing should be said here against the bacillus theory. The bacillus theory is very useful. From the different way in which the bacilli appear here or there, one naturally recognizes various things; for diagnosis, an extraordinary amount can be recognized from it. It is not my intention to speak out against official medicine, but rather to continue it where it reaches certain limits. And it can be continued by applying the aspects of anthroposophy to it.

If phosphorus is now added to the organism, these abilities to inhibit the organic combustion processes are supported. However, it must be taken into account that this inhibition can originate from a wide variety of organ systems. If, for example, it originates from the system that works primarily in the bones, then the phosphorus effect in the human organism must be supported by specializing it, so to speak, specifically for the bone side. This is done by combining the phosphorus remedy with calcium or calcium salt in some way that is revealed by a more precise study of the matter. If the patient has tuberculosis of the small intestine, some copper compounds will be added to the phosphorus in the correct dosage. If the patient has pulmonary tuberculosis, iron, for example, will be added to the phosphorus. But then, because pulmonary tuberculosis is an extremely complicated disease, other admixtures may also be considered under certain circumstances. So you can see that the possibility of a real therapy is based on how the chemical and physical processes in the human organism continue, how they continue to work inside.

Official medicine often starts from the view that just as the antimony forces work out there in antimony, so they also work in the human organism. That is not the case. We must be clear about how these processes continue to work in the human organism. And that can be seen in particular if we apply the actually anthroposophical insights to the experiments at issue.

As we saw with antimony and its powers, antimony establishes the rhythm between the astral body and the etheric body or formative forces body. In the case of the forces at work in silicic acid, quartz, and quartz, in the silicea, can be seen to be particularly suitable for establishing the correct relationship between the ego and the astral body when it is disturbed, in order to have a healing effect on the nervous and sensory system. While it is the case with lime – especially with the lime used from the lime secretions of animals – that you get remedies that establish the right relationship between the formative forces body and the physical body.

So one can say: The correct view of the human being leads one to use lime or similar substances, namely substances secreted by the animal organism, such as oyster shells, to restore the right relationship when it is disturbed, which always manifests itself in physical processes, in disease processes. To restore the right relationship between the etheric body and the physical body. In the preparation of remedies, one must reflect on this in the case of such chalky or similar secretions.

If one is dealing with an arrhythmic interaction between the formative body and the astral body, one must pay attention to such things as are present, for example, in antimony, but also in numerous other metals, but especially in the components that of the plants, that is to say, they are particularly strong in the leaves and in the trunk, while those forces that correspond to the phosphorus process are preferably contained in the flower organs of the plants, and those processes that correspond to the silica process are contained in the root organs of the plants. So that one can also find the relationship between the forces that are in the different parts of the plants. The root forces have a definite affinity and relationship to the human head and nervous-sense system. The leaf and stem organs have a special relationship to the rhythmic system and the flower organs have a special relationship to the abdominal, metabolic system. Therefore, if one often wants to help the digestive, metabolic system in a simple way, it is often enough simply by choosing certain flower organs to make into tea, after having diagnosed in the right way. In this way one helps the digestive organs. While one must extract the salts of the roots through a special extraction process if one wants to obtain a remedy that acts particularly on the nerve-sense process, on the head organs, for example.

And so, on the one hand, you have to understand nature and, on the other hand, the human organism. Then you can really find the remedies in nature in such a way that you can see how the two things are connected, that you don't just have to try clinically: “How does it work?” and then, you see, you make a series of cases and you note that ninety or seventy per cent of them show some favorable result, and that you were mistaken in forty cases. Then you treat the matter statistically and according to whether the statistics favor this or that, you regard it as a remedy or not as a remedy.

I can only deal with these things briefly and aphoristically in order to show you how, without falling into amateurism or medical sectarianism, a strictly scientific approach can be taken to deal with disease processes using remedies that come from human observation.

Just as important as recognizing the right natural substance and natural process to be processed into a remedy is the particular way in which it is used.

Precisely because one can act either on the nerve-sense system, in order to bring about recovery in the indicated manner from it in the right way, or on the rhythmic system, or on the metabolic-limb system, precisely because one must act on these individual systems, it is important, it is essential to also know how the method of treatment is to be administered. Because almost every remedy can be used in three different ways. Either it is introduced into the human being through the mouth into the stomach and so on, so in the way the human being takes in the remedy, one counts on the human being's metabolism, on the metabolic system and on how the metabolic system then affects the other systems. Therefore, there are remedies that are used in this way in particular: they are introduced to the human being through the mouth and stomach and so on.

But then there are also remedies that, in the most eminent sense, have to be used in such a way that they already affect the rhythmic system through the way they are used. In this respect, antimony is particularly suited to finding the right treatment method for this point. This is where injections and injection methods come in. And the remedy that is inoculated into the blood, or is otherwise injected, is the one that is counted on to have an effect on the rhythmic process of the human being.

For those remedies used in baths and ointments, or even where it is a matter of treating the human organism externally and mechanically, for example in massage processes or similar, where the aim is to apply the remedy or the healing process to the person in a more external way, it is assumed that the healing method will act on the nerve-sense system.

And so, in turn, one can work through any other system in a variety of ways to achieve the healing process. Let us assume we have Silicea, a quartz. It makes a difference whether we have a remedy that we prepare and that is to be taken orally, or whether it is injected. If we assume that it is taken orally, we want to introduce the quartz processes through the digestive system by way of how it is processed in the digestive system and the digestive system in turn sends forces into the nerve-sense system. But if we expect that they should be sent more into the nervous-sense system, by inserting them into the blood organism, the respiratory rhythm, whereby in turn healing can take place indirectly through this rhythm, if we thus intend this, then we inject.

If we intend to bring any aromatic-ethereal substance, such as that contained in a plant blossom, to bear through the digestive organ, we make a tea that we introduce into the stomach through the mouth. If we want to work by bringing the essential oil, which has an aromatic effect on the nerve-sense system, directly into effect or through the nerve-sense system on the rhythmic process, then we make some kind of bath out of the juices of these flowers, by adding the juice of these flowers to the water and preparing a bath out of it. There we act on the nerve-sense system.

And so you see how the healing effect also depends on the way the individual substances are treated in relation to the human being.

In order to achieve something in this way, our clinical-therapeutic institutes with their corresponding laboratories and other enterprises have been founded by physicians who have joined our anthroposophical movement, so that on the one hand remedies and healing methods can be tried out, and on the other hand the remedies can be produced. We have such clinical and chemical-pharmaceutical institutes in Arlesheim near Dornach and in Stuttgart.

In particular, the Clinical Therapeutic Institute in Arlesheim should be mentioned, which is under the excellent leadership of Dr. Wegman, who has a particularly beneficial effect on this institute because she has what I would call the courage to heal. For it is precisely when one looks into the complexity of the natural processes from which the healing processes are to be drawn, on the one hand, and into the tremendous complexity of the health and disease processes in the human being, on the other, when one is confronted with this immense field – and one is always confronted with this immense field, even if one only has a certain number of patients – then healing requires courage.

An International Pharmaceutical Laboratory is affiliated to this Arlesheim Institute, where the remedies are produced. Today they can be used all over the world, if only the right ways and means are sought. The laboratory produces the means; people just have to find the means and ways to the laboratory, that is the point. People have to find the right means and ways to get to the remedies. The work is not done in an amateurish way, nor is today's science denied; rather, today's science is only continued.

