The Rudolf Steiner Archive

[ 1 ] As a sort of episode inserted between the lectures now being given, I should like to-day to bring forwards a few things about our building, so that our friends may find in what will be said, a sort of foundation for their own work. We shall have, in the near future, to take strong measures in different directions for the benefit of the cause, so that the Dornach Building, the “Goetheanum”, should be made the centre of the movement for Spiritual Science from the point of view of Anthroposophy for which we intend to work. It would be of great importance if the Goetheanum could also be made known to the outer world, so that those who have not at present an opportunity of seeing it, may become acquainted with it. The very way in which this building is put before the spiritual culture of the present time may, if brought to the consciousness of our contemporaries in the right manner, work in the direction, which we consider is the needful direction for the age. So to-day, when I have said, I wish to provide a foundation for that which others will carry forth into the world, I will once more give you a little of what I have already expounded here in other connections, so that from what is contained in these episodic lectures, a complete conception of the whole may be formed.

[ 2 ] To begin with, it must be stated that the Dornach Building has grown out of the Anthroposophical conception of the world. The Building was able to grow forth from this for the very reason that when this conception is rightly understood, it will itself possess the inner force with which to create its own artistic forms and figures. Once again, I should like to repeat what I have said before in other connections, that if any of the spiritual tendencies of the present, which with their various programmes come before the world to-day, had at any time required a building of their own, some architect or other, and some artist or other would have been approached, who would have built a house in such and such a style, in which the movement it was built for could have been carried on. There would have been an external relation between what went on within it and the building itself, which might be either of the Renaissance period, or of ancient Gothic style.

[ 3 ] There must not be any such merely external relation between the conception of the world which is to be given forth at Dornach and that which encloses its activities. The relation between them is to be an inner one. Every detail connected with the housing of our activities, every detail of form and figure had to proceed from the impulses of this world-conception itself. If you bear this in mind, you will see, that this is connected with the position Spiritual Science or Anthroposophy claims in the whole development of mankind. The life of modern humanity has become simply intellectual; it has become so because for centuries modern humanity has hardly received any other education than that of thought. When forms have to be created, people turn to those already existing to some one or other of the old styles of architecture; just as when they wish to make anything artistic or such-like, they do not turn their minds to the conception of the world, but to something which has been substituted in its place. What actually brought this state of things about? [ 4 ] You see, in everything of note in human culture there have always been two streams flowing together. The presence of those two streams can be traced far back in the historical development of mankind. One of these, which has achieved its greatest intellectual development in the last few centuries, can be traced back to what we may call the Old Testament outlook on the world. We must never lose sight of the fact that one of the essential tenets connected with this was the command: “Thou shalt not make to thyself any graven image of the Lord, thy God”. The pictorial representation of that which is of a spiritual nature, was lacking in the one stream of human development. And this still holds good up to the present day in the modern development of this stream.

[ 5 ] Many schools of thought and of philosophy, many different sciences and popular conceptions of the world have been built up, but none of these have, of themselves, succeeded in creating artistic forms. All that has been achieved is the establishment relationship with the inartistic element of the present day conception of the world. Our modern age is not concerned with creating new forms, or with giving shape to what is capable of representation.

[ 6 ] But really there are two entrances into the world of the spirit; it may be entered in the intellectual way in which it is penetrated by the monotheistic religions, in which case the thought element, the intellectual, is principally developed. By this means great progress can be made along the lines followed in our most recent times. Or, on the other hand, the element which is to be found in the imaginative may be cultivated, the element of vision, of life in course of formation. modern humanity has not much living relation with this latter element. It revives bygone styles, old methods of artistic representation, but never identifies itself with them. Indeed, things have gone so far that, on the one hand those who wished to create artistically had an actual fear of every kind of philosophy, for it is quite reasonable to stand in some sort of fear of the modern world-conception, which is imaginative an intellectual. Put on the other side this has been a great disadvantage in another sense to the development of modern humanity. This disadvantage itself is the sign of decadence of recent times.

Some time ago in this very place, I drew attention to the fact that in all the present struggles of humanity there is something of the Jehovah-striving of the Old Testament, that in a sense an endeavor was being made to make each individual people what the Old Helm wanted to make of themselves and that Christianity, as such, has not fully entered the hearts of modern humanity. And so a certain intellectual thinking, an intellectual feeling concerning humanity as a whole, has in a one-sided way grown up round our social life. But man as man, 0r man as a community, can never be understood from a purely intellectual standpoint.

[ 7 ] What man is, that in him which enables him to take his place in social life, can only be understood if we rise to imaginative conception. Anyone who is acquainted with the law to which such things are subject, is aware that even the Fairy Tales, the legends and various mythologies contain more wisdom concerning the real nature of man than does modern science, which does not even possess the means of giving man an explanation as to himself. People are afraid of the inpouring of the spiritual, which can only manifest in our human civilisation in the form of pictures; they dread it. But our civilised life will never be raised until men's hearts are once again filled with a conception of the world not only capable of forming from itself thoughts, but of creating forms and permeating the whole of life. We want to make a beginning, yet in its own way it is intended to show all that can be accomplished by a really creative conception of the world at the present time and more especially what it must do in the future. In a sense you see before you, in a picture, all that is characteristic of the conception of the world which is studied here, when you are confronted with that which is meant to be representative of it, when you see the Goetheanum on its hill, at Dornach.

[ 8 ] If we wish to describe in a few words the special characteristic of this conception of the world, it is this: The realisation that in this age a new spiritual life must be revealed to man. And as we approach the building which is to stand for the spreading of this new spiritual life, we cannot but feel that a new revelation is to he made. Anyone who draws near to it cannot help feeling that something will reveal itself here, something new in the development of humanity. The very shape of the building impresses you with the sense of something new making its way into the development of man. Two cylinders of circular shape, in neither of which is the circle complete, covered with hemispheres equally incomplete, expresses the duality of that which is revealed and of that which comes to meet it. The very predominance of the two domes conveys an impression to the observer, as he draws near, that something is enclosed herein, something enclosed but which intends to make itself known.

[ 9 ] Do not take what I an now saying in a symbolical sense; take it in an artistic sense and you will then develop the right understanding for it. I shall have to speak further about these things, but this evening we will begin by making a survey of the different effects produced by the contours of the building, seen from without. Let us begin by supposing that someone approaches if from the North-East from any point around the hill on which the Goetheanum is erected. He would then see a Building (Picture 1) which could be in no other form. This is the feeling which ought to be experienced, when directly confronting that which stands as the representative of a new world-conception.

[ 10 ] It is first of all necessary to study the different forms. It was in 1908 that the thought first occurred to me to erect a building with twin domes. But much of the original plan had to be altered, for it had originally been intended to put it in a city, in Munich, where it would have been surrounded by houses, where the outer architecture would not have had to be so much considered. When the building had to be remodelled to stand upon its present hill, it became of course necessary to so plant the outer architecture that it might produce the right effect from the different points of view in the neighbourhood. Here let us begin by noticing that the building stands on a sort of platform, not absolutely on the ground.

[ 11 ] We now draw rather nearer to the Building and this is a picture of the principal entrance. Kindly observe you begin by entering the substructure and that, as we shall see, the staircase by which we ascend to the auditorium belongs to the substructure of the Building. Having ascended that, we then enter by the main door into the real Inner Hall. The Building stands rather above the level of the actual surface of the ground. It will be apparent to anyone who approaches the Building, especially when he finds himself opposite the main door, that an attempt has here been made to depart from the usual purely mathematical-geometrical-mechanical structure forms, and to discover organic ones. Of course those people who are quite accustomed to the old conception and who believe that the geometrical-dynamic can alone rightly hold a place in the art of building and in architecture will have many objections to bring against this introducing the forms of architecture into organic forms. All these objections are known. But here we have actually dared to make the attempt. [ 12 ] Then, however, we had to think the whole thought of the Building as of a living organism. No one will understand what I mean by this, unless he himself really makes the endeavour—which very few people will do as yet—to turn his feelings away from all that is symbolical and intellectual, from everything merely mechanical and mathematical, and allows himself to be carried into a really organic-artistic, a feeling way of thinking. This does not imply that the form of an organic being is symbolically expressed in the structural forms, it means that in order to understand an organic being we must realise that a quite special sort of intuitive thought-form is necessary. We shall have to become accustomed to these intuitive forms of thought. And we then ought to be able to find these architectural forms even coming of themselves quite originally and elementally, out of the intuitive thinking.

[ 13 ] I should like to draw your attention to something of which most people in the present day have no suspicion. It may be said that in nature there are organic forms. Structural forms are made, more or less modelled on some such organic forms in nature, structural forms which in a sense are a symbolical expression of the organic forms of nature. But nothing of that kind has been done. There is no direct prototype in nature of structural forms here. And if a man seeks for such in nature, it only shows that he has failed to understand the whole basic thought of what is in question here.

[ 14 ] To be capable of understanding an organism is a very different thing. For when a man really understands a natural organism, he then possesses a kind of thinking which is able to find organic structural forms quite independently of nature. But such forms as these must be discerned in complete independence, they must be created from out of their own form-essence. They will then, if they result from a real living structural thought, bear the nature of the organic. What then is the nature of the organic? Well, take as an example the most complicated organism, man, and then take merely the lobe of his ear; if you have the right intuitive thinking and feeling, you will say that the lobe of the ear, situated where it, is, could be no other than it is; in its place it must be just as it is. It is the right width, the right height, and is properly rounded off, and so on. And this must be so in every single form in this organically conceived Building. Each detail, in that it represents a part of the whole, must make evident in its own form that it is indispensable. The very smallest appendage in the different parts of the Building must be as manifestly indispensable as the lobe of the ear, or an arm or a hand is to the human organism.

[ 15 ] Nothing here has been copied from nature. And if these forms remind anyone of this, that or the other, it only shows that he is not judging of the Building from the standpoint of Art, but that his opinions are inartistic. If the forms in the Building remind one of anything—and what is there that people have not been reminded of—human eyebrows and eyes and so on—that only proves that he is judging of each thing on its own merit, especially; whereas each detail in the Building only has a significance in its connection with the whole and must be so understood.

The next picture shows the same, a little nearer.

[ 16 ] Below we see the entrance; facing us are the cloakrooms; and to the right and left, where the substructure extends in a circular direction, is the well of the staircase. We then go up the stairs and through the main door, by which we enter the inner building. The motive which we encounter in the main entrance is one if those organic motives to which we have been referring. If you take the various motives that are to be found on the different sides of the Building you will find that they are always formed in accordance with the organic principles of metamorphosis, so that the one always grows forth as a development of the other. For instance, look at the motive here, above the principal entrance. If you can feel it in its forms, you will feel the same form again in the motives of the window of the side-terrace, which you can distinctly see here to the South. (Figure 14) The motives of the windows are apparently quite different. But in studying them you will see that they develop out of that one over the principal Entrance in the same way as, according to Goethe's principle of Metamorphosis, the different organs of the blossom develop from the leaf. It is again a metamorphosis of the same motive. We can only develop a living thought of the Building, if we really inwardly and intuitively grasp the principle of metamorphosis.

[ 17 ] In what is attached right and left of the Principal Entrance you can see that the attempt has been made, just as it is in nature itself, to cause one motive to proceed out of another; although there has been no copying of what is organic. In every line and surface you can see that they all proceed from the same principle—like that same principle which causes the cheek to be carried from the temple of the forehead in a human face. The evolving of the cheek from the temple of the forehead might really be taken as a subject of inner study. Only while doing so we must be free from the purely intellectual ideas of the world. We must be able to view the world in forms, without beginning to symbolise. We then shall be able to see how one surface, one form, proceeds out of the other in such a way that they might really have grown forth; and besides that, they really belong to the place where they are. [ 18 ] Now in the whole of this building there is not a single thing that is mere symbol. At the time when our movement still had many people in it who were full of sectarianism and false mysticism—which tendencies indeed I had to fight over and over again—but when there were these tendencies in the different persons who came into our movement from co many different quarters, persons of artistic natures who happened to come among us were often horrified at this tendency to symbolise. These members valued a Rose-Cross, a cross with seven roses, far higher than a really artistic motive. Now in this building we may say that this has been definitely overcome and that what is really creative in a conception of the world has been expressed in forms without any transition though the symbolical.

[ 19 ] I want you to notice that in the forms, (though of course all this is only a beginning) an attempt has been made so to shape the surfaces that they lean towards the corresponding centres of support. (Kräfte-Lagen). For instance, if you go in at the principal entrance of the substructure, you will see the arches. If you study the forms of these arches you will find them so constructed that their lines follow the distribution of weight of the building. Towards the door, where the weight is less, the arch is wider; where the arch curves towards the building it bends inwards, the curve is arrested. Thus the forms of the arches correspond to the distribution of weight. If you can feel the forms in this way, you have grasped a structural thought.

[ 20 ] We now obtain a view of the North side. In the part between the principal entrance and the one wing, you can see the motive of the principal entrance in metamorphosis. There you can study the metamorphosis of the separate forms, which allows for the motive of the side-wall which is to follow. When you go in at the principal entrance the motive meets you, whereas here you pass it by. An organic structural thought should express whether a motive is one that is to meet the eye, or is to he passed by. It is the same motive, in different states of metamorphosis. Similarly that which finishes it above, which overhangs the motive—is only a metamorphosis of that which is the motive of the main portal. it is differently formed, but has only become different in the course of its metamorphosis; it is the motive of the principal entrance.

[ 21 ] Here you have the side-view of the side-terrace. In the motive of these windows, you can study how organic shapes are formed. The motive completing the windows above is precisely the same as that you have just seen over the windows and the motive over the principal entrance, only in an organic growth it is the case that metamorphosis comes about through that which in the one structure is wider and more forceful, becoming contracted and condensed in the other; what in its earlier state as in a more primitive form, extends to more ramifications. It is just in this that metamorphosis consists, and here you can see it carried out. [ 22 ] And I should like to draw attention here to the fact that in the whole building the endeavour has been made to develop structural truth, architectural truth. That is actually very little understood in the world to-day. You can here see the overcoming of the mere Renaissance idea. The setting of windows is not merely decorative, but as you see it arises from below. In the whole building there is not anything to be
found which does not convey its actual purpose.

Nothing in this building lies, whereas in the present-day conception of architecture there is an enormous amount of untruth and deception. In our civilisation there is so much untruth in our forms that it can hardly be wondered at that so much of what men say is untrue too. Here the endeavour has been made that everything shall absolutely and truthfully express what it actually is. This can never be the case in symbolism, which always contains something arbitrary. I want you to take note of this.

[ 23 ] Here we have the facade of the side terrace. You see in metamorphoses that which is above the principal entrance. Of course, you must bear in mind that whatever you see here is nothing but a new beginning. I always say over and over again, to all who will listen, that if I had to construct the building over again, it would be very different. This is just an attempt. But in its different parts you can see what we really intended, how the organic structural thought has been carried out, and how, for instance, the merely mathematical-geometrical-dynamic column formation has been developed into the organic, so that nowhere is the principle, merely of support or of burden in evidence, but everywhere the principle of growth can be seen, the coming forth of one from another. And as we shall see tomorrow, there is a marked effort to carry out this idea in the architecture of the interior.

This is the juncture seen from the side, seen from the corner.

[ 24 ] The model of the building. Here you have the picture of my original model. I wanted first of all to give you a conception of the idea one receives in approaching the building. I wanted to show you the effect it ought to produce when you walk round it. now show you the inner part, in my original model, carried out in wood and wax. This model was the basis of the whole building. You see it here cut in two through the centre. You can thus see under the great cupola.the seven columns which, in succession, encircle and enclose the auditorium. Here in the middle is the place of the Drop-Scene, and here beneath the smaller cupola you see 6 of the 12 columns which encircle that space. As here seen, the building is divided from West to East. In the East will stand the principal Group: the Representative of Humanity, in the midst of the Luciferic and Ahrimanic elements. Concerning the principle by which these columns with their capitals and architraves were constructed, I shall steak tomorrow.

[ 25 ] Here we have the ground-plan of the building, the principal entrance with the staircase on either side, the auditorium, and the space beneath the small cupola, the place in which the Mystery-plays and the Eurythmic-representations and so on, will be given. These two spaces will be divided by the curtain. On the line dividing the two will be the speaking-desk, on both sides of this dividing line are the two side-alleys, for the use of those engaged in the representations, and their dressing-rooms and so on.

[ 26 ] This ground-plan will show you that certain things were indispensable to the building. Whenever I refer to this ground-plan I am always anxious lest the actual structural thought should be misunderstood. I once gave a lecture in Dornach on this ground-plan and its form, drawing a comparison between it and the human form. Some of my listeners jumped to the conclusion that the building was a symbolical image of the human form. That is absolutely not the case; but if a man is able really to understand the human form and how on the one hand it is an instrument for thinking and on the other hand for willing and that both these are held together by the power of feeling; if he understands the whole human structure, the formation of the head, and limbs and the trunk, with the heart system as the centre, he then would also be able to construct other organic forms. And this is one of these other organic forms. On this account when one sees this and the organic form of man together, it is possible to find a certain relation between them. But there is absolutely no question of the one being modelled on the other, for the Building here is in its organic architectural form constructed from out of that which is organically creative in nature and from cosmic activity itself.

You will be able to see the same in the transverse section that I will now show you.

[ 27 ] The small cupola, as connected with the great cupola. This cut through the centre from East to West. The whole Building has but one axis of symmetry and everything is arranged in accordance with that. That necessitates the structural thought being a living one, for the more highly evolved organism develops along a certain axis. Certain lower organic forms alone evolve from the centre; and we may take it, that as a result of the attempt that has been made here, certain more perfect forms of building than the centrally constructed (Zentralbauten) ones, will be developed, because a first beginning has been made to follow the principle of organic growth along an axis.

[ 28 ] Here you have the vestibule into which one enters through the door of the substructure; and this is the stairway by which one ascends to the terrace. You see that, forming part of and attached to the balustrade of the stairs is a remarkable structure. What this actually is can perhaps only be completely grasped by one who is able to look away from everything merely intellectual, in order to see only the artistic. When this form was about to be made, I said to myself: anyone going up these stairs must have some sort of halting-place, to bring about in him the right frame of mind. Now just look at these three directions of space. But it will not suffice to look at them, you must notice how they droop over and bulge out, how weighty they are, bending over with their own weight. If you take the whole form into your feeling, they will be to you,the expression of the mood which it would be desirable for you to have when you ascend these stairs. Anyone who goes up them will have a premonition that here, in this Goetheanum Building, he will find something which will give firmness, security and strength to his life, which will give him something to his balance. One ought to have that feeling here, for simply from that feeling did the form arise. I might say that besides this, one should feel that the form must be what it is, for although it is not slavishly copied from them, it does resemble the three semi-circular canals which form the small auditory bone of the human ear. If this organ of the human ear is injured a man falls, he loses his balance. It is an organ of balance in the human organism, a diminutive organ of balance.

[ 29 ] Now one cannot help feeling that there must be something here to help us to enter the Hall in a properly balanced frame of mind. This is no puzzled-out idea, it has been really felt. If one takes it as a thought-out thing, it will be his own fault, for it shows he has begun by reflecting and digging down and speculating. There should be no question of speculating or puzzling out, but of feeling the heavy pressure of the overhanging weight of feeling the form and in so doing, of arousing the mood that may come over one while mounting these stairs.

[ 30 ] Here is one of those vaulted arches which can only be understood by organic structural thinking. If you stand here in the Building and feel the Building, that is, feel how you come in or out there, and how you go up the stairs, meeting all the weighty pressure of the whole Building, you will then feel this curve is expressed exactly as it should be: while at the same time you will feel what the whole structure means. The attempt has here been made to give over to the organic the work that is generally done by columns or pillars. There is nothing in this but the feeling for form that comes when one intuitively feels the supporting strength, which this particular form must convey. If anyone is reminded of an elephant or a horse's hoof he may be so but, that only shows that he does not consider it from an artistic point of view, but merely an imitative one. What is important here is the being able to feel that weight has to be supported, while that which is to bear it grows into this form, develops into it, and that this arch could curve in any other direction but this. It is not a question of copying anything, but of trying to feel the weight-carrying, weight-bearing forces, and of moulding such forces as are able to bear weight.

[ 31 ] In the ordinary-structural-conception the geometrical-mechanical-dynamic weight-bearing and carrying, is the only feeling one has. But here in every surface and line should he expressed in the structures, the beginning of the feeling for life. If the things I have mentioned do away with all that is merely speculation, you will have understood the subject in the right way.

[ 32 ] To-morrow we will continue and pass from the outer to the inner architecture. I believe that when all that underlies the conception of our Building is made known to the world, and it is shown that here something really new in the way of artistic forms is growing out of the Anthroposophical conception, we shall be able to arouse a feeling for all that is being done not only in this line, but also in regard to the social question.

[ 1 ] Yesterday we considered the Building from the outside, from different aspects. To-day we will approach it from the inside and will try to bring before our mind the idea of the inside architecture. This idea of the inside architecture might be described something in this way. When one approaches the Building as it appears at present from the outside, the idea called up through the impression that one gets, is, that here is an enclosure that in a way is cut off from the rest of the world, and containing an idea in itself which has to be introduced into the present evolution of humanity; something that has a new element to be brought into the evolution of humanity. The outward forms point to this something that is new in the contemplation of the universe. They aim at a new style. If the Goetheanum had been built in the old style of architecture, it would not have been possible to receive this particular impression that I have to emphasise. This inner architecture is now to be shown in contrast to the outer.

[ 2 ] When we come from the terrace through the main entrance and step into the first Hall, turn round and then towards the West side, we see this picture. We have before our view that which shuts off the space above, the first two pillars to the left and the right. As we go a step further we see here the capital of the first column to the right and left, and above that the architrave. If you will notice that which is essential you will mark the progressive development in the configuration in the capitals of the columns as well as in the architrave over the capitals.

[ 3 ] Yesterday I told you that the chief thing about this Building is that everything is felt to be in its place by reason of an inner necessity, exactly as a limb of an organic body is felt to be in the place determined by an inner necessity of the organism. You can see that everything that is included within the Building is an attempt to express the idea which has inspired the Building, so that it does not appear as a habitation constructed with walls in which something arbitrary here and there is placed. No, everything included in the Building itself is in organic union with its spiritual idea, You can be sure when you look at the next picture (1A) that it is in vital in connection with the one that has gone before. This is the organ left (photographed as you see from the model) which will show that also here the organ is built in full harmony with the rest of the architecture, so that you have not the feeling that it has been added but that it is a part of the whole form, as if the organ had actually grown out of the architecture. That is the fundamental principle upon which the whole Building is carried out.

[ 4 ] In the next picture (31) you see the first pillar and I want to call your special attention to the way in which the motive of every pillar develops out of the one that has gone before in a living metamorphosis. In order to do this we must look at the next picture (32) where the second pillar develops out of the first and where also the architrave motive is transformed in a developing metamorphosis, every succeeding form springing after its own law from the form which precedes it. You see here how the second pillar develops itself out of the first—that is to say when you take the forms which reach up from below and those which reach down from above, and when you picture to yourself how each succeeding leaf of a plant issues through metamorphosis out of the foregoing leaf, then you will realise how the form of the second pillar develops out of the form of the first pillar. The whole of it is to be found in continuing metamorphosis.

[ 5 ] If you would really get an understanding of what is meant, then you will of course be wrong if you attach exaggerated importance to the nomenclature which as a matter of fact only—relates to exterior conditions.

The first pillar has been called Saturn, the second pillar Sun and so forth. Well, that is conceivable and that nomenclature is from a certain standpoint justifiable. But to abide by such nomenclature would of course be most inartistic. The essential thing is the relation of the second pillar to the first and the first to the second pillar. The essential thing is the change from one form into another for it is just in this change from one form into the other that the laws of world order are to be found, and ordain the change from Saturn formation into the Sun formation. I do not mean to say that these pillars are symbolic of Saturn and Sun, I simply mean that the law of change from Saturn to Sun is an inward law whose workings can be seen. This inner law whose workings can be seen has been expressed here in the sequence of the form.

We will now see the second pillar by itself.

In the next picture we show the second and third pillars together with their particular architraves.

