The Rudolf Steiner Archive

The year 1924 in which these lectures were given was the last of Rudolf Steiner's active life as a lecturer and was indeed cut short by illness at the end of September. But during those nine months he gave an almost unbelievable variety of lectures, including courses on Life after Death, on Karmic relations, on Truth and Error in Spiritual Investigation, on Christian Festivals, on Eurythmy in its two aspects as interpreter of both Speech and Music, on Speech and Drama, on Medicine (for Doctors) on Theology (for Priests) and on Agriculture (for Farmers). Many of these were given in Dornach in the so-called “Carpenter's Shop” where work had been done for the first Goetheanum and close to which the new Goetheanum was rising from the ashes of the old. Others, however, were given in places as far apart as Stuttgart, Berne, Prague, Koberwitz, Paris, Arnheim, Torquay and London.

In addition to the great variety of subjects listed above were five courses on Education, given in five different places, of which that here printed was the penultimate, the last being the course for English teachers in Torquay, published under the title The Kingdom of Childhood.

When Steiner was in Torquay for this last course, he remarked to the teachers for whom he gave it that the English do not like long names and titles. The full German title of the lectures in this volume is The Educational Value of the Knowledge of Man and the Cultural Value of Education. Prompted, as it may be said, by Rudolf Steiner himself the Translator and Publishers have ventured to give them the shorter title of Human Values in Education. For this is their constantly recurring theme. We make educational programmes and systems but in making them we constantly forget the human spiritual and cultural values by which the child, the teacher and civilisation itself can only truly live. In Steiner's view it is man who gives significance to the world: and the lectures contain the terrible indictment that “the world significance of modern education is that it is gradually undermining the significance of the world.” The lectures show the way to restoring to man the significance of the world and to the world the significance of man.

A.C.H.

It affords me the deepest satisfaction to find that here in England you are ready to consider founding a school on Anthroposophical lines.¹ This may truly signify a momentous and incisive event in the history of Education. In pronouncing such words as these one may well be accused of lack of humility, but there really is something very special underlying all that is to come about for the Art of Education as based on Anthroposophy. And I am overjoyed that an impulse has arisen to form the first beginnings of a College of Teachers, teachers who from the depths of their hearts do indeed recognise the very special quality of what we call Anthroposophical Education. It is no fanatical idea of reform that prompts us to speak of a renewal in educational life, but we are urged to do so out of our whole feeling and experience of how mankind is evolving in civilisation and cultural life.

In speaking thus we are fully aware of the immense amount that has been done for education by distinguished persons in the course of the nineteenth century, and especially in the last few decades. But although all this was undertaken with the very best intentions and every possible method has been tried, we are bound to state that a real knowledge of the human being was lacking. These ideas about education arose at a time when no real knowledge of man was possible owing to the materialism that prevailed in all departments of life and indeed had done so since the fifteenth century. When, therefore, people expounded their ideas on educational reform they were building on sand or on something even less stable; rules of education were laid down based on all sorts of emotions and opinions as to what life ought to be. It was impossible to know man in his wholeness and to ask the question: How can we bring to revelation in a man what lies, god-given, within his nature after he has descended from pre-earthly life into earthly life? This is the kind of question which can be raised in an abstract way, but which can only be answered concretely on the basis of a true knowledge of man in body, soul and spirit.

Now this is how the matter stands for present-day humanity. The knowledge of the body is highly developed. By means of Biology, Physiology and Anatomy we have acquired a very advanced knowledge of the human body; but as soon as we wish to acquire a knowledge of the soul, we, with our present-day views, are confronted with a complete impasse, for everything relating to the soul is merely a name, a word. For even with regard to such things as thinking, feeling and willing we find no reality in the ordinary Psychology of today. We still use the words thinking, feeling and willing, but there is no conception of what takes place in the soul in reference to these things. What the so-called psychologists have to say about thinking, feeling and willing is in reality mere dilettantism. It is just as though a physiologist were to speak in a general way of the human lungs or liver, making no distinction between the liver of a child and that of an old person. In the science of the body we are very far advanced. No physiologist would fail to note the difference between the lungs of a child and the lungs of an old man, or indeed between the hair of a child and the hair of an old man. He will note all these differences. But thinking, feeling and willing are mere words which are uttered without conveying any sense of reality. For instance it is not known that willing, as it appears in the soul, is young, while thinking is old; that in fact thinking is willing grown old, and willing is a youthful thinking in the soul. Thus everything pertaining to the soul contains youthfulness and old age, existing in man simultaneously.

Naturally, even in the soul of a young child we have the old thinking and the young willing together at the same time. There they are contemporaneous, and indeed these things are realities. But today no one knows how to speak of these realities of the soul in the same way as he can of the realities of the body, so that as teachers of children we are quite helpless. Suppose you were a physician and yet were unable to distinguish between a child and an old man! You would of course feel helpless. But as there is no science of the soul the teacher is unable to speak about the human soul as the modern physician can of the human body. And as for the spirit, there is no such thing! One cannot speak of it, there are no longer even any words for it. There is but the single word “spirit,” and that does not convey much. There are no other words in which to describe it.

In our present-day life we cannot therefore venture to speak of a knowledge of Man. Here one may easily feel that all is not well with our education; certain things must be improved upon. Yes, but how can we improve matters, if we know nothing at all of Man? Therefore all the ideas for the improvement of education may be inspired by the best will in the world, but they possess no knowledge of Man.

This can even be noticed in our own circles. For it is Anthroposophy which at the present time can help men to acquire this knowledge of man. I am not saying this from any sectarian or fanatical standpoint but it is so that he who seeks knowledge of man must find it in Anthroposophy. It is obvious that knowledge of the human being must be the basis for a teacher's work; that being so, he must acquire this knowledge for himself, and the natural thing will be that he acquires it through Anthroposophy. If, therefore, we are asked what the basis of a new method of education should be, our answer is: Anthroposophy must be that basis. But how many people there are, even in our own circles, who try to disclaim Anthroposophy as much as possible, and to propagate an education without letting it be known that Anthroposophy is at the back of it.

There is an old German proverb which says: Please wash me but don't make me wet! Many projects are undertaken in this spirit but we must above all both speak and think truthfully. So if anyone asks you how to become a good teacher you must say to him: Make Anthroposophy your foundation. You must not deny Anthroposophy, for it is only by this means that you can acquire your knowledge of Man.

We have no knowledge of Man in our present cultural life. We have theories, but no living insight, either into the world, life or men. A true insight will lead to a true practice in life, but we have no such practical life today. Do you know who are the most unpractical people at the present time? It is not the scientists, for although they are clumsy and ignorant of life, these faults can be clearly seen in them. But in those who are the worst theorists and who are the least practical in life these things are not observed. These are the so-called practical persons, the commercial and industrial men and bankers, the men who rule the practical affairs of life with theoretical thoughts. A bank today is entirely composed of thoughts arising from theories. There is nothing practical in A; but people do not notice this, for they say: It must be so, that is the way practical people work. So they adapt themselves to it, and no one notices the harm that is really being done in life because it is all worked in so unpractical a way. The “practical life” of today is absolutely unpractical in all its forms.

This will only be noticed when an ever increasing number of destructive elements enter our civilisation and break it up. If this goes on the World War will have been nothing but a first step, an introduction. In reality the World War arose out of this unpractical thinking, but that was only an introduction. The point now at stake is that people should not remain asleep any longer, more particularly in the domain of teaching and education. Our task is to introduce an education which concerns itself with the whole man, body, soul and spirit; and these three principles should be known and recognised.

Now in so short a course as that to be given here, we can only speak of the most important aspects of body, soul and spirit, in such a way as will give a direction to education and teaching. That is what we shall do. But the first requirement, as will be seen from the start, is that my hearers shall really endeavour to direct their observation, even externally, to the whole man.

How are the basic principles of education composed in these days? The child is observed, and then we are told, the child is like this or like that, and must learn something. Then one thinks how best to teach so that the child can learn such and such a thing quickly. But what is a child, in reality? A child remains a child for at most twelve years, or possibly longer, but that is not the point. The point is that he must always be thought of as becoming an older human being some day. Life as a whole is a unity, and we must not only consider the child but the whole of life; we must look at the whole human being.

Suppose I have a pale child in the school. A pale child should be an enigma to me, a riddle to be solved. There may be several reasons for his pallor, but the following is a possible one. The child may have come to school with some colour in his cheeks, and have become pale under my treatment of him. I must admit this, and be able to judge as to why he has become pale; I may perhaps come to see that I have given this child too much to learn by heart. I may have worked his memory too hard. If I do not admit this possibility, if I am a short-sighted teacher, having the idea that a method must be carried through regardless of whether the child grows rosy or pale thereby, that the method must just be persevered with, then the child will remain pale.

If, however, I were able to observe this same child at the age of fifty, I should probably find him suffering from terrible sclerosis or arterial hardening, the cause of which will be unknown. This is the result of my having overloaded the memory of the child when he was eight or nine years old. For you see, the man of fifty and the child of eight or nine belong together, they are one and the same human being. We must know what the result will be, forty or fifty years later, of our management of the child; for life is a unity, it is all connected. It is not enough merely to know the child, we must know the human being.

Again, I take great trouble to give a class as good definitions as I can, so that the concepts shall be firmly grasped, and the child will know: this is a lion, that is a cat, and so on. But is the child to retain these concepts to the day of his death? In our present age there is no feeling for the fact that the soul too must grow! If I furnish a child with a concept that is to remain “correct” (and “correctness” is of course all that matters!), a concept which he is to retain throughout his life, that is just as though I bought him a pair of shoes when he was three years old, and each successive year had shoes made of the same size. The child will grow out of them. This however is something that people notice and it would be considered brutal to try and keep his feet small enough to go on wearing the same sized shoes! Yet this is what we are doing with the soul. We furnish the child with ideas which do not grow with him. We give him concepts which are intended to be permanent; we worry him with fixed concepts that are to remain unchanged, whereas we should be giving him concepts capable of expansion. We are constantly squeezing the soul into the ideas we give the child.

These are some of the ways in which we may begin to answer the challenge that in education we must take the whole human being into consideration, the growing, living human being, and not just an abstract idea of man.

It is only when we have the right conception of man's life as a connected whole that we come to realise how different from each other the various ages are. The child is a very different being before shedding its first teeth from what it becomes afterwards. Of course, you must not interpret this in crudely formed judgments, but if we are capable of making finer distinctions in life, we can observe that the child is quite different before and after the change of teeth.

Before the change of teeth we can still see quite clearly at work the effects of the child's habits of life before birth or conception, in its pre-earthly existence in the spiritual world. The body of the child acts almost as though it were spirit, for the spirit which has descended from the spiritual world is still fully active in a child in the first seven years of its life. You will say: A fine sort of spirit! It has become quite boisterous; for the child is rampageous, awkward and incompetent. Is all this to be attributed to the spirit belonging to his pre-earthly life? Well, my dear friends, suppose all you clever and well-brought-up people were suddenly condemned to remain always in a room having a temperature of 144° Fahrenheit? You couldn't do it! It is even harder for the spirit of the child, which has descended from the spiritual worlds, to accustom itself to earthly conditions. The spirit, suddenly transported into a completely different world, with the new experience of having a body to carry about, acts as we see the child act. Yet if you know how to observe and note how each day, each week, each month, the indefinite features of the face become more definite, the awkward movements become less clumsy and the child gradually accustoms himself to his surroundings, then you will realise that it is the spirit from the pre-earthly world which is endeavouring to make the child's body gradually more like itself. We shall understand why the child is as he is, if we observe him in this way, and we shall also understand that it is the descended spirit which is acting as we see it within the child's body.

Therefore for one who is initiated into the mysteries of the spirit there is nothing that can fill him with such wonder and delight as to observe a little child. In so doing one learns not of the earth, but of heaven; and this not only in the so-called “good children.” In their case, as a rule, the bodies have already become heavy, even in infancy. The spirit cannot properly take hold of the body; such children are quiet; they do not scream and rush about, they sit still and make no noise. The spirit is not active within them, because their bodies offer such resistance. It is very often the case that the bodies of the so-called good children offer resistance to the spirit.

In the less well-behaved children who make a great deal of healthy noise, who shout properly, and give a lot of trouble, the spirit is active, though of course in a clumsy way, for it has been transported from heaven to earth; but the spirit is active within them. It is making use of the body. We may even regard the wild screams of a child as most enthralling, simply because we thereby experience the martyrdom the spirit has to endure when it descends into a child-body.

Yes, my dear friends, it is easy to be a grown-up person—easy for the spirit, I mean, for the body has then been made ready, it no longer offers the same resistance. It is quite easy to be a full-grown person but extremely difficult to be a child. The child himself is not aware of this because his consciousness is not yet awake. It is still asleep, but if the child possessed the consciousness he had before descending to earth he would soon notice this difficulty: if the child were still living in this pre-earthly consciousness his life would be a terrible tragedy, a really terrible tragedy. For you see, the child comes down to earth; before this he has been accustomed to a spiritual substance from which he drew his spiritual life. He was accustomed to deal with that spiritual substance. He had prepared himself according to his Karma, according to the result of previous lives. He was fully contained within his own spiritual garment, as it were. Now he has to descend to earth. I should like to speak quite simply about these things, and you must excuse me if I speak of them as I would if I were describing the ordinary things of the earth. One can speak of them thus because they are so. Now when a human being is to descend, he must choose a body on the earth.

And indeed this body has been prepared throughout generations. Some father and mother had a son or a daughter, and these again a son or a daughter, and so on. Thus through heredity a body is produced which he must now occupy. He must draw into it and dwell therein; but in so doing he is suddenly faced with quite different conditions. He clothes himself in a body that has been prepared by a number of generations.

Of course, even from the spiritual world the human being can work on the body so that it may not be altogether unsuitable, yet as a rule the body received is not so very suitable after all. For the most part one does not fit at all easily into such a body. If a glove were to fit your hand as badly as the body generally fits the soul, you would discard it at once. You would never think of putting it on. But when you come down from the spiritual world needing a body, you just have to take one; and this body you retain until the change of teeth. For it is a fact that every seven or eight years our external physical substance is completely changed, at least in the essentials though not in all respects. Our first teeth for instance are changed, the second set remain. This is not the case with all the members of the human organism; some parts, even more important than the teeth, undergo change every seven years as long as a man is on the earth. If the teeth were to behave in the same way as these we should have new teeth at seven, fourteen, and again at twenty-one years of age, and so on, and there would be no dentists in the world.

Thus certain hard organs remain, but the softer ones are constantly being renewed. In the first seven years of our life we have a body which is given to us by outer nature, by our parents and so on; it is a model. The soul occupies the same relation to this body as an artist to a model which he has to copy. We have been gradually shaping the second body out of the first body up to the change of teeth. It takes seven years to complete the process. This second body which we ourselves have fashioned on the model given us by our parents only appears at the end of the first seven years of life, and all that external science says today about heredity and so forth is mere dilettantism compared to the reality. In reality we receive at birth a model body which is there with us for seven years, although during the very first years of life it begins to die out and fall away. The process continues, until at the change of teeth we have our second body.

Now there are weak individualities who are weakly when they descend to earth; these form their second body in which they live after the change of teeth, as an exact model of the first. People say that they take after their parents by inheritance, but this is not true. They make their own second body according to the inherited model. It is only during the first seven years of our life that our body is really inherited, but naturally we are all weak individualities and we copy a great deal. There are, however, also strong individualities descending to earth, and they too inherit a good deal in the first seven years. That one can see in the teeth. Their first teeth are still soft and subject to heredity, but when children have good strong second teeth that can crack things easily, then they are strong individualities, developing in the proper way. There are children who at ten years of age are just like children of four—mere imitators. Others are quite different, the strong individuality stirs within them. The model is used, but afterwards they form an individual body for themselves.

Such things must be noted. All talk of heredity will not lead you far unless you realise how matters stand. Heredity, in the sense in which it is spoken of by science, only applies to the first seven years of man. After that age, whatever he inherits he inherits of his own free will, we might say; he imitates the model, but in reality the inherited part is thrown off with the first body at the change of teeth.