Once this knowledge has taken root in the broadest circles, we can be truly unconcerned about the success of such a movement as the International Pharmaceutical Laboratory in Arlesheim. But it is difficult to really bring to bear in the world a therapy based on a full understanding of the human being, with its remedies, in the face of today's purely materialistic direction. Here one would actually have to count on the insight of every person who cares about the health of their fellow human beings.

Now, by first pointing out what can be achieved through natural remedies and their appropriate use, it is of course not ruled out what can be achieved by taking a more spiritual-soul approach to healing. In this area, particularly fruitful observations are made. If we now look at the hygienic-therapeutic aspect, which must always be included in a proper education, we see how the way we affect children's souls and spirits through teaching – when I give educational lectures, I discuss these things – can have the most diverse healing and pathogenic effects, perhaps not immediately, but over the course of the life process. I will mention just one. For example, the teacher can proceed in the right way with regard to the child's memory by not expecting too much or too little of him. If he proceeds wrongly, if he demands too much of the memory in the eighth, ninth, tenth, or eleventh year of life, if he does not have the right pedagogical tact in this direction, then what the soul must accomplish in an excessive memory activity, in an artificially cultivated memory activity, will later in life express itself as all kinds of physical illnesses. A connection can be demonstrated between diabetes and incorrect memory methods in teaching. While, on the other hand, the disruption of memory in another way can certainly affect the child in an unfavorable way.

I can only mention this in principle, because time is already so very advanced. But from this one can see how not only health and illness are affected by natural remedies, but how the soul itself works in a very special way for health and illness.

And from there, we can also find our way to those methods where we try to bring about healing processes through purely spiritual-soul influences from person to person, which I cannot describe in detail today, of course, due to the limited time. But it is very easy to fall prey to amateurism in this area. One can, for example, entertain the belief that so-called mental illnesses are most easily cured by spiritual influences. Mental illnesses are characterized by the fact that it is actually almost impossible to reach the patient on a soul-spiritual level. That is precisely the case with so-called mental illnesses: the soul closes itself off to external influences. But one will always find that especially in the so-called mental illnesses, which actually go by their name wrongly, physical disease processes are present somewhere hidden. Before dabbling in mental illnesses, one should actually correctly diagnose the physical source of the disease, which is sometimes very hidden, and then one will be able to work charitably by healing the physical organism.

In the case of physical illnesses, it will be much more a matter of helping through all kinds of spiritual and psychological influences, which are usually applied in a very amateurish way today – I don't want to go into that now. In this respect, much blessing can be bestowed in this regard, in many ways the external process, which is to be brought about by remedies and the like, can be supported.

I can only hint at this. The methods based on anthroposophy certainly do not exclude therapeutic influences of soul and spirit, but include them. We prove this by the fact that at the Clinical Therapeutic Institute in Arlesheim-Dornach, in addition to physical healing methods, you can find so-called eurythmy therapy.

This eurythmy therapy consists of transforming what you see here as artistic eurythmy in the moving human being, in the human being in his or her structure, but moving in space, transforming the vocalizing in such a way that the person moves in healthy movements, but ones that are derived from eurythmy, that one applies the vocalizing movements in such a way that one supports precisely the forces that I mentioned earlier as the albuminizing forces in the person. While the consonantizing forces support the antimonisizing forces in many ways.

In this way, consonant and vowel eurythmy therapy can work together to restore the balance between these two types of forces. And it can be seen, especially when things are done properly, not in a dilettantish way, how other healing processes, especially chronic illnesses, can be greatly supported by this eurythmy therapy.

This eurythmy therapy is actually based on the fact that spiritual and mental processes are evoked by what a person performs with the limbs of his body. If we know which movements arise spontaneously in a healthy human organism, then we can also find the corresponding movements that have a healing effect when we work back from the limbs, from human movement, to the processes of the internal organs.

At the Clinical-Therapeutic Institute in Arlesheim, for example, it is possible to seek out this eurythmy therapy and see how it can be a special branch within the whole healing process, which can be found on anthroposophical ground, based on real human knowledge.

It would, of course, be going too far to go into details in this area in particular. The principle is actually given in what I have presented.

So it has just happened that we have had to develop this therapeutic current within the anthroposophical movement in the most diverse ways because, so to speak, medical experts have approached us. It has arisen out of the conditions of our time. It has been demanded, so to speak, by present-day civilization. Anthroposophy has basically only given the answers to questions that were put to it.

Today I have only been able to give you an aphoristic account of the principles; more is not possible in this already all too long time. And if I wanted to explain just a few things so that it would be, I would like to say, in its entirety, then I would have to do something similar to what I rejected the day before yesterday in the eurythmic lecture; I would have to invite you to stay overnight and listen to me until tomorrow morning, when we would then come together for tomorrow's morning lecture. This is something that can make people ill, and surely no one who wants to talk about healing can make people ill in this way! So it is better to send them home to a good night's sleep with a shorter presentation.

following a lecture by painter Arild von Rosenkrantz

It was requested that I add something to the interesting remarks of Baron Rosenkrantz about art and its future task, and that I also give a picture of the Goetheanum as it will look in the future.

I would like to answer these questions only with a few suggestions, suggestions that relate more to the elaboration of an artistic impulse or artistic impulses in the future — although I do not mean that these artistic impulses can be undertaken arbitrarily or deliberately by any human beings; but to a certain extent one sees them in what is currently being prepared, in the direction that art in particular will have to take in the near future. I mean this in the following way.

On the one hand, we see the old impulses of human work and human civilization persisting in all areas, in the fields of science and artistic creation, and in the realm of religious feeling. But on the other hand, we also see how, in a great number of people, in more people than one would usually think, vague undercurrents prevail, longings for something. These longings one would like to fathom in the field of anthroposophical work; one would like to get to the bottom of them, so to speak. And it seems to me that in fact a large part of what anthroposophy wants to assert itself as in the present day actually meets such vague, more or less unconscious longings of numerous people in the present.

And precisely because in the past three to four centuries, intellectuality has basically flooded everything, because intellectuality has taken deeper root in human souls than one might think, that is why people today find it so difficult to bridge the gap between an indefinite longing and that which can give this indefinite longing a revelation in earthly work. We see this when we look at spiritual science itself.

During my lectures here, I have often had to mention how this spiritual science must be extracted from research into the supersensible worlds through imagination, inspiration and intuition, but how, when this research presents its results, ordinary common sense can approach these research results with complete understanding. And it is actually only the clinging to old prejudices when one does not find enough strength in the soul to approach the results of spiritual science without prejudice.

What people today so often object to about the results of spiritual science actually stems from an undefined fear deep within the soul. Basically, people are afraid of the results of spiritual science. Everything that the last few centuries have brought forth in human civilization so completely contradicts spiritual science that it appears as something completely unknown to most people. One always fears the unknown; but one does not want to admit this fear to oneself, and so one dresses this fear up in so-called logical refutations, in logical criticism.

Those who can see through things will recognize everywhere how the logic of the opponents of spiritual science is basically nothing more than an excuse of the soul for the fear that one has of it.