[ 6 ] You see how in the first place the capitals are pictured in progressive metamorphosis and also how the architrave motif progresses, each form building itself up out, of the form that has gone before. Whenever you see a curve or a turn you must realise that this is not to be considered only as regards its own form but always in relation with the form that has gone before and that which is to come after. Through the entire development here neither a capital nor an architrave motif can be understood by itself. They exist as a sequence. They exist in their relationship one to the other. That is what we chew here. That is the truth which expresses the life element. Now we shall see the third pillar by itself.

[ 7 ] Now then, we will see the third and fourth pillars together with their architraves. We shall see as we continue that things become more and more complicated. That is in accordance with the nature of evolution. Evolution proceeds from the simple forms to the more complicated. You see here that the fourth motif is really very complicated in relation to the one that has gone before and especially the architrave motif is becoming more and more complicated.

We will now see the fourth pillar by itself.

[ 8 ] As I have said before this pillar and this motif must be seen in their relation to all the rest. That is the essential thing in all the ideas expressed in this Building. Whereas elsewhere one finds repetition, here one has a progressive evolution. This is really the essential new element that has been brought into the idea of this Building. Whereas elsewhere the dynamics of Geometry are put before us in repetition so that like balances like here one is concerned with the growth of the one out of the other. Look at them again - this pillar and the following one—together with their own architraves. Here we see how the moss complicated motif will be found in the capital of the 5th pillar and how the architrave motif becomes extremely complicated as it develops from the simple form which was there at the beginning to these very complicated forms.

We will now look at the 5th capital by itself.

[ 9 ] Perhaps the form of this capital suggests to you the staff of Mercury wound about with snakes but you must not regard it as though it stood by itself - you must look at it as though it were veritably a living metamorphosis from that which precedes it—as a composition that has not come into being as an isolated idea.

You will see if you once again change this form according to law and also according to the principle of progressive change the next form will develop out of this one.

We will now see this with the next once more and the contents of its capital. [ 10 ] You have only to notice how certain lines which wind themselves about this Mercury motifs branch out from one another, how the Mercury motif with its small top and its points directed downwards appears to be growing larger, and notice how that which you see there at the edge grows to meet what is underneath it and is united with the Mercury motif. Then you will understand how forms which are in living movement grow through and grow out of each other, and that the succeeding motive is developed from that which has gone before.

[ 11 ] But I must draw your attention to one thing. Just now when we have passed the middle point and we look at the next motive and compare it with the one that has gone before you might be inclined to say that this is more simple than the previous one. This is a point which must be quite clearly stated. If you follow the idea merely intellectually it may seem to you as if evolution consists in the fact that beginning from the most simple forms it proceeds to more and more complicated forms so that the last form will be a perfection of complexity. That is however not the case. A wholly false idea of evolution has come into being in modern times owing to this mistake. It is just when we follow the idea of evolution in Art asp I had to do in order to model these capitals and architraves one from another that VT identify ourselves with the real principle of evolution in nature and indeed in the world. You have then to model things after the pattern of evolution in the world and in nature, then you get an inner vision of what evolution really is. The marvellous and significant thing is that this trend at first is towards the more complicated forms but just about at the centre, just when you have what is most complicated, this trend is reversed. and turns again towards the simple.

Thus it has been shown in an artistic manner out of its own nature that when the most complicated stage has been achieved there come; a return to the simple and the complicated has to appear again in its most simple manifestations

[ 12 ] I should like very specially to explain to you this principle of evolution. Granted we had to follow the course of evolution through any form of metamorphosis we should say this here is a simple form (see drawing 1st form) Now we go a little further and see how a subsequent form can grow out of this one. Now let us understand how the following form grows out of this one. Here we have an illustration of the complicated which has grown out of the simple (the second form).

[ 13 ] The next still more complicated form could be moulded in this way (see 3rd form). Now you have the third form having grown out of the previous one. Follow the development further so that it becomes apparent to you what is organic and growing and in this way you will feel yourself forced from a certain point onward. Through this relationship (or connection) in which you come with the living principle of evolution you feel yourself forced onward to mould not something apparently more complicated but something like this (see drawing 4th form and the next you would feel obliged to mould in this way (see 3th form); that is if you are really immersed in that which in nature is the origin of the principle of evolution and the power of evolution. Then you would get a development which is really modelled from nature—that is, from the simple to the complicated, then again to the simple. [ 14 ] But this simple form which one now achieves has a certain quality It is indeed apparently simple but if you compare this simple form with the simplicity of the first form you will say to yourself “here is a simple roughly drawn line” (referring to the first one) “but here is a change” and one has the feeling that one can see in it what has gone before so that in a certain sense what has gone before is actually included in it and so you feel that out of the complicated comes the simple, in so far as this simple form builds itself up on a mysteriously complicated element (see the red line). So that the later evolution develops its simplicity out of the complicated.

[ 15 ] It is marvellous how if one traces evolution through Art we identify ourselves with what evolution really is in nature. You see how we are led in this way to something that I have often pointed out If we follow the principles of evolution merely intellectually, then it is easy to believe that humanity is the most perfect result in the development of the organic creation and that it is also the most complicated. This is not true. If we contemplate a human organ—say the eye—we find that the human eye as seen from outside is certainly not the most complicated eye. The eyes of certain lower organisms are much more complicated. They grow organs like the sword appendix; the fan of lower organic beings which if; like the continuation of the blood vessels in the eye.

In man these organs have apparently entirely disappeared and the human eye has returned to a simpler form, but simpler according to the principle of that which I have here shown in Art.

[ 16 ] Now as I have said, if one contemplates this simplicity which develops out of the complicated—one has the feeling that this. line has to be completed in thought (dotted line). Simplicity is created from concealed complexity. Simplicity is what is seen outwardly, that is actually to in nature. Man has no appendix in the eye, and apparently no fan but if one could add to the physical eye the etheric, then there should be added that which in the lower organic beings is developed physically. Just in the same way as (see drawing) I had to add, the dotted line here, just as I had to build up that which is externally visible on the foundation of this by the dotted line, so the human eye in its simplicity, in its physical; simplicity is formed out of a complicated etheric eye-formation: the apparently simple physical out of the complicated etheric.

[ 17 ] This is a proof to you that when we really grow into the inner form in the way that the metamorphosis of forms demands, we grow into the creative principle of nature herself. For then we understand for the first time how evolution progresses in nature, and here, dear friend; you can see how necessary it is in order to understand a certain inward power of development that we must learn to know nature not only in intellectual ideas but to grasp her forms with the imagination of the artist. This is the thing that you must realise as most important in every sense of the word. If one is to try in the way that science till now has done to get at nature with ideas and conceptions of an intellectual kind one will never grasp nature in her fullness of evolution. One will, only grasp nature in her fullness of evolution when one has built up in pictures and in imaginations what are otherwise intellectual ideas and so-called natural laws, for nature creates not in intellectual ideas but in pictures and in imaginations. [ 18 ] This is the main impression produced by our Building that it indicates to what kind, of representation we must progress if we would come to a satisfactory view of the world especially, in relation to the social future of mankind. The old world beliefs were developed from imaginations. You know the root of world beliefs is not to be found in intellectual ideas hut in pictures, in legends, in myths, and through pictures and images man sought to understand the forces which work in human life. And pictures and images were transformed into social impulses. All that originally came from the old pictures is to-day in a process of transformation and has to-day changed into intellectual conceptions; and intellectual conceptions cannot suffice for life. From this comes the present conception of the world with its dead element, with its destructive element containing within it the seed of death. And the conceptions of the world which appear new and young make nothing but sentimental and vogue claims.

[ 19 ] Nothing fruitful for the future can develop out of that which today appears in the form of social ideas. Anything fruitful for the future must be born out of an imaginative conception of the forces of growth. These must ever be comprehended in their actual inner reality by means of such simple forms. In this Building the principle that lives and works creatively in nature can be realised from within. It will be seen then from the moulding of isolated forms that so far as this Building is concerned you have before you that which you really need in order to build up a vies of the world and a social life for the future.

[ 20 ] It was of course a drawback that in the beginning the sectarian feelings of a great many people have given a false meaning to that which this building is meant to express, through over much symbolizing; and there have been people who consider it highly important that we should any that this is the Venus column, that the Saturn etc. These things that have a mystical flavour with which the mind can act a pretty play had to come to an end. In our time the task-of humanity is really something quite different from a mystical playing with ideas. And the main thing is that we deal with the clearest conceptions, and act with fullest consciousness—that is with that which transcends everyday consciousness—what I may call the super-consciousness, but which never descends to sub-consciousness. We must overcome all that pertains to day-dreaming, we must overcome all false and deadening mysticism. For higher than this mysticism, my dear friends, stands the everyday consciousness. For example while a raster Eckhardt or a John Tauler were in harmony with their particular time, to-day anyone who turned to this same consciousness which John Tauler or raster Eckhardt had would be entirely out of place in our world order. For the task of to-day is to get further, to awaken, not to go to sleep. There is much too pronounced an attitude among men for the pseudo-mystical, even among those who believe that they are on a better path But they only believe it. But there is still much too much of the idea that if we want to attain to spiritual truth, we can go to sleep a bit, we can dream a little, one can be a sentimental mystic. That is what is most injurious to the culture of our time. Instead of sinking from every-day consciousness into dreams we cannot sufficiently strive to climb out of the everyday consciousness to the more clear, to the super-consciousness.

[ 21 ] For this reason this Building precisely through its artistic side had to make certain claims. Men to-day when they are confronted with Art tend to become a little dreamy and where possible avoid thinking, which is so very exhausting, when we are following our everyday concerns, cooking or tending machines or planning architecture or anything of the kind, and we think we will rest a little when we are enjoying Art; we think we can sleep a little. This Building is not for that kind of sleeping consciousness. People with this kind of sleeping consciousness come into this Building and they say “we do not understand this.” We understand it in the moment we follow with the eye every turn, every curve—where we with the eye of the soul follow the physical eye—where we do not concern ourselves with all the rubbish about names, Saturn or or Sun, Mercury pillar etc.—where we follow the forms and see how one grows out of the other, how everything lives and interweaves, when we leave our false mysticism behind and really exert ourselves to follow these forms.

[ 22 ] We see that everything is not calculated to induce sleep but is for the purpose of awakening, for a shaking-up and not less for a becoming more aware than in ordinary life. This is the thing for instance, which pains me most. It is when I see again and again that people so love sleep even here in the Anthroposophical Society. They would like to pour out rest over everything and this is really the satisfaction of a selfish desire for sleep. Well, here the thing with which we are concerned is to become wider awake than we are in ordinary life. This Building can only be perceived in its Art form - in its inner artistic mobility when as we enter it we allow ourselves to be profoundly stirred and become more awake and aware than we are in everyday conditions. In ordinary life we sleep a great deal to-day, and it is from this sleep that our principle misfortunes come. [ 23 ] That is why every single form must be conceived actively. We must be able to set ourselves inside these forms and this Building is a living protest against all morbid mysticism. The worst of it is that even from well-intentioned people a certain mystical fog has spread itself around this Building through gossip and chatter, so that other people are able to repeat it: If only we could deal with the objections of our enemies with the reply that those who love this Building are concerned with supremely active life' But we must have a desire for this supremely active life. [ 24 ] We must seek here not soul-spiritual indulgence but soul-spiritual activity.

We must grow and not let ourselves be lulled in dreams. This is the thing which I specially wish to say with regard to this Building. If with the whole soul we actively identify ourselves with the living movement, with every single form which has been built into the whole, then we shall see that while this Building gives the impression from the outside, “here within is something which wants to reveal itself to the world,” in the moment when we enter it the forms will so work that the walls themselves in a certain sense will disappear. That is a new thing, viz, the way in which walls have been conceived in regard to this Building. Up to the present time, walls have always been built in such a way that they form an enclosure. The Art principle in these walls is that they roll themselves up so that we have the feeling the walls do not enclose us, the pillars do not stand there in order to define a limit. But the thing that is expressed in the pillars, the thing that is expressed in the walls break through the walls and leads us into living touch with the whole universe.

The Building is shaped out of the universe. Just as the world itself in its living interweaving life, in its spheric harmony, so is this building intended. That is the thing we aspire to in our eurhythmics. Not to allow that kind of sleep to enter into our eurhythmic forms but that a greater awareness shall take place in the action of eurhythmics than takes place in ordinary life, which we never could express in ordinary life. The performer of Eurhythmics should not be overcome in the struggle he has to wage continually against sleepiness in life.

[ 25 ] We will now continue further with the pictures. This is then the pillar by itself in which you can see how when man comes to this perfection he comes outwardly to the perfection of simplicity.

[ 26 ] Now here you see the last two pillars with their architraves. Everything has become simple although it has arrived at perfection. You see the marvellous thing about this is that through the harmony between nature and creative Art other harmonies now manifest themselves that have not been noticed before. If you take the capital of the first pillar you can place that which was convex into the concave form of the last pillar and vice versa. This was not intentional. This is something which has been born out of itself. The convexity of the first Pillar fit into the concavity of the seventh. The convexity of the third pillar in the concavity of the fifth, and the centre pillar with its capital stands quite independently alone. These are things which are born, just as in nature certain realities are born in progressive metamorphosis which do not need to be foreseen at all but seem like a kind of crux of the experiment which one discovers only at last when one has been creating in the same way as nature herself creates.

Here you see also the most perfect, and apparently also the most simple pillar of all.

[ 27 ] We will now let the seven pillars follow one after another so that we can see how one forms. as a metamorphosis emerges out of the other form—from the simple, the imperfect to the most complicated middle one, then back again to the most simple and the most perfect.

[ 28 ] The first pillar. You have only to imagine the principle of growth transforming this pillar and you will get the next, the second pillar, then the third, the fourth, the fifth, the sixth and then the last.

[ 29 ] Now for the next picture. Here you see the last pillar and the point where the great cupola impinges upon the small cupola. So that you have a glimpse here of the meeting point of the two cupolas, where the architrave of the big cupola impinges upon the architrave of the small cupola, only separated by the aperture in which.the curtain will drop. The little cupola is supported in the same way with pillars and architraves of which I can show you only a little. We have not been able to get good photographs of the others, but this juncture we shall see again in the next picture.

We see here another aspect of this juncture where one cupola impinges on the other.

Here we have another aspect of the pillars and architraves of the little cupola. And now you will see a bit of that part which represents an architrave space to the East in the middle of the small cupola.

[ 30 ] You see a bit of what is in the middle; beneath that will be the sculptured group of the Representative of Humanity with Ahriman and Lucifer in the vicinity. Above is the picture of the same.

[ 31 ] When you observe carefully this bit in the small cupola of which only a small portion is shown, you will see that in the forms of this architrave is included—as in a synthesis—everything that is shown in forms on the capitals and the architraves of the small cupola. This is here a comprehensive expression of all that has been expressed in the capitals and architraves of the small cupola. Here is to be found everything repeated again—of course transformed to accord with the place in which it is found. You will find when you compare that which confronts you in the form of the sculptural group showing the Representative of Humanity, Lucifer and Ahriman with all the different curves and forms and surfaces which are found on the capitals and architraves, contains in itself the whole Building in a certain sense. So that this sculptured central group might be conceived of as the synthetic epitome of the whole Building. Just as for example the human head is a repetition of all the rest of the organism, or, if you like it better, the human larynx and its neighbouring organs is an organic repetition of the whole man. Only that everything is put together in its own place out of an inner organic necessity. In the same way this Building must be grasped as a whole for the parts do not exist alone but each must be considered as a part of the whole.

[ 32 ] I want to draw your attention to the way in which this idea with regard to walls is apparent in a still more material way in the glass windows, the reproductions of which I cannot show you here. The glass windows are only works of art when the light of the sun is shining through them. At other times they are only like a musical score. Thus you will see that. these glass windows (about which I shall speak more fully later on but which I cannot show you now) are in themselves an evidence that the building does not stand as a thing by itself but that the light of the sun is imagined as unity with it. And now in the same way everything connected with the form of this Building is imagined as being in unity with the creative powers of the whole universe The Building itself may be likened to a bit of the whole universe.

[ 33 ] The next picture. This gives you the portal of our glass house underneath. You can observe once more how the effect has been made in everything which belongs to the Building to express in every form of truth that I have again and again pointed out. This glass house (and I have called it a glass house because it was originally built in order that the glass windows might be fashioned there) has also two cupolas. It is indeed a metamorphosis of the great cupola of the main Building.

You have to imagine that the two cupolas of equal size are pulled apart, for you could not unite two equally large cupolas in the same way as you can unite a large one and a small one. It would he against the laws of nature. In order to bring the cupolas together as they are brought together in the main building they must be made of different sizes, the one large and the other small. If they are the same size they must be drawn apart and everything else must be adapted in the same way.

You will see in the formation of the steps, how, in every case each individual line in its own place is the outcome of a law of necessity, and how a part is in every case an expression of the whole.

[ 34 ] Now here you,see that which is to many people a monstrosity. It is the. house which is to contain the apparatus for the lighting and heating. If you were to ask me upon what principle this building is designed, I can only say it is fashioned in accordance with the creative principle of nature. It is formed in a way which, as you will see if you look into it, may be compared, for instance, with the way in which the nut shell correspond: to the kernel of the nut. It is true, is it not, that the kernel of the nut has a certain form? The shell of the nut fits itself exactly to the kernel of the nut. The shell cannot be different so long as the kernel has a determinate form which is the effect of quite a different cause. In designing such a building as we have here we have to consider carefully every detail it contains. What purpose does everything serve that is contained herein? For this is a building whose purpose is pure utility. One has to get a conception of what is here contained and of what purpose it serves—that is the nut. Afterwards one has to consider how to build the corresponding shell of this nut. To the “nut” itself belongs the smoke which escapes, this building is only complete when the smoke is rising. It is only a work of art if this chimney really fulfils its purpose. Then only will one see the necessity of these projections. We shall not look at theM as they were leaves of a plane or anything of that sort, but we shall feel ourselves into the shape and then we experience how this shrine is bound by an inner law of necessity to the crake. As the smoke is linked in organic connection with the building and also that which is happening inside the building, so in the same way we shall realise these globes. Imagine what would be there if we had not attempted to create this form. [ 35 ]I will of course admit that we shall be able to carry out these ideas in a more complete way, but a beginning must be made and everything that follows can become more and more perfect. The beginning must be made, first, to demonstrate that a building which is designed for utility must follow some such inner creative principles. Secondly, it must be built with regard to the adaptability of the most modern material: concrete. For every material demands its definite laws of building. When we build in a certain material we have to observe certain quite definite principles, that are bound up with the very nature of the material. The conception of building must give expression to the idea of utility and also to the demands of the particular material.

[ 36 ] You see it is not to be wondered at that these things which are all more or less new are repudiated by many people. Those who are not familiar with these ideas will not easily follow what I mean. But it becomes easier and easier as time goes on. Every idea that has come into the world in this way has experienced at the outset strongest opposition. But we must always take into account that it is exactly with regard to the things that are at present working that we must not sleep. It is also necessary that we make a certain energetic stand for the essential. We shall not succeed for a long time to come with out the energetic stand even if there are only few people who can follow the things with really inner understanding, for you see how things are. We shall take the opportunity tomorrow when we are speaking of the paintings in the cupola, to speak more of many things about, around and in the Building.

I have already said that you can see from all that with which we have been dealing how far this building represents that for which our anthroposophical ideas stand, and how every detail is born out of the way in which we look at the universe. If that could be brought into the world in the same thoroughness, we should have achieved something. For you see my dear friends, it is impossible for us to succeed to-day with these conceptions with which in past years we thought we should be successful.

[ 37 ] I gave you an example a week ago of the unsavoury lying methods which are being used. Why do they use such lying methods? I assure you that this is only the beginning of opposition. There is going to be lying on a much bigger scale. But I can show you how these lies are being systematically spread and the very lies that people are spreading, themselves, they use as further evidence. This systematic campaign will continue. I know there are many people in our Society who will not believe how low is the condition of morality in the world to-day, but it is necessary that we should not blind ourselves to these things. [ 38 ] But we must realise two things. First the intensity of the campaign comes from the fact that people feel, here is reality, they will not let it evolve. If it was a matter of programmes, as has been so much the case in the past, the people would not take so much trouble to slander us. But people will take the trouble to slander what is born of real force. For because they feel that they are face to face with the future they will slander and they will lie. But it is not a matter of convincing liars of the truth; they will not be convinced; they do not want to hear the truth. The thing is to go to the people who are not yet lying and put things before them in the right way. Those who think that they can counter with arguments and proofs that which the Catholic Church is now spreading abroad against us do us very bad service. For to those who are spreading these slanders it is not a question of this or that truth—it is a question of turning minds against us. And if we were confront them with the truth it would be a matter of complete indifference to them, they would only lie the more. But we have to see through it, dear friends, and then adjust ourselves to the position. It is not a question of convincing those who lie but it is a question of showing to the world that is still uncorrupted, in what way these slanders and falsehoods are spread. [ 39 ] I am more and more astonished (and I have to repeat this very often) that:the pernicious tendency shows itself even within our own Society to occupy ourselves with those who slander and lie and to endeavour to meet them directly, while our real task is to explain to the world what kind of human beings these people are. If we are not able to see right through this thing, dear friends, we shall not get very far because it is incumbent upon us, especially those who live here in the vicinity of this building to become objective and to develop interest in the great objective universe, holding ourselves above cliques and personal feelings, and all these commonplace puerilities. If we cannot become objective in relation to this building and what it stands for, then the movement will really not be able to get very far forward. We must subdue the purely personal; we must be able to put ourselves into the big interests of the world. And in everyone of its particular forms this building is a demand upon us that we shall escape from the, narrow personal points of view and rise to the great interests of the world. [ 40 ] For every single form as a matter of fact expresses what is necessary to humanity for the future.

Look at the abuse which is all around in the world. Do you find anything really pertinent to our cause? It is because people cannot find anything against our cause that they become personal. It is for this reason that they try to bring about the destruction of the ideas of this Movement by personal slander. It would be a sad thing if we were not able to look at these things properly and become aware of the things that are going on around us.

[ 41 ] To-morrow we will consider the pictures in the Cupola.

[ 1 ] Passing on to-day to the paintings in the smaller dome, it has not been possible to make lantern slides from the photographs of the paintings of the larger dome—as we pass on to the paintings in the smaller dome, I am indeed in a peculiar position, and everyone will be in this position who wishes to present an idea from these copies of what is meant by the paintings of the dome, to the wider public who has not first seen them here. The attempt has been made in accordance with that artistic point of view referred to, in my Mystery Play The Portal of Initiation, to evolve form in the painting entirely out of colour, so that, as regards the painting of the smaller dome, as far as possible, the influence of this point of view is actually felt—even then of course everything is only at the initial stages. [ 2 ] To allow form to appear as the creation of colour is that which is aimed at here. If we follow the history of painting we see that this fundamental principle to draw forth all that is pictorial from colour, can really only be at the very beginning of its development. Men tried in the art of painting because it offers the special temptation—this was even so in the most brilliant period—to express some naturalistic theme in reproduction. Even though it must be admitted—and who would not willingly admit, in reference to the production of Raphael, Leonardo, Michael Angelo and others?—that the greatest heights of pictorial art have been reached in striving for expression in this way, and it must be admitted that the whole modern cosmic conception which is unspiritual can scarcely do otherwise than somehow strive for expression, yet the time has come when a spiritualization of our cosmic conception must be sought; another principle, another way of artistic thinking, especially in the art of painting must make itself felt. [ 3 ] This artistic feeling certainly will only be admitted by him who has a presentiment that in this world each element represents a creative whole. If we have a right sense for the world of colour we find something truly world-creative in colour. Anyone able to sink himself into the world of colour is able to soar up to the feeling, that from this mysterious world of colour a world of beings spring up, that the colour itself through its own inherent forces will develop into a world of beings. I might say: as we see the growing man in embryo in the little child, so can we see a world of beings in embryo if we have a right sense for the world of colour.