The soul nature which came down from the spiritual world is very strong in us, and it is clumsy at first because it has to become accustomed to external nature. Yet in reality everything about a child, even the worst naughtiness, is very fascinating. Of course we must follow the conventions to some extent and not allow all naughtiness to pass unreproved; but we can see better in children than anywhere else how the spirit of man is tormented by the demons of degeneracy which are there in the world. The child has to enter a world into which he so often does not fit. If we were conscious of this process, we should see what a terribly tragic thing it is. When one knows something of Initiation, and is able to see consciously what lays hold of this body in the child, it really is terrible to see how he must find his way into all the complications of bones and ligaments which he has to form. It really is a tragic sight. The child himself knows nothing of this, and that is a good thing, for the Guardian of the Threshold protects him from any such knowledge.

But the teacher should know of it. He must look on with the deepest reverence, knowing that here a being whose nature is of God and the spirit has descended to earth. The essential thing is that we should know this, that we should fill our hearts with this knowledge, and from this starting point undertake our work as educators.

There are great differences between the manner of man which one is in the spiritual-soul life before descending to earth, and that which one has to become here below. The teacher should be able to judge of this because he has before him the child in whom are the after-effects of the spiritual world. Now there is one thing which the child has difficulty in acquiring, because the soul had nothing of this in the spiritual life.

On earth man is very little able to direct his attention to the inner part of his body; that is only done by the natural scientists and the physicians. They know exactly what goes on inside man within the limits of his skin, but you will find that most people do not even know exactly where their heart is! They generally point to the wrong place, and if in the course of his social life today it were required of a man to explain the difference between the lobes of the right and left lungs, or to describe the duodenum, very curious answers would be given. Now before he comes down into earthly life a man takes but little interest in the external world, but he takes so much the more interest in what he may call his spiritual inner being. In the life between death and a new birth man's interests are almost entirely centred on his inner spiritual life. He builds up his Karma in accordance with experiences from previous earth-lives and this he develops according to his inner life of spirit. This interest which he takes in it is very far removed from any earthly quality, very far removed from that longing for knowledge which, in its one-sided form, may be called inquisitiveness. A longing for knowledge, curiosity, a passionate desire for knowledge of the external life was not ours before our birth or descent to earth; we did not know it at all. That is why the young child has it only in so slight a degree.

What he does experience, on the other hand, is to live right in and with his environment. Before descending to earth we live entirely in the outer world. The whole world is then our inner being and there exist no such distinctions as outer and inner world. Therefore we are not curious about what is external, for that is all within us. We have no curiosity about it, we bear it within us, and it is an obvious and natural thing which we experience.

So in the first seven years of life a child learns to walk, to speak and to think, out of the same manner of living which he had before descending to earth. If you lay stress on arousing curiosity in a child with regard to some particular word, you will find that you thereby entirely drive out the wish he had to learn that same word. If you count on a longing for knowledge or curiosity you drive out of the child just what he ought to have. You must not reckon on a child's curiosity, but rather on something else, namely that the child becomes merged into you as it were, and you really live in the child. All that the child enjoys must live and be as though it were his own inner nature. You must make the same impression on the child as his own arm makes on him. You must, so to say, be only the continuation of his own body. Then later, when the child has passed through the change of teeth and gradually enters the period between the seventh and fourteenth years, you must observe how little by little curiosity and a longing for knowledge begin to show themselves; you must be tactful and careful, and pay attention to the way in which curiosity gradually stirs into being within him.

The small child is still but a clumsy little creature, who does not ask questions, and one can only make an impression upon him by being something oneself. He questions his environment as little as a sack of flour. But just as a sack of flour will retain any impressions you make upon it (especially if it is well ground), so too does the little child retain all his impressions, not because he is curious, but because you yourself are really one with him and make impressions on him as you would do with your fingers on a sack of flour.

It is only at the change of teeth that the situation alters. You must now notice the way the child begins to ask questions. “What is that? What do the stars see with? Why are the stars in the sky? Why have you a crooked nose, grandmother?” The child now asks all these questions; he begins to be curious about the things around him. You must have a delicate perception and note the gradual beginnings of curiosity and attention which appear with the second teeth. These are the years in which these qualities appear and you must be ready to meet them. You must allow the child's inner nature to decide what you ought to be doing with him; I mean, you must take the keenest interest in what is awakening with the change of teeth.

A very great deal is awakening then. The child is curious, but not with an intellectual curiosity for as yet it has no reasoning powers; and anyone who appeals to the intellect of a child of seven is quite on the wrong lines; but it has fantasy and this it is with which we must deal. It is really a question of developing the concept of a kind of “milk of the soul” For you see, after birth the child must be given bodily milk. This constitutes its food and every other necessary substance is contained in the milk that the child consumes. And when he comes to school at the age of the changing of the teeth it is again milk that you must give him, but now, milk for the soul. That is to say, your teaching must not be made up of isolated units, but all That the child receives must be a unity; when he has gone through the change of teeth he must have “soul milk.” If he is taught to read and write as two separate things it is just as though his milk were to be separated chemically into two different parts, and you gave him one part at one time and the other at another. Reading and writing must form a unity. You must bring this idea of “soul milk” into being for your work with the children when they first come to school.

This can only come about if, after the change of teeth, the children's education is directed artistically. The artistic element must be in it all. Tomorrow I will describe more fully how to develop writing out of painting and thus give it an artistic form, and how you must then lead this over artistically to the teaching of reading, and how this artistic treatment of reading and writing must be connected, again by artistic means, with the first simple beginnings of Arithmetic. All this must thus form a unity. Such things as these must be gradually developed as “soul milk” which we need for the child when he comes to school.

And when he reaches the age of puberty he will require “spiritual milk.” This is extremely difficult to give to present-day humanity, for we have no spirit left in our materialistic age. It will be a difficult task to create “spiritual milk,” but if we cannot succeed in creating it we shall have to leave our boys and girls to themselves at the so-called hobbledehoy stage, for there is no “spiritual milk” in our present age.

I just wanted to say these things by way of introduction and to give you a certain direction of thought; tomorrow we will continue these considerations and go more into details.

• 1. “The New School,” Streatham Hill, London, S.W.16, was opened in January 1925. In 1935 the name was changed to “Michael Hall.” In 1945 the school was moved to Kidbrooke Park, Forest Row, Sussex.

I pointed out yesterday how the child's development undergoes a radical change with the loss of his first teeth. For in truth, what we call heredity or inherited characteristics are only directly active during the first epoch of life. It is however the case that during the first seven years a second life organism is gradually built up in the physical body, which is fashioned after the model of the inherited organism. This second organism is, we may say, completed at the changing of the teeth. If the individual who comes down out of the spiritual pre-earthly world is weak, then this second life organism is similar to the inherited one. If the individual is strong, then we see how in the period between the change of teeth and puberty, from seven years till about fourteen, a kind of victory is gradually accomplished over the inherited characteristics. Children become quite different and they even change in their outward bodily form.

It is specially interesting to follow the qualities of soul which now reveal themselves in this second life epoch. In the first epoch, before the change of teeth, we may describe the child as being wholly “sense-organ.” You must take this quite literally: wholly sense-organ.

Take for example the human eye or ear. What is the characteristic of such a sense-organ? The characteristic thing is that the sense-organ is acutely sensitive to the impressions of the outer world. And if you observe the eye you can certainly see what kind of process takes place. The child during the first seven years is really completely and wholly an eye. Now consider only this thought: in the eye a picture is formed, an inverted picture, of every external object. This is what ordinary Physics teaches everyone. That which is outside in the world is to be found within the eye as a picture. Physics stops here, but this picture-forming process is really only the beginning of what one should know concerning the eye; it is the most external physical fact.

But if the physicist would look upon this picture with a finer sense of observation, then he would see that it determines the course of the circulation of the blood in the choroid. The whole choroid is conditioned in its blood circulation by the nature of this picture within the eye. The whole eye adjusts itself according to these things. These are the finer processes that are not taken into consideration by our ordinary Physics. But the child during the first seven years is really an eye. If something takes place in the child's environment, let us say, to take an extreme example, a fit of temper when someone becomes furiously angry, then the whole child will have a picture within him of this outburst of rage. The etheric body makes a picture of it. From it something passes over into the entire circulation of the blood and the metabolic system, something which is related to this outburst of anger.

This is so in the first seven years, and according to this the organism adjusts itself. Naturally these are not crude happenings, they are delicate processes. But if a child grows up in the proximity of an angry father or a hot-tempered teacher, then the vascular system, the blood vessels, will follow the line of the anger. The results of this implanted tendency in the early years will then remain through the whole of the rest of life.

These are the things that matter most for the young child. What you say to him, what you teach him, does not yet make any impression, except in so far as he imitates what you say in his own speech. But it is what you are that matters; if you are good this goodness will appear in your gestures, and if you are evil or bad-tempered this also will appear in your gestures—in short, everything that you do yourself passes over into the child and pursues its way within him. This is the essential point. The child is wholly sense-organ, and reacts to all the impressions aroused in him by the people around him. Therefore the essential thing is not to imagine that the child can learn what is good or bad, that he can learn this or that, but to know that everything that is done in his presence is transformed in his childish organism into spirit, soul and body. Health for the whole of life depends on how one conducts oneself in the presence of the child. The inclinations which he develops depend on how one behaves in his presence.

But all the things that we are usually advised to do with Kindergarten children are quite worthless. The things which are introduced as Kindergarten education are usually extraordinarily “clever.” One is, I might say, quite fascinated by the cleverness of what has been thought out for Kindergartens in the course of the nineteenth century. The children certainly learn a great deal there, they almost learn to read. They are supplied with letters of the alphabet which they have to fit into cut out letters and such like. It all looks very clever and one can easily be tempted io believe that it really is something suitable for children, but it is of no use at all. It really has no value whatsoever, and the whole soul of the child is spoilt by it. Even down into the body, right down into physical health, the child is ruined. Through such Kindergarten methods weaklings in body and soul are bred for later life.¹

On the other hand, if we were simply to have the children there in the Kindergarten and so conduct ourselves that they could imitate us, if we were to do all kinds of things that the children could copy out of their own inner impulse of soul, as they have been accustomed to do in the pre-earthly existence, then indeed the children would become like ourselves, but it is for us to see that we are worthy of this imitation. This is what you must pay attention to during the first seven years of life and not what you express outwardly in words as a moral idea.

If you make a surly face so that the child gets the impression you are a grumpy person, this harms him for the rest of his life. This is why it is so important, especially for little children, that as a teacher one should enter very thoroughly into the observation of a human being and human life. What kind of school plan you make is neither here nor there; what matters is what sort of a person you are. In our day it is easy enough to think out a curriculum, because everyone in our age is now so clever. I am not saying this ironically; in our day people really are clever. Whenever a few people get together and decide that this or that must be done in education, something clever always comes out of it. I have never known a stupid educational programme; they are always very clever. But it is not a question of having programmes of this kind. What matters is that we should have people in the school who can work in the way I have indicated. We must develop this way of thinking, for an immense amount depends upon it, especially for that age or life epoch of the child in which he is really entirely sense-organ.

Now when the change of teeth is complete the child is no longer a sense-organ in the same degree as previously. This already diminishes between the third and fourth year, but before then the child has quite special peculiarities of which one generally knows nothing whatever. When you eat something sweet or sour you perceive it on the tongue and palate, but when the child drinks milk he feels the taste of milk through his whole body for he is also an organ of sense with regard to taste. He tastes with his whole body; there are many remarkable instances of this.

Children take their cue from the grown-ups and therefore at fifteen, sixteen or twenty they are, nowadays, already blasé and have lost their freshness, but there are still children to be found who in their early years are wholly sense-organ, though life is not easy for such. I knew for example a small boy who on being given something to eat that he knew he would enjoy, approached the delectable object not only with those organs with which one generally approaches food, but he steered towards it with his hands and feet; he was in fact wholly an organ of taste. The remarkable thing is that in his ninth or tenth year he became a splendid Eurythmist and developed a great understanding for Eurythmy. So what he began by “paddling” up to his food as a little child was developed further in his will organs at a later age.

I do not say these things jokingly but in order to give you examples of how to observe. You very rarely hear people relating such things as these, but they are happening every moment. People fail to perceive these characteristic phenomena of life and only think out how to educate the young instead of observing life itself.

Life is interesting in every detail, from morning till evening; the smallest things are interesting. Notice, for instance, how two people take a pear from a fruit bowl. No two people take the pear in the same way; it is always different. The whole character of a person is expressed in the way he takes the pear from the fruit dish and puts it on his plate, or straight into his mouth as the case may be.

If people would only cultivate more power of observation of this kind, the terrible things would not develop in schools which one unfortunately so often sees today. One scarcely sees a child now who holds his pen or pencil correctly. Most children hold them wrongly, and this is because we do not know how to observe properly. This is a very difficult thing to do, and it is not easy in the Waldorf School either. One frequently enters a class where drastic changes are needed in the way the children hold their pencils or pens. You must never forget that the human being is a whole, and as such he must acquire dexterity in all directions. Therefore what the teacher needs is observation of life down to the minutest details.

And if you are specially desirous of having formulated axioms, then take this as the first principle of a real art of education. You must be able to observe life in all its manifestations.

One can never learn enough in this direction. Look at the children from behind, for instance. Some walk by planting the whole foot on the ground, others trip along on their toes, and there can be every kind of differentiation between these two extremes. Yes indeed, to educate a child one must know quite precisely how he walks. For the child who treads on his heels shows in this one small characteristic of his physical body that he was very firmly planted in life in his former incarnation, that he was interested in everything in his former earth life. In such a case you must draw as much as possible out of the child himself, for there are many things hidden away in such children who walk strongly on their heels. On the other hand the children who trip along, who scarcely use their heels in walking, have gone through their former earth life in a superficial way. You will not be able to get much out of these children, but when you are with them you must make a point of doing a great many things yourself that they can copy.

In this kind of way you should experience the changing of the teeth through careful observation. The fact that the child was previously wholly sense-organ now enables him to develop above all the gift of fantasy and symbolism. And one muss reckon with this even in play. Our materialistic age sins terribly against it. Take for example the so-called beautiful dolls that are so often given to children nowadays. They have such beautifully formed faces, wonderfully painted cheeks, and even eyes with which they can go to sleep when laid down, real hair and goodness knows what all! But with this the fantasy of the child is killed, for it leaves nothing to his imagination and the child can take no great pleasure in it. But if you make a doll out of a serviette or a handkerchief with two ink spots for eyes, a dab of ink for a mouth, and some sort of arms, then the child can add a great deal to it with his imagination.

It is particularly good for a child when he can add as much as possible to his playthings with his own fantasy, when he can develop a symbolising activity. Children should have as few things as possible that are well finished and complete and what people call “beautiful.” For the beauty of such a doll that I have described above with real hair and so on, is only a conventional beauty. In truth it is horribly ugly because it is so inartistic.

Never forget that in the period round about the change of teeth the child passes over into the age of imagination and fantasy. It is not the intellect but fantasy which fills his life at this age. You as teachers must also be able to develop this life of fantasy, for those who bear a true knowledge of the human being in their souls are able to do this. It is indeed so that a true knowledge of man loosens and releases the inner life of soul and brings a smile to the face. Sour and grumpy faces come only from lack of knowledge. Certainly one can have a diseased organ which leaves traces of illness on the face; this does not matter, for the child takes no account of these things, but if the inner nature of a person is filled with a living knowledge of what man is, this will be expressed in his face, and this it is that can make him a really good teacher.

And so between the change of teeth and puberty you must educate out of the very essence of imagination. For the quality that makes a child under seven so wholly into a sense-organ now becomes more inward; it enters the soul life. The sense-organs do not think; they perceive pictures, or rather they form pictures from the external objects. And even when the child's sense experiences have already a quality of soul, it is not a thought that emerges but an image, albeit a soul image, an imaginative picture. Therefore in your teaching you must work in pictures, in images.

Now we can work least of all in pictures if we are teaching the child something that is really quite foreign to him. For example, the calligraphy of today is quite foreign to the child whether in the written or printed letters. He has no relation whatever to this thing which is called an “A.” Why should he have a relation to an “A”? Why should he be interested in an “L”? These are quite foreign to him, this “A,” this “L.” Nevertheless when the child comes to school we take him into the classroom and start to teach him these things. The result is that he feels no contact with what he has to do. And if we teach him this before the change of teeth and set him to stick letters into cut-out holes, for example, then we are giving him things that lie right outside his nature and to which he has not the slightest relationship.

But what he does possess is an artistic sense, a faculty for creating imaginative pictures. It is to this that we must appeal, to this we must turn. We should avoid a direct approach to the conventional letters of the alphabet which are used in the writing and printing of civilised man. Rather should we lead the children, in a vivid and imaginative way, through the various stages which man himself has passed through in the history of civilisation.