And so it is in the artistic field. One hears it said extraordinarily often: Yes, spiritual science wants to ascend to the higher worlds through ideas, through scientific discoveries; but science suppresses free artistic creation. Those who really want to create artistically must, so it is said, be free of all ideas, of all knowledge; they must create out of pure imagination. And there are very many poets, painters, musicians, in fact artists in all fields, who now have the very fear that if they approach spiritual science too much, their imagination will dry up; that they will then no longer be able to let their imagination unfold freely, but would in a sense only reproduce through colors and sounds what occurs in spiritual science.

Yes, you see, my dear attendees: there were indeed many struggles at the old Goetheanum. It is true that those who do not have a profound artistic impulse come to a kind of outer symbolism, outer allegory, out of a certain misunderstanding of this school of thought. I can readily admit that there have been an extraordinary number of anthroposophists and theosophists who have sought the artistic in ideas that are then painted, or for that matter sometimes even composed, and the like. When you entered such an anthroposophical or theosophical space and saw these symbolic and allegorical, straw-like images, you could despair! All artistic feeling had been driven out! I can say that there were certainly well-meaning friends who, when the old, burnt Goetheanum was being rebuilt, began to want to add all kinds of symbols. But I always resisted this in the strongest possible way! With this Goetheanum, everything had to be created out of a truly artistic form. Every line, every form had to be created in such a way that the matter was viewed purely from an inner artistic perspective.

Therefore, the forms of the Goetheanum were not really to be interpreted, but basically only to be looked at. When friends or other external visitors came to the Goetheanum, they always wanted to be shown around, and they then asked to be accompanied by this or that person and for explanations of how the columns are designed, the capitals are designed, the architraves are designed – how things are painted. They should be given the inner meaning everywhere.

When I myself led friends, I usually said as an introduction: What I am about to say to friends or visitors is extremely unpleasant to me. And I have never been more possessed with such antipathy towards what I myself say than when I had to explain these forms of the Goetheanum; for they were not there to be explained, to be grasped in concepts, but to be looked at, to be grasped artistically, aesthetically!

And why was this so? This can best be illustrated by the human being itself. You see, you can study the human being — study it according to what science has produced as such science over the last three to four centuries. But you can only get so far, only as far as the physical organism. At the moment one wants to go higher in the higher links of human nature, one cannot do so without letting the world enter into an artistic understanding of the human being, because the world itself creates artistically where it creates spiritually. So that no one can understand the human being who cannot let the scientific pass into the artistic in his own inner vision.

Modern science then comes along and says: Yes, the one to whom it happens that he passes from science into artistry, he strays from the path of logic, from the observations of logic that must be present in science. He is no longer a scientist.

One can continue to declaim for a long time, my dear audience, but when nature does not create as one declaims, when nature at a certain point no longer begins to be so naturalistically logical, but rather to be artistic itself, then only he who becomes artistic in the last moment can approach nature.

And so it is precisely with true anthroposophy. It does not want to and cannot, because that does not correspond to its essence. It does not want to be something merely alive and ideal, but at a certain moment, what is vividly and scientifically expressed in ideas, passes directly into the artistic and the creative. And that is why every time one only begins to describe the human etheric body, even the description, which for my sake is still similar to the currently used science, will immediately turn into artistic expression, into artistic visualization.

And as soon as one comprehends this intensively, one will find everywhere that anthroposophy, that truly spiritual science is not something alien to art or even hostile to art, but that it will lead precisely into a truly artistic future.

This was truly demonstrated in practice in the old Goetheanum. The old Goetheanum had such a ground plan that if you drew a center line, the axis was symmetrical on both sides; but then there was no further symmetry, except for the left-right symmetry.

The columns of the auditorium had capitals that were not all the same, but were in a progressive development, in such a way that the capital of the first column on the left and right was relatively simple. The second column had a somewhat more complicated capital. And so it went on. But the artistic creation of these capitals was such that, inwardly, in the sensation of the line, in this contemplation of the curves, everything in the form of the second capital emerged directly from the first, and the third from the second. And so one surrendered purely to the life in lines, surfaces, curves.

And so it turned out that, I might say, one was finished with the seventh column by itself. There one had a form with the lines, curves: one could not go beyond that, one had to stop there.

Now people see the seven columns and think: that is a deeply mystical number, it is based on an old formula, on something that lives on in superstition and the like. But that is not the case! If you create purely artistically, you have to stop at seven. Just as the rainbow has seven colors, the musical scale has seven notes from the prime to the octave - the octave is the repetition of the prime - so you have seven columns.

But something else becomes apparent in the course of such work: Now, the second capital has emerged from the first through metamorphosis, from the second through experienced metamorphosis, and so on, and seven have been created. Then you stand and look at it. You look at your own work and discover all kinds of things in it that you hadn't even thought of! For example, when I had the seventh pillar capital, I compared it with the first and discovered that, of course artistically manipulated, all the forms that were concave in the first were convex in the last; and all those that were convex in the first were concave in the last. So that if you turned some around, you could put the last one into the first: the seventh into the first, the sixth into the second, the fifth into the third, and the fourth remained in the middle by itself. That happened all by itself.

You see, you had the certainty that you had not read anything of human arbitrariness into things, but that you had worked from the life of the forms themselves; that you had connected yourself with the creative cosmic world itself; that you also this, that one also grasps what lives and rules in nature on another level; that what one did was not human allegorizing, but that one has, so to speak, woven oneself into nature's creation, and now creates like nature.

But this is also true artistic creation, and all the arts in the future will more or less return to this. That was the artistic creation in all great art epochs. And that is what has also shone through in all the individual examples given in Baron Rosenkrantz's excellent lecture. That is what you can see everywhere, especially where new artistic impulses emerge in the evolution of the earth. From new impulses one then receives the courage and hope that new art forms can really arise out of what can be experienced in spiritual science.

Introduction

[IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW]

In 1923 Rudolf Steiner gave a series of lectures at a Summer School in Penmaenmawr, which have since been published under the title The Evolution of Consciousness. These lectures formed the main event of the School, but there were other activities as well. Steiner had brought with him a group of Eurythmists and a performance was arranged in spite of the inadequacy of the stage and its equipment. On the day before the performance he gave the introduction to this new art of movement, which appears in the following pages.

Eurythmy differs from other arts of movement in that it is an interpretation of speech as well as of music. Steiner here deals principally with the interpretation of speech, perhaps because he considered that his audience would be most interested in this aspect of Eurythmy. But he always regarded it as essential that in a performance there should be the interpretation of speech as well as of music.

The performance at Penmaenmawr was followed by others in London, and gradually sufficient interest was aroused to promote the building of a small theatre to be dedicated to the development of Eurythmy, the Rudolf Steiner Hall, in Park Road, Baker Street, now the location of the London School of Eurythmy.

Steiner would have been profoundly happy to see the development of this new art since his death. Performances at the Goetheanum in Dornach, Switzerland, now include the interpretation of whole symphonies, in which different Eurythmists, or groups of Eurythmists, interpret the parts of the different instruments. On that great stage, with its superb lighting, Eurythmy can be seen in its highest development. But there are flourishing Schools of Eurythmy in other centres as well, and recently a Congress of Eurythmists held at the Goetheanum was attended by over six hundred Eurythmists from every part of the world. Eurythmy also plays a vital part in the Rudolf Steiner Schools and Curative Homes which have been established in nearly all European countries, as well as in the Americas and the Southern hemisphere. But Steiner always emphasised (as he does in the Introduction) that educational and curative Eurythmy cannot exist without the establishment of Eurythmy as an art in its own right, just as painting, sculpture and music exist as arts in their own right, although they may be used educationally in schools and institutions.