[ 4 ] Certainly it does not mean that we should have merely a feeling for the single colour; the single colour, as a rule, establishes only a relationship between man and colour as such. To see blue means to feel an intense desire, longing, to go out into the space in which the colour is manifesting, to follow the colour; to look at red calls forth a feeling of being attacked, as if one had to defend oneself against something, and so on with the other colours. Colours have also a certain relation with that which can be formed in colour, if we are able to draw the form out of the colour. Blue, for instance will always help if we wish to express movement, red will always help if we wish to express physiognomy. But what I mean has to do much less with single colours at with what the colours have to say to one another, whet red has to say to blue, green to blue, green to red, orange to lilac, etc. In this exchange, I might say, of speech, and exchange of activity between the colours, an entirely new world would come to expression. And we do not fully perceive this interchange of speech and interplay of: colours, if me are not. able to perceive colours as ocean-waves rising and falling, and at the same to perceive, playing upon the waves of colour, coming into life from the colour-waves, the elemental beings which develop their forms of themselves out from the colour-waves.

[ 5 ] Thus the attempt has been made to show in painting the secret of how to create out of the very nature of colour. For a greater part of that which is living, which we look out on, is born wholly out of the creative colour-world. As our vegetation has sprung forth from the ocean, so that which is living grows out of the colour-world.

[ 6 ] I might say, it is always pitiful to see how those who are possessed of artistic feeling truly feel that the old forms of art are bankrupt, that they can go no further, and how in spite of this the world is not willing to respond to the impulse which can only be explained through the anthroposophical interpretation of the world. Certainly this anthroposophical interpretation of the world must be something more than a mere intellectual idealistic set of ideas. It must be an intuitive perception. We must be able to think in colours, in forms, just as we think in ideas and thoughts. We must be able to live in colours, in forms. [ 7 ] If our Building is to be what it is intended to be, it must in a certain sense, bring to expression, as in one living being, the spiritual, the psychic and the physical. The spiritual is essentially brought to expression in the forms of the pillars, the architrave and the capitals, etc. In these is reflected the spirit, out of itself creating form. The psychic finds its manifestation, for example, in the glass-windows. In this interplay of the external light with the engraving on the coloured sheets of glass may be dimly apprehended by the play of the psychic, and the physical, that shows itself in its own configuration if one has the right-vision for what is painted in the domes. The paintings in the domes express to a certain extent the physical substantiality. It is, of course, the case that in the arrangement of the Building, which strives to give an understanding of the world to come extent, there is a reversed order, as compared with the ordinary comprehension of the three world principles. This follows naturally in contrast to what one generally imagines, i.e. the spiritual above, the physical below. In that which should develop in the human soul as force of inspiration through the whole artistic structure of the Building there must be a reversed relationship.

[ 8 ] But this very creation from colours is of course just what I cannot show you in lantern slides, and therefore with lantern slides we do not get what is really essentially purposed in the painting in the domes. We get as it were inartistic ideas, effects of what is intended to he artistic. But of course that cannot be helped, and it is to be hoped that those who see these lantern slides of colour-pictures will regard there pictures as it were as crying out for something else, as not really giving expression to that which is intended. If we take them in the right way we must say, as regards these lantern slides of colour-pictures somewhat as follows: “What is really in these pictures, really wishes to speak to us in a totally different language”, and then we shall be led to see the Building itself in the original conception of it. And out of the contemplation of these lantern slides, this will be a longing that will then arise in him who has artistic perception. Hence I do not think it quite superfluous to produce even these lantern slides.

[ 9 ] We start from here in the small dome, where as a beginning there is, on the surface of the walls, a kind of flying child, immediately at the junction of the large and small domes. You see this flying child, which in its composition belongs to what follows on here on your left. The composition is of course entirely derived from the colour; yet it also forms an element in the configuration of the small dome. You understand the whole figure of this child here if you keep in mind the two adjacent forms.

We will now put on the next picture.

[ 10 ] You see here as it were a figure of Faust. Here we are in the riddle Ages, just at the time when our fifth post-Atlantean age begins and here you find the only word written in letters, the Ich or I or Ego. In the whole Building you find nothing anywhere expressed in written letters. The intellectual method of representing a word, of this foundation word I or Ego, has so far its justification here, in that, with the commencement of the fifth post-Atlantean civilisation that in which ourselves stand—in the 15th century, developing further into the time of Faust, in the 16th century, that which was invisible appeared, that which expressed by mere symbols, by what had detached itself from Reality. That which lay at the bottom of the real ego-being of man was not grasped. In the universal spiritual evolution of humanity no image of the ego had been evolved. For, when man said “I” he had only an abstract idea in his mind. This is therefore the justification for introducing a wholly unreal representation of the ego through letters. And it falls into place naturally by the side of the Faust-figure. [ 11 ] Do not, I beg you, attach any special value to my expression Faust-figure. The main thing is that in the whole composition this figure expresses what the spirit of the age in that very epoch produces in the seeking man. You see it brought to expression especially in the eye, in the countenance, in the attitude of the hand, you see it expressed in the whole gesture of the figure. That we are reminded of Faust is what one might say—purely arbitrary. It is the man who in the fifth our post-Atlantean age actually seeks, which is the characteristic of our age. Of the real fundamental character of this seeking few men as yet are conscious. Since the 15th century we have evolved ever more a sort of philosophy of death, which is no longer capable of grappling with life. [ 12 ] This is the result of the whole training which humanity had to pass through at the beginning of the fifth post-Atlantean period. During this period humanity has to develop the inner force of freedom. self-consciousness. Humanity can only do this by breaking adrift from nature. But to break adrift from nature means to identify oneself with the forces which in perceiving, alone understand death, recognise what is dead. All our ideas, all concepts which are the actual concepts of civilisation lead to death, are concerned with what is dead. And he who to-day is not himself dead, as most learned men are in soul, he who to-day is not himself dead as regards his seeking, finds in the seeking of these principles an incentive to what makes man free but is at the same time, I might say, the abyss or the dead. He has constantly the feeling: Thou makest thyself indeed free, but in so doing thou comest into proximity with death. Thus Death had to be brought into proximity with the Faust-figure.

[ 13 ] This is below. Hero you see the seeking man, who to-day is under the impress, under the feeling of death, death which always accompanies the most important ideals in the search for knowledge. It would be unbearable to a feeling soul to have a sort of Faust-figure above and below to have death, and no counterpart in the composition. Therefore, before we come to this composition of Faust and Death, we have this flying child, which to some extent represents the contrast to the feeling of Death. Thus a Trinity is to be understood: Death, the Seeking Man and the young Child full of life. With this is painted in the small dome what may be presented as the Initiation of the fifth post-Atlantean time. The Initiation-wisdom of the fifth-post Atlantean time is not to be won without one's having as it were full consciousness of the significance of Death, not only in human life, but in the life of the whole world as well. We possess indeed our powers of thinking because we continually bear the forces of death in our head. Were these forces which are active in our head for the purpose of thinking to penetrate our whole organism we should not be able to live, we should continually die. We only live because the tendency in our head to death is continually balanced by the tendency to life in the rest of our organism. That is, I may say briefly and lightly expressed in the abstract, the law of our time. [ 14 ] When I tell you this, I can understand that it does not penetrate specially deeply into your hearts, into your souls. To have experienced, signifies something fearful; to have experienced that impulse which in every effort for knowledge says: What thou canst acquire as knowledge at the present time, thou owest to Death which penetrates more and more into the earth-life. What really must enter into the earth-life of humanity will only enter when this initiation-principle, now at the very beginning of its growth—the power of Death!—extends further and further and engenders the vital longing of the newer future humanity for the compensating spirit, for a youth who is already Jupiter, which is no longer earth-youth, which is already the youth of the next planetary embodiment of the earth.

[ 15 ] We now go back to what can-be pictorially represented of the fourth post-Atlantean (the Graeco-Latin) period of civilisation. A sort of form is given here in the paintings of the small dome, which in its whole configuration - you will particularly feel this when you look at the colouring of this figure in the small dome—which, in its whole configuration, in its whole nature, portrays the shining-in of the spiritual world into humanity during the fourth post-Atlantean period, as it was to be at that time. Above this figure you find those who gave the inspiration, of which I have not been able to obtain lantern slides from the photographs. You always find those who inspire, over the corresponding figures, only in the case of the fifth post-Atlantean period of civilisation, Death itself, appears from below and approaching man above is the real Being which inspires.

[ 16 ] Here you see above a kind of God, an Apollo-like form, as the inspirer. That which, through inspiration, is able to enter a human form of the fourth post-Atlantean period of civilisation comes into this figure. Thus you see the actual human history of the inner soul-development is painted in the small dome. Of course you must give up asking inartistic questions. When an artist paints a form on the wall, there is nothing in his soul that,can meet such a question as: What does this or that mean? The inartistic man will stand before this figure and say: What do there two or three heads mean on the left of the principal figure? That it not the question of an artist; it is the question which he who paints it will least of all be willing to answer, because for him visions have to form pictorially, they simply appear in space as forms in a vision. He perceives nothing whatever with which to meet the question: What does that mean?—but he feels a necessity from the creative cosmic forces to place a form, which is inspired just like this one, in the neighbourhood of that which has already been-represented in human form.

[ 17 ] I spoke of the creative forces themselves inherent in the colour-world. At the present time, if one sees any painting, one always has the image in one's mind. This is just what must be overcome. There are many more elementary impressions which must possess the artistic soul. (I will explain more clearly in detail what I have to say). Suppose I simply make a smudge of colour, a yellow smudge, and add to it a blue smudge (see illustration). He who perceives colour as something actually living cannot experience other than, when he so perceives a colour in this way, a yellow smudge with a blue border, to see a head in profile.

[ 18 ] This follows of itself for him who carries the life of colour within him. Just two smudges of colour are, to him who possesses the creative idea of colour, that which at the came time leads to the experience of its essence. But anyone cannot, let us say, paint a face according to colour in such a way that he can say: I have seen a face, or indeed, have a model, and after this model I have formed a face, and it resembles it. Not in this way will painting be done in the future, but colour will be experienced, and the artist will turn away from everything naturalistic, from all copying, and from the colour itself that will be drawn out which already lies in it and which must necessarily be drawn out, if one has a living feeling with the life of colour itself.

[ 19 ] Here you find a combination of what you have seen singly before: here above, the Flying Child, this Figure of the 16th century, below Death, the remainder less distinct. You see here above, the one inspiring, you can recognise him the higher inspirer of the figure you have just seen on this sheet but which is here very indistinct. It is, of course, difficult to reproduce in this rough way of colourless pictures things which have really only been lightly breathed into the colours on the walls. Such can only be understood, I might say, as a description of what is actually intended.

[ 20 ] Here you see the inspiring figures of the third post-Atlantean (the Egyptians) period of civilisation, those which inspire from the spiritual world that figure which will now appear in the next picture.

We have here, inspired by the previous figures, the Initiates of the third post-Atlantean period of civilisation.

[ 21 ] Thus in the small dome the actual psychic evolution of humanity is painted, certainly not according to historical time, that you will see at once, but in an inner way. For now we are not going back simply to the earlier second post-Atlantean period of civilisation, but we are going back indeed to the Persian principle of Initiation, which also had developed out of the primeval Persian principle of Initiation, and is the Germanic principle of Initiation.

So when we pass on to the next picture we have the Germanic principle of Initiation. This Germanic-Persian principle of Initiation is founded on a dualism, and everything depends on the understanding of the fact that the initiation of of the period of civilisation which took its rise in the primeval Persian period, continued its development in the Goethean period of civilisation. It spread geographically from Asia Minor, across the Black Sea northwards into Europe, and this Initiation-stream reaches its fulfilment in recognising the principle of man's effort to seek the balance between Lucifer, whom you see on the right, and Ahriman on the left. The essential point is that we understand that this current of civilisation crust derive all force in the finding of the condition of equilibrium between the Luciferic and the Ahrimanic. And an attempt has been made, in this very figure, which is inspired by the Ahrimanic-Luciferic principle itself, by that which you see here on the right as Luciferic, and here on the left as Ahrimanic, to show in the attitude, in the whole physiognomy, that spirituality that must result from the realisation of this dualism, the Luciferic and the Ahrimanic, between which man has to find the balance.

[ 22 ] The fact that you see here the child as it were held up by the Initiate, for this there is no good foundation. For what flows into man through the inspiration of the dual principle, could not be endured, it would kill him inwardly, if he had not always the vision of youth, of the child. When you see this in the dome, you will observe that an earnest attempt has been made to draw out of the colours just what is meant here. An attempt has been made to draw out of the colours even the contrast between what is Luciferic and what is Ahrimanic. Only you must not analyse minutely, but seek what is essential in the artistic perception.

[ 23 ] Picture 8: Here you see Ahriman presented. There are not two Ahrimans, but Ahriman and his shadow. That is to say, Ahriman does not go about without his constant shadow accompanying him. Ahriman himself would be a much too freezing, too drying-up a principle of he appeared for instance in his full nature. It is most necessary to have near him his shadow which qualifies his freezing influence. If you study the colours in the small dome, you will see that in this particular shade of colour, the brownish-green, an attempt has been made to expr ess the freezing effect of Ahriman; an attempt has been made to bring everything out of the colour.

[ 24 ] Here you see the Lucifer-theme. You will only understand the Luciferic and Ahrimanic principles fully if you see them in connection. If you simply look at Ahriman alone and Lucifer alone you will really understand neither; only when you have them side by side, because really Ahriman and Lucifer create and work in such a way in the universe that always whatever the one accomplishes is taken and made use of by the other, and vice versa. Thus their figures can only be rightly understood if one sees them in their living relationship to each other.

The inspiration that come from these will be shown in the next picture.

[ 25 ] I had hoped to express in this countenance with its adequate colour what is possible to express in a figure standing under the influence of this dual principle. It is the need,of inner stability, and at the same time self-possession in temperament, in character and the joyous inclination towards that which is young and childlike, in order to bear all that which one experiences under the actual inspiring influence of the dual principle.

Here we have the same again in another aspect.

[ 26 ] Here you see that into which our Period of civilisation will resolve itself. This picture is to be found nearer to the central Group, that of the representative of Humanity with Ahriman and Lucifer We have attempted to represent what had to be shown here as an Initiate, i.e. such a man who could embody the spiritual revelation of the coming 6th post-Atlantean period of civilisation, even now in advance, and we have attempted to represent such an Initiate through the medium of form and colour. For this reason we had to picture not a Russian of to-day: but that which is to be seen to a certain extent in every Russian to-day. every such Russian has his own shadow continually as his companion. He has always his second self who accompanies him, and that is what is here expressed.

[ 27 ] But you must realise that that which is here inspiring him is more spiritual compared with the earlier source of inspiration. Hence this angel-like form which here appears in its whole outline growing out of the blue. You will see more clearly in the next picture the kind of centaur-figure which is essentially necessary to the inspiring Being. You see, this inspiration leads at the same time out into the starry world. We recognise again man in his connection with that in the Cosmos which is external to the earth. But the Being which inspires is no longer to be conceived of in human likeness. In our attempt to show form we come to figures which are no longer human-like which have certain qualities of form which recall the qualities and temperament of man but are no longer human as such.

[ 28 ] Here is this inspiring figure which is a figure of the Cosmos and at the same time in connection with that which still tends towards the human, but is an angel-like Being born wholly out of the colour of the clouds. This is what we see as the colour Inspirer.

The same Being; only there is more to see; the Initiates are here to be seen. Of course the whole effect lies in the colour composition, which, naturally, is here wholly lacking.

[ 29 ] Here we see the upper portion of the Central Group. The middle figure shows the Representative of Humanity, above it, Lucifer.

The middle figure is represented in the painting—under it the Group which is the Chief Group stands—is here represented in painting where the space is small, so as to represent the Luciferic and Ahrimanic principles in one figure only; while, in the plastic Group, on account of the weight, on account of the proportions of the space they are given in double form.

This figure is only to be understood through the colours, through the Red colour out of which it is chiefly composed together with some other shades of colour. And here we are shown how man is seeking the state of equilibrium between that which is Luciferic and that which is Ahrimanic. This search for the state of balance is to certain extent to be found in man as much physically and physiologically as also in his soul and spirit.

[ 30 ] From a physiological, from a physical point of view, man is not that simple growing being that he is often represented to be in superficial science. an inclines continually on the one hand towards ossification, and on the other hand towards .a softening gelatinous condition.

The tendency in a man towards softening, which arises when the blood gains the upper hand, comes from Luciferic influences. Where the Luciferic influence tends to gain the upper hand physiologically in the human being, where feverish phenomena appears physiologically in man as actual formative principles, the Luciferic influence is predominant. As a result, the human form approximates more and more to this form. Man had this form during the ancient-moon period. In other words: if that principle which is specially the principle of growth in heart and lungs were alone to rule the human being, man would preserve such a form. Only through the fact that the Ahrimanic principle is found at the opposite pole to the Luciferic, the physiological state of equilibrium is maintained between that which the blood brings about and that which is produced by the ossifying tendency. This is the case viewed physiologically, from the point of view of the physical body.

[ 31 ] From the point of view of the soul one may say: man is continually on the search for the state of balance between excessive enthusiasm, which is Luciferic, and that which is prosaic, materialistic, abstract, which is Ahrimanic. From the point of view of the spirit: man is continually seeking the balance between theca conditions of consciousness which are specially permeated with Light where the consciousness is awakened through the irradiation, through the illumination of the soul; through the Luciferic. And the opposite pole is that through which weight, gravity, electricity, magnetism, in short, all that which holds one down, bring about the consciousness of self, the attainment of consciousness: all this is Ahrimanic. Man is always seeking the balance between these two conditions, and we may observe how that all that man can make man more conscious, that can bring him away, from the middle.path always inclines either to the one side or the other, the Luciferic or Ahrimanic. It would be of immense importance even for the study of human physical organism, if we discarded the merely theoretical principle of growth, that of the One principle, and took into consideration that polarically-opposed impulses of growth are present in man as if interwoven, intermingled with each other. The other impulse of growth is Ahrimanic.

[ 32 ] Picture 17: Here is the exact opposite. In every shape, in every line you will see the exact opposite of Lucifer, in this Ahriman, who as it were grows out of the masses of rock, i.e. out of the solid conditions of the earth. His aim is to approach man and so lay hold of him with his force of gravity, (his solidity) that at the same time he slays him with ossification or presses him to death in barren materialism. This is what is expressed in this figure of Ahriman. He appears as if slain by light, hence the rays of which bind him wit) cords so that he is fettered by them. In between we have man - man himself.

[ 33 ] The real man, who represents the condition of equilibrium, under him Ahriman, above him Lucifer.

I expressly draw your attention to this, that here again it is not essential to aim at the visionary conception of the Christ. The essential is that we feel what is here presented in this figure. Then we shall arrive ourselves, through the art representation, to the Christ. That is, we shall discover the central being of all earth's existence, the Christ, when we experience that which is to be felt in this form. The Christ may to-day discovered purely spiritually. But we must rightly understand man and rightly perceive him.

[ 34 ] On the other hand it may be said: he who to-day understands and smypathises with that which man can suffer, with that which he can enjoy, he who fully realises how man can go astray or raise himself towards one side or the other, he who is striving after a real self-knowledge, if he only goes far enough along the road of feeling, perception and will, he will discover the Christ. And he will then be able to find again in the Gospels, in all historical documents, the Christ he has discovered. We cannot to-day really attain to true knowledge of man without attaining to the knowledge of the Christ.

[ 35 ] Even along physiological, biological lines if we rightly conceive of man in his physical form we shall come to the understanding of the Christ. It is just the task of the fifth post-Atlantean time to attain more and more to this understanding of the Christ. Hence there could not be a visionary Christ-figure, concerning which one merely enquired its significance, in the central point of our Building, but the Representative of Humanity, in which the Christ to a certain extent appears in his essence. This is what I would beg you always to consider concerning these things; not to start out from the prosaic intellectual, but from the symbolic, not from the visionary to set out from that which is really there on the wall, not from that which may be imagined about it. That which should fill our thought should come forth from that which is on the wall itself.

[ 36 ] Of course that which is on the wall is only imperfectly executed, but every beginning must be imperfect; even the gothic architecture, when it first appeared was imperfect. The perfect will undoubtedly follow out of that which has here been attempted. This is not to say that earnest effort has not been made to find the true Representative of, Humanity by every means of the art of occult investigation. You see, that figure of Christ which is the traditional one arose only in the 6th century after Christ. For myself, I only give this out as a fact, but do not require from anyone that he accept it as a dogma of belief, for myself I am quite clear on the point, it is for me a fact, that the Christ Jesus who walked in Palestine had this countenance, which you may see on the carved figure. And the attempt has only been made to represent in the expressive gesture that which one sees more when the etheric body is observed than when one observes the physical body. Hence also, the strongly-marked asymmetry which we have dared to portray. This asymmetry is present in every human countenance, naturally not in this strength, but the human countenance is thus indeed, especially as at present man wears in many respects an untrue mask. When humanity will have reached a certain spiritualisation in the 6th and specially the 7th post-Atlantean period where physical man will no longer live on the earth, then man will wear his true countenance, i.e. will express in his countenance what he is really worth within.

[ 37 ] But all this—I should like to point out—is very difficult for the paint-brush or chisel to represent in the painting and sculpture and that which we have attempted to express as the Representative of Humanity. As imperfect as these things may be, he who studies them will find that the secrets, the mysteries of human evolution are actually sainted in this little cupola. He will certainly find that which is meant to be expressed., may be experienced from out of the colour, and that these pictures can only indicate to you what you are capable of feeling, when, on receiving the information which I have given you to-day, you expect nothing symbolic, nothing about which man can enquire the meaning, but when you—rather, with the information I have given you to-day, seek to feel that which is painted into this little cupola.

[ 38 ] Picture 19: Now I want to show the other view of the heating-house. Yesterday I showed the front view, and you see that this heating-house is thought out as a whole, so that its side-view to a certain extent stands full in harmony with the whole, as I yesterday, through the comparison with the nutshell, explained to you.

[ 39 ] I have tried to give you to-day what we have up to the present in pictures. I should like to say that the actual attempt has been made with this Building to make the conception of the Building as far as possible a unity. For example, you see the Building covered over with Norwegian slate. Once when I was travelling on a lecture tour from Christiania to Bergen, I saw on the mountain slopes the wonderful slate-quarries of the neighbourhood of Voss, and the thought came to me that our Building must be covered with this slate. You will find, if you strike a favourable day, and desire to see the thing, that the particular blue-grey glistening of the dome—the covering of this slate—in the sun, makes an impression which is suited to the Building in its dignity.

[ 40 ] This is what I am able to say concerning the Building, in reference to these pictures. I wanted.to make this Building comprehensible to our friends who are willing to undertake the,risk of making it known to and understood by those to whom the Goetheanum in Dornach is perhaps nothing but a name they have heard, and to whom the place is only a geographical idea. I wanted to give this exhibition for those friends who are willing to bring before the understanding of those who are thus placed what will proceed from the Goetheanum for , the future of the evolution of humanity. It is of great importance that this visible token of Spiritual Science from the point of view of Anthroposophy should be accurately brought to the knowledge of the world, and that it is made to a certain extent the centre-point of our considerations and of our feeling within our anthroposophical world-conception.

[ 41 ] He who truly feels at what a turning-point the evolution of humanity has arrived in the present day, he will really indeed find within himself the necessary stimulus to make known what is here being carried out in Dornach. There are not many to-day who see how strongly the forces of human historical forms, coming from the past, act as destructive forces. We have indeed submitted to the destructive forces in Europe during the last 4 or 5 years; only the very few have wished actually to think over and appreciate what really happened. Those who do appreciate it will surely feel that nothing is to be gained for the further development of humanity from that which has been brought over from old times, that literally the new revelation which presses in upon us since the last third of the 19th century must be received by this world of ours.

[ 42 ] No one can think socially to-day without taking up the impulses which come to us from this knowledge which has been described. We must painfully, really painfully, realise, when we hear that there are to-day men who say: Oh Spiritual Science according to Anthroposophy was very pleasant, as long as it was Spiritual Science ,as long as it did not bother itself with outride things, as for example, “The Threefold State” does. There have arisen individual men among the earlier followers of Anthroposophical Spiritual Science who say: Spiritual Science was very acceptable to us by itself; with the social aspect we cannot and will not identify ourselves. Such an attitude of mind is sectarian, and that is what our movement truly never wished to be; this sectarianism only strives after a certain spiritual voluptuousness. I should like to know how anyone can be so without heart, so terribly heartless in the presence of such impulses as are appearing in the evolution of humanity as to say: I want something that comforts my soul, that assures me of immortality, but I won't touch it if this spiritual striving is to have a practical social result. Is it not heartless in such a time as this, not to wish for a practical result from that for which we are striving spiritually?