In former times there was picture writing; that is to say, people painted something on the page which reminded them of the object. We do not need to study the history of civilisation, but we can show the child the meaning and spirit of what man wanted to express in picture writing. Then he will feel at home in his lessons.

For example: Let us take the word “Mund”—English “mouth.” Get the child to draw a mouth, or rather paint it. Let him put on dabs of red colour and then tell him to pronounce the word; you can say to him: don't pronounce the whole word but begin only with M; and now we can form the M out of the upper lip (see drawing). If you follow this

process you can get your M out of the mouth which we first painted.

This is how writing really originated, only today it is difficult to recognise from the words themselves that the letters were once pictures, because the words have all been subject to change in the course of the evolution of speech. Originally each sound had its own image and each picture could have but one meaning.

You do not need to go back to these original characters, but you can invent ways and means of your own. The teacher must be inventive, he must create out of the spirit of the thing. Let us take the word “fish.” Let the child draw or paint some kind of fish. Let him say the beginning of the word: “F,” and you can gradually get the F out of the picture (see drawing).

And thus, if you are inventive, you can find in point of fact, pictures for all the consonants. They can be worked out from a kind of painting-drawing, or drawing-painting. This is more awkward to deal with than the methods of today. For it is of course essential that after the children have been doing

this painting for an hour or two you have to clear it all away. But this just has to be so, there is nothing else to be done.

From this you can see how the letters can be developed out of pictures and the pictures again directly out of life. This is the way you must do it. On no account should you teach reading first, but proceeding from your drawing-painting and painting-drawing, you allow the letters to arise out of these, and then you can pass over to reading.

If you look around you will find plenty of objects which you can use to develop the consonants in this way. All the consonants can be developed from the initial letters of the words describing these objects.

It is not so easy for the vowels. But perhaps for the vowels the following is possible. Suppose you say to the child: “Look at the beautiful sun! You must really admire it; stand like this so that you can look up and admire the glorious sun.” The child stands, looks up and then expresses its wonder thus: Ah! Then you paint this gesture and you actually have the Hebrew A, the sound Ah, the sound of wonder. Now you only need to make it smaller and gradually turn it into the letter A (see drawing).

And so if you bring before the child something of an inner soul quality and above all what is expressed in Eurythmy, letting him take up this position or that, then you can develop the vowels also in the way I have mentioned. Eurythmy will

be of very great help to you because the sounds are already formed in the Eurythmy gestures and movements. Think for instance of an O. One embraces something lovingly. Out of this one can obtain the 0 (see drawing). You can really get the vowels from the gesture, the movement.

Thus you must work out of observation and imagination, and the children will then come to know the sounds and the letters from the things themselves. You must start from the picture. The letter, as we know it today in its finished form, has a history behind it. It is something that has been simplified from a picture, but the kind of magical signs of the printed letters of the present day no longer tell us what the picture was like.

When the Europeans, these “better men,” went to America at the time when the “savages,” the Indians, were still there,—even in the middle of the nineteenth century such things happened—they showed these savages printed writing and the Indians ran away from it because they thought the letters were little devils. And they said: The Pale-faces, as the Indians called the Europeans, communicate with each other by means of little devils, little demons.

But this is just what letters are for children. They mean nothing to them. The child feels something demonic in the letters, and rightly so. They have already become a means of magic because they are merely signs.

You must begin with the picture. That is not a magic sign but something real and you must work from this.

People will object that the children then learn to read and write too late. This is only said because it is not known today how harmful it is when the children learn to read and write too soon. It is a very bad thing to be able to write early. Reading and Writing as we have them today are really not suited to the human being till a later age, in the eleventh or twelfth year, and the more one is blessed with not being able to read and write well before this age, the better it is for the later years of life. A child who cannot write properly at thirteen or fourteen (I can speak out of my own experience because I could not do it at that age) is not so hindered for later spiritual development as one who early, at seven or eight years, can already read and write perfectly. These are things which the teacher must notice.

Naturally one will not be able to proceed as one really should today because the children have to pass from your Independent School into public life. But a very great deal can be done nevertheless when one knows these things. It is a question of knowledge. And your knowledge must show you, above all, that it is quite wrong to teach reading before writing, for in writing, especially if it is developed from the painting-drawing, drawing-painting, that I have spoken of, the whole human being is active. The fingers take part, the position of the body, the whole man is engaged. In reading only the head is occupied and anything which only occupies a part of the organism and leaves the remaining parts impassive should be taught as late as possible. The most important thing is first to bring the whole being into movement, and later on the single parts.

Naturally if you want to work in this way you cannot expect to be given instructions for all the little details, but only an indication of the path to be followed. Therefore just in this method of education which arises out of Anthroposophy you can build on nothing else but absolute freedom, though this freedom must include the free creative fancy of the teacher and educator.

In the Waldorf School we have been blessed with what I might call a very questionable success. We began with one hundred and thirty to one hundred and forty pupils; but these pupils came from the industrial works of Emil Molt, so they were at that time to a certain extent “compulsory” children though we had some children from anthroposophical families besides.² In the short time of its existence the Waldorf School has grown so big that we have now more than eight hundred children and between forty and fifty teachers. This is a doubtful success because gradually it becomes impossible to keep a clear view of the whole. From the arrangements of the Waldorf School which I shall describe to you, you will soon see how difficult it is to survey the whole; though I shall later indicate certain ways of making this possible. We have had to form parallel classes; in the case of the fifth and sixth there are three parallel classes: A, B and C. These classes are still overfull and have more children than the other classes in the school.

There is therefore a teacher in Class A, another in Class B. Just imagine how this would work out in a “proper” educational establishment of today. You come into Class I A, where you find a particular educational drill going on which is considered the best. Now you go into Class I B. It could equally well be called ‘A,’ only that different children are sitting there, for in both classes exactly the same thing goes on, because the “right method” is used. This is of course all most cleverly thought out: what is intellectual has but one meaning and it cannot be otherwise.

With us in the Waldorf School you find no such thing. You go into the first Class A. There you see a teacher, man or woman, who is teaching writing. The teacher lets the children make all kinds of forms, let us say with string. They then go on to painting the forms and gradually letters arise. A second teacher likes to do it differently. If you go into Class B you find that this teacher is letting the children “dance” the forms round the room, in order that they may experience the forms of the letters in their own bodies. Then she carries over these forms also into the letters themselves. You would never find uniformity of teaching in Classes A, B and C. The same things are taught but in completely different ways, for a free creative fancy holds sway in the class. There are no prescribed rules for teaching in the Waldorf School, but only one unifying spirit that pervades the whole. It is very important that you should realise this. The teacher is autonomous. Within this one unifying spirit he can do entirely what he thinks right. You will say: Yes, but if everyone can do as he likes, then the whole school will fall into a chaotic condition. For in Class V A, there could be goodness knows what kind of hocus-pocus going on, and in V B, you might find them playing chess. But that is exactly what does not happen in the Waldorf School, for though there is freedom everywhere you will find in each class the spirit which is in accordance with the age of the children.

If you read the Seminar Course, you will see that you are allowed the greatest liberty, and yet the teaching in each class is what is right for that age³ The strange thing is that no teacher has ever opposed this. They all quite voluntarily accept this principle of a unifying spirit in the work. No one opposes it or wants to have any special arrangements made for himself. On the contrary, the wish is often expressed by the teachers to have as many discussions as possible in their meetings about what should be done in the various classes.

Why does no teacher object to the curriculum? The school has been going for several years. Why do you think that all the teachers approve of the curriculum? They do not find it at all unreasonable. They find it in its very freedom excellent because it is bound up with real true human knowledge.

And just in such things as creating one's teaching matter out of fantasy it can be seen that freedom must prevail in the school. Indeed it does. Each of our teachers has the feeling that it is not only a question of what he himself thinks out and discovers out of his own fantasy, but when I sit with my Waldorf teachers in their meetings, or when I go into the classes, I get more and more the impression that when once the teachers are in their classrooms they actually forget that a plan of teaching has previously been drawn up. In the moment of teaching every teacher imagines that he himself is creating the plan of work. This is the feeling I have when I go into the classes.

Such is the result when real human knowledge lies at the basis of the work. I have to tell you these details even though you might think they were said out of vanity; indeed they are not said out of vanity but that you may know how it is and then go and do likewise; this will show you how what grows out of a true knowledge of man can really enter into the child.

It is on fantasy then, on imagination, that our teaching and education is to be built. You must be quite clear that before the ninth or tenth year the child does not know how to differentiate himself as an ego from his surroundings. Out of a certain instinct the child has long been accustomed to speak of himself as “P,” but in truth he really feels himself within the whole world. He feels that the whole world is connected with himself. But people have the most fantastic ideas about this. They say of primitive races that their feeling for the world is “animism,” that is, they treat lifeless objects as though they were “ensouled,” and that to understand a child you must imagine that he does the same as these primitive peoples. When he knocks against a hard object he hits it because he endows it with a quality of soul.

But that is not at all true. In reality, the child does not “ensoul” the object, but he does not yet distinguish between the living and the lifeless. He considers everything as a unity, and himself also as making up a unity with his surroundings. Not until the age of nine or ten does the child really learn to distinguish himself from his environment. This is something you must take into consideration in the strictest sense if you wish to give your teaching a proper basis.

Therefore it is important to speak of everything that is around the child, plants, animals and even stones, in such a way that all these things talk to each other, that they act among themselves like human beings, that they tell each other things, that they love and hate each other. You must learn to use anthropomorphism in the most inventive ways and speak of all the plants and animals as though they were human. You must not “ensoul” them out of a kind of theory but simply treat them in the way which a child can grasp when he is not yet able to distinguish between the lifeless and the living. For as yet the child has no reason to think that the stone has no soul, whereas the dog has a soul. The first difference he notices is that the dog moves. But he does not ascribe the movement to the fact that he has a soul. One can indeed treat all things that feel and live as if they were people, thinking, feeling and speaking to one another, as if they were persons with sympathy and antipathy for each other. Therefore everything that one brings to a child at this age must be given in the form of fairy tales, legends and stories in which everything is endowed with feeling. The child receives the very best foundation for his soul life when in this way we nourish his instinctive soul qualities of fancy. This must be borne in mind.

If you fill the child with all kinds of intellectual teaching during this age (and this will be the case if we do not transform into pictures everything that we teach him) then later he will have to suffer the effects in his blood vessels and in his circulation. We must consider the child in body, soul and spirit as an absolute unity. This must be said over and over again.

For this task the teacher must have an artistic feeling in his soul, he must be of an artistic disposition. For what works from teacher to child is not only what one thinks out or what one can convey in ideas, but, if I may express myself so, it is the imponderable quality in life. A very great deal passes over from teacher to child unconsciously. The teacher must be aware of this, above all when he is telling fairy tales, stories or legends full of feeling. It very often happens in our materialistic times that we notice how the teacher looks upon what he is telling as childish. He is telling something which he himself does not believe. And here Anthroposophy finds its rightful place if it is to be the guide and leader of the true knowledge of man. We become aware through Anthroposophy that we can express a thing infinitely more fully and more richly if we clothe it in pictures than if we put it into abstract ideas. A child who is naturally healthy feels the necessity to express everything in pictures and to receive everything also in picture form.

Remember how Goethe learnt to play the piano as a boy. He was shown how he had to use the first finger, the second finger, and so on; but he did not like this method, and this dry pedantic teacher of his was repugnant to him. For Father Goethe was an old Philistine, one of the old pedants of Frankfurt who naturally also engaged Philistine teachers for preference, because they are the good ones, as everyone knows. This kind of teaching was repugnant to the boy Goethe, it was too abstract. So he invented for himself the “ Deuterling” (“the little fellow who points”), not “Index finger,” that is too abstract, but “ Deuterling.”⁴

The child wants an image and he wants to think of him- self as an image too. It is just in these things that we see how the teacher needs to use his fantasy, to be artistic, for then he will meet the child with a truly “living” quality of soul. And this living quality works upon the child in an imponderable way—imponderable in the best sense.

Through Anthroposophy we ourselves learn once more to believe in the legends, fairy tales and myths, for they express a higher truth in imaginative pictures. And then our handling of these fairy tales, legends and mythical stories will once more be filled with a quality of soul. Then when we speak to the child, our very words, permeated as they will be by our own belief in the tales, will flow over to him and carry truth with them; truth will then flow from teacher to child, whereas it is so often untruth that passes between them. Untruth at once holds sway if the teacher says: the child is stupid, I am clever, the child believes in fairy tales so I have to tell them to him. It's the proper thing for him to hear them. When a teacher speaks like this then an intellectual element immediately enters into the relating of the stories.

But the child, especially in the age between the change of teeth and puberty, has a most sensitive feeling for whether the teacher is governed by his fantasy or his intellect. The intellect has a destructive and crippling effect on the child, but fantasy gives it life and impulse.

It is vital that we should make these fundamental thoughts our own. We will speak of them in greater detail during the next few days, but there is one more thing I should like to put before you in conclusion.

Something of very special importance happens to the child between his ninth and tenth year. Speaking in an abstract way we can say that he then learns to differentiate himself from his environment; he feels himself as an “I,” and the environment as something external which does not belong to this “I” of his. But this is an abstract way of expressing it. The reality is this, speaking of course in a general sense: the child of this age approaches his much-loved teacher, be he man or woman, with some problem or difficulty. In most cases he will not actually speak of what is burdening his soul, but will say something different. All the same one has to know that this really comes from the innermost depths of his soul, and the teacher must then find the right approach, the right answer. An enormous amount depends on this for the whole future life of the child concerned. For you cannot work with children of this age, as their teacher, unless you are yourself the unquestioned authority, unless, that is, the child has the feeling: this is true because you hold it to be true, this is beautiful because you find it beautiful, and therefore point it out to him, and this is good because you think it good. You must be for the child the representative of the good, the true and the beautiful. He must be drawn to truth, goodness and beauty simply because he is drawn to you yourself.

And then between the ninth and tenth year this feeling arises instinctively in his subconsciousness: I get everything from my teacher, but where does he get it from? What is behind him? The teacher need not enlarge on this because if you go into definitions and explanations it can only do harm. The important thing is to find a loving word, a word filled with warmth of heart—or rather many words, for these difficulties can go on for weeks and months—so that we can avert this danger and preserve the feeling for authority in the child. For he has now come to a crisis as regards the principle of authority. If you are equal to the situation, and can preserve your authority by the warmth of feeling with which you deal with these particular difficulties, and by meeting the child with inner warmth, sincerity and truth, then much will be gained. The child will retain his belief in the teacher's authority, and that is a good thing for his further education, but it is also essential that just at this age of life between nine and ten the child's belief in a good person should not waver. Were this to happen then the inner security which should be his guide through life will totter and sway.

This is of very great significance and must constantly be borne in mind. In the handbooks on education we find all kinds of intricate details laid down for the guidance of teachers, but it is of far greater importance to know what happens at a certain point in the child's life and how we must act with regard to it, so that through our action we may radiate light on to his whole life.

• 1. In Germany the children remain in the “Kindergarten” until their seventh year so that the above remarks apply to all school life up to this time, (including, for instance, the “Infants” Departments of State Schools in England).
• 2. In 1919 the first Rudolf Steiner School was founded by Emil Molt, Director of the Waldorf Astoria Cigarette Factory, Stuttgart. The first pupils were all children of the factory workers.
• 3. Just before the opening of the Waldorf School, in 1919, Dr. Steiner gave three simultaneous courses of lectures to the teachers two of which have been published in English under the titles ofStudy of Man and Practical Advice to Teachers.
• 4. Compare the old country names for the fingers referred to by Walter de la Mare inCome Hither p. 515, e.g. Tom Thumbkin, Bess Bumpkin, Long Linkin, Bill Wilkin and Little Dick.

Meister Bertram, Hieronymus Bosch, Dieric Bouts, Pieter Brueghel, Petrus Christus, Gerard David, Jan Van Eyck, Master of Flémalle, Geertgen tot Sint Jans, Hugo van der Goes, Quentin Matsys, Hans Memling, and Joachim Patinir.

The pictures we shall show today are to illustrate the development of Dutch and Flemish painting towards the end of the 15th century and on into the 16th.