This Introduction anticipates some of the difficulties which the newcomer may experience with an art of movement based on new and profound considerations as to the nature of man. It gives a comprehensive picture of the whole field of Eurythmy and of the need for such an art in the modern world.

A. C. Harwood, 1967

Eurhythmy has grown up out of the soil of the Anthroposophical Movement, and the history of its origin makes it almost appear to be a gift of the forces of destiny. In the year 1912 the Anthroposophical Society lost one of its members, the father of a family, and as a result it was necessary for his daughter to choose a profession, a profession, however, which could be found within the field of Anthroposophical activity. After much thought it seemed possible to make this the opportunity for the inauguration of a new art of movement in space, different from anything which had arisen up to that time.

And thus, out of the teaching given to this young girl, there arose the very first principles and movements of Eurythmy.

Eurythmy must be accounted one of the many activities arising out of the Anthroposophical Movement, which have grown up in such a way that their first beginnings must be looked upon as the result of the workings of destiny. I spoke some days ago about the forms of the pillars of the Goetheanum, and mentioned how I had stood before these pillars, and realised that through artistic activity they had gained a life of their own, and had developed quite different qualities from those with which they had originally been endowed. The same may be said about the art of Eurythmy.

This is always the case when one draws upon the creative forces of nature, either in one's work as an artist or in any other form of human activity. Just as the creative forces of nature draw upon the inexhaustible source of the infinite, so that it is always possible to perceive in something which has come to fruition much more than was originally implanted in it, so is it also when artistic impulses unite themselves with the mighty creative forces of nature. In such a case the artist is not merely developing some more or less limited impulse, but he reaches the point when he makes of himself an instrument for the creative powers of the universe, so that very much more grows out of his activity than he could originally have intended or foreseen.

At the time of which I speak, Eurythmy was studied only by a very few people. At the beginning of the war, (the first world war) Frau Dr. Steiner undertook their further training, and from that time on Eurythmy became more and more widely known, and its artistic possibilities very much enriched. The art of Eurythmy, as we know it today, has developed out of the first principles which were given in the year 1912. The work since then has been carried on without interruption; but Eurythmy is still only in its first beginnings, and we are working unceasingly towards its further development and perfection.

I am, however, convinced that Eurythmy bears within it infinite possibilities, and that, in the future, when those who were responsible for its inauguration must long have left their work in other hands, Eurythmy will develop further until it is able to take its place as a younger art by the side of those other arts having an older tradition.

No art has ever risen out of human intention intellectually conceived, neither can the principle of imitating nature ever produce an art. On the contrary, true art has always been born out of human hearts able to open themselves to the impulses coming from the spiritual world, human hearts which felt compelled to realise these impulses and to embody them in some way in external matter.

It can be seen how, in the case of each separate art—architecture, for example, sculpture, painting or music—certain spiritual impulses were poured into humanity from higher worlds. These impulses were taken up by certain individuals specially fitted to receive them, and in this way, through human activity, pictures of the higher worlds were reflected in the physical world; and the various arts came into being.

It is true that the arts, in the course of their further development, have for the most part become naturalistic, and have lost their connection with the impulses which originally inspired them, a mere imitation of external nature taking their place. Such imitation, however, could never be the source of any true art.

To-day, when a sculptor or painter wishes to represent the human figure, he does so by studying and working from a model. It can, however, easily be shown that the art of sculpture, which reached its zenith during the civilisation of ancient Greece, did not arise through the artist working from a model, and in his way more or less imitating the external impressions of the senses, but at that time, when the plastic art of Greece was in full bloom, man was still to some extent aware of the etheric body—which contains within it the formative forces and the forces of growth. At the height of Greek civilisation man knew how to make use of the etheric body when bringing an arm or hand, for instance, into a certain attitude, and the position and arrangement of the muscles were an actual experience to him. He had an inner understanding of the possibilities of movement in the arm and hand, of the possibilities of muscular expansion and contraction. And he was able to bring this inner experience to physical expression, making use of physical materials.

Thus the Greek sculptor incorporated into matter a real, inward experience, not merely the external impression of the eye. He did not say to himself: the lines go in this or that direction, and then proceed to embody in plastic form the perceptions of his physical senses; but for him it was indeed an actual inward experience which he re-created out of the creative forces of nature, and entrusted to external physical matter.

This is true of every form of art. There have always been, and will always be, in the course of human evolution on the earth, epochs during which art is at its height, during which influences from the spiritual worlds penetrate more easily into the souls of men than at other times, urging them to turn their gaze towards the spiritual worlds and to carry down from thence living spiritual impulses. This is how every true art is brought to birth.

Such periods of civilisation are always followed by others of a more naturalistic tendency, in which certain arts often attain to a greater external perfection than they had possessed at an earlier stage; but this perfection bears within it traces of decadence, whereas in their beginnings, these arts were permeated with a more vital, a more powerful and enthusiastic spiritual impulse. At that earlier stage they had not yet lost their true reality; their technique was the outcome of man's whole being. It was not a merely external, traditional technique, but was based on the body, soul, and spirit of man.

The realisation of this fact of human evolution might well give one courage to develop ever further and further this art of Eurythmy, which has been borne on the wings of fate into the Anthroposophical Movement. For it is the task of the Anthroposophical Movement to reveal to our present age that spiritual impulse which is suited to it.

I speak in all humility when I say that within the Anthroposophical Movement there is a firm conviction that a spiritual impulse of this kind must now, at the present time, enter once more into human evolution. And this spiritual impulse must perforce, among its other means of expression, embody itself in a new form of art. It will increasingly be realised that this particular form of art has been given to the world in Eurythmy.

It is the task of Anthroposophy to bring a greater depth, a wider vision and a more living spirit into the other forms of art. But the art of Eurythmy could only grow up out of the soul of Anthroposophy; could only receive its inspiration through a purely Anthroposophical conception.

It is through speech that man is able to reveal his inner being outwardly to his fellow-men. Through speech he can most easily disclose his inmost nature.

At all periods of civilisation, in a form suited to the particular epoch, side by side with those arts which need for their expression either the external element of space or the external element of time, accompanying and completing these, we find that art which manifests itself through speech—the art of poetry.

The art of speech—I purposely use the expression ‘the art of speech,’ to describe poetry, and the justification for doing so will appear later—is more comprehensive and universal than the other arts, for it can embody other forms of art within its own form. It can be said that the art of poetry is an art of speech which in the case of one poet works more plastically, and in the case of another more musically. Indeed one can go so far as to say that painting itself can enter into the art of poetry.

Speech is a universal means of expression for the human soul. And one who is able to gaze with unprejudiced vision into the earliest times of human evolution on the earth, can see that in certain primeval languages a really fundamental artistic element entered into human evolution. Such primeval languages were, however, to a far greater degree than is the case with modern languages, drawn out of the whole human organisation.