[ 43 ] Is it not the most confused mysticism to as it were fold the hands and say to oneself: For my soul I will have Spiritual Science but this Spiritual Science must have no social result. It is heartlessness. For how terrible it is to think that to anyone this Spiritual Science should be the most important thing in life, and that it should have no counsel to give in the present-day burdened social condition of humanity. That is the good of this Spiritual Science if it contains no help towards which humanity to-day may turn! Shall it be quite unfruitful, this Spiritual Science, for life? Does it only exist to pour into men a spiritual bliss? No, only thus can it preserve itself, by creating out of itself actual practical results. And it means that true Spiritual Science is not understood if men will not advance to practical results. And Spiritual Science must not be mere visionary knowledge, Spiritual Science must be actual life. Therefore it is always such a great pain that not very many more human souls are able to rouse themselves out of the impulses of Spiritual Science to the great interests of humanity to-day. To-day that which affects the individual is of such infinitesimal importance as compared with that which is fermenting and working in humanity, and the moment one occupies oneself with anything personal, the thought is immediately directed the great interests of humanity. But how many people think like this? For I must remember, how necessary it really is to communicate certain esoteric truths to humanity, and yet how impossible this is because there is really no set of people in whom really the impersonal objective principles have the value that they should have. It is a pressing necessity to communicate certain truths of Initiation to humanity. Only it cannot be done, when one has to do with men who the whole day long are only occupied with their own personal interests, as if they were of the highest importance. To turn our eyes to the human interests, that is what is of such immense importance. He who does this will see very very much to-day.

[ 44 ] I have to draw your attention again and again to the beginning of this battle-storm which will arise with all sorts of slander and lies against Anthroposophical Spiritual Science. Men do not want to believe this, but it is true; Spiritual Science will not be fought primarily on account of its faults; these would be forgiven it; Spiritual Science will be attacked just when it succeeds in accomplishing something good. And the hottest and most infamous attack will be directed against that which Spiritual Science can do of good.

[ 45 ] Each one must examine himself, whilst continually observing with true inner force that which can only be criticised as relentless opposition to Spiritual Science, whether he does not perhaps carry in himself too much of that attitude which does not attack the failings but rather the good sides of Spiritual Science. Much of this sort might be pondered over to-day: And this sort of thing must continually be pointed out. And the time must certainly come firstly, in which it will be possible not to have to approach closed doors with the communication of certain esoteric truths, because men are only occupied with their own personal interests, and secondly in which it will also be possible to bring the most important things when they are spoken, actually home to the hearts of men. As a rule one may proclaim things of the greatest significance—men take them only as a kind of theoretical knowledge, and hence they do not penetrate into, their hearts and affect them deeply; whilst everyday things, humdrum things even perhaps relatively big things, penetrate easily into the hearts of men.

[ 46 ] This is what we must before all else strive for; that that which is drawn from the Spirit shall truly penetrate right into the heart, into the soul, that it does not remain merely in our understanding. Much of the most important of that which has been spoken to-day, which may already be found in the teachings of Spiritual Science or Anthroposophy, bears no fruit on this account, that men let it get no further than their understanding, and then they say perhaps: This is something which should only be grasped by the understanding: But that is their own desire—to leave it only to the understanding, because they only take it as a wisdom for the head, and do not let it reach their hearts. This observation I wish to link on to the Introduction I have given you of the Building.

Over a period of three hours I shall have the opportunity of speaking to you about the building idea of Dornach. In this first lecture, it is my task to characterize how this building idea emerged from the anthroposophically oriented spiritual movement, and then, over eight days and in a fortnight, to go into more detail about the style and the whole formal language of this our building, the framework and the external representative of our spiritual scientific movement. By speaking about the genesis of the Dornach building, I would like to perhaps touch on something personal by way of introduction.

I spent the 1880s in Vienna. It was the Vienna in which the ideas were developed that could then be seen in the Votivkirche, in the Vienna City Hall, in the Hansen Building of the Austrian Parliament, in the museums, in the Burgtheater building, that is to say in those monumental buildings that were created in Vienna in the second half of the last century and which, to a certain extent, represent the most mature products of the architecture of the past era of human development. I would like to say that I heard the words of one of the architects involved in these buildings resound from the views from which these monumental buildings were created. When I was studying at the Vienna Technical University, Heinrich Ferstel, the architect of the Votivkirche, had just taken up his post as rector. In his inaugural address, he said something that I would like to say still echoes in my mind today, and it has echoed throughout my subsequent life. Ferstel said something at the time that summarized the most diverse views that had emerged in art at the time, especially in the art of architecture. He said: architectural styles are not invented, architectural styles are born out of the overall views, out of the overall development of the time and the emotional soulfulness of entire peoples and eras.

On the one hand, such a sentence is extremely correct, and on the other hand, it is extremely inflammatory for the human mind. And anyone who has ever immersed themselves with artistic sensibility in the whole world of vision from which this remarkable Gothic structure of the Votive Church in Vienna, translated into miniature, was created by Ferstel himself, anyone who has felt the Vienna City Hall by Schmidt, anyone who has felt the Austrian Parliament in particular, which, through Hansen's genius, has achieved a certain freedom of style, at the time when this same view had not yet been spoiled by the hideous female figure that was later placed on the ramp. Those who had experienced the artistic heyday of Gottfried Semper's mature architecture at the Vienna Burgtheater could truly feel the background from which such an artistic view emerged as that of Heinrich Ferstel, which has just been characterized. In all that was built, one sees ripe fruits, but basically one sees only the renewal of the styles of past epochs of humanity.

And I was able to feel this, I would like to say, inwardly inciting fact, for example, when I heard the lectures of the excellent esthete Joseph Bayer, who, out of the same spirit that Ferstel, Hansen, cathedral architect Schmidt, but especially Gottfried Semper, created with, tried to illustrate the forms of architectural art, the forms of ceramics, and so on.

Such a fact, such a world of ideas, is inspiring for the human mind, I say this because perhaps, when faced with such an idea, “architectural styles are not invented, but born out of an overall spiritual life” in the human mind - when one sees: this view has achieved something magnificent and powerful, but from a mere renewal, from a renaissance of old architectural styles, old artistic perceptions, so to speak - because then the question arises before the soul: Are we perhaps such a barren time after all that we cannot give birth to something new in this sense from our overall view, from the scope of our world view?

At the same time as all that could so richly fill the souls from these buildings when they immersed themselves in these views, from which the buildings arose, something else, though characteristic of the time, was concentrated in Vienna. In its soul body, Vienna had at that time also absorbed a certain height of precisely the newer medical progress. Skoda, Oppolzer and others represented a flowering of the development of medical science in the second half of the 19th century. At that time, especially if you lived among those who had to deal with such things, you could often hear a saying – and this saying also stayed with me: We live in a time in which medical nihilism has developed.

This medical nihilism, which had emerged precisely in the heyday of pathology, actually culminated in the fact that the great physicians mainly studied those forms of disease that could be observed in their course merely through pathology, in which nature's healing process only needed to be helped along by all sorts of measures, but in which little could be done for the patient by taking remedies. Thus, precisely out of this medical school arose a disbelief in therapy, a skepticism about therapy. And when pathology had developed to its highest peak that it could reach at that time, people actually despaired of the possibility of real healing and, especially in initiated circles, spoke of medical nihilism. That is what one could feel. Our world view, where it was to prove fruitful in a certain area of practical life, led to nihilism and a certain powerlessness in the face of that practical life.

Anyone with the ability to feel and perceive these things will, in the subsequent period of European civilization, be able to fully sense how, basically, those impulses, which on the one hand found expression in the fact that an architect as important as Heinrich Ferstel had to say, “Architectural styles are not invented, but are born out of the overall development of the time,” and yet still built in the sense of an old architectural style, on the other hand, expressed itself in the fact that in a practical area of life, people's views have led to nihilism.

What developed from this in the period that followed was basically a continuation of what had been expressed in this way. Through the most diverse circumstances, seemingly, but probably through a necessary connection, I was confronted with the necessity of setting up impulses of a new spiritual life everywhere in the face of the appearance of what lay in the lines of development I have indicated. This new spiritual life would in turn draw from such original sources of human thought , human feeling and human will, as they repeatedly existed in the epochs of human development and as they proved fruitful in order to give rise to the artistic, the religious and the cognitive.

If we want to feel in an even deeper way what the human mind was actually like at a time when, in art, only a kind of renaissance was living in the highest expressions of the artistic, and when, even in practical areas, views have led to a kind of nihilism When we delve into what was actually taking place in the soul and spirit during this time, we have to say that the spiritual matters that directly concern the human being, the scientific, and even to a high degree the religious life, had taken on an abstract, intellectual character. Man had come to cultivate less that which can arise from his entire human essence, his powers and impulses. In this most recent period, he had come to establish a mere head culture, a mere intellectualistic culture, to live in abstractions.

This is something that occurs as a parallel phenomenon in the materialistic age: on the one hand, people believe that they can completely immerse themselves in the workings of material processes; but on the other hand, precisely because of this striving for immersion in a tendency towards abstraction, a tendency towards mere intellectualism, a tendency through which the urge to shape something that can directly reach into the full reality of existence fades from the most intimate affairs of the human soul. One withdraws into an abstract corner of one's soul life, leaving one's religious feelings to take place there. They withdraw into the closed rooms of the laboratory and the observatory, and devote themselves to specialized investigations in these fields, but in so doing they distance themselves from a truly living understanding of the totality of the world. One withdraws as a human being from real cooperation with practical life, and as a result one arrives at a closed intellectuality. And finally, everything that we see emerging in the fields of philosophy or world view in this period bears a distinctly abstract, a distinctly intellectual character.

I believed that anthroposophically oriented spiritual science had to be placed in this current. It was not surprising that this spiritual science, when it was first placed in an intellectualist age, when it had to speak to people who, in the broadest sense, were fundamentally oriented towards intellectualist abstraction, initially had to appear as a worldview as if it itself had arisen only from abstraction, from mere thinking. And so it was that in our work for our anthroposophically oriented spiritual science, that phase arose which filled the first decade of the twentieth century and of which I would like to say: it was inevitable that our anthroposophically oriented world view should take on a certain intellectual character through the very nature of the people who were inclined towards it. It had to speak to people who, above all, believed that if you wanted to ascend to the spiritual and divine, you had to do so completely detached from the lower reality, you even had to arm yourself with a certain world-contempt, with a certain unreality of life. This was already an attitude that was alive in those who, out of their inclinations, had found their way into the current of anthroposophically oriented spiritual science.

And on the other hand, the world's judgment of this anthroposophically oriented spiritual science arose: Oh, they are dreamers, they are visionaries, they are people who are not relevant to practical life. This judgment arose - such things are very difficult to destroy - and still lives on today in most people who want to judge anthroposophically oriented spiritual science. Of course, people saw that something different was alive in what appeared at that time as this anthroposophically oriented spiritual science than in their theories, in their world-view ideas. And since they regarded what they had sucked out of their bloodless abstractions from their materialistic orientation as the only spiritual reality to be attained by man himself, what the anthroposophically oriented spiritual science spoke to the world from completely different foundations seemed to them to be something fanciful, something fantastic.

But a quite different phenomenon was involved. What was spoken at that time out of truly shaped spiritual science oriented to anthroposophy is not the speech of fantasy or enthusiasm. It is the speech of spiritual research that can give an account of the nature of its research to the most exacting mathematician, as I said at another time. But it is true: what has been spoken here out of spiritual realities sounded different from the bloodless world views of modern times. It sounded different, not because it was more abstract, or because it ascended to regions of the spirit more bloodless and frozen than those which have given rise to the theories developed out of the modern way of thinking, but it sounded different because it proceeded from spiritual realities, because it proceeded from those regions of man where one not only thinks, where one feels and wills, but does not feel and will in a dark way, not in the way that modern psychology considers to be the only one because it only knows this; not out of dark feeling, but out of feeling that is just as bright, as bright as the purest thinking itself. And the words were spoken out of a will that is suffused with a light that is striven for as the bright clarity of pure thoughts is striven for, and these thoughts are grasped when we seek to comprehend reality. Thus, in this anthroposophically oriented spiritual science, there lived that which wanted to come from the whole person, which therefore also wanted to take hold of the whole person, to take hold of the thinking, feeling and willing human being.

When one was able to speak in this way from the innermost being of the whole person, one often felt the inadequacy of even modern modes of expression. Anyone who has felt this way knows how to speak about it. One felt that modern times had also brought something into external language that leads words into abstract regions, and that speaking in the way language has now become itself invites abstraction. And one experiences, I would say, the inwardly tragic phenomenon of carrying within oneself something that one would like to express in broad content and sharp contours and developed with inner life, but that one is then rejected back to what modern language, which is coming out of an age of abstraction and is theoretical, alone knows how to say. And then one feels the urge for other means of expression. One feels the urge to express oneself more fully about what one actually carries within oneself than can be done through the theoretical debates in which modern humanity has been trained for three to four centuries, the theoretical debates that have shaped our concepts, our words, in which even our lyricists, our playwrights, our epic poets live more than they realize. One feels the necessity for a fuller, more vivid presentation.

Out of such feelings, the need arose for me to say what was said in the first phase of our anthroposophical movement, which was clothed in more intellectual forms, through my mystery festival plays. I tried to present, in a theatrical way, in scenes and images that were to embrace the whole of human life, the physical, soul and spiritual life, what can be seen in the course of the world, what is contained in the course of the world as a partial solution to our great world riddles, but which can never be expressed in the abstract formulas into which the laws of nature can be expressed. This is how that which I then tried to depict in my mystery dramas came about. I had to resort to images to depict what comes from the whole human being. For only from the human being in his head comes what modern language has created for our science and our popular literature, and what today's people, if you listen to them, are able to understand. You have to touch the deeper sides of their minds if you want to speak to them what anthroposophical spiritual science actually has to say.

This is how the need for these mystery dramas arose. These mystery dramas were first performed in Munich, in the surroundings, in the setting of ordinary theaters. Just as it literally blew apart the inside of the soul when one had to express the anthroposophically oriented spiritual science in the formulas of modern philosophy or world view, so it blew apart one's aesthetic sensation when one had to present in an ordinary theater, in an ordinary stage space, what was now to be depicted in a pictorial way: the spiritual content of the anthroposophical worldview and world feeling, of the anthroposophical world will. And when we worked in Munich on the theatrical presentation of these mystery plays in ordinary theaters, the idea arose to create a space of our own, to perform a building of our own, in which there would no longer be the sense of confinement that one in the manner just described for anthroposophically oriented spiritual science, but in which there is a framework that is itself the expression of what lives in anthroposophically oriented spiritual science.

Therefore, this building was not created in the sense of an old architectural style, where one would have gone to any architect and had a house created for what anthroposophically oriented spiritual science is to work out, but rather it had to arise from the innermost being of anthroposophically oriented spiritual science, because it did not merely work out of thinking and feeling, but out of the will itself, a structure had to arise out of this living existence of anthroposophically oriented spiritual science as a framework, which, as a style, as a formal language, gives the same as the spiritual-soul gives the spoken word of anthroposophically oriented spiritual science. A unity had to be created between the building as an art form and the living element present in this spiritual science.

But if there is such a living element, if there is a living element that is not merely theoretical and abstract, if there is a truly living spiritual element, then it creates its own framework, because with such a spiritual element one lives within the creative forces of nature, within the creative forces of the soul, within the creative forces of the spiritual. And just as the shell of the nut is formed out of the same creative forces as the inside, which we then consume as a nut, just as the nutshell cannot be other than it is because it follows the laws the nut kernel comes into being, so this structure here in all its individual forms is such that it cannot be otherwise, because it is nothing other than a shell that has come into being, been formed, created according to the same laws as spiritual science itself.

If I may express myself hyperbolically, it seems to me that at the end of my life I would not have been haunted by Heinrich Ferstel's thought that “architectural styles cannot be invented” if the truth contained in it had not been clearly reckoned with. Yes, architectural styles cannot be invented, they must arise out of an overall spiritual life. But if such a spiritual life as a whole exists, then it may dare, even if in a modest way, even with weak forces, to also gain an art style from the same spirituality from which this spirituality itself is created.

I believe that I know better than anyone else what the faults of this building are, and I can assure you that I do not think immodestly about what has been created. I know everything I would do differently if I were to build such a structure again. I know how much this building is a beginning, how much of what is intended by it in the sense of its style may have to be realized quite differently. In any case, I do not want to think immodestly about this building. But with regard to what is intended by it, it may be pointed out how it wants to prove that architectural styles cannot be invented, but that they can be born if, instead of the nihilism of world view, a spiritual positivism is set, if, instead of the decadent decline of old world views, new sources of world view are sought. This building has therefore been created with a certain inner necessity. Just as feeling led us to present our world view in the mystery plays, as if feeling were to be taken into account in addition to thinking, so should the will, which is inherent in anthroposophically oriented spiritual science, first express itself artistically in this building.

The fact that there is life in this spiritual science should, however, be shown in an equally modest way, just as a beginning – I always have to emphasize this – by the fact that we do not want to use this building to shut ourselves away and, as it were, strive for a higher world view as if it were a satisfaction of our inner soulful desires. No, in the next lectures on this building I will show you how all the building forms here live in such a way that they basically do not represent walls, but something artistically transparent. This is how the wall, which is designed here, differs from the walls that one is accustomed to in other architectural walls. The latter are final; one knows oneself inside a space that is limited in a certain way. Here, however, everything is shaped in such a way that, by looking at the frame, one can get the feeling, if one feels the thing in the right way, of how everything cancels itself out. Just as glass physically negates itself and becomes transparent, so the artistic forms of the walls are meant to negate themselves in order to become transparent; so painting and sculpture are meant to negate themselves in order to become transparent, so as not to lock up the soul in a room, but to lead the soul out into the world. And out of this tendency there also arose the impulse, still modest, which I call the social impulse and which in my book The Core of the Social Question should be presented to the world, not as a theory but as a call to action.

Spiritual science could not remain with intellectuality. In its first phase it had to take human habits into account, had to speak to those people who were still educated entirely in abstract intellectualism. But it had to progress from thinking to feeling in order to present to the world what was to be expressed not only through the abstract word, but also through the dramatic play, the dramatic action, the dramatic image. But this spiritual science could not stop at mere feeling. It had to progress to the realm of will. It had to overcome and shape matter, it had to give form and life to matter. Therefore, a new framework, a new formal language, indeed a new architectural style, had to be sought for the mystery plays and for everything that wants to express itself through them, including the living anthroposophically oriented spiritual science itself. In order to affirm what lives as the deepest impulse in this anthroposophically oriented spiritual science, the social impulse also arose quite naturally in the time when adversity taught people to replace the tendency of decline with the tendency of ascent. We wanted to gain through this building, even through its style, that state of mind through which the human being goes out to experience all of social existence, goes out to be able to participate in the necessary social reconstruction of our time with living soul content.

Thus, I believe, this structure can be seen as standing within what reveals itself as the deepest needs of our time, which in turn want to lead people out of mere abstractness and the materialism associated with it, out of mere thinking and into living feeling, and into active will. And we believe that in this way we also have what must be the substance, as it were, for what is so urgently demanded of us today, for what we know: If we humans are unable to accomplish it, the slide into barbarism will continue. A worldview that encompasses the whole person, the thinking, feeling and willing human being, must also be able to provide the state of mind that enables people to work together on what is a vital necessity of the present and the near future: social action.

In today's lecture, my task will be to contribute something to the understanding of what lies in the artistic impulses that carry the building idea of Dornach, in order to then develop this building idea in more detail in the next of these lectures. It will be necessary for me to say something about these artistic impulses, so to speak, because strong misunderstandings have spread about them.

The point is, and this is clear from what I said here eight days ago about the development of the Dornach building from our entire anthroposophical movement, that the Dornach building should in no way create something that could be called the carrying of abstract spirituality into what is actually artistic. The Dornach building should be created entirely by artistic forces. And this building should mark the beginning of a development towards this goal, so that what works in spiritual science as a spiritual being can also flow out, stream out into artistic forms, into artistic designs and so on. This is something that had to be fought for against certain tendencies that very easily run in the opposite direction, especially in such a movement as anthroposophy.

It is very easy for all kinds of mystifying elements to enter into such a movement. These elements push towards the abstract through a false mystification, and which actually – because the artistic element must express itself in the shaping and forming of the external – bypass this artistic element and strive towards the symbolic, towards the allegorical. They want to keep the spirit in its abstract form, so to speak, and see in the outwardly shaped and formed only a symbolic illustration of the spiritual.

This leads to a killing, a paralysis of everything truly artistic. In this direction, due to the penetration of false mysticism from the theosophical into the anthroposophical movement, one has had to experience all sorts of things. For example, a play like “Hamlet”, which is an artistic creation, was interpreted allegorically and mystically, so that one figure was understood as the spiritual self, the other as the astral body, and so on. There is endless allegorizing among those who would like to profess such a spiritual movement, and I once had to experience the following, for example: When I tried to discuss the well-known painting 'Melancholy' by Dürer in such a way that I traced everything that lives in this painting back to the chiaroscuro and showed how Dürer wanted to penetrate the secrets of the chiaroscuro, of the chiaroscuro, to contrast the light with the dark, the darkness with the light, in the most varied of ways, a voice was heard from the audience saying, “Yes, but can't we understand this picture on an even deeper level?” The deep interpretation was obviously sought in the fact that one wanted to extract from the artistically captured chiaroscuro an abstract-allegorical interpretation of what is depicted in the picture, which Dürer has already forbidden by placing the polyhedron in the picture to suggest how important it was to him to express the chiaroscuro variety that becomes visible when you compare differently directed surfaces, differently positioned surfaces of a polyhedron or the different surface layers of a sphere with any spreading light. That it is infinitely deeper to look into this working and weaving of light and darkness and to spread one's own spirit over this weaving of light and darkness, that for the one who feels artistically, it can be infinitely deeper than the abstract-intellectual allegorical interpretation of such images, such an interrupter had no understanding.

And so what is present in this building had to be seen as an initial, weak attempt, in many respects fought for in the face of those aspirations that strive towards allegory and symbolism. These can be seen sufficiently when one enters some particularly solemnly decorated rooms where Anthroposophical spiritual science is practised and sees that attempts are being made to begin with colours and all kinds of paintings and drawings, but that these attempts ultimately leads to nothing other than offending every artistic feeling by painting a hideous rose cross, when what matters is only the allegory of showing some symbolism in seven roses painted in a certain way on a cross. I must mention this so that, if anthroposophically oriented spiritual science is also to show its artistic fertility to the world, it is known that what is attempted artistically must not be confused with all the abominations that easily arise from symbolizing and allegorizing, especially on such mystical ground as I have indicated.

It is absolutely essential that the true spiritual scientist should realize through direct insight what the essence of the ideal consists in, so that he can find the transition from the ideal to what must be expressed in prose words, even though these prose words are only an inadequate means of revelation for the rich revelation of the spiritual world itself, and that this necessary prose presentation, which must also take on certain forms if it is to do justice to the spiritual world, is sharply contrasted with the actual artistic presentation, including that of the supersensible vision, which has nothing of symbolizing or allegorizing in it.

That is why I had to point out in the lecture I gave to you on declamation and recitation that it is nonsense to fantasize and allegorize all sorts of things into my mystery dramas that are actually anthroposophical theory. The point of the dramas is to be understood artistically; and I myself, if I may make this personal comment, suffer the most unspeakable pain when someone presents me with abstract concepts that are supposed to “explain” these mystery dramas. These mystery dramas have been seen and experienced down to the last word, down to the tone of voice, as they stand, and the one who introduces allegorization does not understand them. He cannot really bring out the measure of super-sensibility that lies in them, for he only imprints the intellectual concepts into what should actually be experienced in the artistic sense. And so it is with everything else that is to arise artistically from those impulses from which spiritual science itself arises.