From the inner historical point of view, this is one of the most important moments in the evolution of Art. It is, as you know, the period immediately after the dawn of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch—that epoch which is called upon to bring forth, out of the depths of human evolution, all that is connected with the development of the Spiritual Soul. In the Dutch and Flemish pictures we shall now consider, this comes to expression in a most characteristic way. We see in every detail how the Spiritual Soul begins to work. We can see it, my dear friends, if only we bring to these works of Art an elementary power of understanding—that is to say, if we have to some extent escaped the unhappy fate of being historians of Art after the modern fashion.

The most up-to-date of the modern critics and historians will, no doubt, consider a critic like Hermann Grimm an altogether inferior intellect. But if we have not the misfortune to be quite so up-to-date, then, even if we knew nothing beforehand of the laws and impulses of human evolution as explained by Spiritual Science, we should still find in this artistic evolution a wonderful confirmation of all the differences which Spiritual Science indicates in its descriptions of the Third, Fourth, and fifth post-Atlantean epochs. It is interesting to see how gradually there emerges—century after century during these epochs—what we may regard as the fundamental frame-work of the artistic conceptions of today. It is interesting to see the several elements of it emerging in the most manifold quarters in the evolution of mankind.

If we go back to the history of drawing and painting, we find that the laws of Space, for example, have only been evolved by gigantic efforts of the human soul. The older representations in line and color do not really constitute a pictorial Art in the modern sense. They are more like a kind of narrative or story-telling on the flat surface. This applies to a by no means very distant past. (Without entering at length into these historic aspects, I will only indicate a few general points of view.)

We can see that in those olden times, the artist had in his mind's eye some story which he wished to portray—a story such as one might even narrate in words. He did not try to represent Space as it is; he simply fixed on to the flat surface what he desired to represent. The various things that he relates stand side by side on this flat surface. From our point of view, we could, at most, regard this as a kind of primitive illustration. Today we should not even allow the art of illustration to proceed in this way, merely setting down the events of the narrative on a flat surface.

At the next stage, an attempt is made to represent the ordering of things in Space, at any rate, in a most rudimentary way, by introducing the principle of overlapping. The artist makes use of the visibility, or partial visibility of this or that figure.

A figure that stands in the way of another, is in the foreground; the other stands behind it. By this method of overlapping, the surface is really used to suggest, at any rate, the dimension of depth.

At a following stage, the several figures are already made larger or smaller in proportion, taking into account that that which appears larger is to the front, while all that which appears smaller is further back. If, however, we return to the Third Post-Atlantean period, we find that this spatial treatment to which we are now accustomed, did not exist at all. They either put things down on the flat surface, as described above, or else they used the element of Space to express their thought. This, indeed, continued into the Graeco-Latin period. Contrary to the way in which things are really seen, we often find figures which are obviously to the front (nearer to the spectator) smaller in proportion to other figures which are further away. In olden times they often made use of this kind of treatment.

We see a King, for example, enthroned in the background of the picture. His subjects, in the foreground, are represented as being smaller in proportion. In Space they are not really smaller, but according to the conception prevailing, they are smaller in idea. Hence, while they are placed in the foreground, they are made smaller. This gives you the transition to a thing you will frequently find in older times—I mean what we may call "inverse perspective" compared to the perspective we know today. In this “inverse perspective” we must imagine things envisaged as they are seen by a particular figure in the picture. Figures which are in front from our point of view can, indeed, be smaller than other figures which are farther back, if a figure in the background is conceived as the observer of the scene. But to this end the man who is actually looking at the picture must entirely obliterate himself! He must either imagine himself away, or he must think himself into the picture, as it were,—into the personality of the figure conceived as the observer of the scene.

Here, then, we have an Impersonal perspective. This “impersonal perspective” was still suited to the stage of the Fourth Post-Atlantean epoch, when the Spiritual Soul was not yet so consciously born as afterwards. The man of the fifth Post-Atlantean epoch cannot forget himself; he demands a presentation arising from his own point of view. Hence it is that the art of perspective, strictly related to the visual point of the spectator, only appears with Brunellesco—that is to say, is the main, with the beginning of the Renaissance.

We may truly say that what is now called perspective was first introduced into the technique of Art at that point of time. Moreover, the South, through the impulses I characterised in one of the earlier lectures, is the inventor of perspective. For the South is much concerned with the ordering of things in the inner relationship of Space; concerned, that is to say, with qualities in extension. Thus the South is predisposed for mastery in the whole art of composition, and at a later date we see this art of composition fertilised by the Southern Renaissance—with all that I have described already as the inherent impulses which then came to the surface, and reached so high a degree of perfection.

Thus there comes forth in Art what we may call the gathering together of things in Space, where the man who looks at the picture is included in the whole conception. Truly, this corresponds to the age when the Spiritual Soul is born—when man becomes conscious of himself.

Hence it is in the south—in all that is connected with the Southern culture, which we have described before—it is here that the modern principle of perspective first arises. We see how it evolves quite naturally out of the Southern culture.

Meanwhile, however, another principle is at work, is emerging in the North; this principle we see in its nascent state, as it were, in the very moment of its origin, when we turn our gaze to the Brothers Van Eyck.

In the two Van Eycks—Hubert van Eyck to begin with, and later in his brother Jan—we see emerging, albeit in a different form as yet, what afterwards came forth as described when dealing with Rembrandt, for example. Something which emerges out of the Mid-European, Northern element. These things always find expression in external symptoms—in outwardly real symbols, if I may so call them. Brunellesco must be conceived as the inventor of modern perspective. The ancient perspective—that which underlies the Greek pictures, for example,—does not possess what is called a “vanishing point.” It has a whole “vanishing line.” The scene we see seems to converge, not in a vanishing point, but in a vanishing line. In this is, indeed, expressed the radical difference between the ancient perspective and the modern, which is the perspective of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch.

Brunellesco, then, is the discoverer of modern perspective. It is discovered in the South. Whereas in the North—this is no mere tradition, but contains a profound truth—in the North oil-painting is discovered. Although Hubert van Eyck was not the sole inventor of oil-painting, nevertheless, it is true that oil-painting was discovered in the age and out of the whole milieu out of which he created.

Now what does this signify? What is the underlying reason? For the art of oil-painting was then carried to the South. Perspective was carried from the South to the North; oil-painting from the North to the South. What does this signify?

It is deeply rooted in their fundamental character and mood of soul. In the South men have a feeling for coming together mutually in the Group. The South has far more attachment to the Group-soul as such. Hence the people of the South are fond of describing themselves as members of such and such a Group. They have little understanding of the individual principle. Such things should be taken into account, for Nations will never understand each other if they take no pains to grasp their several characteristics.

When a man has been brought up in the more Latin spirit—who has received the inner impulse of the Southern nature—speaks of his devotion to nation or people—when he calls himself a Patriot in one sense or another, he means something very different from the Mid-European who speaks of Patriotism. Mid-Europe really has no talent for this belonging together, this gathering of men together into a Group. In Mid-Europe there is a faculty for the Individual principle. The true native character of Middle Europe is expressed in the recognition of the Individual, and in the age of the development of the Spiritual Soul this implies, to begin with, the recognition of the personality, the human individual—the person.

Now, if we feel essentially the Group-element, which is, of course, extensive (spread out in space), we shall naturally live in the element of composition. One who has this tendency will have a natural understanding for the art of composition. If, on the other hand, we have a strong feeling for the individual principle, we shall seek to mould the individual from within—outward. Instead of seeing the Spirit, as it were, put forth its feelers to embrace and hold the Group together, we see the Spirit within each single form; we place the several individual figures side by side, seeing the Spirit in each single one. We seek to bring to the surface of the body what is there in the inner being of the soul.

This is not to be achieved by perspective, but by color that is irradiated, flooded by light. Thus in the profoundly Germanic brothers, Van Eyck, we have the real starting point of the modern art of color, which seeks to hold fast in the color itself, what comes from the individual character of the soul to the outer surface of the body.

The brothers Van Eyck and their successors, derive their essential inner quality from this Northern Mid-European element, while composition, which gradually finds its way into their works, is borrowed more from France and Burgundy.

It is no mere matter of chance that this special development in the 15th century took place at a time when the districts where these artists lived did not possess a hard-and-fast political structure. Such a structure was only afterwards imposed upon them from the South—from France and especially from Spain. In that period we see spread out over the Northern and Southern Netherlands the more individual City-formations—towns and cities whose connection as compact States was at most a very loose one. The people of those regions, and of that time, had no inclination to think that men ought to be held together in groups by well-defined States, where the State itself is the important thing—where the precise extent and frontiers of a particular State are considered a matter of importance. To the people out of whom the brothers Van Eyck arose, the particular nation to which they belonged was not the point. Nor did they think of what is called the “State,” or trouble themselves about its frontiers. What mattered to them was that human beings full, thorough-going human beings—should develop, regardless of the group to which they might belong.

So we see this Art of the Southern Netherlands, the regions of Flanders. The inner being of man is conjured forth to the surface of the body in a tender and thoughtful way. By a mysterious power they flood their pictures with light, introducing just that element which color can introduce, for the individual characterisation of the soul.

Then we see the burgher, the citizen virtues of the Northern Netherlands reaching down into the Southern aristocratic element. The life of the burghers gives birth to that Art which places the individual so thoroughly into the world. It is, in reality, an overcoming of the Group-soul principles in Art.

And yet, as we shall see in the very first of our pictures today, how wonderfully the mass-effects are, nevertheless, attained. But with these mass-effects, it is not that they are conceived as a group from the outset. They arc not deliberately constructed: the figures distributed in Space so as to belong together as a Group. On the contrary, these wonderful groupings arise through the very fact that each individual being has his full importance, and takes his stand beside the others.

Such are the things that we shall recognise out of this portion of artistic evolution. In the brothers Van Eyck we still have comparatively primitive, rudimentary groupings in Space, but withal a high degree of inwardness, and a strong adaptation to what is actually seen, regardless of any hard and fast conventions.

In effect, we have here the second pole of that entry into the physical reality in the artistic life, which belongs to the fifth post-Atlantean period. This pole is in the North, while the other takes its start from the Italian art of the Renaissance. There we have the element of composition, and all else is to some extent subservient to this. In the North we have a creating from within, outwards. Only gradually and by dint of constant striving do they arrive at a certain power of composition by the placing together of individuals portrayed with inwardness of soul. Thus the one aspect of the naturalistic principle in Art, which belongs to the fifth post-Atlantean epoch, found its essential fountain-head in these regions. These painters place their subject in the immediate reality which surrounds them. The Biblical story, for example, when reproduced in Art by men of earlier times, was taken right away from their immediate surroundings. But this period in Art places the Biblical narratives into the midst of the immediate naturalistic reality. Men of the Netherlands stand before us as the characters of Biblical history.

What formerly shut one off, as it were, from the outer naturalistic world—the golden background and all that was expressed in it—ceases to exist. On the very soil where we ourselves are standing, the Biblical scenes move before us.

It goes with this, quite naturally and inevitably, that they everywhere surround their human figures with that peculiar treatment of space which we find in their interiors, not in their outer landscapes. I would express it thus. Having ceased to be living in the composition, the space itself must be transposed, transplanted into the picture. Space, as such, must now appear in the picture. How, then, can this be done? By shaping a portion of the picture itself as a “space,” that is to say, by placing the figures in an “interior”—in a room, or the like. Or, again, by painting a naturalistic space such as forms itself around the human being in the landscape. Thus with all the impulses of the new age which, as above described, permeate especially this Dutch and Flemish Art, we see arising quite naturally, the art of landscape painting. The landscape appears, often with a mighty and overpowering grandeur, in the background of the figures, or in some other way.

This Art evolves and flourishes most beautifully in the age of the free cities, when every town or city in these regions has a pride in its independence, and feels no inner need for territorial union with other cities. A certain international consciousness arises. This freedom from separations, this freedom from the Group-spirit, is a product of the sound and strong Germanic burgher-spirit of those times and places.

All this grows out of the life of the Northern and Southern Netherlands. Influenced very slightly by the South—influenced only by the Southern art of composition through the adjoining southern countries—their artistic creation springs from this democratic strength and soundness of the burghers, and blossoms forth until the time when the whole thing is eclipsed, if I may put it so, by the Group-mind once more.

Thus the period in artistic evolution which we shall illustrate today is at the same time a period of free development of human beings. I might continue to say many other things; but I wanted, above all, to fix your minds on the world-historic moment when this development in Art took place.

We will now proceed at once to show a number of pictures on the screen.

We begin with the famous Altar-piece of Ghent, by the Brothers Van Eyck.

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1. The Brothers Van Eyck. Altar-piece. (St. Bavo. Ghent.)

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2. God, the Father

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3. Mary

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4. John

This Altar-piece consists of many parts. This is the portion seen when the front is opened—the middle portion above the Altar. The figure in the center, in Papal costume, is representing God the Father. Conceived in the spirit of the Church, God the Father is actually represented as a Pope. Nevertheless, the features I have indicated are recognisable in the whole artistic composition. If we went back still further, we should find the preceding evolution altogether steeped in Christian ideas—the Christian traditions—that is to say, which the ecclesiastics forcibly impressed upon the people. These traditions most certainly corresponded to a manner of thought inspired by the Group-consciousness. But out of the midst of this very element we now witness the individual spirit making itself felt.

The figure to your left is Mary; that on the right is St. John. Here, then, we find ourselves in the first third of the 15th century. Hubert Van Eyck died in 1426; the Altar-piece was finished by his brother Jan. It is the first third of the 15th century.

From the same Altar-piece we will show the angel-pictures, to the right and left of these central figures.

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5. Angels making Music

Here you see a group of angels playing on instruments of music. Compare them with the angels by the German Christian Masters of the period immediately preceding this. Lochner, for instance, or the Master of Cologne—the pictures we saw in a former lecture. You will see how great a difference there is. The angels here are full-grown human beings, in spite of their clerical and ceremonial garments—fully developed human beings—no longer as before, half child-like forms. In such a group as this, you will see that the artist has not yet reached a thorough-going perspective. The perspective is only carried through to a slight extent. You see the whole picture on the surface—spread out like a tapestry. We will now show the angel-picture from the other side of the altar-piece.

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6. Angels singing

This whole Altar-piece was done by order of a wealthy Burgher for the Church of St. Bavo. The several parts are now scattered abroad—at Ghent, in Brussels, in Berlin ...

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7. The Brothers van Eyck. Adoration of the Lamb.

Here we come to the main portion of the picture, beneath the other three. The “Adoration of the Lamb” is one of the fundamental motifs of this and the preceding period. Here we see it beautifully presented as the fundamental religious conception which had evolved during the course of many centuries. It could not have been embodied in this beautiful artistic form till they had so grown together with this conception as to represent it thus. Throughout the centuries of Christianity this idea had gradually taken shape—this idea of the Salvation, the Redemption of mankind through a great Sacrifice.

We must go far, far back in time to realise its full significance. Compare the subject—the story which this picture tells—with a picture, for example, of the Mithras Offering. There you have Mithras seated on the Bull; the Bull is wounded, the blood is flowing. It is the uplifting of Mithras, His salvation by the overcoming of the Beast. You are familiar with the deeper spiritual meaning of this picture; it is, if I may so describe it, the very antithesis of the one we now see before us. The rearing and rebellious Bull has to be fought down—gives up his blood by force; the Lamb gives His Blood of His own free will.

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8. Adoration of the Lamb as compared to a Mithras-Relief

What does this signify? Salvation is lifted out of the element in which it was previously conceived—the element of violence, and strife and conflict. It comes into the element of free devotion and out-pouring Grace. Such is the idea which is here expressed. Not by man seeking in pride to rise beyond himself, seeking to kill his lower nature, but by experiencing in his soul that which streams through the world and patiently suffers with the world, will he attain his liberation at every point of this world's existence, his redemption.

Such is the Universal—and therefore, the individually universal—principle of redemption which we here find expressed. The Lamb is One, yet no one being is striking it. Therefore we see it offered up for every one of those who worship it, who draw near to it from all their different spheres of life—near to the Lamb of Salvation, near to the Fountain of Life.

The greatest conception of the Middle Ages, grown and matured in the course of the centuries, is thus recorded at the end of the Mediaeval Ages by the brothers Van Eyck, and there arises in this period one of the greatest of all works of Art.

Of course, we must bear in mind the points of view I emphasised just now. The individual principle, creating from out of the inner life, wrestles still with an inadequate mastery of the treatment of space. You will, for instance, scarcely be able to imagine a spectator situated with his eye in such a place as to perceive the spatial distribution of this figure here (at the bottom of the picture).