When one investigates without prejudice the course of the evolution of man, one discovers certain ancient languages which might almost be likened to song. Such singing was, however, enhanced by accompanying movements of the legs and arms, so that a kind of dancing was added. Especially was this the case when a dignified form of expression was sought, the form of some ritual or cult.

In those primeval times of human evolution the accompanying of the word which issued forth from the larynx with gesture and movement was felt to be something absolutely natural. It is only possible to gain a true understanding of what lies behind these things, when one realises that what otherwise appears only as gesture accompanying speech can gain for itself independent life. It will then become apparent that movements which are carried out by the arms and hands, from the artistic point of view can be not merely equally expressive, but much more expressive than speech itself.

It must be admitted that such an unprejudiced attitude with regard to these things is not always to be found. One often observes a certain antipathy towards the accompanying of speech by gesture. Indeed, I myself have noticed that certain people even go so far as to consider it not in very good taste when a speaker accompanies his discourse with pronounced gesture. As a result of this the habit has grown up, and is by no means unusual at the present day, of putting one's hands in one's pockets when making a speech. I must say that I have always found this attitude most unsympathetic.

It is a fact that the inmost nature of the human being can be revealed most wonderfully through movements of the arms and hands. My fingers often itch to take up my pen and write an essay on the philosopher, Franz Brentano, a dear friend of mine who died some years ago. I have already written a good deal about him, but I should much like to write yet another essay, based on what I shall now relate.

When Franz Brentano mounted the platform and took his place at the lecturer's desk he was himself the embodiment of his entire philosophy, the spiritual content of which called forth such deep admiration when clothed in philosophical terms and concepts.

Brentano's philosophy, in itself, was far more beautiful than his own description of it. All that he could say in words was revealed through the way in which he moved his arms and hands while speaking, through the way in which he held out the piece of paper containing the notes of his lecture. It was a very remarkable type of movement, and its most striking characteristic was, that by means of this piece of paper, and, indeed, by his whole attitude, he gave the impression of imparting something of great significance, while at the same time preserving an appearance of unconcern. So that in the course of one of his lectures one could see his entire philosophy expressed in these gestures, which were of the most manifold variety.

What is especially interesting about Franz Brentano is the fact that he founded a psychology in which he departs from the theories of all other psychologists, Spencer, Stuart Mill and others, by refusing to include the will among the psychological categories. I am acquainted with all that Franz Brentano brought forward to substantiate this theory of his, but I found nothing so convincing as the way in which he held his piece of paper. The instant he began to make gestures with his hands and arms, all trace of will disappeared from his whole bearing as a philosopher, while feeling and idea revealed themselves in the most remarkable manner. This preponderance of idea and feeling, and the disappearance of will, underlay every movement which he made with his hands. So that one day I shall really find myself compelled to write an essay: The Philosophy of Franz Brentano, as revealed through his Gesture and Bearing. For it seems to me that much more was expressed in these gestures than in any philosophical discourse on the subject.

Those who enter deeply and without prejudice into this matter will gradually realise that the breath which we expel from our lungs, our organs of speech and song, when vocalised and given form by means of the lips, teeth and palate, is really nothing else than gesture in the air. Only in this case these air-gestures are projected into space in such a way that they conjure up sounds which can be heard by the ear.

If one succeeds, with true sensible-super-sensible vision, in penetrating into the nature of these air gestures, into all that the human being actually does when he utters a vowel or consonant sound, when he forms sentences, uses rhyme and rhythm, the Iambic, for instance, or the Trochee—when one penetrates into these gestures of the air, the thought arises; alas, the languages of modern civilisation have indeed made terrible concessions to convention. They have become simply a means of expression for scientific knowledge, a means of communicating the things of everyday life. They have lost their primeval spirituality.

Civilised language bears out what has been so beautifully expressed by the poet: “Spricht die Seele, so spricht ach schon die Seele nicht mehr.” (“Alas, when the soul speaks, in reality it speaks no more.”)

Now all that can be perceived by super-sensible vision, all that can thus be learned about the nature of these forms and gestures of the air, can be carried into movements of the arms and hands, into movements of the whole human being. There then arises in visible form the actual counterpart of speech. One can use the entire human body in such a way that it really carries out those movements which are otherwise carried out by the organs connected with speech and music. Thus there arises visible speech, visible music—in other words, the art of Eurythmy.

When one brings artistic feeling to the study of the nature of speech, one finds that the individual sounds form themselves, as it were, into imaginative pictures. It is necessary, however, entirely to free oneself from the abstract character which language has taken during the so-called advanced civilisation of the present day. For it is an undeniable fact that modern man, when speaking, in no way brings his whole human being into activity.

True speech, however, is born from the whole human being. Let us take any one of the vowels. A vowel sound is always the expression of some aspect of the feeling life of the soul. The human being wishes to express what lives in his soul as wonder—Ah. Or the holding himself upright against opposition—A; or the assertion of self, the consciousness of ego-existence in the world—E. Or again he wishes to express wonder, but now with a more intimate, caressing shade of feeling—I.

The character of the sounds is of course slightly different in the different languages, because each individual language proceeds from a differently constituted soul-life. But every vowel sound does in its essence express some shade of the feeling-life of the soul; and this feeling only has to unite itself with thought, with the head system, in order to pass over into speech.

What I have said about the vowel sounds of speech can be applied equally to the tones of music. The various sounds of speech, the use of idiom, the construction of phrases and sentences—all these things are the expression of the feeling-life of the soul.

In singing also the soul life expresses itself through tone.

Let us now consider the consonants. The consonants are the imitation of what we find around us in external nature. The vowel is born out of man's inmost being; it is the channel through which this inner content of the soul streams outwards. The consonant is born out of the comprehension of external nature; the way in which we seize upon external things, even the way in which we perceive them with the eyes, all this is built into the form of the consonants. The consonant represents, paints, as it were, the things of the external world. In earlier times the consonants did actually contain within themselves a kind of imaginative, painting of what exists in external nature.

Such things are, certainly, dealt with by many students of the science of language, but always in a one-sided manner. For instance, there exist two well-known theories with regard to the origin of language—the Ding-Dong theory and the Bow-Wow theory—which have been set forth by investigators who are, as a matter of fact, absolutely lacking in any real understanding of their subject, but belong to that type of person who is constantly originating all sorts of scientific theories. The Ding-Dong theory is based upon the assumption that, as in the case of the bell—to take an extreme example—so within every external object there lies some sort of a sound, which is then imitated by the human being. Everything is included in this theory of imitation; and it has been named the Ding-Dong theory after the sound made by the bell, which is perhaps its most striking example. The idea is, that when one says the word “wave,” one is imitating the actual movement of the waves—which is, indeed, perfectly true in this instance.

The other theory, the Bow-Wow theory, which could equally well be called the Moo-Moo theory, is one which assumes that speech in the first place arose from the transformation and development of the sounds of animals. And because one of the most striking of these sounds is “Bow-Wow,” this theory has been called the Bow-Wow theory.