I would like to say it clearly, although it may sound a little pedantic: no art can of course arise from spiritual science itself, as it is communicated in words; only allegory and symbolization can arise from it. But from those spiritual impulses that stand behind spiritual science, that drive spiritual science itself out of themselves like a branch, from those, as another branch from the same origin, artistic creation also arises. Therefore, those who understand spiritual science in the abstract and then want to translate it into art will never be able to create anything other than straw-like allegories or lifeless symbols.

It has been said many times that symbols and allegories can be found in this building. If you look at the building properly, you won't be able to find a single symbol or allegory in it. Everything is meant to be – although some things have been left in initial attempts – in such a way that it has flowed into the form, the design, the color. And because misunderstandings can easily arise in this regard, I would like to discuss a few artistic matters with you today, so that, as I said, I can get to the actual building idea next time and characterize it in very specific terms.

I would like to assume that, when we once had to perform that scene from the second part of Goethe's “Faust” in the carpentry workshop, in which the Kabirs appear, I tried to create the three Kabirs plastically from the supersensible vision that arises when one tries to penetrate the mysteries of Samothrace. So I tried to visualize these Kabirs in order to be able to bring them on stage. Now these three Kabirs were there in three dimensions. Then a personage who was very close to our movement wanted to give some other people an idea of these Kabirs, who could not see them here, or who wanted to have a souvenir of the way in which the Kabirs were vividly reconstructed here, and the question arose as to whether these Kabir sculptures should be photographed.

For someone who has a feeling for sculpture, however, every photograph of a sculpture is a killing of the actual sculptural work of art. And so I decided to simply reproduce these Kabir statues in a drawing, in chiaroscuro, that is, using a different technique. So from the outset they were conceived two-dimensionally on the surface, and so it was possible to photograph them and disseminate them through photography. So you see: if you really stand on the soil of those life forces that pulsate in spiritual science, then above all you acquire a truly artistic feeling for the artistic means you use, and you acquire emotionally, not intellectually, what lives in existence.

Let me mention the following example, which leads us more into the intimacies of the artistic empathy of the world process, which we then try to shape. Let us assume that one wanted to create a kind of sculptural representation of humanity, as I attempted in my sculptural group, which includes a figure similar to Christ (Figs. 94-98). If you want to create a sculpture of this representative of humanity, you would be led to feel quite differently about what is present in the formation of the head than about what is present in the rest of the human being's form, which lives outside the head.

In sculpting, you feel what appears as a huge difference in the human being. In sculpting, where one is dealing with the shaping of surfaces, one feels that a formative impulse must be at work in the head, which, as it were, pushes inwards, draws away from the outside, but which shapes from within; and one feels that in the rest of the human being, one encounters that which is shaped in precisely the opposite sense. It is not so important to say that one thing happens from within and the other from without – that would lead to an abstract, intellectual description again – but rather it is important to have the opposite feelings when developing any form out of the depths of the world process develops some form that can only be shaped from the inside out, or when one takes out a form that can only be shaped from the outside in, in which one can see, as it were, how the external world forces concentrate and shape from the outside in.

If one continues in this feeling and sensing, then one comes to understand how, through having different feelings for the head than for the rest of the organism, one experiences something as a sculptor that is neither gravity nor vertically acting buoyancy nor even spreading force. Pure spreading force is what we feel in the light. Gravity alone is what we feel in our own weight and experience in particular in the aging of the human being, if one can take a look at this aging in true introspection. Of these two forces, gravity and buoyancy, one senses a kind of interaction in such a way that, I would say, the buoyancy forces, those forces that tear the plastic away from the earthly, can be felt more in the head, and the forces that work upwards from the earth's gravity and, as it were, drive the body upwards, these are felt more in the shaping, in the plastic formation of the rest of the body.

But, my dear attendees, when one has really felt this, and – especially when one has metamorphosed this feeling into artistic creation – when one really lives not in an abstract idea, but in this feeling and endeavors to bring into the material that which one feels there, then one feels a strong difference... [gap in the shorthand]. For example, in sculpture there is something to be sensed, such as the balance of two forces, of which the sculptor himself need know nothing. Even someone who knows about such forces as spreading force, gravity and buoyancy force, completely forgets it in sculpting; it is none of his business there, he lives purely in feeling the spreading of the forces of the surface, in feeling how the surface expands in space, or in shaping the surface itself. If you have not appropriated anything abstractly conceptual – that is, if you can completely shed the cloak of the ideal when you immerse yourself in artistic creation – then, in a sense, you become a different person emotionally when you immerse yourself in artistic creation; then you also acquire a feeling for the diversity of artistic means of expression.

And when one moves from working with sculpture to working with painting, one comes to say to oneself: All that one has to say about sculpture in terms of the way in which forces acting vertically and in the direction of propagation interact, of heavy elements and light elements, all that one has to have put aside when dealing with color and its nuances in painting. Because there it is about creating not out of the line, not out of the form, but out of the color, so that one completely stops feeling differently towards the head than towards the rest of the organism, as the sculptor does. In painting, one feels that difference disappear that arose for the sculptor between the head and what is not the head in a human being. This completely balances out and becomes something completely different, an inner intensity that cannot be represented by a contrast of lines, but can only be represented by penetrating into the intensity of the color nuances, so that it is not possible to go into detail, for example, on what still stands out very strongly in sculpture.

And if you want to overcome it, you can only do so if you push the sculpture to a certain degree of consciousness, as I did with my central group for this building. But if you move on to painting, it is a matter of thoroughly rejecting any thinking in lines and moving on to the feeling that creates purely from color. And however strange it may seem to someone who speaks of a spiritualization of art in a falsely abstract sense, it must still be said: for someone who thinks in terms of painting, the most important thing is that there is a certain color nuance at a certain point on a certain surface and that, when one moves from this color nuance to another point on the surface, other color nuances are there. It is about creating from color.

In this creative process, however, the artist is supported by what I would call the experience of color, the experience of blue, the experience of yellow, the experience of red. What the artist has, in experiencing yellow and red as if they were attacking him, and experiencing blue as if he had to chase after it with his soul, as if he had to expand himself, is what transforms into creativity within him and what then gives him the opportunity to transform the sensation into what is to become a work of art. If, for example, one is faced with the task of painting any surface, then it is a matter of nuancing between so-called light, warm colors and dark, cold colors. If one has the color experience, one can create out of this color experience, just as the musician creates out of the sound experience. Then it is a matter of the form arising out of the color itself, so that one does not draw and then smear color into the spaces created by the drawing spaces that arise through drawing, smearing the color in, but rather it is a matter of starting from the color experience and allowing the line experience, the form, to arise from the color experience. That is why I said at one point in the first of my mystery dramas - that is, I had a character say it, to whom I put it in the mouth - that the form must be “the color's work”.

Fundamentally, we must be aware that all drawing and all thinking in drawing is actually a lie compared to painting. For example, when I see the blue sky, with the sea-green of the surface of the sea below, I have the blue of the sky above, the green of the sea below, and the line of the horizon simply arises from seeing, from the experience of color. And I am actually lying when I draw a horizon line that is not actually there (Fig. 114). This must now be thoroughly examined, otherwise one will not be able to enter into that world, which can be experienced through all the means of artistic expression, through the colors and their nuances, as well as through the concepts and ideas, if these concepts and ideas are really rooted in the spiritual and are not abstracted from ordinary human consciousness.

You see, here it is not so much a matter of expressing spiritual science in all kinds of forms, but rather of gaining impulses for artistic observation, which are just as necessary in the course of human development as spiritual science itself. But they are required as something special. It is the case that on the one hand there is the spiritual-scientific stream and on the other hand there is the artistic stream, which in a certain way must now also take on new forms. Therefore, I say to everyone who stands before this group, which is to become the central group here: One can feel something in the central figure like the Christ-figure, but it must be felt, it must not be thought that the name Christ is there. It will certainly not be written on the outside, but it does not even have to be thought, rather, the intuitive experience must take place within us, which draws our attention to how we must look at the matter, so that we develop reverence, develop high regard, develop the intuitive perception of the depths of the human being. So there should be nothing but feeling, nothing but experiencing in feeling, the same feelings that we experience, for example, when we immerse ourselves spiritually in the figure of Christ. But everything we experience spiritually when we immerse ourselves in the figure of Christ through spiritual science must not be carried over into what is formed plastically or pictorially. What is formed plastically or pictorially must be born out of form, out of line, out of surface. And this life in form, in line, in surface, in color, in word itself, is what later develops such forms, such painting, as it is to appear here in this building before you.

What I have said now has little to do with the building itself, but only with the artistic attitude and artistic feeling that underlies the entire building idea of Dornach. It should always be borne in mind that it is at the beginning of the development of that architectural style, that artistic language of form, which can be expected to flourish in a special way in the future. Because I would not rebuild this building in the same way a second time. Not because I consider the artistic attitude on which it is based to be misguided – that is not the case – but because everything that is alive is also constantly evolving, so that a second time all those mistakes would be avoided and everything that could be said in terms of impulses for perfection could be taken into account. But I see all this myself and take it much more seriously than those who often call themselves critics of the building. I know the mistakes very well today and know what could be avoided if the building were to be rebuilt, and what could be brought into it if it were to be rebuilt. And it is necessary that all the details of the building idea from Dornach be taken up in this way.

To take one detail, I would like to mention the small dome (Fig. 57). Later, at the end of this hour, we will raise the curtain and you can then take a look at the small dome. Above all, I would like this small dome to be understood in such a way that nothing abstract is fantasized into it. For in this small dome, in which I myself am essentially involved – this is of course not to say anything special about the also in turn initial and in many respects perhaps amateurish in the painting of this small dome – an attempt has been made to paint really out of color, out of the color experience. In fact, this color experience should be understood in such a way that one sees, above all, the color nuance at a particular point. It could not be a matter of, for example, at a certain point where, let us say, the blue was to be emphasized, where the blue was experienced according to its position near the opening, further away from the center, contrasting with the color effects in the center, of thinking of a fist (Fig. 70) and paint it there because one feels a kinship of the nature of the fist with the blue color, but it could only be a matter of developing the color experience of the blue at this point and then letting the form, the shape, the essence arise out of the color. It had to become what it is there out of necessity.

From this you can see that it is not important to the person who originally gave rise to the idea of forming a figure out of the color experience of blue at this point, which then leads the feeling back to the sixteenth century, reminiscent of the Faust figure, but rather that it is important to him to give birth to form and essence out of the living color. And if, in the end, interpretations are attributed to the works, then one must be aware that these are interpretations from the outside, that they may help one or another subjectivity to experience this or that; but I myself prefer it if you completely forget, when facing this small dome, that there is something Faustian, something Apollonian ( Fig. 76) or of any doppelgänger (Fig. 84) and the like, and that you first surrender to the pure color experience from which the whole is born, and that you are initially just as indifferent to whether there is a Faust crouching there or some other figure, just as the person who wanted to create from the color was indifferent to whether this figure emerged. It just came out because the world lives in color.

But one must not take the starting point from the linear or symbolic boundaries of the being; rather, one must take the starting point from painting from the color experience, from moving in color, so that the color and especially the color harmonization and disharmonization come to life as such. One will then see that one narrows one's view of the world if one tries to translate the intellectually abstract world view — even one that arises as spiritual science — simply symbolically, allegorically into color or into form. Rather, one will see that when one immerses oneself in color, the whole richness of the life of color overflows one and that in this immersion in the world of color one has, that one still discovers a new world. While with every allegory you only bring the world you already have into the colorful world, if you start from the colored experience itself, you discover a new world that is as creative in itself as the world you have in mind when you summarize the external natural fact in abstractions or in natural laws.

In this description – because everything artistic, when it is discussed, must be described – I had to show you how an attempt has been made here in this building, not to secretly incorporate anything into the plastic forms, into the color nuances, but to experience the secrets of these worlds ourselves, which give us the means to express them artistically. And when one experiences the secrets of these worlds, then one gradually frees oneself from all straw-like allegorizing and straw-like symbolizing. In painting, for example, one learns to overcome the line, even in the representation of the copperplate engraving or the woodcut, and to allow form to arise purely out of the contrast between light and dark. It is out of such experiences, not out of abstract thought, that the building idea of Dornach has come into being, out of what can be experienced in colour, in form, in surface, what can be felt as that which strives upwards, freeing itself from burdens, as that which works downwards, bearing burdens, bringing them to life within itself.

All this is here in architecture, sculpture, painting, even in the window panes - the nature of which I will also discuss next time - felt, experienced, not thought; because all abstract thinking is the death of art. The life of art is born only out of form, out of color, out of the burdened, out of the carrying, out of the rounded, out of the angular – I now mean “rounded” and “angular” as a verb. And when one can live in the round, in the angular, in the burden, in the carrying, in the arching, in the covering and opening, in the plastically rounding, in the surface giving, in the expressing the interior in the exterior through the special surface treatment, when one can experience what arises like beings in the waves from the surface of the sea, when one experiences from the living colors, then the forms are formed in such a way that they are a creation of the color. Then there is truly no allegorization, no symbolization; then, alongside that world of abstraction or the merely non-sensuous spiritual, a completely new world arises, a world that Goethe called the sensuous-suprasensible world. This world is not, however, killed by the merely intellectual, and it is brought to life when one knows how to set the spirit within oneself in motion, not by going so far in the contemplation of the external that the sensual contemplation leads to the linking of thoughts, but in such a way that one sees the supersensible directly in the external, in the sensual. When the inner life, which in Expressionism always seeks to give rise to thought, is restrained to such an extent that it does not reach thought, but remains in the mere experience of the formative, of that which permeates the surface with the intensity of color and when the world is experienced in this way, as it can only be experienced in the element of sensation, not in the element of thought, then this experience can truly provide the stimulus for a new art.

It may be clear from the two observations already made here about the building idea of Dornach how this building idea has arisen out of the same life from which that is to arise which is meant here as spiritual science. But this building idea did not arise in such a way that, in the building, what lives in thought form, in idea form, in spiritual science, is to be found again, only in outwardly symbolic pictorial form. Rather, the building was to arise out of the feelings and perceptions that can be harbored by someone who feels inspired by this spiritual science. To some extent the intention was there: on the one hand, the spiritual-scientific impulse wants to express itself in the form of ideas. But that is not enough, that does not reveal its life in a complete way, and another branch must sprout from the common root. That is precisely the artistic branch, that is what manifests itself out of feeling and perception in the building idea of Dornach.

Those approaching this building from the outside will at first perceive a kind of duality: a larger dome structure as an auditorium; a smaller dome structure, which to a certain extent cuts through the larger one , as a space for performances, also conceived as the space towards which everything in the auditorium tends, and from which, in turn, everything that the auditorium is inclined to absorb should radiate. Our future development will depend on whether humanity is able to commit itself to a truly essential development in all its soul-forming aspects, to commit itself to development in such a way that one says to oneself: What one has inherited or acquired through ordinary life does not yet lead to what gives the human being a truly dignified existence. From a certain point onwards, the development of the inner life must be taken up in order to lead beyond what the outer consciousness alone can bring. But there must be something to meet what one is approaching and which one expects, as it were, from unknown depths of the spirit. And it is the feeling of this interaction between the receiving human being and the creating human being within himself that was then able to be lived out in the building idea of Dornach.

From the outset, wherever domed rooms of different sizes adjoin or even intersect, one cannot help but feel that a close interaction is taking place between the person to whom the one part is dedicated and the person to whom the other part is dedicated. To a certain extent, the aim was to evoke the sensation of a rhythm that exists between the larger and the smaller component. This lively sensation, or perhaps it would be better to say this invigoration of sensation through the forms of the building, could hardly be evoked by two rooms adjacent to one another in a different way. But now that is adapted to what interior design is and from which I would like to start initially.

You know that in the case of all the buildings that are actually designed to enclose something, we are dealing with a completely different architecture. Perhaps we can reach an understanding if we point to older building forms that draw their style, their architectural concept, from completely different premises. The Greek “temple is conceived as the dwelling of the god, and a Greek temple in which there is no statue of the god, of Zeus, Apollo or Athena, would not be a complete work of art. But how did this style actually come about? It arose, so to speak, from the idea of God acting from a specific point in the universe. It is intended to envelop the activity of this god; it is therefore conceived in its entirety as a covering, as an enclosure.

If we go a little further, skipping other architectural styles, to the architecture of the later Middle Ages, to the Gothic cathedral, we have to say that anyone entering a Gothic cathedral cannot feel that this building is complete if it is empty. A Gothic building that is not conceived as a temple but as a cathedral, that is, as a gathering and confluence of the faithful, is only complete when the faithful are assembled in it, when they are inside, just as a Greek temple is only complete when the statue of the god is inside. Accordingly, the entire Gothic architectural style is conceived in this way.

And now, penetrating into our times, one is led to say: the internalization of the human being is what must be the essential impulse of the present and the near future. Man himself, with his inwardly divine-spiritual essence, is at the center of all striving, but he kills this inner impulse of his modern striving if he does not find his way into the development in a living way. And it is from this feeling of the modern human being that the building idea here has arisen. The mere all-round principle of symmetry of Greek architecture, the enclosure, had to be dissolved, and the abstract idea of the upward striving of the crowd gathering in the cathedral also had to be dissolved. Closure had to be found, so to speak, in the upward infinity of the spherical form, development in the complete feeling for that which animates the individual form.

It is perhaps partly due to external motives that part of this building is a wooden structure; it could just as easily be a concrete structure, but not, for example, a marble building. Now that it is a wooden building, I only need to speak about the peculiarity as a wooden building, which essentially presents the interior design. When working with wood as a material for architecture, for sculpture, one notices that this work in wood is something quite different from working in marble, for example, or in any material that reveals itself on the surface like marble or stone. This will be particularly apparent when the central group in the right light is seen standing in this small domed room on the east side (Fig. 92). It has become a sculptural wooden group in keeping with the overall interior design. So it was worked in wood. Of course, it was he who made a model first, since no single person can work on a nine-and-a-half-meter-high wooden group. I would not have been surprised if the people who saw this model, which was made in plasticine, had actually found it hideous, especially the central figure, the representative of humanity himself. For it goes without saying that the final design in wood must already have been present in the plasticine version.

But now, when working on stone – or on a surface that can resemble stone – one is obliged to carve out the form from the raised parts, from what bulges out of the plane, what confronts one from the plane; one is therefore obliged, so to speak, to place it on the plane, on the surface. When working with wood, you have to avoid working on the wood itself and instead work out of the wood. One must work not towards the convex but towards the concave. With stone and everything that resembles stone, it is that which emerges from the surface, the convex, that is effective. With everything that is made of wood, it is that which withdraws from the surface, that which is thus, as it were, cut out, hollowed out of the wood.

Therefore, it is necessary – and I ask you to visualize the whole type, let us say, of the Roman Caesar heads, which can be seen everywhere in casts in museums, in relation to what I am about to say – therefore, when you sculpt the human form out of a stone-like material, you have to work the whole thing out from the face, from the head, and the rest of the human form that is not the head is actually, artistically speaking, just an appendix to the head. One must not, so to speak, sin against the natural forms of the human head, and one must shape the entire organism of the limbs and trunk out of what is laid down in the head. All this is required, for example, of marble, all this is required of stone.

If one works in wood, then one has the necessity to work in the opposite sense. You have to work from the whole human figure, from the movement of the limbs, from the feeling of the torso. You can dare to shape an upward arm movement, a downward arm movement in such a way that it continues in an asymmetrical forehead, as was attempted with this group. This was only possible because it is a wood group, because when you work in wood, you bring out the hollows in the material and do not place what is raised on the surface. Only by being completely immersed in the material, with all one's feelings, especially in the human form, can such a treatment of the material emerge.

And what is most vividly apparent when the human form is sculpted is apparent in the overall treatment of the wood here in this interior design. In stone, the progression of the columns from the simplest capital and pedestal forms to the more complicated middle forms, and then back to the simple forms again, would represent the dissolution of the symmetry on all sides into a developmental metamorphic progression. In stone, all of this would be nonsense; because stone demands to be more comprehensive, stone demands symmetry on all sides. Only wood allows for the development that was attempted here. As I said, it could also have been done in concrete, which, due to its nature, overcomes stone; only the form would look somewhat different. But wood allows for the introduction of development into the shape of the capital.

And here I would like to say that the underlying idea was to implement Goethe's concept of metamorphosis in the purely artistic. One must, however, completely immerse oneself in the creative powers of nature and create forms out of the creative powers of nature if one dares to attempt to progress from the simplest capital forms, which you can find here at the two columns at the entrance, to ever more complicated forms. But that came about all by itself, that came about for the senses, that was not contrived. Those personalities who in earlier times were often led here in this building were told: this column means this, that column means that; they were spoken of Mercury, Mars columns and the like, and in these things, which actually only serve an abstract understanding, one has seen the main thing. The main thing is not in that. The main thing is how the second capital motif - but now for artistic perception - emerges from the first with the same necessity as the higher-lying leaf or blossom emerges from the lower-lying leaf according to the principle of natural growth, or the petal from the leaf. When forming such a concept, one looks at nature theoretically. Here it is a matter of having nothing to do with theory, but of experiencing the development as one form arises from the other. I may say: everything that you see here in the way of capitals and architraves is felt to be absolutely pure, and anyone who speculates about it, who makes symbolic interpretations about it, misunderstands the whole thing.

But it is strange how, when you are working, this interweaving with the creative powers of nature brings surprises. When I was working on the model for this building (Fig. 22), I merely had the feeling that one capital would emerge from the other, that the next architrave motif would always emerge from the previous metamorphosis, and so on with the base motifs and so on. It soon became clear to me that this developmental impulse does not lead to a progression from the simpler to the more complicated, but that the most complicated is achieved right in the middle, as you can see here on the central columns, and that, in turn, when you have taken complexity to its ultimate height, to its culmination, you are compelled to move on to something simpler. Therefore, you do not see here, for example, an abstract development that starts with the simplest and progresses to the most complicated, so that the last would be the most complicated, but you see the greatest complication of the motifs in the middle.

And then I may also reveal to you here that it was certainly not intended from the outset to be a staff of Mercury entwined by snakes (Figs. 41, 42). No, that arose out of the artistic experience as something that cannot be otherwise if one ascends to the complicated in development and then has to turn around in order to descend again into the simpler. Likewise, I was surprised, for example, when – having arrived at the seventh column – I found that the sublimities of the first column, if you think of it as being turned inside out like a glove – not geometrically, but artistically turned inside out — fit exactly into the cavities of the last column; how, in turn, the same is the case with the second and sixth columns, as it is with the third and fifth columns, and the fourth column is in the middle.

It was not a case of pursuing some abstract, mystical principle of seven from the outset; rather, just as the tone scale is a seven-part entity, here the columns had to be formed in such a way that, so to speak, an octave of feeling in the form is fulfilled in a seven-part structure. For the eighth would be the octave; there it has to merge into the other kind of feeling, which one then finds in the small domed room, which contains something that accommodates development as an absorption. Therefore, the capital motifs of the small dome (Figs. 58-63) are not presented in their developed form as they are here, but are rather presented as a single entity, so to speak, opening its arms to what hastens towards it as a development.

But all this is not said beforehand, because beforehand one is dealing with something else, with life in form, with life in the plane itself. This is said afterwards, to give some indication of what has been created. Nothing here has grown out of any newer theoretical world view, not even out of the world of ideas of spiritual science itself. And I believe that it can be achieved, at least to a certain extent, that those who enter this building have the feeling: here, for the time being, one can forget everything one has absorbed in one's head in the way of spiritual-scientific ideas and thoughts. There is no need to talk about it, but one can feel it, feel it from the forms and from the treatment of the forms.

So that one can feel something like this: When you enter a Greek temple, you feel the encompassing nature of this Greek temple. The stone form reigns in wisdom. From the macrocosm comes the wisdom that builds this macrocosm, pushes through the wall, as it were, and works in the stone's sublimity, in the convexities, and there encompasses the externally resting God, who is only active in the spirit for the world. One could feel in a similar way that which is striven for in a Gothic building. It is the community with its group soul, which, by being gathered in the cathedral, actually has around it that which it itself has built, bricked, chiseled, carpentered, and so on. When one enters a Gothic cathedral, one always has the feeling that, in contrast to the Greek temple, which arose from a purely aristocratic way of thinking, the Gothic cathedral is the product of a class-conscious thinking, of the structure of medieval life, which expresses itself through the search for humanity, which also expresses itself in its forms in this search for humanity.