Very beautifully Van Eyck portrayed how the Impulse of the Lamb works in the various callings, in the several branches of human life. Here are some examples.

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9. Brothers van Eyck. The Knights and Judges. (From the Altar-piece at Ghent. Berlin Museum.)

These are the Judges and the Knights as they draw near to the Lamb. All these are portions of the same great Altar-piece. The next is a very tender picture:

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10. Brothers van Eyck. The Pilgrims and Hermits. (From the Altar-piece at Ghent.)

Here we can already admire the treatment of landscape in relation to the human beings to whom it belongs.

Hubert van Eyck died in 1426, when the Altar-piece was not nearly finished. His brother Jan continued working at it for many years, and scholars have long been engaged in the dispute, which they seem to regard as so important, as to which portions are due to Hubert and which to Jan. This dispute is, after all, more or less superfluous, if we are interested in the artistic aspect. We now come to another picture by Van Eyck.

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11. Jan van Eyck. Madonna. (At Bruges.)

This picture was painted in 1436. You will admire the tenderness of expression in the Madonna, no less than the characterisation of this figure (the Canon, Georg van der Pole). It reveals a wonderful observation of Nature and a strong sense of character, with all the primitiveness of the period—needless to say. The next picture was painted by Jan van Eyck in Spain, whither he had been summoned.

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12. Jan van Eyck. The Waters of Life. (Prado. Madrid.)

Observe the Gothic architecture in the background. To represent the Waters of Life, the Well of Life, in connection with the Sacrifice of the Lamb, was natural to the ideas of that time. Once more, as in the former picture, you have the motif of God the Father with Mary and St. John.

Here, however, it is transferred more into the spirit of the Southern Art—not unnaturally, as the picture was painted in Spain.

In the former picture we had the same theme treated with more of the Northern character.

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13. Jan van Eyck. The Crucifixion. (Berlin.)

Notice how the characteristic qualities come to expression in this picture. The human element far outweighs the Biblical tradition. Only the subject, the occasion, we might say, is taken from that quarter. See with what deep human sympathy the Biblical story is re-awakened, as it were. Here it is not merely the prevalent idea that it is meet to represent in pictures what the Bible tells. The whole event is felt again and re-experienced in the highest degree. It is scarcely conceivable—(pointing to the figures of Mary and St. John)—that a Southern artist would have placed this line, and this, side by side. Here, however, the painter's chief concern is not with the composition, but to give an impression of real inwardness—to realise the inner experience. And then we must say that the effect of this line, and this line, together, is most wonderful, characterising as it does the different moods of the soul.

We now give two examples of secular subjects by the same artist.

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14. Jan van Eyck. The Betrothal. (National Gallery. London.)

This picture shows very clearly how great was the artist's power of characterisation and expression. Our last picture by Van Eyck shows the attempt to get still further in the way of portraiture;

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15. Jan van Eyck. The Man with the Carnation. (Berlin.)

Here you will see with great distinctness, the artist does not care at all to conceive what a man should be like; he does not work out of any such impulse, but as he sees the human being—whatever presents itself to his vision—this he reproduces.

We now come to a contemporary artist who outlived Van Eyck by a few years—the Master of Flémalle, as he is called.

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16. Master of Flémalle. St. Veronica. (Frankfort.)

In him we recognise a seeker inspired by somewhat the same impulse as the Van Eycks, yet influenced far more from France. He recognise these influences in the “line.” There is a kind of echo of artistic tradition. In Van Eyck's work we feel that everything is born out of an elemental inner need. Here, on the other hand, there is already an underlying opinion—this thing or that ought to be represented in such or such a way. Though they are not by any means predominant in his work, still we can see the Master of Flémalle accepts the principles of certain aesthetic traditions. In the former artist you will not easily find, for example, this peculiar position of the hand, nor this peculiar treatment of facial expression. These elements in the picture are undoubtedly to some extent determined by certain influences from France. An atmosphere of elegant grace is poured out over these figures, which you will not find to this extent in the figures of Van Eyck.

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17. Master of Flémalle. Death of the Virgin. (London.)

Characteristically—this picture shows the Christian legend transplanted into the artist's present time. These pictures were painted about the thirties of the 15th century.

We now come to Van der Weyden, who—like the former artist, received certain influences from France. Still, he contains all those elements which mark him out clearly as a follower of the Van Eycks.

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18. Rogier van der Weyden. Descent from the Cross. (Berlin.)

Already in this picture you will see a characteristic difference. There is an essentially dramatic life in this, whereas we might say Van Eyck is purely ethical. Van Eyck places his figures quietly side by side; they influence one another, but there is no one all-pervading movement. Here, however, in Van der Hayden's work, there is a certain drama in the working together of the figures. It is not merely ethical.

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19. Rogier van der Weyden. Descent from the Cross. (Prado. Madrid.)

The same subject, treated once more by the same artist. And now a picture taken from the Christian legends.

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20. Rogier van der Weyden. St. Luke painting the Madonna. (Munich.)

Here you see the Evangelist St. Luke, who, as the legend has it, was a painter, painting Mary and the Child.

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21. Rogier van der Weyden. Adoration by the Three Wise Men. (Alte Pinakothek. Munich.)

One of these is King Philip of Burgundy; this one, who is just taking off his hat, is Charles the Bold. If only by this external feature, the whole scene is very much transferred into the artist's immediate present. For the Kings who come to worship the Child, he takes the figures of princes more or less of his own time.

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22. Rogier van der Weyden. Charles the Bold. (Berlin.)

Here, then, we have a portrait by Van der Weyden. All these artists attained—a certain perfection in the art of portraiture.

We now come to Petrus Christus:

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23. Petrus Christus. The Annunciation (wings of an Altar-piece) (Berlin.)

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24. Petrus Christi. The Birth of Christ

The Angel and Mary (The Annunciation) and the presentation of the Christ Child. Petrus Christus works more or less equally along the lines of Van der Weyden on the one hand, and the Van Eycks on the other. These pictures were painted about 1452—the middle of the 15th century.

In the following pictures we come increasingly to the more Northerly Dutch element, where the landscape is developed to greater and greater perfection. The next picture is by Dieric Bouts the Younger. And now, a picture extraordinarily characteristic of this stream in Art:

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25. Dieric Bouts. Adoration by the Three Wise Men. (Alte Pinakothek. Munich.)

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26. John the Baptist and Christopher

On one side is the Baptist; on the other side the Christophorus—the Christ-Bearer. Truly, there comes to expression here the full and immediate human inwardness, and with it the landscape that belongs to it. In Dieric Bouts you will especially notice this art—to place the human being fittingly within the landscape of open Nature.

The realistic representation of things is working its way through more and more. Man as an artist becomes more and more able to find, in the direct reproduction of Nature, what he has been striving for along this path.

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27. Hugo van der Goes. Portinari Altarpiece, c. 1475. (Uffizi. Florence.)

Truly, Realism has here reached a high degree of perfection. The same subject again:

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28. Hugo van der Goes. Adoration by the Shepards, 1480 (Berlin.)

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29. Hugo van der Goes. St. Anthony and St. Matthew.

Below are the Donors of the picture. By the same artist:

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30. St. Margaret and St. Mary Magdalene. (Ste. Maria Novalis. Florence.)

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31. Hugo van der Goes. The Death of Mary. (Academy. Bruges.)

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32. Hugo van der Goes. Adam and Eve. The Fall. (Vienna.)

The Art of that time—as I have said on previous occasions relating to Meister Bertram—did not picture a mere snake, but tried to portray the Luciferic element.

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33. Meister Bertram. The Fall (Hamburg.)

That the snake itself—the existing physical snake—should have been the Tempter, is an invention of the most modern naturalistic materialism.

We now come to the artist who, educated in the School of Van der Weyden, represents, in a certain sense, its continuation. He was known in the School as Der deutsche Hans. I refer to Hans Memling.

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34. Hans Memling, Madonna Enthroned. (Uffizi. Florence.)

This artist was born at Mainz. We shall, if possible, in the near future, show some examples of Upper German paintings, which have their own characteristic peculiarities. Its tendencies are quite evidently present in this picture; but for the rest, Memling had absorbed all that was then living in the Art of the Netherlands, including the influence that came over from France. The next picture is also by Hans Memling.

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35. Hans Memling. The Seven Joys of Mary. (Munich.)

—a motif which was also familiar to those times. The various events connected with the life of Mary are here portrayed. Unfortunately it is too small in this reproduction to recognise the details very clearly.

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36. Memling. The Last Judgment. (Marienkirche. Danzig.)

A characteristic picture by Memling. With real genius, in his own way, he brings to expression his conception of the Last Judgment. There is a certain angular quality about it, and yet the whole event is permeated with humanity, with inward feeling. The picture is note at Danzig. A powerful trader stole the picture—but, being a pious man also, he afterwards bequeathed it to a church in Danzig.

He will also acquaint ourselves with Memling's portraits. You will see that all this School achieves a greatness of its own in representing the human individuality.

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37. Memling. Portrait of a Man. (Berlin.)

The expression of the qualities of the soul in this face is, indeed, remarkable. This is a well-known picture at the Hague.

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38. Memling. Portrait. (The Hague.)

We come now to the later artists who no longer show quite the same freedom and simplicity, but a certain contortion and inner complexity. David, for instance, was born in 1400; he came from Holland. Hitherto, we may say, we have had before us the pre-Reformation period in Art; the artist we shall now show brings us already very near the Reformation.

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39. Gerard David. Adoration of the Magi. (Munich.)

Here you will recognise how strongly the Southern influence is already working in the element of composition.

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40. Gerard David. Baptism of Christ. (Bruges.)

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41. Gerard David. Madonna and Christ, with Angels. (Rouen.)

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42. Gerard David. Mary and Child

The next is by an artist who was in a sense only a kind of imitation of David. We now come to Geertgen, who, though he dies at the early age of twenty-eight, does, indeed, bear within him all the peculiar characteristics of this epoch.

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43. Geertgen. Holy Family. (Amsterdam.)

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44. Geertgen. The Holy Night. (Berlin.)

As we go forward into the 16th century, other elements mingle more and more with what was characteristic of the Van Eyck period. We come now to Hieronymus Bosch.

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45. Hieronymus Bosch. Descent from the Cross.

In his work we find a strong element of composition. Also we have no longer the mere naturalistic observation. His work is permeated with a fanciful, fantastic feeling—so much so, that he becomes the painter of all manner of grotesque and “spooky” subjects.

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46. Hieronymus Bosch. Christ carrying the Cross.

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47. Hieronymus Bosch. Hell. (Prado. Madrid.)

The fantastic element is mingled with all that he had learned in this direction.

Now we come to Quentin Matsys, in whom the element of composition is already strongly paramount. Indeed, this is already in the 16th century.

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48. Quentin Matsys. Holy Family, 1509. (Brussels.)

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49. Quentin Matsys. Mourning for Christ. (Antwerp.)

Here you see quite deliberate composition. In the next picture we shall see how this feeling for composition combines with that for individual characterisation even where there is less intensity of form, or movement, in the group.

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50. Quentin Matsys. The Money-Changer and His Wife. (Louvre. Paris.)

We now come to an artist who reveals the characteristics of the period especially in his landscape-painting—Joachim Patinir. It was at this time and from these regions that landscape-painting first developed and found its way into the full artistic life. Only from this time onward was it really discovered for the life of Art.

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51. Patinir. The Flight into Egypt. (Madrid.)

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52. Patinir. The Flight into Egypt. (Berlin.)

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53. Patinir. The Baptism of Christ. (Vienna.)

I beg you to look at this especially, from the point of view of landscape-painting. Such landscape treatment could naturally only originate in the age of attempted naturalism; only then does landscape begin to have a real meaning for Art.

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54. Patinir. Temptation of St. Anthony. (Prado. Madrid.)

The next is a painter quite definitely of the 16th century. I spoke just now of the “Burgher” element. He carries it still further, even into the sphere of the peasantry. His works are born of the elemental simplicity of the people. Nevertheless, all manner of other influences enter into them—Italian influences, for example. Thus he strangely unites his elemental Dutch simplicity with a very marked Renaissance feeling. I refer to Pieter Brueghel—born in 1525.

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55. Brueghel. The Pious Man and the Devil. (Naples.)

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56. Brueghel. The Blind Leading the Blind. (Paris. Louvre.)

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57. Brueghel. The Fall of the Angels. (Brussels.)

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58. Brueghel. The Way to Calvary. (Vienna.)

And another Biblical subject by the same painter.

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59. Pieter Brueghel. The Adoration of the Magi. (London.)

With that, we will finish for today.

Today—since Dr. Trapesnikoff has ordered them—we will show you some pictures arranged from a different point of view than in our former lectures; more from the point of view of subject-matter. The pictures today will relate especially to the birth of Christ Jesus, the Adoration by the Shepherds and by the Three Wise Men, and finally the Flight into Egypt. Comprising an evolution through several centuries, they will bring before our souls, from another aspect, that which is living in the Old Christmas Plays of which we have been speaking in the last lectures. We shall thus be concerned today, not in the first place with the artistic elements, as such, but with the treatment of a certain theme in the history of Art, and I will therefore speak not so much of the evolution of artistic principles, but draw your attention to some other points of view which may be of interest in relation to these pictures. You will, however, bear in mind the general lines of development of Christian Art, which we have described in the past lectures of this series. You will observe the same great trend of evolution, as we pass from the artistic representations of the early Christian centuries into the times of the Renaissance. First you will see the more typical representations of an early time. These, as we have seen, were still under the influence of Revelations from the Spiritual World. Less concerned with naturalistic expressions of form and color, they try to reproduce the spiritual Imaginations, revealed out of the Spiritual World. Thenceforward you will see this Christian Art evolve towards Naturalism, that is, towards a certain reproduction of that which may be called reality from the point of view of the physical plane. As we follow the evolution of this Art, the sacred personalities stand before us in a more and more human form.

We shall first show some pictures relating more especially to the Birth of Christ. Then we shall show the Adoration of the Child by the Shepherds; indeed, these two, to some extent, will go together. The next series of pictures will deal mainly with the story of the Three Wise Men of the East—the Magi. Here I beg you to observe how the two streams evolve: the stream of St. Luke's Gospel, as we may call it, and that of the Gospel of St. Matthew. They are the streams which take their start from the two Jesus Children. Artistically, too, we can recognise the difference. The Adoration by the Shepherds—all that is more or less related to this theme—could best be understood (understood, that is to say, by the inner feelings) under the influence of what remained from those Northern Mysteries whose center, as I told you, was in Denmark. This stream is connected with all that related to the Birth of Jesus—springing forth, as it were, with Jesus, out of the earthly evolution, out of the spiritual beings that are bound up with the life of Nature.

In the Adoration by the Magi, on the other hand—the mission of the Three Wise Men from the East—we always find a direct expression of the “Gnostic” stream. Under the influence of the “Star”—which means, something that is made known out of the Cosmos—the Wise Men draw near to the Christ Who heralds His approach and develops in the Zarathustra Jesus. In all that is connected with the Adoration by the Three Wise Men, we have, therefore the Gnostic stream: the consciousness that the Christ-Event was a cosmic one; that a fertilisation of the Earth had taken place out of the Cosmos.

Our friends have been kind enough to put up here a drawing of the Three Wise Men. The picture is taken from an old Gospel Book. We see them looking up in adoration, that is, in quest of spiritual knowledge, by striving upward with all their inner being, and looking up to the Star wherein the Spirit Who shall liberate the Earth draws near.

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1. Three Wise Men.

It may truly be said that this stream, which finds expression in St. Matthew's Gospel, was less and less understood in the further course of centuries. True, it also came to life, as you know, in the Old Christmas Plays. But the appearance of the Three Wise Men of the East cannot really be understood with the same understanding, as the appearance of Jesus to the Shepherds according to St. Luke's Gospel. For the latter is a simple understanding of the heart, of inner feeling; while the understanding which we must bring to bear on all that is connected with the Wise Men from the East must needs be of a “Gnostic” character. All that is signified by the Wise Men “following the Star” will only come into the consciousness of humanity again when—not the Gnosis this time, it is true—but anthroposophical Spiritual Science gains acceptance.

Finally, we shall show some pictures of the Flight into Egypt. This, too, is connected with the “Gnostic” Revelation concerning Jesus Christ. We cannot speak of it at great length today; we may return to it another time.