Now all these theories do actually contain a certain element of truth. Scientific theories are never without some foundation. What is remarkable about them is that they do always contain say, a quarter, or an eighth, or a sixteenth, or a hundredth part of the truth; and it is this fraction of the truth, put forward as it is in a very clever and suggestive manner which deceives people. The real truth is that the vowel arises from the soul-life, and the consonant out of the perception and imitation of the external object. The human being imitates the external object through the way in which he holds back the stream of the breath with his lips, or gives it shape and form by means of the teeth, tongue and palate. While the consonants are formed in this way, by the fashioning of gestures in the air, the vowel sounds are the channel through which the inner soul-life of the human being streams outwards.

The consonants give plastic form to what is to be expressed.

And in the same way as the single sounds are formed, the single letters, so are sentences also formed, and poetic language becomes actual gesture in the air. Modern poetry, however, shows very clearly how the poet has to struggle against the abstract element in language.

As I have already said, our soul-life does not in any way flow into the words which we speak; we do not enter into the sounds of speech with our inner being. How few of us really experience wonder, amazement, perplexity, or the feeling of self-defence simply in the vowel sounds themselves. How few of us experience the soft, rounded surface of certain objects, the thrusting hammering nature of others, their angular or undulating, their velvety or prickly qualities, as these are expressed by the different consonants. And yet all these things are contained in speech.

If we follow the successive sounds as they occur in a single word, entering into the real nature of this word as it originally arose out of the whole being of man, then we can experience all possible shades of feeling, the ecstasy of joy, the depths of despair; we can experience the ascending and descending of the whole scale of the human emotions, the whole scale of the perception of external things.

All that I have been describing can be conjured up in imaginations, in the same way as speech itself once came forth from the world of imagination. One who has this imaginative vision perceives how the E sound (as in me). always calls up in the soul a certain picture, a picture which expresses the assertion of self and shows how this self-assertion must be expressed through the stretching of the muscles, in the arm for example. Should anyone be able to use his nose in a skilful manner, he could also make an E with his nose! An E can also be shown by the direction of the glance of the eye; but because the arms and hands are the most expressive part of the human body, it is more natural to make an E with the arms and it has a more beautiful effect. But the essential thing is that the stretched, penetrating feeling should really come to expression in E.

If we utter the sound A, (as in mate) and take this out-going stream of the breath as the prototype for the Eurythmic movement, we find that this breath stream reveals itself to our imagination as flowing in two crossed currents. This is how the Eurythmic movement for A is derived. All these movements are just as little arbitrary in their nature as are the sounds of speech, or the tones of music.

There are many people who are inclined to say that they have no wish for anything so hard and fast, that there should be more ways than one of expressing any particular sound in movement. They feel that the movements should arise quite spontaneously out of the human being. If, however, one desires such absolute spontaneity, one should carry this desire into the realm of speech itself, and declare that there should be no German, French, or English language to interfere with the freedom of the human being, but that each individual should feel himself at liberty to express himself by means of other sounds if he should so choose. It would be just as rational to say that the freedom of the human being is hindered through the fact that he must perforce speak English, or some other language.

But the existence of the different languages in no way interferes with human freedom. On the contrary, man could not express beauty in language, if language were not already there to be used by him as an instrument, and in the same way beauty can only be expressed in the movements of Eurythmy through the fact that Eurythmy actually exists. Eurythmy in no way infringes upon human freedom. Such objections really arise from lack of insight.

Thus Eurythmy has come into being as a visible language, using as its instrument the arms and hands, which are undeniably the most expressive part of the whole human organism.

To-day it would really be possible to come to an understanding of these things by purely scientific means. Science, however, although on the right path with regard to much of the knowledge it has acquired, knows about as much of this matter as someone with a veal cutlet on his plate knows about a calf—namely, the most insignificant fraction! Scientists know that the centre of speech lies in the left region of the brain, and that this is connected with what the child acquires for himself by means of movement of the right arm. In the case of left-handed people the centre of speech is situated in the right side of the brain.

One might almost say that the scientist has no knowledge of the calf in its entirety, but is only acquainted with the veal cutlet! Thus he is aware only of the merest fraction of the whole connection between the life-processes in one or other arm and the origin of speech.

The truth is that speech itself arises out of those movements of the human limb system which are held back, and do not come to full expression. There could be no such thing as speech were it not for the fact that, during the natural course of his early development, the child has inherent within him the instinct to move his arms and hands. These movements are held back and become concentrated in the organs of speech; and these organs of speech are in themselves an image of that which seeks outlet in movements of the arms and hands, and in the accompanying movements of the other limbs.

The etheric body—I can, after what you have heard in the morning lectures, (published as The Evolution of Consciousness.) speak to you quite freely about the etheric body—the etheric body never uses the mouth as the vehicle of speech, but invariably makes use of the limb-system. And it is those movements made by the etheric body during speech which are transferred into the physical body. Of course you can, if you choose, speak quite without gesture, even going so far as to stand rigidly still with your hands in your pockets; but in that case your etheric body will gesticulate all the more vigorously, sheerly out of protest!

Thus you can see how, in very truth, Eurythmy is drawn out of the human organisation in just as natural a way as speech itself.

The poet has to fight against the conventionality of speech in order to be able to draw from speech that element which could make of it a way leading to the super-sensible worlds. Thus the poet—if he is a true artist, which cannot be said of most of those people whose business it is to manufacture poems—does not over-emphasise the importance of the prose content of the words he uses. This prose content only provides him with the opportunity for expressing in words his true artistic impulse. Just as his material—the clay or the marble—is not the chief concern of the sculptor, but rather the inspiration which he is striving to embody in form, so, the chief concern of the poet is the embodiment of his poetic inspiration in sounds which are imaginative, plastic and musical.

And it is this artistic element which must be brought out in recitation and declamation.

In our somewhat inartistic age, it is customary in recitation and declamation to lay the chief stress on the prose content of a poem. Indeed, in these days, the mere fact of being able to speak at all is looked upon as sufficient ground for becoming a reciter. But the art of recitation and declamation should rank as highly as the other arts; for in recitation and declamation there is the possibility of treating speech in such a way that the hidden Eurythmy lying within it, the imaginative, plastic, coloured use of words, their music, rhythm and melody, are all brought to expression. When Goethe was rehearsing his rhythmic dramas, he made use of a baton just as if he were the conductor of an orchestra; for he was not so much concerned with the merely prosaic content of the words, but with the bringing out of all that lay, like a hidden Eurythmy, in their construction and use.

Schiller, when writing his most famous poems, paid little heed to the actual sense of the words. For instance he wrote, “Das Lied von der Glocke” (The Song of the Bell), but, as far as the prose content of the words is concerned, he might just as well have written a completely different poem. Schiller first experienced in his soul something which might be described as a vague musical motif, a sort of melody, and into this melody he wove his words, like threaded pearls.

Language is truly poetic only in so far as it is used musically, plastically, or only in so far as it is filled with colour.

Frau Dr. Steiner has given many years to the development of this special side of the art of recitation and declamation. It is her work which has made it possible to bind together into one artistic whole, much in the same way as the various instruments of an orchestra, the picture presented on the stage by the “visible speech” of Eurythmy and with what is expressed through a truly Eurythmic treatment of speech, a truly Eurythmic recitation and declamation. So that, on the one hand, we have the visible speech of Eurythmy, and, on the other hand, that hidden Eurythmy which lies, not in tone-production alone, but in the whole way in which speech and language are treated. As far as the artistic element of poetry is concerned, the point is not that we say: “The bird sings,” but that, paying due regard to what has gone before and to what is to come, we say with enthusiasm, for instance: “The bird sings,” or, again, in a more subdued tone of voice, at a quite different tempo: “The bird sings.” [The reader must imagine the difference of tone which Rudolf Steiner gave to these repetitions of Der Vogel singt.] Everything depends on giving due form and shape to the words and sentences. And it is just this which can be carried over into Eurythmy, into our whole conception and treatment of Eurythmy.