Those people who cannot bring themselves to look at it impartially speak of the Temple of Dornach. What has been built here is the opposite of any temple. There is nothing temple-like here, nothing that can be related to a church or a cathedral. And anyone who speaks of the temple of Dornach is only expressing how they have remained with Greek architecture in their whole feeling, not even having progressed to the Gothic. Here, however, what had to be tackled was that which creates forms that are basically only the continuation of what is spoken here, what is played here, what is declaimed here, what is artistically presented here. And just as the speaker stands here at the lectern, just as the organ sounds from above, just as the recitative tones vibrate through the room, so that which originates from the word, from the sound, from the thought must continue to speak through the framing, through the enclosure, which is not an enclosure but only continues the spoken, the sounded word. In the Greek temple we are dealing with an enclosure; here we are dealing with a self-expression. Therefore, above all, the whole form must be such that it lovingly embraces what is happening here, but that it does not close it off, but that this building stands as a symbol that what is being worked on here in Dornach should reach out to all of humanity.

If you study the columns here, together with the back wall, which signifies enclosure, you will see that The whole can now be felt in such a way that nowhere does one have the feeling of being enclosed and speaking only to the wall; rather, one has the feeling that one is speaking and the forms of the wall, these capitals, these architraves, these column forms absorb the vibrations of the word and actually want to carry them out into the world. They do not want to close off, but want to be artistically transparent. And just as the wood here is cut in such forms that make the wood artistically permeable, so it is suggested in these windows, I would say in a more natural material way, how what is here inside should be connected with the outside. These windows are not works of art in themselves; these windows, whose technique is essentially a glass etching technique, are only works of art when sunlight shines through them, when a connection is created between what has been scratched out of the glass and the sunlight shining through. That doesn't close, that lets the sun in, that is the living mediator with the whole, with the light that floods the cosmos, and is only something if you look at it in connection with this light.

If you approach it in such an artistic way, then you can also dare to develop the motifs that are in these windows.

I cannot go into details, of course, but I would refer you to that blue window there (Fig. 111), where you can see the human form in both casement windows, the human form in two situations. In one case, all the qualities that live in the hunter when he aims at the animal he wants to shoot live in the person. In what has been scratched out of the glass, you will find the entire inner life of the person depicted, you will find everything that lives in him poured into the figurative. When you come to a certain stage of inner experience, you cannot help but give shape to what lives inside as passion. And if you then think of the metamorphosis as having progressed, the whole picture shows the following in the right-hand window: the person has progressed from intending to shoot the bird down to actually doing it: he has taken aim and is shooting. What happened earlier is transformed into the other part, which is then scraped out of the glass and together with the sunlight gives the work of art. In this way, each individual window could be treated. But the point here is not to come up with more interpretations, but to surrender to what is on the glass, to feel it. Precisely when one strives for the art of interpretation, one overlooks the actual artistic intention therein.

And when you look at this dome painting (Fig. 57) and see how everything that is painted in the small dome is brought out of the color, then you will also have the aspiration there to feel your way out of the closed space into the cosmos. It is painted in such a way that the painting on the surface is suspended, as if you are entering through a portal into a living thing. If you have a vivid sense of color, you can draw that out of the color. Of course, there are people who would prefer to see naturalistic figures up there; that would spare them the discomfort of first having to feel things. Because what you can feel in a beautifully—what we call “beautifully”—painted naturalistic human figure is something you have felt since childhood, and it is comfortable to see it again. But when you come here, you don't have the opportunity to rediscover what you have felt since childhood and say that it resembles this or that, but rather, here you have to, so to speak, go through all the that you have gone through in your entire life, in order to grasp in a lively way what emerges from the colors and the forms – which are, after all, the work of the color; they want to be nothing else – and to have the feeling: it does not shut you out, it carries what you feel here out into the whole world, it connects you with the world. Nothing about this building is conceived as anything other than an organic formation.

It was certainly a daring move to transfer mechanical forms of construction into the organic. If you want to develop something organic, everything has to be so that it could not be any different at the place where it occurs. Take something as insignificant as a human earlobe, which is certainly something very insignificant in the human organism. But according to the nature of the human organism, this earlobe, with its very specific shape, must form at this location here, and of course a similar organ could not develop, say, at the tip of the little finger or elsewhere. Each has its shape in its own place.

This has been developed here as a building idea. Everything you see formed here (Fig. 27) has been thought out from the whole, has been thought and felt into the place where it stands. The column is dissolved in such a way that one can see the supporting function of the dissolved column in its form. If you see any motif outside at the entrance, you will see from its forms: This is towards the entrance. If you step a few steps further inside, what the column has to bear is no longer there in the same way. But if you go from the outside world into what such a column structure has to bear, the load-bearing and pushing of the whole structure against each column structure should be felt and, in turn, the relief against the outside world. What we are seeking here is an inner dynamism that strives towards life. And we live in a time when such a metamorphosis must be striven for in all fields of human endeavor, as was rightly felt in the past.

I am reminded of Schlegel, who, looking at the past forms that the “Renaissance men” repeatedly wanted to bring back, coined the beautiful phrase: “Architecture is frozen music.” It is a beautiful phrase for everything that has gone before in architecture, and an extraordinarily apt one. One has the feeling that music lives in these building thoughts. How could one see more beautifully than in the building forms of the Greek temple! How could one feel Bach, prophetically foresaw, differently than in the forms of the Gothic cathedral! The fugue already lives in the pointed arch. There it was frozen, and Friedrich Schlegel was right to call architecture, which he knew, frozen music.

But today we live in a momentous moment of human development. We live in the moment when all creativity must take on a different form. And so we must also thaw and melt the frozen form of architecture. But it would dissolve into the indefinite if it were not imbued with soul in the melting process. And so we must have, alongside the frozen music, a thawing music that looks at us and demands: Give me soul! That, you see, is something of the building idea at Dornach, which spoke out of the development of humanity: thaw me, I am the frozen music! But I would melt into nothingness if, in thawing, the soul, the soul that is intensely moved within, did not lead into all forms. Not mere symmetry-proportionality should live in the forms, not merely that which one capital places in symmetry and proportionality next to the other, but living, intense movement, which allows one capital to grow out of the other like one petal of a flower out of another, metamorphosically transforming the form.

I know all the arguments that can be used against this transfer of the idea of construction from the dynamic-mathematical to the organic-living, and I understand every one of the artists who cling to the old in this direction; I feel for them. But a start had to be made sometime with what time, from its depths, demands of us humans in the present and for the near future. And so only those who experience it as a need of their own soul, which has struggled to meet the demands of the present and the near future, will feel this structure. Of course, there is still a lot that is imperfect, and if it were to be performed a second time, this building would look quite different. But nevertheless, you can see from the attempt, at least, how the attempt has been made down to the smallest detail to transfer the dynamical-mathematical into the organic.

Take a look at the radiators (Fig. 26). See how they are created from an organic, living elementary form, as if certain forces, which mysteriously work in the earth's interior, wanted to continue to work over the earth's surface. A few days ago, you were given a hint here as to how electricity continues to work in a mysterious way in the earth, when what is only transmitted through a wire is closed to the power circuit through the earth line, as it were, the whole earth replaces in its powers what would have to be there in a second wire line. Oh, there is much that is mysterious in the earth. But what is mysterious in the earth can be unraveled, not intellectually but intuitively. When it is shaped into forms, which should not be slavish imitations of animal or plant forms, but which are quite independent forms, then one perceives them as being alive. You can then form a wide, low stove screen and make the shape differently than if you were making a narrow, tall stove screen. You have the metamorphosing principle within you; it passes into the creative hand.

Of course, these are all things that people of the present day may still find repulsive. Let them do it. Those who cling to the old have always found what has emerged as something new repulsive. But such an experiment must be ventured some time. Here it was not even ventured out of the abstract, but it was undertaken because a second, an artistic branch wanted to emerge from the same roots from which spiritual science itself emerged. And I would like to emphasize once again: you will not find a single symbol in this room. If anything here appears to you as a symbol, it could at most be the five-petalled flower leaf at the back in the small domed room (Figs. 55 above, 57), which could appear to you as something that is meant to be symbolic when the curtain is raised later. Just as the five petals do not symbolize a pentagram, nothing here is meant to be symbolic. But everything has been so carefully thought out that every detail, every artistic line, is derived from the form of the whole.

If I have been permitted to characterize the building idea of Dornach in this way, it must be understood that I must at the same time add that what I have said is only the beginning of an attempt. And you can be sure of this: those who are working on this building, those from whom this building idea has arisen, do not think of it in an immodest way. They think about it in such a way that they would certainly retain the impulse, principle and style, the essentials, but create something completely different after they have learned what can be learned in the process of creating this building. A lot could be learned here. Because you truly do not learn more thoroughly than when you are forced to let what lives in your soul flow into concrete action. It is relatively easy to contrive abstract ideals with great perfection. But if one is compelled, already at the very first steps that an idea, an impulse inwardly takes in the soul, to shape this idea, this impulse in such a way that it can weave in the outer material, so that the work in which it embodies itself, does not become allegorical, then it requires something quite different in inner experience, then it requires a growing together with the world thought, with the world impulses, with that which lives in the world.

Therefore, the Greeks, who were able not only to think about the world but also to feel it, took the word “cosmos”, with which they designated the universe, not from theory but from feeling. In the word “cosmos” lies the sense of beauty that is aroused in us when we look at the outer universe. But today, anyone who carries the thought of building in reality in their soul must be able to experience and grasp human development itself in a cosmic artistic way. We place ourselves in the sight of the portal of a Greek temple. We enter the temple. We experience the forms that surround us as a fence around the image of the god. We feel something like wisdom cast in form, that wisdom that flows through the whole world and that once had to emerge artistically in external forms, that had to be felt and that was felt in the highest way when the temple was created as the dwelling place of the Greek god.

We must have a different material from the stone that allows us to shape world wisdom in its sublimity; we must have a different material when we work from the innermost being of the modern human being; for a different force must radiate out into the universe than wisdom is. We receive wisdom; it radiates towards us from what we place on the surface in terms of sublimity, of convexities. When we stand before the soft wood, we hollow into it that which lives in us, and we give something of ourselves to the cosmos. But as human beings, if we do not want to sin against the whole spirit of the world, we must carry nothing into it but what is carried into the universe on the stream of love.

And anyone who can feel artistically, feels when he shapes the marble out of the flat surface, how wisdom comes over him in his consciousness when he carries out the building idea of the marble. The person who executes such a building idea as the one here feels that he must create what can be created by carving into the soft wood, what can live in the concavity, in true devotion to the greatness of the universe. One may only carve into it if one carves into it with love for the universe. No one should actually be able to form a surface with a relief without being overwhelmed by the wisdom of the universe. No one should dare to commit the sin of imprinting their own human essence on the material, of hollowing out the material, who does not do it with love for the universe. These, however, are the two poles of all human development: idea or wisdom and love. When we read Goethe's sayings in prose, it sounds to us like a fundamental solution to the riddle of the world when Goethe says: The highest that man can feel is the harmony of idea and love.

We are aware that this harmony has been achieved here, for the time being only, I would almost say haltingly, in what we have now been able to do. But according to the intentions from which its idea has flowed, this structure does not want to be anything other than a germ. But a germ must not be judged only by what it initially presents itself as; a germ must be judged by what can grow out of it. These courses have been organized to help get this germ growing. And we have called you here because you are part of this building idea from Dornach. For whatever I might relate to you about the building idea of Dornach, it would all have to be unfinished, because this building idea can only be completed by those who have felt it going out into the world and - each in his own place - accomplishing that to which this building idea, with all that can be cultivated in the building, is to be the germ. I can only speak to you of something unfinished.

To complete what is intended here, that cannot be done in Dornach, not by those who would work here, however fully; that can only be done effectively by you, by going out into the world and completing what can be hinted at here but must remain unfinished. You are not called upon to admire or evaluate the building, but to complete it, to be the further material in which the world spirit itself works, in which it is freely grasped by you so that in today's social distress, in today's decisive moment in world history, something may be done for the further development of humanity that leads not to barbarism but to a new, luminous ascent of human development. We would like the walls, columns, windows and domed spaces to speak to you: become the fulfillers of the architectural vision of Dornach! For it is in this sense that we have truly counted on you.

I would like to say a few words about the building concept, with the direct support of the building. From the outset, the view could arise that if one has to talk about such a building, it indicates that it does not make the necessary impression as an artistic work; and in many cases, what is thought about the building of Dornach, about the Goetheanum in the world, is thought from a false point of view influenced by a [one-sided] view. For example, the opinion has been spread that the building in Dornach wants to symbolize all kinds of things, that it is a symbolizing building. In reality, you will not find a single symbol in it when you look at it, as they are popular in mystical and theosophical societies. The building should be able to be experienced entirely from the ki-based feeling and has also been created from these artistic feelings in its forms, in all its details. Therefore, it must only work through what it is itself.

Explaining has become popular, and one then complies with such requests for explanations; but in mentioning this here before you, I also say that such an explanation of an artistic work always seems to me to be not only half, but almost completely unartistic, and that I will now give you a kind of lecture in front of the building, a lecture that I fundamentally dislike, if only because I have to speak to you in abstract terms about what emerged in my mind as details when designing the building, the models and so on, and what was created from life. I would rather speak to you about the building as little as possible.

It is already the case that a new style, a new artistic form of expression, is viewed with a certain mistrust in the present day. I can still hear a word that I heard many decades ago when I was studying at the Technical University [in Vienna], where Ferstel gave his lectures. In one of them, he says: “Architectural styles are not invented, an architectural style grows out of the character of a nation.” Therefore, Ferstel is also opposed to any invention of a desired new architectural style, a new type of construction. What is true about this idea is that the style, which is supposed to stylize the characteristics of a people, must emerge not from an abstraction, but from a living world view, which is at the same time a world experience and, from this point of view, comprehensively encompasses the chaotic spiritual life of contemporary humanity. On the basis of this thoroughly correct idea, it becomes necessary to transform what was characteristic of previous architectural styles into organic building forms by incorporating the symmetrical, the geometric-static, and so on.

I am well aware of what can be said – and, from a certain point of view, justifiably said – by those who have become psychologically attuned to previous architectural styles against what has been attempted here in Dornach as an architectural style: the transference of geometrical-symmetrical-static forms into organic forms. But it has been attempted. And so you can see in these forms of building that this building here is an as yet inadequate first attempt to express the transition from these geometric forms of building to the organic. It is certain, of course, that the development of humanity is moving towards these forms of building, and when we again have the impulses of clairvoyant experience, I believe that these forms of building will play the first, leading role.

This building should be understood in the same way through its relationship with the organizing forces of nature as the previous buildings are understood through their relationship with the geometric-static-symmetrizing forces of nature. This building is to be viewed from this point of view, and from this point of view you will understand how every detail within the building idea for Dornach must be completely individualized here. Just think of your earlobe: it is a very small part of the human organism, but you cannot imagine that an organic form like the earlobe is suitable for growing on the big toe. This organ is bound to its place within the organism. Just as you find that within the whole organism a supporting organ is always shaped in such a way that it can have a static-dynamic effect within the organism, so too the individual forms in our building in Dornach had to be such that they could serve the static-dynamic forces. Every single form had to be organized in such a way that it could and had to be in its place what it now appears to be. Look at each arch from this point of view, how it is formed, how it flattens out towards the exit, for example, how it curves inwards towards the building itself, where it not only has to support but also to express support in an organic way, thereby helping to develop what only appears to be unnecessary in organic formation. Ordinary architecture leaves out what the organism develops, that which goes beyond the static. But one senses that the idea of building has been transferred to the organic design of the forms, and that this is also necessary.

You will have to consider every column from this point of view; then you will also understand that the ordinary column, which is taken out of the geometric-static, has been replaced by one that does not imitate the organic - everything is so that it is not imitated naturalistically - but transferred into organically made structures. It is not imitating an organic structure. You will not find it if you look for a model in nature. But you will find it if you understand how human beings can live together with the forces that have an organizing effect in nature, and how, apart from what nature itself creates, such organizing forms can arise. So you will see in these column supports how the expansion of the structure, the support, the inward pointing, and, in the same way as, say, in the upper end of the human thigh, the support, the walking, the walking and so on, is embodied statically, but organically and statically.

From this point of view, I would also ask you to consider something like the structure with the three perpendicular formations at the top of the stairs here below (Figs. 23, 24). The feeling arises here of how a person feels when he is striving to ascend the stairs. He must have a feeling of security, of spiritual unity in all that goes on in this building, indeed in all that he sees in this building. Everything came to me entirely from my feelings. Believe it or not, this form came to me entirely from my artistic feelings. As I said, you may believe it or not, it was only afterwards that it occurred to me that this form is somewhat reminiscent of the form of the three semicircular circles in the human ear, which, when injured, cause fainting, so that they immediately express what gives a person stability. This expression, that a person should be given stability in this building, comes about in the experience of the three perpendicular directions. This can be experienced in this structure without having to engage in abstract thought. One can remain entirely in the artistic realm.

If you look at the wall-like structures, you will find that natural-looking forces have been poured into the forms, but in such a way that in these forms, which are radiator covers (Fig. 26), the concrete material of the structure is worked out first, and then, further up, the material of the wood, so that they are metamorphosed. You will find that in these structures, the process of metamorphosis is elevated to the artistic. It is the idea of the building that should have a definite effect on such radiator covers, which are designed in such a way that you immediately feel the purpose and do not need to explore it intellectually first. This is how these elementary forms, half plant-like, half animal-like, came to be felt. One only realizes that they must be so when one has shaped them out of the material. And it also follows that it is necessary to metamorphose them depending on whether they are in one place or another, depending on whether they are long and low or narrower and higher. All this is not the result of calculating the form, but the forms shape themselves out of the feeling in their metamorphosis, as for example here, where we have come so far, where the building is a concrete structure in its basement and where one has to empathize with the design of what the concrete is. You enter here at the west gate. Here is the room for checking in your coat. The staircase, which leads up on the left and right, takes you up to the wooden structure containing the auditorium, the stage and adjoining rooms. Please follow me up the stairs to the auditorium.

We first enter a kind of vestibule (Fig. 27). You will feel the very different impression that the wooden paneling creates compared to the concrete paneling on the lower floor. I would like to note here: When one has to work with stone, concrete or other hard materials, one has to approach it differently than when one has to work with a soft material, for example, wood. The material of wood makes it necessary to focus one's entire perception on the fact that one has to scrape corners, concaves, and hollows out of the soft material, if I may use the expression. It is scraping, scraping out. You deepen the material, and only by doing so can you enter into this relationship with the material, which is a truly artistic relationship. While when working with wood you can only coax out of the material what gives the forms if you focus your attention on deepening, when working with hard material you do not have to do with the recesses. You can only develop a relationship with the hard material by applying it, by working convexly, by applying raised areas to the base surfaces, for example when working with stone. Grasping this is an essential part of artistic creation, and it has been partially lost in more recent times.

You will see when we enter the auditorium how each individual surface, each chapter, is treated individually. In this organic structure, a chapter can only be such that one feels: In what follows each other, no kind of repetition can be created, as is otherwise the case with symmetrical-geometric-static architectural styles. In this building, based on organic ideas, you have only a single axis of symmetry, which goes from west to east. You will only find a symmetrical arrangement in relation to this, just as you can only find a single axis of symmetry for a higher organism, not out of arbitrariness, but out of the inner organization of forces of the being in question.

At this point, I would also like to mention that the treatment of the walls also had to be completely different under the influence of the organic building idea than it was before. A wall was for earlier architects what demarcates a space. It had the effect of being inside the room. This feeling had to be abandoned in this building. The walls had to be designed in such a way that they were not felt as a boundary, but as something that carries you out into the vastness of the macrocosm; you have to feel as if you are absorbed, as if you are standing inside the vastness of the cosmos. Walls had to be made transparent, so to speak, whereas in the past every effort was made to give the wall such artificial forms that it was closed, opaque. You will see that the transparent is used artistically at all, and that was driven out of elementary backgrounds into the physical in these windows that you see here and that you will see in the building.

If you see windows in the sense of the earlier architectural style, you will actually have to have the healthy sense: they break through the walls, they do not fit into the architectural forms, but they only fit in through the principle of utility. Here, artistic feeling will be needed down to the last detail. It was necessary to present the wall in such a way that it is not something closed, but something that expands outwards, towards infinity. I could only achieve this by remembering that you can scratch out designs from single-colored window panes, as if using an erasing method, a glass etching method. And so, monochromatic window panes were purchased, which were then processed in such a way that the motifs one wanted to have were scratched out with the diamond stylus. So for this purpose, an actual glass etching technique was conceived, and from this the windows emerged.

When you consider the motifs of the windows, you must not think that you are dealing with purely symbolic designs. You can see it already on this larger windowpane (Fig. 109): nothing is designed on these window panes other than what the imagination produces. There are mystics who develop a mysticism with superficial sentences and strange ideas and constantly explain that the physical-sensual outer world is a kind of maja, an illusion. Often people approach you and say that so-and-so is a great mystic because he always declaims that the outer world is a maja. The human physical countenance has something that is maya, that is absolutely false, that is something quite different in truth. What appears on this windowpane is not something that symbolizes; it is an essence that is envisaged, which only does not look to the spiritual observer as it appears to the senses. The larynx is the organ of vision for the etheric; the larynx is already Maja as a physical larynx, and that which is a merely physical-sensual vision is not reality.

What is the spiritual meaning behind this? The spiritual fact is that the human being is truly being whispered in the ear, left and right, what the secrets of the world are. So that one can say: the bull speaks in the left ear, the lion in the right ear. If one wants to depict something like this as a motif in a picture or in words, one can only put into the word what is already in the picture itself. It must be clearly understood, however, that such a picture can only be understood by someone who lives in the world view from which it originated. A person who does not have a living Christian feeling will not be able to relate to the pictorial representations that Christian art has produced.

The artist experiences a great deal when he immerses himself in a vision; but such an experience must not be translated into abstract thoughts, otherwise it will immediately begin to fade. One example of the artist's experience is this: when Leonardo da Vinci painted his Last Supper, which has now fallen into such disrepair that it can no longer be appreciated artistically, people thought it took too long. He couldn't finish the Judas because this Judas was supposed to emerge from the darkness. Leonardo worked on this painting for almost twenty years and still hadn't finished it. Then a new prior came to Milan and looked at the work. He wasn't an artist; he said that Leonardo, this servant of the church, had to finally finish his work. Leonardo replied that he could do it now; he had always only sketched the figure of Judas because he had not found the model for it; now that the prior was there, he had found the model for Judas in him, and the picture would now be quickly finished. — There you have such an external, concrete experience. Such external, concrete experiences play a much greater role in all the artist's work than can be expressed in such brief descriptions.

You have [now] entered the building through the room below the organ and the room for musical instruments, dear attendees. If you look around after entering, you will find the building idea initially characterized by the fact that the floor plan (Fig. 20) represents two not quite completed circles that interlock in their segments. It seems to me that the necessity for shaping the building in this way can already be seen when approaching the building from a certain distance and if one has an idea of what is actually supposed to take place in the building. I will now explain further what is connected with the building idea. First of all, I would like to point out that you can see seven columns arranged in symmetry solely against the west-east axis, closing the auditorium on the left and right as you move forward. These seven columns are not formed in such a way that a capital shape, a pedestal shape or an architrave shape above it is repeated, but the capital, pedestal and architrave shapes are in a continuous development. The two columns at the back of the organ room have the simplest capital and pedestal motifs (Figs. 28, 33): forms that, as it were, strive from top to bottom, with others striving towards them from bottom to top. This most primitive form of interaction between above and below is then metamorphosed in the following architrave, capital and pedestal forms (Figs. 35-54).

This progressive metamorphosis came about through the fact that, when I was forming the model (Fig. 22), I tried to recreate what occurs in nature by force. What happens in nature, where an unnotched leaf with primitive forms is first formed at the bottom of the plant, and then this primitive form metamorphoses the higher you go, into the indented, more intricately designed leaf, even transformed into a petal, stamen and pistil, which must be imitated - although not in a naturalistic way - one must place oneself inwardly and vitally into it and then create from within, as nature creates and transforms, as it produces and metamorphoses. Then, without reflection, but from much deeper soul forces than from reflection, one gets such transformations of the second from the first, the third from the second, and so on.