To begin with, it is important here, again, to realise that there is a certain underlying composition in all that the Gospels contain. The composition is always important. We need only faithfully follow the Gospel narrative. The Flight into Egypt appears in direct connection with the Mission of the Three Wise Men. It happens, as it were, on the basis of what was first undertaken by the Three Wise Men. This bears witness to the fact that the Gospel is taking into account the connection with all that was related about Egypt in the Old Testament. Moses was learned in the Wisdom of the Egyptians. Now we are told in the Gospel that the Three Wise Men of the East came to the birthplace of Christ Jesus, led by the Star which is really the Star of Christ. But it goes on to relate that something now had to take place which did not entirely accord, as it were, with the course of the Star; something which was not in the consciousness of the Wise Men themselves—for so the Gospel explicitly tells us. Here we are shown one of those cases where the astrological determination, as it were, of certain great events has to be broken through. How precisely the astrological determination corresponds to what is known of the historic facts—you could see this from the instance which we spoke of recently. Our friends drew up the Horoscope for that point in the course of Time which was indicated as the day of Christ Jesus's Death.

But we see that the Jesus Child, in whom the Zarathustra Soul was living, had to be taken out of the domain of this Star. He was taken into Egypt, and from Egypt He was then led back again into the realm of the Star. In this is contained the whole Mystery of the ebbing away of that ancient stream of evolution which had grown atavistic in the Egyptian Gnosis. The new Revelation had to enter once more into a certain union with the Old in order that it might free itself consciously.

These are the underlying Mysteries, and though they are little recognised, none the less they lie inherent in the composition. I may take this opportunity to point out once more, how important it is to pay attention to the composition when we read the Gospels. For the text is frequently corrupt and can only be read in its true form by those who are able to read with the help, if I may say so, of the Occult Text. Notably in the translations, naturally enough, the text is often quite unintelligible. But in the composition (compare my Lecture Cycle held in Cassel on the Gospel of St. John)—in the composition there is something which will strike any reader immediately, if he reads the Gospel carefully.

One more remark I would like to make, before we go on to show the pictures. The materialistic consciousness of our age has altogether lost the point of view which would indicate such inner connections as underlie the revelation to the Three Wise Men. Whatever goes by the name of Astrology today has fallen into the hands of utter dilettanti, who carry on all kinds of nonsense and abuses with it. Few people nowadays are in true earnest when they speak of that relation of the Earth to the Cosmos which finds expression in actual physical relationships—in the constellations of the Stars. On the other hand, for the official Science of today Astrology of whatever kind is a mere antiquated superstition.

Nevertheless, the knowledge of these things did not decay or die out absolutely until the 18th century. Even as late as the 18th century people still spoke of something which is of extreme importance if we wish to understand the deep, deep truths that underlie the appearance of the Three Wise Men. In the 18th century, those who had still preserved some knowledge of the old Initiations spoke of the significance of the physical constellations. But not only so: they also spoke of the significance of invisible constellations. Even in the 18th century it was expressly stated in certain circles who possessed Initiation Knowledge. “There are also Stars which only the Initiate can see.” This is a true statement, and this, above all, must be taken into account if we wish to understand why it was that “Imaginations” appeared to the Shepherds, while “Stars” appeared to the Three Wise Men. Such is the indication: The Revelation came to the Shepherds inasmuch as they still had dreamlike clairvoyance in the old atavistic sense. But the Wise Men of the East had their knowledge through the ancient Science that had been handed down. Through this they knew of the relation between the Cosmos, the Heavens and the Earth. Through this they knew—could calculate, as it were—what was drawing near.

Hence we can see in the evolution of these pictures—and you will now have opportunity to observe it for yourselves—we see, with all the transition to Naturalism, the pictorial representations growing less and less adequate to the theme of the Wise Men. For the Wise Men or Magi, the most ancient and typical representations are the most fitting. For the real truth that is intended in this story is lifted right out of the earthly domain. On the other hand, the representations of Jesus grow the more intimate and tender, the more naturalistic they become. For in this case the naturalistic quality is fitting. All that goes out to meet the approaching Christ from the physical plane—all that is connected, therefore, with the life of Nature—is naturally best portrayed by such means.

We will now go on to the pictures, first of the Nativity itself and of the Adoration by the Shepherds, and then of the Three Wise Men or Kings.

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2. The Nativity. (mosaic) (Palermo, Chiesa della Martorana.)

In these old compositions, as you see, everything is conceived in typical form—based on the typical representations of the ancient Myths which came over largely from the East. In a most natural way the typical representations of the Myth grew into the representations of the Christian theme. The Orpheus type, for instance, the type of the Good Shepherd, was handed down from earlier representations of Myth or Cult or Ritual, and taken to represent the new impulse, the Christ event; and so it was with many another theme and composition.

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3. A Page of the Biblia Pauperum. 1st Edition. (15th century) The Nativity, etc. (German Woodcuts.)

These early Bibles generally showed parallel representations from the Old and New Testaments. They bore in mind that the New Testament is the fulfilment of the Old; this idea is brought out again and again in these “Bibles of the Poor.” The Nativity, which interests us mainly now, is shown in the middle of the page.

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4. The Nativity, 11th Century. (Limburg Monestary.)

This is at Cologne. Beneath is the Flight into Egypt; the two are together in this slide. Apart from this one, we shall show the Flight into Egypt at the end of the lecture. Here you have a beautifully naive conception of the Nativity. You will feel the connection of it with what is given in the old Christmas Plays with which we are familiar. Though the latter belong, of course, to a later time, nevertheless they are from earlier Christmas Plays which are no longer extant.

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5. The Flight into Egypt. (Evangeliar of the 12th century. Cathedral of Cologne.)

It is interesting to see, all around the picture, representations of what was cosmically connected with the Event, showing how they were still aware of the spiritual relationships. And now we will take the same motif as it appears in the work of Niccola Pisano.

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6. Niccola Pisano. The Nativity. (Baptistery at Pisa.)

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7. Giotto. The Nativity. (San Francesco. Assisi.)

You see how the representations of the theme are gradually passing into Naturalism.

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8. della Robbia. The Nativity. (Hamburg. Altarpiece.) (National Museum. Florence.)

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9. Meister Francke. The Nativity. (Hamburg.)

This picture is at Hamburg; I remember having seen it there myself not long ago.

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10. Philippo Lippi. The Nativity. (Cathedral at Spoleto.)

You really see how in the course of time Naturalism takes hold of it more and more.

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11. Piero della Francesca. The Nativity. (National Gallery. London.)

Here we are in the fifteenth century once more; and we now go on to Correggio.

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12. Correggio. Holy Night. (Dresden.)

We pass again to the more Northern Masters, whose names you know. First we have a work of Schongauer' s.

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13. Martin Schongauer. The Nativity. (Alto Pinakothek. Munich.)

Most interesting to see the Italian and the Northern Masters one after the other. In the former you still find a stronger adherence to ideal types, while here there is more individualisation—creation out of inwardness of soul, as we have seen before. Down to the tiny feet, all is pervaded with feeling, albeit the artistic perfection is not so great as in the Southern Masters.

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14. Herlin. Nativity from the Altar of St. George. (Museum at Nordlingen.)

We come now to the turn of the 15th and 16th centuries, to Albrecht Dürer.

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15. Dürer. The Nativity. (Alto Pinakothek. Munich.)

See how the Art is taken hold of here by all that I described to you—the working out of the element of light. It is most interesting to study this in Dürer.

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16. Altdorfer. The Holy Night. (Berlin.)

Altdorfer was Dürer's successor in Nuremberg.

We shall now give a series of pictures relating mainly to the Adoration by the Shepherds. First, some older Miniatures from Bible and Gospel Manuscripts.

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17. Nativity and Annunciation to the Shepherds. (Codex Egberti. Trier. 10th century.)

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18. Nativity and Annunciation to the Shepherds, from Menologion of Basil II (Vatican. Rome. 11th Century.)

We go on to the Italian representations of the Adoration of the Child by the Shepherds.

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19. Cimabue. Adoration by the Shepherds. (Assisi.)

With Cimabue, as you know, we find ourselves in the 13th century. We go on into the 15th and come to Ghirlandajo, the Master of whom we lately spoke.

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20. Ghirlandajo. Adoration by the Shepherds. (Akademia. Florence.)

Another Master of the 15th century is Piero di Cosimo.

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21. Piero di Cosimo. Adoration by the Shepherds. (Berlin.)

And now we come to the Art of the Netherlands, with which we are familiar.

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22. Hugo van der Goes. Adoration of the Child. (Uffizi. Florence.)

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23. Hugo van der Goes. Adoration of the Child. (detail.)

Finally we give two works by Rembrandt.

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24. Rembrandt. Adoration by the Shepherds. (In the Lantern Light. Etching, about 1652.)

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25. Rembrandt. Adoration by the Shepherds. (Alte Pinakothek. Munich.)

We now go on to the pictures representing the Adoration by the Three Wise Men. To begin with, an old Mosaic, of the 6th century.

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26. Mosaic. Chiesa della Martotana. Palermo. Three Wise Men.

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27. Mosaic. Sant Apollinare Nuovo. Ravenna.

In these older pictures the events are shown thoroughly in connection with the Spiritual World—remote from all Naturalism, lifted into a higher sphere.

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28. Nativity and Adoration by the Wise Men. (Menologium Basilius. Vatican. 11th century)

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29. Niccola Pisano. Adoration by the Wise Men. (Baptistery at Pisa.)

This is the famous Golden Gate at Freiberg, second half of the 12th century:

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30. Adoration by the Three Wise Men. (Cathedral of Freiberg. The Golden Gate.)

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31. Domenico Veneziano. Adoration by the Wise Men. (Berlin.) Formerly attributed to Pisanello (Vittore Pisano).

We go on to the 15th, to Stephen Lochner:

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32. Stephen Lochner. Adoration by the Three Wise Men. (Cathedral of Cologne.)

The next is by Gentile da Fabriano, also of the 15th century.

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33. Gentile da Fabriano. Adoration of the Child. (Florence.)

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34. Fra Angelico. Adoration of the Kings. (St. Marco. Florence.)

Fra Angelico is as tender and lovely in this as in all other subjects.

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35. Filippo Lippi. Adoration by the Wise Men.

Whichever subject it is, you see how Naturalism progresses. This is especially interesting when one follows the treatment of one and the same subject through the centuries.

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36. Sandro Botticelli. Adoration by the Wise Men. (Uffizi. Florence.)

Now we come to the second half of the 15th century.

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37. Ghirlandajo. Adoration by the Wise Men. (Spedale degli Innodenti. Florence.)

End of the 15th century:

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38. Mantegna. Adoration by the Wise Men. (Uffizi. Florence.)

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39. Giorgione. The Wise Men of the East. (Vienna.)

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40. Giorgione. Adoration by the Wise Men. (National Gallery. London.)

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41. Giovanni Bellini. Adoration by the Kings. (Layard Gallery. London.)

And now I ask you to call to mind once more the various Dutch and Flemish Masters of whom we have spoken in a former lecture. For we now have the same subject by

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42. Rogier van der Weyden. Adoration by the Kings. (Alte Pinakothek.Munich)

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43. Dieric Bouts. Adoration by the Wise Men. (Alte Piankothek. Munich.)

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44. Adoration by the Wise Men, 15th centry, from the Brevarium Grimani.

We have spoken of the characte of these painters. The next is by the artist who worked in Bruges and died about 1523.

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45. Gerard David. Adoration by the Wise Men. (Alte Pinakothek. Munich.)

And now the same theme treated by Leonardo.

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46. Leonardo da Vinci. Adoration by the Three Wise Men. (Uffizi.Florence) And by his pupil,

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47. Luini Bernadino. Adoration by the Wise Men. (Saronno.)

Going North again:

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48. Dürer. Adoration by the Wise Men. (Uffizi. Florence.)

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49. Brueghel. Adoration by the Wise Men. (Vienna.)

And finally, Rembrandt.

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50. Rembrandt. Adoration by the Three Wise Men. (Buckingham Palace.)

And now we come to our last theme: the Flight into Egypt. First we have a painter of the late 15th and early 16th century.

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51. Herrad von Lanndsberg. The Flight into Egypt.

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52. Joachim de Patinir. Rest in the Flight. (Prado. Madrid.)

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53. Correggio. Madonna della Scodella. (Parma)

The next, a little later.

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54. Bernhard Strigel. The Flight into Egypt. (Stuttgart.)

Strigel painted also in Vienna, and died in 1528.

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55. Albrecht Dürer. Resting on the Flight into Egypt.

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56. Workshop of Albrecht Dürer. Resting on the Flight into Egypt.

Next is Hans Baldung or Hans Grun, going on into the 16th century.

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57. Hans Balding (Baldung). Rest in the Flight. (Germanisches Museum. Nuremberg.)

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58. Lucas Cranach. Rest in the Flight. (Berlin.)

Finally, Rembrandt:

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59. Rembrandt. Rest in the Flight. (Etching.)

So much for today. Perhaps you will now take the opportunity to see at close quarters this impressive picture of the Wise Men which indicates so clearly the worship of the Star with the incoming of the Christ Jesus Soul.

The pictures we shall show today will enable us to give a kind of recapitulation of various things that came before our souls in former lectures. I shall draw attention today to further aspects, arising out of what we have said before. In the course of these studies, we have distinguished between the more Southern European and the Northern or Mid-European artistic streams and we have indicated characteristic aspects of these two. I do not wish to repeat what has already been set forth. Today we are able to show some further reproductions of pictures by Raphael, and I wish to say a few words about him, unfolding—if I may so describe it—a more special outcome of our ideas concerning the artistic genius of the South.

Anyone who lets Raphael's creations work upon his soul, will admit that in Raphael—with respect to certain artistic intentions—the highest ideal has been attained. When we let them work upon us and try to understand them, we ask ourselves again and again: What is it that comes to expression in his works, and how does it stand in relation to the World? Think for a moment from this aspect of the Madonna della Sedia,—how this picture is placed in a great world-perspective: It is so, indeed, in all directions. To begin with, you may consider the picture as an outcome of the Christian world-conception. So perfectly does it express this theme: The Birth of Christ Jesus in connection with the Madonna, that we must say, 'The ides, the meaning, the impulse, the world-historic significance which it is desired to express, has here been expressed by means that cannot ever be transcended.

From a certain point of view you cannot imagine a further enhancement of this theme—the Madonna with the Jesus Child—in its impression on the human soul. One of the ideas of the Christian conception of the world has come to expression here in the highest imaginable way, seen from a certain aspect.

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1. Raphael. Madonna With Child.

And now let us look at the picture for a moment as though we knew nothing of the Christian world-conception. Let us consider it in the way Herman Grimm once spoke of it, simply as an expression of the deep mystery of the relation of the mother to the child. A mother with her child: Once more, the highest means of expression have been found by Raphael for one of the most mysterious themes in the whole Cosmos, as it lies before us human beings living in the Physical. Thus even if we take the pure picture of Nature—the mother and child—apart from the world-historic happenings, once more the thing is perfect in itself, the highest of its kind.

It is always so with Raphael. His themes are of universal significance, and perfectly expressed,—the means of expression proceeding from those streams and influences which we recognise as characteristic of the South. Always, however, his themes must be seen in the context of great universal meanings. We can regard them from a Christian aspect (and the above two points of view are by no means the only ones),—looking at it in a Christian way, the theme places itself at once in a great context of Nature. Again it rises free from the individually human; we seem to forget the human being that worked to create it—the human being, Raphael himself. Behind the artist stand great cosmic perspectives—world-conceptions coming to expression in him. This, indeed, is to characterise such an artist as Raphael, as the artist of an epoch that was drawing to it close: the Fourth Post Atlantean epoch. Such epochs, when they draw near their end—or when their inner essence reaches beyond the boundary of times, often bring forth their very highest.

We shall presently see how very different it is when we consider in this light, say, the personality of Albrecht Dürer. There it is altogether different. But you might also think of the Sistine Madonna, even as we have now spoken of the Madonna della Sedia. Again we should have to say: What is here placed before us interests us, above all, inasmuch as it stands out against the background of a great world-conception. Without this background of a great world-conception, the Sistine Madonna is, indeed, unthinkable.