For this reason we must put before ourselves as an ideal this orchestral ensemble, this interplay between the visible art of Eurythmy and the art of recitation and declamation.

Eurythmy cannot be accompanied by the ordinary conventional recitation, which is so well liked to-day. It would be impossible to do Eurythmy to such an accompaniment, because it is the soul-qualities of the human being which must be given expression here, both audibly through speech, and visibly through Eurythmy.

Eurythmy can be accompanied, not only by recitation and declamation, but also by instrumental music. But here it must always be borne in mind that Eurythmy is music translated into movement, and is not dancing in any sense of the word. There is a fundamental difference between Eurythmy and dancing. People, however, often fail to make this distinction when seeing Eurythmy on the stage, owing to the fact that Eurythmy uses as its instrument the human body in motion. I myself know of a journalist—I am not personally acquainted with him, but his articles have been brought to my notice—who, writing on Eurythmy, says: “It cannot be denied that, when one witnesses a demonstration of Eurythmy, the performers on the stage are continually in motion. Eurythmy must, therefore, be looked upon as dancing, and must be judged accordingly.” Now I think it will be admitted that what we have seen here of Tone-Eurythmy, of this visible singing, accompanied as it is by instrumental music, is clearly to be distinguished from ordinary dancing. Tone-Eurythmy is essentially not dancing, but is a singing in movement, movement which can be carried out either by a single performer, or by many together.

Although the movements of the arms and hands may be accompanied and amplified by movements of the other parts of the organism—the legs, for instance, or the head, the nose, ears, what you will—nevertheless these movements should only be used to strengthen the movement of the hands and arms in much the same way that we find means of emphasising and strengthening the spoken word. If we wish to admonish a child we naturally put our reproof into words, but at the same time we assume an expression suitable to the occasion! To do this electively, however, a certain amount of discretion is required, or we run the risk of appearing ridiculous. It is the same with regard to Eurythmy. Movements of a type approaching dancing or mime, when they are added to the essentially Eurythmic movements, are in danger of appearing grotesque; and, if made use of in an exaggerated manner, given an appearance of crudity, even of vulgarity. On the other hand purely Eurythmic movements are the truest means of giving outward and visible expression to all that is contained in the human soul.

That is the essential point—that Eurythmy is visible speech, visible music. One can go even further and maintain that the movements of Eurythmy do actually proceed out of the inner organisation of man. Anyone who says: “As far as I am concerned, speech and music are all-sufficient; there can surely be no need to extend the sphere of art; I, for my part, have not the slightest wish for Eurythmy”;—such a man is, of course, perfectly right from his particular point of view. There is always a certain justification for any opinion, however conventional or pedantic. Why should one not hold such opinions? There is certainly no reason why one should not—none at all; but it cannot be said that such a standpoint shows any really deep artistic feeling and understanding. A truly artistic nature welcomes everything that could possibly serve to widen and enrich the whole field of art.

The materials used in sculpture—the bronze, clay and marble—already exist in nature, and yield themselves up to the sculptor as the medium of his artistic expression; this is also true of colour in the case of the painter. When, however, in addition to all this, the movements of Eurythmy, drawn forth as they have been from the very fount of nature and developed according to her laws—when such movements arise as a means of artistic expression, then enthusiasm burns in the soul of the true artist at the prospect of the whole sphere of art being thus widened and enriched.

From a study of the Eurythmy models or wooden figures, very much can be learned about the individual movements. [Rudolf Steiner here refers to a series of coloured wooden figures illustrating the fundamental Eurythmy gestures.] Here it is only possible to give some indication of what underlies these wooden figures, and of all that can be revealed by them with regard to the nature and character of the various movements. These models are intended to represent the fundamental laws of Eurythmy which are carried over into the actual movements themselves. Every Eurythmic movement may be looked upon as being of a threefold nature; and it is this threefold aspect which is embodied in the models. In the first place there is the movement as such; then there is the feeling which lies within the movement; and lastly there is the character which flows out of the soul-life, and streams into the movement.

It must, however, be understood that these wooden models have been designed in a quite unusual manner. They are in no way intended to be plastic representations of the human form. This comes more within the sphere of the sculptor and the painter. The models are intended to portray the laws of Eurythmy, as these are expressed through the human body. In designing them the point was not in any way to reproduce the human figure in beautiful, plastic form. And, in witnessing a Eurythmy demonstration, anyone who would regard beauty of face as an essential attribute of an Eurythmist, is labouring under a delusion as to the nature of Eurythmy. Whether the Eurythmist is beautiful or not beautiful, young or old, is a matter of no consequence. The whole point is whether the inmost nature of the Eurythmist is carried over into, and expressed through, the plastic form of the movements.

Now if we look at the Eurythmy model for H, for instance, the question might naturally arise: “In what direction is the face turned? Do the eyes look upwards or straight ahead?” But that is not the first thing to be considered. In the first place we have, embodied in the model as a whole, the movement as such, that is to say, the arm movements or the movements of the legs. Secondly, in the draping of the veil, in the way the veil is held, drawn close to the body, or thrown into the air, or allowed to fall again or to fly out in waves—all this gives the opportunity for adding to the more intellectual expression of the soul-life, as this is shown through the movement, another quality of the soul-life, that of feeling.

At the back of the models there is always an indication of what the different colours are intended to represent. In the case of all the models certain places are marked with a third colour, and this is intended to show where the Eurythmist, in carrying out the particular movement, should feel a definite tension of the muscles. This tension can be shown in any part of the body. It may have to be felt in the forehead, for instance, or in the nape of the neck, while in other places the muscles should be left in a state of complete relaxation. The Eurythmist experiences the movements quite differently according to whether they are carried out with relaxed muscles or with the muscles in a state of tension; whether the arm is stretched out more or less passively, or whether there is a conscious tension in the muscles of the arm and hand; whether, when bending, the muscles which are brought into play are stretched and tense, or whether the bending movement leaves the muscles comparatively inactive. Through this consciously experienced tension of the muscles, character is brought into the movement.

In other words: there lies in the whole way in which the movement, as such, is formed, something which might be described as being the expression of the human soul, as manifested through visible speech. The actual spoken words, however, also have nuances of their own, their own special shades of feeling; for instance, fear may be expressed in a sentence, or joy, or delight; all these things can be shown by the Eurythmist in the way in which he or she carries out the movements. The manipulation of the veil—the way in which it floats, the way in which it is allowed to fall—all this provides a means whereby these feelings can be brought to expression in Eurythmy. So we see how the movement, when accompanied by the use of the veil, becomes permeated with feeling, and how, when there is added a conscious tension of the muscles, the movement acquires character as well as feeling. If the Eurythmist is able to experience this tension or relaxation of the muscles in the right way, a corresponding experience will be transmitted to the onlooker, who will himself feel all that lies in the visible speech of Eurythmy as character, feeling and movement.