It is possible to misunderstand that, for example, in the fifth column and in the architrave motifs above the fourth column, something like a caduceus appears (Figs. 41, 42). One could now believe that the caduceus was stuck in these two places by the intellect. I believe that someone who had worked from the intellect would probably have placed the caduceus in the architrave motif and, because the intellect has a symmetrical effect, the column motif with the caduceus below it. Someone who works as we have here finds something different. Here, with the motif that you see as the fourth capital motif, this Mercury staff emerged just as a petal emerges from the sepal, only through sensing the metamorphosing transformation, without me even remotely thinking of forming a Mercury staff. I did not think of a past style, but of the transformation of the fourth capital motif from the third. One can see how the forms that have gradually emerged in the development of humanity have developed quite naturally.

Then we come to the epoch when the human being intervenes in his or her psychological development. If we work this into the column in an individualizing way, what is worked on earlier on the surface of the architrave comes later. That is why you see the caduceus on the capital later than on the architrave. A plant that is thin and delicate develops different leaf shapes than a sturdy one. Compare just a shepherd's purse with a cactus, and you will see how the filling and shaping of space is expressed in the figurative design.

At the same time, a cosmic secret arises in this way of feeling evolution through. There has been much talk of evolution in recent times, but little feeling about it. One only thinks it through with the mind. One speaks of the evolution of the perfect from the imperfect. Herbert Spencer and others have done much harm to this, and the thought has arisen that is completely justified in front of the mind, but which does not do justice to the observation of nature: In intellectual thinking, one assumes that in evolution, the simpler forms are at the beginning and that these then become more and more differentiated and differentiated. Spencer, in particular, worked with such evolutionary ideas. But evolution does not show it that way. There is, however, a differentiation, a complication of the forms; but then one comes to a center, and then the forms simplify again. What follows is not more complicated, but what follows is simpler again. You can see this in nature itself. The human eye, which is the most perfect, has, so to speak, achieved greater simplicity than the eye forms of certain animals, which, for example, have the xiphoid process, the fan, which has disappeared again as the eye in evolution moved further up to become human.

It is therefore necessary for man to connect with the power of nature, to feel the power of nature, to make the power of nature his own power and to create from this feeling. Thus, an attempt has been made to design this building in an entirely organic way, to design every detail in its place as it must be individualized from the whole. So you can see, for example, that the organ (Figs. 28-30) is surrounded by plastic motifs that make it appear as if the organ is not simply placed in the space, but that it works out of the whole remaining organic design, as if growing out of it. So everything in this building must be tried to be made in this way.

Here you see the lectern (Fig. 68) on which I am standing. Initially, the idea was to create something here that would, as it were, grow out of the other forms of construction, but in such a way that it would also express the fact that from here, through the word, one strives to express everything that is to be expressed in the building. At the moment when a person speaks here, the forms of what is spoken must continue in such a way that, just as the nose betrays in its form what the whole person is through his or her countenance, so too can the forms of what is spoken continue in such a way that the whole human being is revealed through the form of the nose. Anyone who has made artistically inspired nose studies can create the 'architectural style', the physiognomy of the whole human being, from a nose study. No one can ever have a different nose than they have, and there could never be a different lectern than the one that is here. However, if you claim this, it is meant according to your own view; you can only act according to your own view.

That an attempt has been made here to truly metamorphose the body can be seen from the fact that the motifs here in the glass windows are in part really such motifs that arise as images of the soul's life. For example, look at the pink window here (Fig. 113). You will see on the left wing something coming out like the west portal of the building; on the right wing you see a kind of head. There you see a person sitting on a slope, looking towards the building, and another person looking towards the head. This has nothing to do with speculative mysticism; it has to do with an immediate inner visual experience. This building could not have been created in any other way than by sensing the shape of the human head in a mysterious way, and the organic power on the one hand and the shape of the human head on the other hand result in the intuitive shape of the building. Therefore, the person sitting on the slope sees the metamorphosis of the building in his soul, sometimes as a human head, sometimes as the building revealing itself to the outside world. This provides a motif that leads, if I may say so, to an inner experience.

There you will find in the blue windowpane (Fig. 111) a person who is aiming to shoot a bird in flight. In the right-hand pane you will see that the person has fired. The bird in the left-hand field is in a sphere of light. Around the man you find all kinds of figures vividly alive in the astral body, one when he is about to shoot, the other when he has shot. This is reality, but it is from mundane life. I can imagine that those who always want to be dripping with inner elevation take offence when they experience such things as they are meant here, that a human shooting is simply depicted. Yes, I was pleased when an Italian friend once used a somewhat crude expression about theosophists, who are such mystics. The friend who had already died said it, and I may say it in the very esteemed company here, because the person concerned was a princess, and what a princess says can certainly be said. She glossed such people, who always want to live in a kind of inner elevation, by saying that they are people with a “face up to their stomachs”. I also do not repeat her not quite correct German.

Now, dear attendees, the same idea was then also implemented in painting. I can only talk about the actual painting, about spiritual painting, by referring to the small dome. Only in the small dome was it possible for me to carry out what I have indicated as the challenge of a newer painting: that here, behind the emergence from the color experience, drawing disappears altogether. I had one of my characters in the first mystery drama express this as follows: that the forms appear to be the work of color. For when one feels with the feeling for painting, then one feels the drawing, which is carried into the pictorial, as a lie. When I draw a horizontal line, it is actually a reproduction of something that is not there at all. When I apply the blue sky as a surface and the green below, the form arises from the experience of the color itself. In this way, every pictorial element can be formed. Within the world of color itself lies a creative world, and the one who feels the colors paints what the colors say to each other in creation. He does not need to stick to a naturalistic model; he can create the figures from the colors themselves. It is the case that nature and also human life already have a certain right to shape the moral out of the colored with a necessity.

Yesterday, Mr. Uehli quite rightly pointed out how newer painters already have an intuitive sense of such effects created by light and dark, by the colors themselves, and how they come to paint a double bass next to a tin can. They are pursuing the right thing in and of itself, that it is more important to see how the light gradates in its becoming colored when it falls on a double bass and then continues to fall on a tin can. That is the right thing. But the wrong thing is that this is again based on naturalistic experience. If you really live in the colors, something other than a tin can and a bass violin arises from the colors. The colors are creative, and how they come together is a necessity arising from the mere colors, which you have to experience. Then you don't put a tin can next to a bass violin because that is outside the colors.

So here I have tried to paint entirely from the colors. If you see the reddish-orange spot and the black spot next to the blue spot, it is first of all a vivid impression from the colors. But then the colors come to life, then figures emerge from them, which can even be interpreted afterwards. But just as little as one can make plants here with the human mind, one can just as little paint something on them that one has thought up with the human mind. One must first think when the colors are there, just as the plant must first grow before one can see it.

And so a Faust figure with Death and the Child came into being (Figs. 69-74). The whole head emerged out of the colors, with all the figures in it. Only in the realm of the human soul does something spiritually real take shape of its own accord. For example, you can see above the organ motif how something is painted (Fig. 31) that a person with a philistine attachment to the sensual world would naturally perceive as madness. But you will no longer perceive it as madness when I tell you the following: if you close your eyes, you will, as it were, feel something like two eyes looking at each other, inside the eye. What takes place inwardly can certainly be further developed in a certain way. Then what, when viewed in a primitive way, looks like two eyes glowing out of the darkness and what is seen when it is experienced inwardly, can be projected outwards and experienced in such a way that an entire beyond, an entire world-genesis can be seen in it. Here again an attempt has been made to create out of color what the eye experiences when it looks into the darkness and sees itself. One need not merely read the secrets intellectually, one can see them – suddenly they are there.

In a similar way, attempts were made to bring other motifs into reality, again not from the naturalistic imitation of signs and forms, but entirely from color. The ancient Indians and their inspiration, the seven Rishis, who in turn were inspired by the stars, to paint with an open-topped head (Fig. 32, far right) is, if you do it that way, abstract, actually nonsense; I say that quite openly. But when one experiences what was experienced in the ancient Indian culture in the relationship between the disciple and the guru, the teacher, one feels as if the ancient Indian did not have a skullcap, but as if it had evaporated and as if he were not the one human being who lives in his skin, but one feels as a sevenfold being, as if his soul power was composed of the seven soul rays of the holy Rishis of ancient Atlantis, enlightening him, and that he then communicated to his world that which he revealed, not from his own spirit but from the spirit of the holy Rishis. The more one works out what is said here, the more one comes closer to what has been painted here. The intuitive perception has first placed itself in ancient India, in ancient Atlantis. That which can be seen there has been painted on the wall here, and only afterwards can one speculate when it is there. This is how the message can relate to artistic creation. This is how everything in this building should actually come about.

You will find this building covered with Nordic slate. The building idea must be felt through to the point of radiating outwards. The slate, or the material used to cover it, must shine in a certain way in the sunlight. It seemed to happen by chance here – but of course there is always an inner necessity underlying it. When I saw the Nordic slate in Norway from the train, I knew that it was the right thing to cover the building with. We were then able to have the slate shipped from Norway in the pre-war period. You will feel the effect when you look at the building from a distance in good sunshine.

My main concern during the construction was the acoustics. The building was of course also provided with scaffolding on the inside during construction so that work could be carried out above. This did not produce any acoustics, the acoustics were quite different, that is, it was a caricature of acoustics. Now it so happens that the acoustics of the building were also conceived from the same building idea. My idea was that I had to expect that the acoustic question for the lecturer could be solved from occult research. You know how difficult it is; you cannot calculate the acoustics. You will see how it has been done, but to a certain degree of perfection in the acoustics.

You may now ask how these seven pillars, which contain the secret of the construction, are related to the acoustics. The two domes within our building are so lightly connected that they form a kind of soundboard, just as the soundboard of a violin plays a role in the richness of the sound. Of course, since the whole, both the columns and the dome, are made of wood, the acoustics will only reach perfection over the years, just as the acoustics of a violin only develop over the years. We must first find a way to have a profound effect on the material in order to be able to feel through the building idea what is now sensed as the acoustics of this building. You will understand that the acoustics must be sensed best from the organ podium. You will also see that when two people talk to each other here in the middle, an echo can be heard coming down from the ceiling. This seems to be an indication from the world essence that one should only speak from the stage or the lectern within the building and that the building itself does not actually tolerate useless chatter from any point.

Now, dear attendees, I have tried to tell you what can be said in this regard while looking at the building. I will have to supplement what I have spoken today in my presentation of the building idea, which I will give at the final event next Saturday. Then I will say what can still be said. Now we have to clear the hall for the next lecture.

Dear attendees!

With your permission, I would like to expand on what I said during the tour of the Goetheanum by saying a few more words about our building today. For many years, our anthroposophical movement held its meetings in ordinary halls, just as they are available today. And even when we were able to present dramatic performances based on the impulses of the anthroposophical worldview, starting in 1909, we initially had to limit ourselves to having these performances in ordinary theaters and under ordinary theater conditions. As our anthroposophical movement grew, a large number of our friends came up with the idea of building a house for anthroposophy. And now I was given the task, so to speak, of creating a home for the anthroposophical movement. I would like to make it clear that the order to build did not come from me, but from friends of the anthroposophical worldview.

The question now arose: how should the construction of such a house be approached? If any other society, an association with any task or objective, builds a house for itself today – and today there are all kinds of associations with all kinds of objectives – then it consults with some architect. They agree on the style in which such a house is to be built: Greek, Gothic, Renaissance or some other style. This is the usual procedure today. If anthroposophy were a movement like all the others, it could have proceeded in this way. But anthroposophy takes into account the great demands of our time for a thorough renewal of our entire culture, and therefore it could not be built in this way.

Furthermore, anthroposophy is not a one-sided body of ideas, but the body of ideas of anthroposophy arises from the whole of human experience, from deep sources of the human being. And that which lives in the ideas of anthroposophy has sprung from a primeval source, just as it did in the case of the older cultures. And just as the words of Anthroposophy can be proclaimed by human mouths and given as teachings, so too can that which flows from the sources from which the Anthroposophical ideas also flow be given for direct artistic contemplation. It is not a matter of translating or applying anthroposophical ideas to art, but rather of another branch growing out of the same source of life from which anthroposophical ideas come, and developing as art. What Anthroposophy has to reveal can be said from a podium in words that signify ideas. But it can also speak from the forms, from plastic forms, from painting, without sculpture or painting becoming symbolism or allegory, but rather within the sphere of the purely artistic. But that means nothing other than: If anthroposophy creates a physical shell for itself in which it is to work, then it must give this physical shell its own style, just as older world views have given their physical shells the corresponding style.

Take the Greek architectural style, as it has partly been realized in the Greek temple: This Greek temple has grown entirely out of the same world view that gave rise to Greek drama, Greek epic poetry, and Greek conceptions of the gods. The Greek felt that in creating his temple, he was building a dwelling for the god. And the god is again nothing other than what older cultural views saw in the human soul that had passed through death in its further development; a certain qualitative relationship between the god and the human soul that has passed through death was felt in older cultural currents. And so, as in ancient times, when people believed that the human soul had passed through death, they built dwellings for it while still on earth, thus constructing houses for the dead, they designed something similar for the older times, as the Greeks then designed in their temples at a later stage. The temple is the dwelling of the god, that is, not of the human soul that has passed through death itself, but of that soul which belongs to a different hierarchy, to a different world order.

Those who can see forms artistically can still feel in the forms that have been created by carrying and other loads for the Greek temple, as in older times the dead, who still remained on earth after death, who, so to speak, as a chthonic deity, as an earthly deity, this house was formed out of this earth; so that a continuation of the gravitational forces of the earth, as they can be felt by man when he somehow looks through his limbs, such a connection of forces as a temple was erected. The Greek temple is only to be regarded as complete when one looks at it in such a way that the statue of the god is inside. Those with a sense of form cannot imagine an empty Greek temple as complete. They can only imagine, they can feel, that this shell contains the statue of Athena, Zeus, Apollo and so on.

Let's skip some of the art historical development and look at the Gothic building. If you feel the Gothic building with its forms, with its peculiar windows that let in the light in a unique way, you actually always feel that when you enter the empty Gothic cathedral, it is not a totality, nothing complete: the Gothic cathedral is only complete when the community is inside, whose souls resonate in harmony in their effects. A Greek temple is the wrapping of the god who dwells on earth through his statue in the people; a Gothic cathedral is in all its forms that which encloses the community in harmony and with thoughts directed towards the eternal.

Greek world view, world view that created form in the Gothic, are dead worlds for humanity. Only the degenerate forces of decline that originated from them can still live today. We need a new culture, but one that is not only expressed in a one-sided way in knowledge and ideas, but one that can also express itself in a new art. And so the development of art history also points to the necessity of a building style for anthroposophy, which wants to bring a new form of culture.

The way in which Anthroposophy is to be lived is based on the idea that a higher being, which is in fact the human being himself, speaks to the person who lives in the ordinary life that unfolds between birth and death. By feeling this, the two-dome structure presented itself to me as the necessary building envelope for this basic impulse of the anthroposophical world view. In the small dome, what is inwardly large and wide is, as it were, physically compressed; in the large dome, what is inwardly less wide, what inwardly belongs to the life we lead between birth and death, is spatially expanded.

And when a person enters this structure in the sense of such an anthroposophical worldview, they must find their own being. This is based on what has just been said. And while he is inside, he must feel the structure in such a way that he, as a human being, as a microcosm, does not feel constrained by the structure, but is externally connected to the universe, to the macrocosm, through the entire structure. But if you look at the structure from the outside, you must have the feeling: Something is going on in there that brings something unearthly, something extraterrestrial, to earthly existence. Something is going on in there that is hidden in the earthly itself. So it must be possible to look at the building in terms of its overall form and also in terms of the sculptural extensions, which, as I said over there, must represent organic structure.

I ask you to view the slides from this perspective, which I will now take the liberty of showing you. Of course, they show nothing other than what you have already seen; they are only intended to conclusively present what can be seen of the building. We will start by showing an exterior view looking towards the west portal.

The building seen from a little further away (Fig. 6), looking towards the west portal.

The next picture (Fig. 7): looking more towards the south portal, the west and south portals seen more together.

Here (Fig. 2) is a view of the building from the east, with a simultaneous view of the building that contains the lighting and heating units for the building. This boiler house is, of course, particularly controversial in its form because it looks different from the buildings we are accustomed to seeing today. And this boiler house is not built according to any principle other than everything that has been built here at all. The original idea was to have a number of heating and lighting systems. That is, in a sense, the nut. And now, as with the nut, only the nutshell can arise as a covering from an inner, logical necessity, and that, when one has such a utilitarian building, one cannot proceed otherwise than that one perceives everything that must be inside this structure in its essence and then makes a shell that corresponds to this content in the same way that the nutshell corresponds to the nut.

Of course, this can only be felt; it cannot be discussed. Another person may feel differently. But if one criticizes the ground, I would like to ask the people who do so to consider what would be there if no attempt had been made – even if it was not immediately successful at the first attempt – to find the right covering for heating and lighting, but had stuck with the current one, then there might be a red chimney here. Perhaps the philistines would have liked it more, but art would have been less satisfied.

The next picture (Fig. 4) will show a view from a greater distance of the north-west portal.

The next picture (Fig. 1) is supposed to show the building from an even greater distance.

It was always my intention, despite the fact that the building was not originally intended for here, but in the middle of houses, to design it here so that it fits into the overall configuration of the landscape, the Jura landscape. I cannot, while trying to avoid any illusion, but say otherwise than that I think the building is already growing out of the plastic forms of the landscape.

Here I take the liberty of showing you the ground plan (Fig. 20), which expresses exactly what I have just said. The point was to feel through the effect, I would like to say, of one side of the human being on the other, in the ground plan and in the whole form of the building.

What now follows is a cross-section through the entire structure (Fig. 21).

Now I will try to show this cross-section; I will try to show what can be built on this cross-section by showing you the model that I originally made (Fig. 22). This is the original model of the construction, the large dome, the small dome, as I made it here from the fall of 1913. It is largely made of wax, insofar as one is dealing with plastic forms, and partly of wood.

The next one will show a side wing, seen from the side (Fig. 13), where you can particularly see the metamorphosis that the motif, which can be seen above the west portal, can undergo in a smaller form. The forms become quite different on the outside, but according to the idea, they are the same on the inside.

The next motif is depicted in the piece above the south portal, which is above the southern entrance door (Fig. 11): the same motif as on the west portal, but in a simpler, more primitive metamorphosis. Next, we present part of the room that one enters when going down into the concrete sub-room, which is intended for depositing the clothes (Fig. 23). One goes up there via the stairs. In any case, all the honored attendees have become aware of the underlying feelings behind the design of this room.

The staircase with its surroundings (Fig. 24), which we can pass over particularly quickly because they are only intended for recapitulation. The next thing I bring is a column from the interior, which one enters when one has gone up the stairs, that is, before one enters the main room (Fig. 27). Everything that is worked here is already worked in wood.

Here I present the organ motif, but not as you see it now, but as it was as a model (Fig. 30). It is a photograph of the organ motif model and you can see it here (Fig. 29) in an unfinished state at the same time. I said in the description over in the building that an attempt was made to design the whole sculpture around the organ so that the organ does not appear to be inserted into the space, but rather to have grown out of it. Here you can see the work of this organ sculpture still half-finished. First, I had to work out the general shape, and only later did I adapt the general forms to fit exactly with what emerged as the lines through the ends of the organ pipes upwards.

We now see in the next picture [the capital of the first column in the west] (Fig. 33), and I ask you to pay attention to the next three pictures. They are presented here to show two consecutive capitals. You should note that a single capital is actually not something that can be viewed on its own. The thing on which everything is based is the way in which each subsequent capital emerges from a preceding one. Therefore, I show two capitals emerging from each other [of the second and third columns] (Figs. 36, 38), and in between the two together [with the architrave above] (Fig. 37), thus each individual one in succession and in between the two together.

We see here the fourth capital (Fig. 40). Now the two capitals in succession, the fourth and fifth (Fig. 41). Now the fifth alone (Fig. 42).

Likewise, I will now show two bases that have been formed one after the other, again the individual one is not to be understood in isolation, but only as emerging from what has gone before.

The first pedestal, the fifth (Fig. 52).

Now the sixth (Fig. 53). The next picture will show the motif that arises when we look east, standing in the building and see what is in the east (Fig. 57).

A column order: This is the view after the organ motif when standing in the building, looking from east to west (Fig. 29).

Here you can see the motif carved into the wood above the curtain slit (Fig. 55). The curtain is open, we look into the small domed room, and below we can also see the carving of the small domed room, only a little indistinctly, and above it the painting.

The next one shows the motif that was carved in the small domed room: as a kind of synthetic conclusion of the individual forms (Fig. 67). If you look from the auditorium into the small domed room, you will see, immediately below the painted Christ-like figure, with Lucifer above him and Ahriman below him, a wood carving that combines all the forms that are otherwise distributed throughout the building – but initially, I would like to say, only in an organic, not yet spiritualized way.

Psychically, it is only summarized in the Christ group (Fig. 93), which is a nine-meter-high wooden group that will stand in the far east and show the representative of humanity in the middle, who can be understood as the Christ – but must be understood in the feeling – [and] has the Luciferic principle above him and the Ahrimanic principle below him. Psychically, this will synthesize all the individual forms.

I will now describe some of the motifs in the small cupola painting.

First, you see the child, depicted in an orange tone (Fig. 72), in front of the blue figure, which looks like a fist (Fig. 70), holding a tablet with the “I” – the only word that will be found in the entire structure, for very specific reasons. I would be pleased, ladies and gentlemen, if you would feel something absurd from these pictures, which, after all, could only be viewed in black and white, because here the painting is done in such a way that everything is brought out in color. You can actually only give something in the reproduction in which, according to perception, something must be missing, something absurd. Perhaps one should see here that something quite unfinished, something absurd stands before one, and then one should give oneself the answer: it must actually be so, because the thing has meaning only in color. Whoever understands the inner meaning of the colored world will thoroughly grasp that even the figurative can, to a certain degree, be created entirely out of color. Those who see the blue above in the neighborhood of the other colors will perceive it purely as a possible creation from the color that a kind of Faust figure appears here. The next picture (Fig. 71) shows Death below Faust. The modern discerning person is placed between Death, the end of life, and Birth, the other end of life, which has been depicted in the child.

The next image (Fig. 78): a kind of figure that resembles an Egyptian initiate.

The inspirers hovering above him, initiating world powers (Fig. 77). From the way the treatment is presented, it will be clear that I may say: Although Figural is distinguished here from the colored, what I have said about the creative in color still applies.

Here you can see a detail, a kind of ahriman head (Fig. 81). It is only conceivable to paint from the color used in the dome above: a peculiar brown-yellow.

Here together: Ahriman head and Lucifer head (Fig. 79). They are only truly contrasted in color. The lower one shows what is inspired by Lucifer and Ahriman when they are grasped in their objectivity, when one is not grasped by them oneself, which is then particularly effective in man or can become so because man is of a special kind, who stands to the child as indicated in the lower figure.

The next picture shows Lucifer's head on its own (Fig. 80), that is, painted; in sculpture, it looks different.

Here (Fig. 82) you see the [Germanic] man with the child, who has Ahriman and Lucifer above him, as shown earlier.

Here (Fig. 87) you can see Lucifer in a reddish-yellow painting above the representative of humanity in the central image of the small dome.

The next image (Fig. 88) then represents Ahriman under the representative of humanity – Ahriman, who is embraced with his love rays as if by a crushing lightning bolt.

This is the painted Representative of Man, that is, the head of it (Fig. 90). This (Fig. 91) represents my model as it is initially worked in profile view of the Representative of Man; while what was shown earlier is a painting, this here is a sculpture. This is the first model of the Representative of Humanity in sculpture, the Representative of Humanity who can be felt as Christ.

The next part will show the plastic group (Fig. 98). At the top left, this elemental being will show itself, an elemental being that has, to a certain extent, grown out of the forces of the rock. Below, you can see Lucifer striving upwards. The elemental being has grown out of the forces of the rock here in the wood group, whereby it becomes clear how one first dared here to work out ways of overcoming mere composition through organic design by means of asymmetry work out ways of overcoming mere composition through organic design, thus working in asymmetry. What is important here is that the form is worked out precisely from the place, with all its asymmetries, from the place where this being is located in the nine-meter-high group.