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2. Raphael. Sistine Madonna With Child

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3. Raphael. Sistine Madonna With Child (detail)

Looking at some of Raphael's pictures today, let us bear in mind the aspect which has thus been characterised. For Raphael to create in this way—for his pictures to arise out of a mighty world-perspective—something of cosmic law and principle had to be working in his very soul. This is, indeed, the case. It comes to expression in the remarkable course of his life, which was already emphasized by Hermann Grimm. Raphael's work takes its course in regular cyclic periods. At the age of twenty-one he creates the Sposalize; four years later the Entombment; four years after this he completes the Frescoes of the Camera della Segnatura; four years later, once again, the Cartoons for the tapestries in the Vatican and the two Madonnas. And finally, four years after this, at the age of thirty-seven, he is working at the Transfiguration, which stands unfinished when he leaves this physical plane. In cyclic periods of four years, something of the nature of a cosmic principle works in Raphael. Truly, we here have something that proceeds from a great cosmic background. Hence Raphael's work is so strongly separated from his personality. Again and again the question comes to us: How is it that the themes—and they are world-historic themes—come to expression in his work so perfectly; so self-contained, so inwardly complete?

Down to this day, the study of Art derives—more than from any other source—from that great Art in the center of which is Raphael.

The study of Art in the exoteric life today is more or less of this kind. All its available ideas have been learned from the Art which finds its highest expression in Raphael—the Art of the Italian Renaissance. Thus in the outer life the concepts to express this Art are the most perfect, and all other Art is measured by this standard. The works of this Art are the ideal, and we have few words at our disposal, few concepts and ideas, even to speak of any other streams in Art, specifically different from this one. That is the unique thing.

And now we will let pass before our souls a number of pictures by Raphael, most of which we have not yet seen in these lectures.

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4. Raphael. The Vision of Ezekiel. (Florence, Palazzo Pitti.)

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4. Raphael. The Vision of Ezekiel. (detail) (Pitti. Florence.)

The ideas, the living conceptions, out of which such a picture proceeded even in Raphael's time, are naturally no longer near us today. To represent so truly this wandering of the soul in human form through the spiritual world, would no longer be attainable today for those who have not Spiritual Science. The animal nature below expressed what man has cast aside from himself, but it is still there, needless to say, even in his etheric body, and we find it there when the etheric is freed from the physical. The union of the soul with something childlike, as it is is represented by the angel figures here, is an absolutely true conception. The conception corresponds to a reality. We must consider man in his full being, such as he really is. In recent communications on the Guardian of the Threshold we had to speak of the Threefold being of Man. This threefold nature of man emerges everywhere, where reference is made to the Spiritual part of man emancipated from the Physical. We find this threefoldness in manifold forms—not symbolic, but corresponding to spiritual Realities. And so we find it here, in the full-grown Man related to the Child and the Beast.

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5. Perugino. The Marriage of Maria. (Vienna, Albertina.)

Today we are able to show a study from the Sposalizo, the picture with which Raphael's great career as an artist properly begins. He did this at the age of twenty-one—at the beginning of the four-year period which dominated all his work.

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6. Perugino. “Sposalizo”. (Caen.)

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7. Raphael. “Sposalizo”. (Milan, Brera.)

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8. Raphael. The Call of St. Peter. (London, Kensington Museum.)

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9. Raphael. The Road to Calvary. (Madrid, Prado.)

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10. Raphael. Sketch of the Mourning for Christ. (Louvre. Paris.)

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11. Raphael. Sermon of St. Paul at Athens. (London, Kensington Museum.)

We will now show once more a reproduction of the so-called “Disputa,” with certain details.

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12. Raphael. Disputa. (Vatican. Rome.)

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13. Raphael. The Holy Trinity. (Perugia, San Severo.)

The Holy Trinity, as it is called.

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14. Raphael. Sketch for the Disputa. (Windsor.)

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15. Raphael. St. Cecilia. (Bologna.)

And now, as an example of Raphael's portraiture:—

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16. Raphael. Cardinal Bihbiens. (Pitti. Florence.)

The next two are examples of his tapestries in the Vatican.

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17. Raphael. The Miraculous Draught of Fishes. (Tapestry in the Vatican.)

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18. Raphael. The Healing of the Lame. (Tapestry in the Vatican.)

These are the things of which Goethe said that nothing he had known till then could compare with them in greatness.

Looking back once more over the pictures by Raphael which we have seen today, I beg you observe how we may recognise in them the echoing of a mighty tradition of great Art. Even the sketches which we have shown today reveal this most especially. Raphael's work is the last, the highest, the closing act in a great tradition. There is also another point I would ask you to consider. Think of the picture of the Sermon of St. Paul and others—the “Disputa,” for example. You may take any one of those that we have seen today. In every case, having distinguished the subject of the picture, you may naturally ask yourself about the event or personality represented. But it will never be sufficient to answer: The subject is such and such; it represents this or that. In Raphael's case you will have to ask: How is the artist contriving to express—whatever the subject is—in accordance with the ideas and canons of great Art? We cannot merely ask: How would St. Paul actually have lifted up his hand to speak? With Raphael we must ask: What angle will the arm have to make with the body according to aesthetic laws of balance and proportion? And so forth ... A magic breath is poured out over it all,—a magic breath of aesthetic traditions, of harmony and balance. Look at the boy who stands here, in this picture. It is not enough to ask: What is going on in the soul of the boy? Your question must, rather, be directed to these laws of artistic harmony. See how the line of the arm, reaching out on either side, is placed into the composition. In short, you can distinguish what is purely artistic from the underlying subject-matter. Here, however, the artist's power is so magnificent that it draws the subject-matter into its own sphere. With such an artist as Raphael, we may, indeed, pronounce the word, for it is literally true:—“Artistic truth makes all the rest true,—compels all the rest into its circle.”

You cannot apply this saying, in its present meaning, to the works we shall now let pass before our souls. We will begin with one by Martin Schongauer, who died in 1488.

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19. Martin Schongauer. The Road to Calvary.

Here you see the very opposite. To begin with, the artist is simply concerned to express his subject. No longer is there poured out over it the magic breath of a peculiarly aesthetic truth, the climax of a great tradition. Here the effort is, to the best of the artist's technique and ability, with the artistic means at his disposal, to bring to expression what is there in the souls of men. Here the world speaks to us directly—not through the medium of a tradition of great Art.

We will now let work upon our souls the personality of Albrecht Dürer; showing a number of pictures which we did not see in the former lectures. In Albrecht Dürer, whom we may speak of as a contemporary of Raphael, we have before us an altogether different personality. It is impossible to think of Dürer's works in the same way as of Raphael's. In Dürer's case we shall not easily forget the personality, the human being. Not that we must always necessarily imagine him; but the pictures themselves are eloquent of all that is direct and intimate and near to the human soul, springing from the soul with elemental force. Raphael paints with the ever-present background of great world-perspectives. He is only conceivable if we imagine, as it were, the Genius of Christianity itself painting in the soul of Raphael. And, again, he is only conceivable as one who stands at the close of a great epoch, during which pupils were learning from their Masters many a tradition of aesthetic law, artistic harmony,—learning that certain things should be done in certain ways, to correspond with the canons of great Art.

In Raphael's works these things are always there before us. In Dürer's work, on the other hand, we feel in the background, as it were, the aura of the life of the time in Middle Europe,—the German towns and cities. Invisibly his pictures are pervaded by all that blossomed forth in the free life of the cities, working its way towards the Reformation. Nor does he stand before us with any cosmic perspectives in the background. It is, rather, the ordinary individual man's approach to the Bible and to his fellow-men, bringing his own soul to expression. The Human element can never be separated from his works. We cannot seek in Dürer for a cosmic principle working through his soul, as we can in Raphael. But we may look for something intimate and deep; deeply connected—we cannot say so too often—with the human soul, its feelings and its seeking, its longing and striving.

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20. Dürer. The Four Witches. (Etching)

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21. Dürer. Hercules.

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22. Dürer. Melanchthon Etching.

Here we have a portrait of Melanchthon, the theological bearer of the Reformation, as against Luther, who was the “priestly” bearer.

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23. Dürer. “Rosenkranzfest.” (Prague.)

This picture is now in the “Rudolfinum” at Prague. The Pope, the Emperor and representatives of Christianity are being crowned with roses by Mary, the Jesus Child and St. Dominic. The two figures against the tree trunk will be shown in detail in the next slide.

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24. Dürer. Portrait of Himself and Pirkheimer. (Detail of the above.)

Further examples of Dürer's portraiture:—

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25. Dürer. Portrait of his Father. (Uffizi. Florence.)

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26. Dürer. Portrait. (Prado. Madrid.)

Looking at such a portrait, the whole life of the time comes vividly before you. Truly, in this sense Dürer is an historic figure of the very first rank. No historic document tells us so well, what the people of that time were like.

We shall now show some characteristic examples of Dürer's drawings—etchings and woodcuts. To begin with, from his cycle on the Apocalypse—fifteen leaves, done in 1498.

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27. Dürer. The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. (1498.)

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28. Dürer. The Woman Clothed with the Sun and the Seven-headed Dragon (1498.)

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29. Dürer. The Adoration of the Lamb and The Hymn of the Chosen. (1497).

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30. Dürer. The Battle of the Angels. (1498.)

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31. Dürer. Michael and the Dragon. (1493.)

And now we will show a number of pictures from the series of etchings of the Passion—known as the “Kupferstich-Passion.”

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32. Dürer. The Kerchief of St. Veronica. (Etching)

Then the motif that occurs again and again in that time:—

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33. Dürer. The Man of Sorrows. (Etching)

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34. Dürer. The Scourging. (Etching)

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35. Dürer. The Crowning with Thorns. (Etching)

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36. Dürer. Ecce Homo. (Etching)

We will next show a number of pictures from the Holzschnitt-Passion—of thirty-six small woodcuts. They are extraordinarily tender and intimate. The first is the title-page:—

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37. Dürer. Christ with the Crown of Thorns. (Woodcut)

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38. Dürer. Saint Veronica. (Woodcut)

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39. Dürer. The Last Supper. (Woodcut)

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40. Dürer. The Scourging. (Woodcut)

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41. Dürer. Ecce Homo. (Woodcut)

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42. Dürer. The Way to Calvary. (Woodcut)

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43. Dürer. Christ on the Cross. (Woodcut)

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44. Dürer. Mourning for Christ. (Woodcut)

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45. Dürer. The Resurrection. (Woodcut)

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46. Dürer. The Ascension. (Woodcut)

We can also show two pictures by Hans Baldung, who worked for a certain time, at any rate—in Dürer's workshop. These pictures date from the end of the 15th or beginning of the 16th century.

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47. Hans Baldung. The Three Fates.

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48. Hans Baldung. Ecce Homo.

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49. Hans Sebald Beham. The Man of Sorrows.

I would like to make the following remarks:—The transition from the Fourth to the fifth post-Atlantean epoch and all that is connected with it, finds expression—far more than we can realise from the ordinary textbooks of History—in the whole life of the 12th, 13th, 14th, 15th, and 16th centuries. We must remember that at such times, at the turning-point of one epoch and another, many things are perceptible in the life of the time, expressing the mighty transformation that is taking place. History, truly, does not take its course—though the text-books might lead one to suppose so—like a perpetual succession of causes and effects. At characteristic moments, at the turning-points of epochs, characteristic phenomena emerge, in the most varied spheres of life. Thus, at the transition from the age of the Intellectual Soul or Soul of the Higher Feelings to that of the Spiritual Soul, phenomena appear in all domains of life, revealing how men felt when the impulses of the Spiritual Soul were drawing near. The evolution of the Spiritual Soul involved the development of those relationships with the purely physical plane into which men had to enter during the fifth post-Atlantean age. To a high degree, man was about to be fettered to that physical plane. Naturally, this brought in its train all the phenomena of reaction—of opposition and revulsion at this process. Moreover, at the same time many things emerged out of the former epoch, reaching over with multitudinous ramifications into the new.

Among the many symptoms of that time we see, for instance, the intense preoccupation of man with the phenomenon of Death. In many different spheres—as we can easily convince ourselves—the thought of Death came very near to men. Death as a great mystery—the Mystery of Death—drew near to men at the very time when their Souls had to prepare to come out most of all on to the physical plane of existence.

Moreover. the things of the fourth epoch were reaching over into the Fifth. There were the excesses of the Papacy which had degenerated more and more into a pure impulse of might. There were the excesses connected with the old divisions—the riches of the higher orders, their overweening arrogance, their growing superficiality of life,—while the religious themes themselves were being made external, flat and superficial. Those human beings, on the other hand, who attained some inwardness of soul were pondering deeply on the penetration of the Spiritual world into the physical. Added to this, there was the absolute need to turn one's attention to the spiritual world; inasmuch as the seeds of decay and destruction were entering most terribly into the physical world just at that time. For in those centuries the plague was raging far and wide in Europe—truly, an awful death, Death, in the Plague, came face to face with men as a visible phenomenon in its most awful form.

In Art, too, we see this intensive study of the significance of Death. It comes before us especially in the famous Procession of Death on the cemetery wall at Pisa—one of the earliest appearances of this kind. Then we find many pictures of Death as it draws near to men under the inexorable laws of Fate—draws near to man of whatsoever rank or class. The “Dance of Death,” the “Wandering of Death through the World,” Death's entry into all human relationships—this becomes a very favorite theme. It was out of this mood and feeling that Holbein himself created his cycle on the Dance of Death, three examples of which we shall now show. In Holbein's Dance of Death the object was especially to show how Death approaches the rich man, for instance; approaches man of every social rank—from the highest in the land to the lowest. Moreover, the object was to show Death as a righteous judge. Holbein in his Dance of Death desired to show every conceivable circumstance under which Death draws near to human life.

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44a. Holbein. Death and the King.

Here we see Death coming to the King, to tear him away from his royal life.

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44b. Holbein. Death and the Monk.

The people of that time had great delight in pictures such as these. This was the time when the Reformation strove to put an end to all the growing worldliness and emptiness of the religious life—to the corruption of the Church and the religious orders.

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45. Holbein. Death and the Rich Man.

Death draws near to the rich man, and finds him with his pile of money.

My dear friends, we have seen how the German Art came to expression in these great examples—and especially in the greatest, in Dürer,—at the end of the 15th and beginning of the 16th century. One question cannot but interest us again and again: How is it with the origin and evolution of this special stream of Art? In order to say a little more upon this subject, we shall presently show a few pictures revealing how the several factors stood at a characteristic moment. We can make very interesting studies on the evolution of the Mid-European or German Art—and notably the Southern German Art—at the beginning of the 15th century. True, the pictures of the period, which we shall show, give only the outcome of a long line of evolution. But this outcome appears in them strongly and characteristically. When we wish to characterise a great range of phenomena, we have to sum up many things in a few words; and if we desire to be true, it is by no means easy ... It may be that the characteristic pictures we choose does not fully represent all that is here intended. But if we take things on the whole, we shall find it is confirmed, undoubtedly.

The origin of the Mediaeval Art of the German people shows itself most characteristically on the slopes of the Alps reaching out into Southern Germany, into the regions of Southern Bavaria and Swabia. And we must realise that here was a flowing together of two factors. The one represented by all that was imported from the South along the paths of evolution of the Church—and notably the Roman Church system. We must decidedly imagine (though the historic documents contain little about it) that in artistic matters, too, many an impulse came through the Church and the clerical orders. This applies especially to the districts to which I have just referred. Undoubtedly, many priests and clerics also became painters—good and bad—and they, of course, were always in close connection with the whole system of the Church, working its way upwards with its Roman, Latin impulses from the South. They carried with them all that was living there as artistic tradition. Needless to say, this great tradition reached its eminence only in men of genius, but it existed and was taught as a tradition even among lesser men. Tradition was especially at home in Italy, and thence the priests and monks absorbed and carried it with them to the North.

With all the other things which they derived from the Roman Church, they also took with them these conceptions of how the artist should work, ideas of artistic harmony and balance: Of how one ought to group the persons in a picture, and how the lines should go, and so forth. All this that we see at its loftiest eminence, say in the works of Michelangelo and, above all, Raphael, too, did not create naively, but, as I said before, out of a far-reaching artistic tradition. These artists knew how the figures should be grouped, in the composition, how the single figures should be placed, and so forth. And as I mentioned recently, they had brought the laws of perspective to a high degree of perfection.