The whole artistic conception of these models, both as regards their carving and their colouring, is based on the idea of separating the purely Eurythmic element in the human being from those elements which are not so definitely connected with Eurythmy. The moment a Eurythmist becomes conscious of possessing a charming face, in that moment something is introduced into Eurythmy which is completely foreign to its nature; on the other hand, the knowledge of how to make conscious use of the muscles of the face does form an essential part of Eurythmy. For this reason, the fact that many people prefer to see a beautiful Eurythmist on the stage, rather than one who is less beautiful, shows a lack of true artistic judgment. The outward appearance of a human being when not engaged in Eurythmy should not in any way be taken into consideration.

These models, then, have been designed in such a way that they portray the human being only in so far as he reveals himself through the movements of Eurythmy.

It would indeed be well if, in the whole development of art, this principle were to be more generally adopted—I mean the principle of putting on one side everything which does not definitely belong to the sphere of the art in question, everything which cannot be expressed through the medium of this art and which does not strictly come within the range of its possibilities. A distinction should always be made, particularly when dealing with an art such as Eurythmy, which reveals so directly, so truly and so sincerely, the life of the human being in its threefold aspect of body, soul and spirit—a distinction should always be made between what can legitimately be revealed through the medium of any particular art and what does not lie within its true scope.

Whenever I have been asked: “Up to what age can one do Eurythmy?”—my answer has always been: There is no age limit. Eurythmy can be started at the age of three and can be continued up to the age of ninety. The personality can find expression through Eurythmy at each and every period of life, and through Eurythmy the beauty of both youth and age can be revealed.

All that I have said up to this point has reference to Eurythmy purely as an art, and, indeed, it was along purely artistic lines that Eurythmy was developed in the first instance. When Eurythmy was inaugurated in 1912 there was no thought of its developing along any but artistic lines, no thought of bringing it before the world in any other form.

But some little time after the founding of the Waldorf School, it was discovered that Eurythmy can serve as a very important means of education; and we are now in a position to recognise the full significance of Eurythmy from the educational point of view. In the Waldorf School, (The original Waldorf School in Stuttgart of which Steiner was educational director.) Eurythmy has been made a compulsory subject both for boys and girls, right through the school, from the lowest to the highest class; and it has become apparent that what is thus brought to the children as visible speech and music is accepted and absorbed by them in just as natural a way as they absorb spoken language or song in their very early years. The child feels his way quite naturally into the movements of Eurythmy. And, indeed, in comparison with Eurythmy, the other forms of gymnastics have shown themselves to be of a somewhat one-sided nature. For these other kinds of gymnastics bear within them to some extent the materialistic attitude of mind so prevalent in our day. And for this reason they take as their starting point the physical body. Eurythmy takes the physical body into consideration also; but, in the case of Eurythmy, body, soul and spirit work harmoniously together, so that here one has to do with an ensouled and spiritualised form of gymnastics. The child feels this. He feels that each movement that he makes does not arise merely in response to a physical necessity, but that every one of his movements is permeated with a soul and spiritual element, which streams through the arms, and, indeed, through the whole body. The child absorbs Eurythmy into the very depths of his being. The Waldorf School has already been in existence for some years, and the experience lying behind us justified us in saying that in this school unusual attention is paid to the cultivation of initiative, of will—qualities sorely needed by humanity in the present day. This initiative of the will is developed quite remarkably through Eurythmy, when, as in the Waldorf School, it is used as a means of education. One thing, however, must be made perfectly clear, and that is, that the greatest possible misunderstanding would arise, if for one moment it were to be imagined that Eurythmy could be taught in the schools and looked upon as a valuable asset in education, if, at the same time, as an art it were to be neglected and underestimated. Eurythmy must in the first place be looked upon as an art, and in this it differs in no respect from the other arts. And in the same way that the other arts are taught in the schools, but have an independent artistic existence of their own in the world, so Eurythmy also can only be taught in the schools when it is fully recognised as an art and given its proper place within our modern civilisation.

Shortly after the founding of the Waldorf School, a number of doctors having found their way into the Anthroposophical Movement, there arose the practice of medicine from the Anthroposophical point of view. These doctors expressed the urgent wish that the movements of Eurythmy, drawn as they are out of the healthy nature of the human being, and offering to the human being a means of expression suited to his whole organisation—that these movements should be adapted where necessary, and placed at the service of the art of healing. Eurythmy, from its very nature, is ever seeking for outlet through the human being. Anyone who understands the hand, for example, must be aware that it was not formed merely to lie still and be looked upon. The fingers are quite meaningless when they are inactive. They only acquire significance when they seize at things, grasp them, when their passivity is transformed into movement. Their very form reveals the movement inherent within them. The same may be said of the human being as a whole. What we know under the name of Eurythmy is nothing else than the means whereby the human organism can find healthy outlet through movement. So that certain of the movements of Eurythmy, though naturally differing somewhat from the movements which we use in Eurythmy as an art, and having undergone a certain metamorphosis, can be made use of and developed into a Curative Eurythmy. This Curative Eurythmy can be of extreme value in the treatment of illness, and can be applied in those cases where one knows the way in which a certain movement will react upon a certain organ with beneficial results.

In this domain also we have had good results among the children of the Waldorf School. But it is of course necessary that one should possess a true insight into the nature of the child. For instance, a child may have certain weaknesses and be generally in a delicate state of health. Such a child is then given those particular movements likely to assist in the re-establishment of his health. And along these lines we have indeed had the most brilliant results. But this, as also the educational side of Eurythmy, is entirely dependent on the successful development of Eurythmy as an art.

It must frankly be admitted that Eurythmy is still at a very early stage of its development; a beginning, however, has certainly been made, and we are striving to make it ever more and more perfect. There was a time, for instance, when we had not as yet introduced the silent, unaccompanied movement of the Eurythmist at the beginning and end of a poem. Such movement is intended to convey in the first instance an introductory impression, and, in the second, an impression reminiscent of the content of the poem. At that time also there were no effects of light. The lighting in varied tones and colours has not been introduced with a view to illustrating or intensifying any particular situation, but is in itself actually of a Eurythmic nature. The point is not that certain effects of light should correspond with what is taking place on the stage at a given moment, but the whole system of lighting, as this has been developed in Eurythmy, consists of the interplay between one lighting effect and another. Thus there arises a complete system of Eurythmic lighting which bears within it the same character and the same shades of feeling as are being simultaneously expressed on the stage in another way through the movements of the Eurythmists, or the Eurythmist, as the case may be.

And so, as Eurythmy develops and attains to ever greater perfection, very much more will have to be added to the whole picture of Eurythmy as this is presented on the stage, very much will have to be added to all that we can now see when witnessing a Eurythmy demonstration.

I could indeed speak about Eurythmy the whole night through, carrying on this lecture without a break into the lecture of tomorrow morning. I am afraid, however, that my audience would hardly benefit by such a proceeding, and the same certainly applies to any Eurythmists who may be present! The great thing is that all I have said to-day in this introductory lecture will be practically realised for you tomorrow, when you witness the performance; for a practical demonstration is, after all, where art is concerned, of more value than any lecture.