I will now show you my first Ahriman model (Fig. 99), which was created in 1915 in wax. The other Ahriman heads here are modeled after this Ahriman head. I would just like to note: This is what a person would look like if he had no heart at all and only reason. For the Ahrimanic represents the super-intellectual, the super-rational in man.

I will now show two views of the boiler house, the boiler and lighting house (Figs. 106, 107).

Now we come to the glass house below, in which you have held many a meeting here (Fig. 103). You can see the double-dome structure in a different form, a metamorphosis of the large building, metamorphosed in such a way that the two domes have to be the same size and do not adjoin each other, but are separate. I would like to illustrate the fact that everything about these buildings is individualized down to the last detail by showing you the gate of this glass house (Fig. 104), where you will see the individualization down to the stairs and the woodcarving.

Now another picture (Fig. 110 or 112), which should show how what is intended by scratching out the colored glass pane, what is created from the feel of the material, so that it can only appear in the color in question. I ask you to look at this and see for yourself that if this appears uncolored, it is hideous.

In recapitulating these things, I believe I have once again been able to point out how anthroposophy does not want to be just a science, but wants to be something that can act creatively in culture, that can speak in words, but that can also reveal itself in artistic forms. And now I just want to add at this point that perhaps it has emerged to you from what we have seen here in the building, what you have heard here in the building, what is intended and how it is connected with the signs of the times. The project that has come to fruition could only be realized through the great willingness of some of our members to make sacrifices; but the exchange rate situation in the world and the poverty of the Mediterranean countries have led us to a point where I I had to say, which was also spread by a small brochure that was sent to members: If we do not receive active help from the world, we will not be able to complete the building, but the building will have to come to a halt. If our members apply themselves with the same zeal to the completion of the building as they did to the founding of the World School Association, which is intimately connected with the building idea of Dornach, then we will soon be able to see a torso in the fall, which can be seen as a torso.

Since your time is limited, in particular the time of some of our esteemed visitors, I will not add anything further to what has been said, but ask you to come over to the building, where I will then take the liberty of saying a few closing words for this summer event.

[ 2 ] The building of the Goetheanum became necessary at a time when the anthroposophical movement had expanded to such an extent that it needed its own space. According to the whole nature of the anthroposophical movement, it could not be a question of having a building for its purposes constructed in this or that style. A movement which merely expresses itself in ideas and maxims can be wrapped up in any desired form, but not so a spiritual movement which is predisposed from the outset to let its currents flow into the whole of cultural life. The anthroposophical movement wants its impulses to flow into the artistic, religious and social spheres as well as into the scientific. When it speaks, its words, its ideas, are to come from the whole human being, and these ideas are to be only the outer language for experienced spiritual reality. But this experience of spiritual reality, of spiritual being, can also express itself in artistic forms, in outer social life, etc.

It had to be so, that in a place where that which stands behind the anthroposophical movement resounds in thoughts, resounds in words and ideas, is also revealed in the forms which surround the listeners, in the paintings which speak down from the walls.

[ 3 ] This is how it has always been when a civilisation, a culture wanted to manifest itself in the world. The content of such a culture does not form one-sidedly, but forms a cosmic or human totality. And the individual fields, science, art, etc., appear only as the individual members of such a totality, just as in an organism the individual members appear as born out of the totality of the organism.

Therefore, the anthroposophical movement had to create its own artistic style, just as it had to create a certain way of expressing itself in ideas. [ 4 ] The latter is still little considered today. It is, for example, necessary that anthroposophical spiritual-science should be expressed in a different way from what has hitherto been customarily contained in human civilisation.

Anthroposophy, for example, must in many respects depart from the principle, still habitually held today, of rigidly, one-sidedly, adopting a single point of view. Today, people are still often a materialist or a spiritualist, a realist or an idealist, and so on. For an unprejudiced, complete world-view this only means that when someone says “I am a materialist”, they are expressing just one side of reality, when someone says “I am a spiritualist”, they are expressing another side of reality. And anthroposophy requires all-sidedness. One is a materialist for material processes, a spiritualist for the spiritual, an idealist for the ideal, a realist for the real, and so on. Just as a tree, when seen from different standpoints, is always the same tree, but the representations of it are quite different, so the world can be represented differently from the most diverse points of view. [ 5 ] Therefore, in the field of anthroposophy, one must simply take this path when considering some spiritual or material aspect of reality. One then chooses a point of view from which to illuminate it, one feels and thereby shows a one-sidedness, but one then characterises the same thing from the opposite point of view. So that it is often necessary—let us say—to begin a lecture by speaking from the one side, and then to let the style of the lecture flow over into a characterisation using the converse forms of thought.

But this can also be necessary in an individual sentence! [ 6 ] And something else is necessary for the anthroposophical world-view. A world-view which adheres to the outer, naturalistic aspect, it can preferably work subjectively in, let us say, for example, one which is juxtaposed to it. Anthroposophy must make many things fluid, which are otherwise presented with rigid outlines, so that the sentence becomes elastic, inwardly mobile.

One then experiences that people call this style "terrible" because they have not got used to the fact that a particular spirituality also demands a particular form of expression. [ 7 ] However, it also happens, and this may perhaps be said, that from some quarters, spiritual-scientific content is taken up but clothed in the stylistic form which people are accustomed to today. Then, of course, it looks like a person wearing clothes that do not fit. Such presentations of anthroposophical content, which look like a person wearing ill-fitting clothes, are not even very rare today.

But all of this is only a sign that with anthroposophy something is to be created which is not only a new instance, a new standpoint, but which is a new, complete world-conception.

[ 8 ] And this is connected with the fact that the style, the artistic, architectural, painting and sculptural style, which had to be used in the Goetheanum, had to stand out from what had hitherto existed in the world in terms of style. In accordance with the fact that anthroposophy expresses the spiritual content of the present, which must represent progress in comparison with the spiritual content of earlier times, it was necessary to transform the old architectural styles, which were based on geometry, symmetry, a certain regularity, in short, on that which has a mathematical character, into an organic architectural style, a style which passes from the geometric-dynamic into the organic-living.

[ 9 ] I can well understand that those who feel firmly rooted in the older styles of architecture, and who see in these older styles something which they once had brought to a certain understanding, feel that what is now departing in such a radical way from everything they were accustomed to before is dilettantish. I can fully understand that. But we had to take the risk of transforming the more mathematical-dynamic style into an organic-living style.

This may still have happened as imperfectly as possible today, but a beginning had to be made. And it is as an expression of these efforts that the "Goetheanum" confronts you.

[ 10 ] Whoever approaches the "Goetheanum" from any direction will already find in its outer form that it is, without falling into abstract symbolism or arid allegory, a revelation of the particular spiritual life which wants to realise itself here. This spiritual life is more concerned with the human being as an expression of the world, a revelation of the world, than earlier stages of our human civilisation have been. This is expressed in the way the building is divided into two parts.

[ 11 ] In our present age, the human being is more dependent on sensory impressions than was the case in earlier times. In Greece, for example, human beings still had a life that perceived thoughts in the external world in the same way as we perceive only colours or sounds today, or sensory impressions in general. Just as we see red today, for example, the Greek still saw a thought expressing itself. The Greek did not have the feeling that the thought was something that they formed in their inner being, that they experienced in their inner being as separate from external reality. The separation of the human being, and with it the increase in the individuality of the human being, has progressed in the course of human evolution.

I explained this in the first chapter of my "Riddles of Philosophy". And so, it was quite natural—as I said, without symbolism, without allegorising—to perceive the building as something in two parts: as one part that contains within itself that which the human being experiences more when turned inwards, that which the human being experiences when contemplatively turned inwards, and the other part which the human being experiences when turned outward towards the world. This complete architectural idea of Dornach is not somehow thought out, symbolised, or spun from groundless thoughts, but is purely felt. It had to become so, this building, if it was thought and felt as that which should be in it. Entirely in accordance with the natural principle which I have already characterised on another occasion during these days. Just as the nutshell gets its form from the same forces which formed the nut inside, just as one can only feel that the nutshell corresponds to the nut that is inside it, so also this shell had to be the sheath for what pulsates here as art, as knowledge.

I have often used another comparison that looks more trivial, but I did not mean it trivially. I said, the building in Dornach must be like what they call a Gugelhupf mould in Vienna, pardon the expression. A Gugelhupf is a special kind of cake, a baked cake that has a special shape, baked from flour and eggs and many other beautiful things. And it has to be baked in a mould. This mould must be formed in a very specific way, because it is precisely this mould that gives the Gugelhupf its shape. So, there must always be a lovely Gugelhupf mould around the cake: that is, it must be there in the first place. The cake is baked in it, so the mould must be conceived and felt in such a way that the right thing can be baked.

Anthroposophy strives to bring into a living flow the ideas which are more adapted to the fixed forms of nature, and thus to bring into a living flow the mechanical-geometric style of architecture. Therefore, when you enter the building and look at its various areas, you will find everywhere that the attempt has been made to continue the geometric-symmetrical design in such a way that organic forms or forms reminiscent of organic forms are present everywhere.

First go to the main door, you will find that there is something like an organic form above the door. This organic form is not felt in a naturalistic way, by reproducing this or that organic thing, but is based on a living surrender to organic creation in general.

One cannot, as mere naturalists do, obtain a stylistic form by imitating leaf-like, flower-like, horn-like or eye-like forms, but by bringing oneself, with one's own soul-life, into such an inner movement as corresponds to the creation of the organic. Then, when one erects a building, which of course is not a plant or an animal, then, when the whole is conceived from the organic-living, natural forms do not arise, but forms that remind one of the natural, and which nowhere imitate the natural, but which remind one of the same.

And when you have entered the building, then go through the gallery, you will find certain forms which are intended to serve as heating elements. These forms are shaped in such a way that you have the feeling that they are growing out of the earth, that there is a living growth force in them, something that is not a plant, not an animal, but something that is growing, something organic. That takes shape. That even takes shape in such a dual form. It is something like beings speaking to each other, and their mutual relationship is also expressed.

All of this, by itself, creates according to the principle of Goethean metamorphosis, which was first created by Goethe in order to gain a cognitive overview of the organic. The organic is such that it repeats certain forms, but it does not repeat them in the same way. Goethe expresses this in such a way that in the living-organic the individual organs, let us say the leaves of a plant from the bottom up into the flower, the stamens, the pistils, and into the fruit organs, are according to the idea the same, but in their outer forms, appear in the most varied ways.

When one delves into the living, one does indeed have to form things in such a way that something which is only taken hold of spiritually, ideally, can, in its external shape, form itself in the most manifold ways. This, in turn, can be led up into the artistic, whereas Goethe first of all developed it cognitively to comprehend the organs, and must be led up into the artistic if the geometric, symmetrical, dynamic style of architecture is to be transferred into the organic style of architecture. The essential thing in such an organic style of architecture is that the whole is not only a unity through the repetition of the individual parts, but is also a unity as a whole. This means that each individual element that is there, must be as it can only be in that place.

Just think, my dear guests, your earlobe—a small organ on you, it can only be at that place where it appears on the organism. It cannot be anywhere else on the organism. But it also cannot be formed in any other way than it is there. This earlobe could not be where the big toe is now, nor could it be shaped here like the big toe. In an organism, each element is in its place and can only be shaped in the way it is shaped in that place.

You will find this adhered to in this building. Wherever you look, you will feel (certainly, individual things are still imperfect, but this is the idea of the building) that the place for each individual thing is only found out of the whole and it can only be in this place.

If you look at the balustrades of the staircase with their curves, you will see that the curves are formed in a quite definite way where the building opens outwards, where nothing can be held in place, so to speak, by the forces; on the other hand, the forms dam up towards the building, they contract, as is also quite the case with the organic.

Therefore, the venture had to be undertaken to replace the columns and pillars with something organic in design. So, you see the attempt: in the staircase you see the balustrades supported by organic forms that appear as supports, which in turn are not modelled on anything natural, but which are found out of the architectural idea itself. And each individual thickening, each individual thinning, then again, the circumference of such a pillar-like structure are absolutely conceived in their size in the sense of the whole, and again conceived in such a way as they must be in their place.

I can understand that something like the two organically formed pillars in the concrete porch still seem strange to those who are not used to such things. A critic once went into this building and found it strange that such a thing should be placed there. He could only think: something must have been copied!—There is nothing imitated at all, the whole thing is just formed out of the architectural idea through original feeling. Nothing at all is copied. But the critic, who prefers to stick to the old, does not like to get involved in this creative-productive process. And so, it occurred to him: this must be an elephant's foot. But it seems that with one eye he saw an elephant's foot out there, but with the other eye it didn't seem like an elephant's foot, because as an elephant's foot it's too small for the building. What is too small for something appears rickety in the organic, and that is why he said with a strange inner contradiction: one sees "rickety elephant feet" in the anteroom!

The lower part of the building is made of concrete. Even today, when building in concrete, it is necessary to first find the forms out of the concrete material. This is something that is of the utmost importance for artistic creation: that one must build out of the feeling of the material, out of the feeling for the material. You have to build differently out of wood than out of any stone material. And of course, you have to create differently out of concrete than you would out of marble.

When you form sculpturally and you form out of stone, you have to consider, for example, that which is raised in the form. When you work out of the stone, you have to work out the elevations, the convexities in particular. If you are shaping the eyes of a sculptural figure of a human being, and you have stone as your material, then direct your attention to the elevations, to the convexities, and work the whole eye out of the convexities. If you make a figure in wood, you cannot proceed in this way, then you must direct your attention everywhere to the depressions, to the concavities, and you must, as it were, carve out what is becoming deeper from the wood. This must be out of feeling. It must come from the feeling for the material.

For concrete, one must find very particular forms. Our friends the Großheintz, provided us with the site for this building, and the house that is built outside for Dr Großheintz and his family is made of concrete. For this house, this very special concrete style had first to be used, as it still can today, given the imperfections. Perhaps it is precisely in such a building that one can see the struggle for an architectural style, for an artistic style out of the material.

This aspiration was therefore the basis for the lower part of the building, which is made of concrete. The upper part is made of wood. When you go up the stairs, you enter the anteroom. And here you can already see how the ceiling and the side walls are formed differently from what you were used to. And I would like to mention that, in accordance with this new architectural style, the details have also been given a different meaning than in previous styles. This is expressed, for example, in the treatment of the wall.

What is a wall in buildings of the past? That which closes off to the outside. Here the wall does not close off to the outside, here the wall becomes, to a certain extent, transparent to feeling, it does not close off, but opens feeling to the vastness of the world. There is a profound difference between the formation of the wall as we have been accustomed to it up to now and the formation of the wall here. Everywhere else, the formation of walls closes you off from the world. But here you should have the feeling that you are not closed off. Just as you can see through glass, you feel artistically through the forms that are artistically created, and you feel in harmony with the whole cosmos.

We were therefore able to use artificial lighting for the entire building. One might have the feeling that compared to the open buildings of Greece, something like this, which reflects artificial lighting, is like a closed off cave. Well, that may be, but that is due to the conditions of modern life. We are not within the culture of ancient Greece.

But if on the one hand, as is always the case in anthroposophy, one accepts our present civilisation, if in this way one relates quite positively to our present civilisation, then one must in turn also draw on all the consequences of this civilisation. That is why the walls here do not close off, but open one in the spirit to the whole cosmos. Even the paintings on the ceilings should not be such that they merely shine inwards with what they express in their colours, so that one merely has a painted ceiling that tells one something inwards. That should not be. Such a ceiling is first thought of in this way: there is the ceiling, there is the human being. It is painted in such a way that what is painted confronts you. That is not the case here. Here the colour is placed on the wall for the purpose of looking through the painting and having a connection with the whole cosmos. This is carried through to the physical form. You can see it in the windows that close off the building down here.

These windows are designed in such a way that they are created from single-coloured glass panes according to a method that one could call glass engraving: a single-coloured glass pane, from which the form is carved out with a diamond bit. This sheet of glass, when it is finished and placed somewhere, is of course not a work of art, any more than a score is a work of art. Only when it is put in its right place and the light of the sun shines through, then the work of art is there. Only with outer nature, with the outer world, does it make sense.

And so, it is with all the details here: they only have meaning together with the whole world, with the totality of the world. There is no need to ramble on in thought, interpreting this or that in this or, that way. One should feel, completely naturally, naively, then one will find one's way best here in this building. Because that's how the whole thing is felt. Better still than to speak of the architectural idea of Dornach, I could speak of the architectural feeling of Dornach.

It has been said many times: "Up there on the Dornach hill, there is a building with all kinds of symbols.” There is not a single symbol here. Everything is poured out in artistic forms, everything is felt, nothing is thought. However, all kinds of symbols live in the imagination of some people. Yes, I could also imagine that some anthroposophists, who still have some theosophical airs about them, have even been annoyed by the fact that there is no symbolism here at all, that nothing symbolic can be spun from fantastic thoughts here, but that everything is to be understood in a purely artistic way.

It was precisely on this occasion that the real way in which the anthroposophical impulse streams into art had to be shown. First of all, a movement of this kind, which leads to the spiritual, is naturally predisposed, as is the case with sectarian movements, to seek a meaning, an inner meaning in everything.

You experience the most amazing things there. We have performed mystery plays in Munich, in which characters appear, created characters, which one should understand as they walk across the stage. I was asked whether this character in these plays meant the etheric body, another manas, another buddhi. Yes, there are even treatises that have emerged from the theosophical movement, where "Hamlet" is interpreted in such a way that the individual characters, Hamlet himself—mean this or that: one character is the etheric body, another the astral body, another manas, another buddhi. Please forgive me for not being able to explain this in detail with regard to Hamlet, for I have never been able to really read through such a treatise.

And so, it was naturally also something unfortunate that one came into the various anthroposophical working groups where there were still theosophical airs and graces, and one found all kinds of symbolic designs, black crosses with seven red splotches, which were supposed to represent roses, trafficked all around. One imagined there was something great about it! The whole thing was enough to drive one crazy! But these are—one might say—the dross that first brings forth a movement. That's what it's all about, that real artistic feeling came out of all this dross, that something was attempted in which there is nothing at all of a pale symbolism, of an empty allegory, but where at least the attempt is made to shape everything artistically.

It is precisely the artistic that then becomes natural. You can see that in these columns. Column capitals are usually constructed according to the principle of geometric repetition. Column capitals usually repeat themselves. An organic style of architecture does not allow this. How did these column capitals, the architraves above them and the plinths, come about? They came about through the real incorporation of the principle of organic growth.

Here at the entrance—the simplest capital: a form is attempted that descends from above, another form that comes up to meet it. But all this is not thought out, but every surface, every line of the form is felt. And if one advances from the first column to the second column, and looks at the capital: it is the same feeling translated into the artistic, to which one must devote oneself to the sense of Goethean metamorphosis, when one has the simply formed leaves at the bottom of a plant and must find the transition to the leaves somewhat higher up. It reshapes itself, metamorphoses itself.

But if you look at these capitals, you will see that they really represent artistically that which appears so distinctly in abstract thoughts in the modern worldview: evolution, development. The second capital develops from the first, and so on.

But one peculiarity confronts you. If you look at the successive capitals, it contradicts the abstract idea of evolution, as it is often expressed. You will also find in Herbert Spencer, for example, the idea of evolution expressed in such a way that the first simply differentiates, then integrates again. But that is not how it is. That contradicts the natural course of evolution. Whoever delves into natural evolution will find that evolution rises to certain complicated forms, then again becomes simple, and the perfect is not that which is the most complicated, but the simple into which the complicated has again been transformed.

If I am to represent this in a simple way, I would have to represent it as follows: The middle form is the more complicated, the last form is the most perfect. You can see this, for example, in the evolution of the eye. The eyes of the lower animals are relatively simple, undifferentiated. In the middle series of animals, you find very complicated eyes, with the blade process and the fan inside the eye. These organs are again dissolved inside the human eye: the human eye is more perfect than that of the lower, the middle animal stage, but again more simplified. That which is in the middle stage is also spiritually within in the simplified form, but the perfect stage is again simplified for external observation. This simplification, however, is such that, as is the case with the capitals of the columns, with the architraves above, one feels in the simple that it has become, that it has been infused with that which was complicated.

I did not arrive at this design—if I may make this remark—when I worked out the model of this building, by trying to reproduce this abstract thought, which I have just expressed, externally in a symbolic way, but I arrived at it by surrendering myself to the creative forces of nature and trying to form something out of the same creative forces from which nature itself shapes. And that is how these forms came into being.

The most important thing that one encounters in the process is this: one creates quite naïve forms out of feeling. When they are finished, they show you all kinds of things that you did not intend to put into them at the beginning, just as natural forms show you all kinds of things that you discover in them. If, for example, you take the simple forms of base and capital there, and you accordingly make them somewhat elastic, then you can put the convexity of the first form into the concave part here. What is convex there is concave here, what is concave there is convex here. So that I later concluded—I did not intend it—that in terms of convexity and concavity the first column corresponds to the seventh column, the second column to the sixth column, the third column to the fifth column, and the middle one stands for itself.

That is precisely what is characteristic of artistic creation: that what one initially has in the mind is not everything that one then puts into the object. One is actually outside of oneself when creating artistically. One has only a little of what the creative forces are in one's consciousness. You create with the little that is alive, which then goes into the material. But what emerges surprises you, because you don't actually create alone, because you create together with the productive forces of the cosmos.

And purely out of feeling, the individual parts then acquire the character by which they fit into the whole, just as the members of an organism fit into the totality of the organism.

Look at this lectern here. You must feel, when you look at it, that it is a continuation of what proceeds from the mouth as the spoken word: there the words come down to you, but these forms say the same thing.

And again, if you take the columns as they are leaning here and think further about their form, if you combine them here: then the combination again becomes what stands here as a lectern. On the one hand, it leans towards the auditorium, on the other hand, it is a conclusion of what is present in the auditorium. The individual forms are conceived on this basis. However, the geometric-mathematical style of older forms is thereby transformed into a spatial-musical quality. But that, in turn, means something for human evolution, that the geometrical gradually passes over into the musical, so that the musical also confronts us in space.

However, if one wants to grasp this idea in its full livingness, one must not attach too much importance to the fact that the musical can be expressed in mathematical formulae. As a one-sided abstract scholar, one can be delighted when, let us say, a sequence of tones can be expressed by their mathematically calculated pitches and tonal ratios; one can feel that one has only now translated it into real knowledge. One can also feel it differently. One can also feel that when one has transferred the musical experience into the mathematical, one has buried the music, and that one finally has the corpse of the musical in the mathematical formulae.

These things must really be taken seriously here. The cognitive must be lifted up into artistic experience. Only by attempting this could these forms come about.

This Goetheanum is already felt to accord in many ways with Goethean impulses, but not according to the Goethean impulses that died with Goethe in 1832 within the physical world, but according to the impulses of that Goethe who is still lives today. Not as he is, however, according to the sense of ordinary Goethe scholars, but he is truly the reality of Goethe. For today's Goethe scholars, the very name "Goetheanum" is an abomination. One can understand that. The most one can do is to reply in private that everything that exists today as the "Goethe-Bund" and the "Goethe-Gesellschaft" is in turn—well, in private, you don't have to bring it out in the open—quite fatal to you. But something should be felt here of what Goethe meant when he travelled to Italy, out of a deep longing to find more intimate artistic impulses, to find the real essence of art. After looking at the works of art he saw in Italy, still feeling the after-effects of the Greek artistic principle, he wrote to his friends in Weimar: After what I see here in the works of art, I believe I have discovered the secret of Greek artistic creation. The Greeks followed the same laws in their artistic creation that nature itself follows.—And the pure abstract philosophy, which to his delight he encountered in Weimar through Herder, from the works of Spinoza, e.g. from the work "God" by Spinoza, this spiritual, essential quality in the world, this is what Goethe felt when he was confronted with the ideal works of art, and he wrote to his friends: There is necessity, there is God. And among his sayings we find the characteristic one: To whom nature reveals her open secrets, feels a deep longing for her most worthy interpreter, art.

That which appears in forms can be the same for a completely contemplated artistic impulse as that which expresses itself in thoughts. Only then the thoughts must be full of life and the forms must breathe spirit.