All this was taken Northward. Monks and Priests who had enjoyed artistic training would frequently discuss such things with those who showed signs of artistic talent. But it must be said that the people whose home was in the German-speaking districts of what is now called Austria or Southern Bavaria or Swabia absorbed these rules of Art only with great reluctance. There can be no doubt about it; they confronted many of these things without real understanding. They heard that a thing must be done so, and so; but it did not truly appeal to them, it did not strike home. They had not yet developed in themselves a vision for these things. For a period, from which little has been preserved, we must assume, proceeding from these districts, works of Art carrying forward in a very clumsy fashion whatever had to do with the great artistic tradition of the Latin, Roman South. They could not enter into it; they had very little talent for it. The talents of the people of these districts lay in another direction.

I have spoken of all that was carried Northward by the Roman priesthood. This, as I said, was the one factor. The other was what I would call the elemental originality of heart and mind of the human beings themselves who in these regions showed any kind of talent for the Art of painting. They had no talent to follow the rules which were considered the highest requirements of Art in the South. To begin with, they had no eye for perspective. That a picture must somewhat express the fact that one figure is standing more in the foreground and another towards the back,—this they could only understand with great difficulty. To the people of these districts in the first half of the 15th century the spatial conception was still well nigh a closed book. Yet these very districts are in many respects the source and fountainhead of German Art. They could not work their way through to feel the laws of perspective independently and of their own accord. At most, they felt that the things must somehow be expressed by overlapping. The figure that overlaps the other is in front, the other is behind. In this way they tried to bring some measure of spatial order into their pictures, and so they began to find their way into the laws of space.

Primitive as they still are, we see in these pictures—appearing so characteristically in the first half of the 15th century—how hard it is for that stream of evolution which tries to take shape out of the elemental forces of the human heart, to discover for itself the laws of artistic creation. We will now show some examples from the above-mentioned districts. We shall see that they had no real inner relation to the tradition that has been brought to them. They absorbed it, as it were, unwillingly, with reluctance. Nor had they yet the power to obey the laws of space out of their own understanding. To begin with, I will show you an artist of the first half of the 15th century: Lucas Moser.

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46. Lucas Moser. The Voyage of Mary and Lazarus. (Altar-piece at Tiefenbronn.)

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46. Lucas Moser. The Voyage of Mary and Lazarus. (detail)

Here you see how difficult, how well-nigh impossible the artist finds it to escape from the flat surface. He seems quite unable to obey any kind of perspective law. He creates out of the elemental forces of heart and mind, but his figures are in the flat—he can scarcely get out of the plane. It is, however, interesting for once to see something so primitive.

Lucas Moser was one of those artists, creating within a social order wherein undoubtedly some of the laws and canons of Art, that had been introduced from the South, were living. Some element of the Southern style undoubtedly plays into his works. At the same time he tries to contribute something of what he sees for himself. And the one thing does not quite agree with the other. For one does not actually see things in accordance with the laws of Art.

Look at this Voyage of the Saints across the Sea, as it is called. Look in the foreground (although one can scarcely speak of a “foreground” here),—see the water in which the ship is floating. The waves are merely indicated by the crests, painted in lighter color. If you try to imagine a visual point from which the whole picture might be seen, you will get into difficulties at once. We must imagine it high up so as to look down on the water. But that, again, will not agree with the aspect of the figures of the saints, below.

On the other hand, you see this artist is already striving towards what afterwards emerged—as their essential greatness—in the German artists of a later time, whom we have now considered. Look at the element of naturalism—the faithful portrayal of expression in the faces of these saints. And yet they are sitting on the very edge of the boat, so that they would certainly fall overboard at the least breath of wind. In spite of this, how intimate is the artist's observation; how delicately the souls are expressed. He makes an unskillful attempt to observe the laws of Art, and tries to be realistic at the same time, and the two things do not agree ... Needless to say, the face could not be in this position, in relation to the body (see the figure of the saint, with the mitre). There are countless faults of the same kind. It is all clue to the fact that the artist is striving on the one hand towards what afterwards became the real greatness of the German Art, while on the other hand he is impressed with certain rules. For instance: That there should be a full-face figure in the middle of the picture, and others in profile to contrast with it. He has been taught certain rules in arrangements of composition. All this he tries his best to observe. But he can only do so according to the measure of his own elementary conceptions. He has not yet worked his way through to any kind of perspective or observation of the laws of space.

Observe these little hills,—and yet the picture does not really recede towards the background. You will realise the immense progress that has been made by the time of Dürer and Holbein. And yet how short was the intervening time! This alter-piece was done in the first half of the 15th century. How strongly the forces must have worked, overcoming the artistic traditions imported from the South (for these they did not want) and bringing forth a new stream out of an independent elemental impulse. They rebelled against the Southern tradition and tended to overcome it, and to find for themselves what they required. And you have seen how far they got in a comparatively short time.

We will now show another picture by the same artist.

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47. Lucas Moser. Saints Asleep. (Marseilles. From the Altar of Tiefenbronn.)

Look at this creation! It shows how the artist combines a clear vision of Nature with an absolute disregard of some of the simplest natural facts. The tiled roof and the church tower—the whole ensemble is such that the artist cannot possibly have seen it anywhere. He just puts it together, having learned certain rules about the distribution of figures in space. Yet look how he brings out the single items according to his own vision. There is a decided beginning of Naturalism. He tries to be naturalistic and yet to express what he feels should be. His subject is "Sleeping Saints," but he conceives that they must appear worthy and dignified. Look at the figure of St. Cedonius (?) here, with his mitre.

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48. Lucas Moser. Saints Asleep. (Detail)

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49. Lucas Moser. Self Portrait. (Detail)

Once more the whole thing seems on the flat. But you will already observe the first attempt to bring out of the spatial effects by the strong shadows thrown. His relations to the laws of perspective are very strained, to say the least. But he contrives to get the effect of space by the strong shadows, and altogether by the distribution of light and dark.

This, as we saw in former lectures, is a peculiar characteristic of the German stream,—to feel the quality of space by catching the light, using the spatial virtue of the light itself. Here we do not take our start from the laws of lineal perspective—laws of perspective drawing. We extend the surface forward and backward by discovering the hidden effects of light itself.

We can see this most significantly in another artist, who already seeks for truth of Nature, but can still be characterised fundamentally in the same way as the former one. I refer to Multscher.

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50. Multscher. The Nativity. (Berlin.)

Here is a representation of the Birth of Christ. Once again there is really nothing of those Laws of Space that came from the South. But you see the beginnings of the spatial working of the light itself. Space is born, as it were, out of the activity of light, and in this element the artist works with keen attention. This picture dates from 1437.

In Moser's and Multscher's works we have a true artistic impulse, born out of the very nature of the German South. Here is the element that afterwards rose to its height in Dürer, Holbein and the rest, though the latter were also influenced from Flanders and the Netherlands. The Cologne Masters, too, are rooted in these same impulses. Again and again we see how wonderfully the characteristics emerge even at the very beginning of the evolution of such an impulse. Observe in this picture the striving to express the inner quality of soul of every single person. And yet the artist's relation to certain other truths of Nature is very strained; Imagine you were in this crowd of people standing in the background. Look at the faces. Considering how near some of them are, they could not be standing side by side in that way unless their arms were chopped off, right and left; the artist pays no heed to these elementary matters of spatial distribution. One person is dovetailed into the other. The next is another picture by Multscher.

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51. Multscher. Christ in Gethsemane. (Town Hall. Sterzing.)

The artist tries to find his way into the representation of landscape. Note how deeply he has felt the three figures of the apostles, left behind. Yet how little he succeeds in making any real distinction between foreground and background. He seems almost unable to follow any of the laws of space. But he tries once more to express the spatial by the effects of light. Here once again we see the element which afterwards became so great in German Art.

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52. Multscher. The Entombment. (Stuttgart. Museum.)

In Lucas Moser and in Multscher we see the actual beginnings of German Art. There are others, too, but very little has been preserved; most of it is to be found in the churches. With all their primitive unskilfulness, we have here the beginning of what emerged with real greatness in the pictures of a later date, that we have seen. They paint out of a primitive feeling, while they simply cannot find their way into the traditions that come to them from the South. Their inwardness is in opposition to these laws in which they are instructed. One more picture by Multscher.

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53. Multscher. The Resurrection. (Berlin.)

All that we have said of the two artists comes out very prominently in this picture. If you look for a point from which these figures with the sarcophagus (for so we might call it) are seen, you have to look high up above. We are looking down on the whole scene. And yet if you look at the trees you will see, they are seen from a frontal aspect. There is no single visual point for the picture as a whole. The trees are seen from in front; the picture as a whole, from above. There is no single point of vision according to the laws of space. Indeed, whatever of perspective you do see in the pictures would largely be eliminated were it not for the strong differentiation of the space through the effects of the light itself. In this respect, our eyes will easily deceive us. You would look in vain for line perspective in this picture. You would find mistakes everywhere. I do not mean naturally admissible mistakes, but errors which by themselves would make the picture quite impossible. We see once more the striving to get beyond the mere linear perspective by means of a spatial depth and quality which the light itself begets.

We see how these artists of Middle Europe have to feel their own way towards a totality of composition. There is another interesting point,—less evident in these pictures, but you will find it in other works by Multscher belonging to the same altar-piece. His fine feeling for light enables him to bring out the facial expression beautifully. But he is scarcely able to do the eyes with artistic truth. You can see it here to some extent, though it is less evident than on other pictures. And as for the ears—he does them just as he has been taught. Here he does not yet possess a free and independent feeling. Thus on the one hand he observes what he has been told, but without much artistic understanding. The things he does according to tradition he does badly. On the other hand, we see in him, in a primitive form, what was only afterwards able to appear more perfectly in German Art.

It is, indeed, remarkable how all these things, which we find in the German Art, emerge already in a highly perfect form in the Hamburg Master, Meister Francke, who was practically a contemporary of Moser and Multscher.

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54. Meister Francke. The Man of Sorrow. (Hamburg.)

In this Ecce Homo, this Man of Sorrows, you see how high a degree of perfection the expression of the Head of Christ, which was elaborated by and by in the course of time, had already reached. Compare this Head of Christ with the one by Multscher which we saw just now. You will recognise a great advance. Likewise, in the whole forming of the figures. Of course, the peculiar quality which afterwards came out through greater skill and variety of technique in Dürer's work,—in his paintings, etchings and woodcuts,—is lacking still.

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55. Meister Francke. The Resurrection. (Schwerin.)

All in all, considering the artistic developments that are potentially there in these first beginnings, and that produced Dürer and Holbein and the others, we must admit that the thread is broken. For afterwards there came a break; they turned back again to the Roman, Latin principle. And in the 19th century, artistic evolution was decidedly on a retrogressive path. There can, however, be no doubt that this fact is connected with deep and significant laws of human evolution. This stream of evolution in Art works out of the element of light and dark, and discovers—as I tried to explain in the lecture on Rembrandt—the inner connection of the world of color with the light and dark. Through the historic necessity of the time, it could not but tend towards a certain Naturalism; but it can never find its culmination in Naturalism. For in this peculiar talent to perceive the inwardness of things, the possibility to paint, to represent the spiritual Mysteries, still lies inherent. When I say “inwardness of things,” I mean not merely inwardness of soul, but the inwardness of things themselves, expressed in the spatial laws of light and darkness which also contain the mysteries of color. Goethe, as you know, tried to express this systematically in his Theory of Color. This possibility, therefore, still lies open and unrealised in evolution. The possibility to paint the spiritual Mysteries out of the inner virtues of the world of color, out of the inner essence of the light and dark. And the possibilities in this direction can be extended also to the other Arts.

But such a thing can only be brought about through the inspiration of Spiritual Science, of the anthroposophical conception of the world. In the none too distant future, the possibilities that lie inherent in the beginnings of this stream of Art must all be brought together. To create out of the inner light—out of the forming and shaping power of the light—will at the same time be to create out of the inner source of being, and that, I need not say, can only be the Spiritual. In the portrayal of the sacred History, this stream in Art could not, in the nature of the case, attain the high perfection which Raphael attained, for instance. (Nevertheless, in some respects it attained a perfection of its own—notably in the great artists whose works we have seen again today.) But the Spiritual that pervades the works of this Art is still alive. We must only find the connection of what surges through these works of Art, with the underlying laws of the spiritual life. Then will spiritual Imagination and artistic fancy join together and create a true Imaginative Art.

To some extent, as a first beginning, this has been attempted in our (Goetheanum) Building. For this is, after all, a beginning of new artistic impulses. Naturally, there is something primitive about every new beginning; but we have ventured, none the less, to strive for something new and in a grander style. The time may come when people will understand what we have been striving for in this Building. Then it will be realised why certain occult impulses that came already to expression in this art which we have seen today and in the preceding and contemporary sculpture (examples of which we have also seen) remained to this day unrealised. It will be understood why a certain break was inevitable in the evolution of this art. How remote, after all, is that which emerges in the 19th century in the art of a Kaulbach or a Cornelius from what is living in this art which we have seen today! In Kaulbach, Cornelius, Overbeck and the rest, we see a mere repeat of the Southern element. In this art, on the other hand, we see on all hands a radical rebellion and revolution against the Latin and Roman.

He who is prepared to look more closely, will find still deeper connections. Think of the four pictures by Multscher which we have shown today. They represent, if I may say so, the native Swabian tendencies in the realm of Art. Here we find a certain native talent for a flat surface with the help of light. Anyone who has a feeling for finer, more intimate relationships will perceive a similar quality in the Philosophy of Hegel—likewise a product of the Swabian talent, and in that of Schelling, of whom the same thing may be said, and in the poetry of Holderlin.

This grasp of the flat surface, but working forth from the flat surface with the help of light,—we find it not only in the primitive beginnings of this art; we find it again even in Hegel's Philosophy. Hence Hegel's Philosophy, if I may say so, makes such a ‘flat’ impression on us. It is like a great canvas, like an ideal painting of the world. It works from the surface; and in its turn, after all, it can but be the philosophic beginnings of what will now work its way—not merely into this projection of Reality on the flat—but into the full Reality itself. And this “Reality,” I need not say, can be none other than the Spiritual.

These things are interrelated in all truth. What I have lately been trying to describe to you for other realms of life, with regard to the history and civilisation of Europe, is wonderfully confirmed, in all detail, in the sphere of Art. All that we recognised in the lecture the day before yesterday—the impulses working in the different regions of Europe—you can trace it again in the life of Art. Bring before your minds again the art of the Netherlands which we have seen,—coming from thence into Western Germany. Then consider what we have studied today—as something growing absolutely and originally out of the German spirit itself. For the country of which we have spoken today, the soil on which Lucas Moser and Multscher worked, is, after all, the central region of the German Spirit. It is here that the German Spirit has evolved most originally and most truly. Here, too, Christianity was inwardly absorbed, as though by an inner kinship with the spiritual nature of the German heart and mind. The absorption of Christianity was a far more inward process in these districts; and here the original and elemental gifts of the German nature came forth in the realms of Art. They did not accept what brought Christianity to them from the South in a form already marred by Rome; they tried to recreate Christianity themselves artistically out of their inner heart and feeling.

Such a thing could not emerge in the same measure in the more Northern regions of Germany without the coming of an impulse from the South. We see the same thing once more in the fact that Hegel's philosophy received its quickening from the Southern region, and Schelling's too; while, on the other hand, the philosophy of Kant reveals itself quite evidently as a North German product. The peculiar quality of the Kantian philosophy is not unconnected with the fact that the originally Prussian districts remained Heathen for comparatively long. They were brought over to Christianity at a later period and by a rather external process—a conversion far more external than in the Southern German districts. Prussia, properly speaking, remained Heathen till a very late period.

The things we otherwise recognise in historic evolution—we can find them confirmed in the evolution of Art and in the evolution of the life of Thought. For this very reason I wanted to place Moser and Multscher before you at the close of our considerations for today.

I have often quoted Goethe's saying, when he felt in Italy the echo of the nature of Greek Art. I may remind you of it once again today, now that we shall show a few representations of Greek sculputre. Goethe was writing from Italy to his friends in Weimer. He had seen something in Italy of the Grecian Art, and he had divined still more. He had made acquaintance with it. And he wrote: After this experience he had become convinced that in the creation of their works of art the Greeks proceeded according to the same laws by which Nature herself proceeds—and he himself was on the track of their discovery.

This saying of Goethe's always seemed to me of deep and lasting significance. Goethe at that moment divined that something was living in the Greeks, in intimate unison with the laws of the great Universe. Alread before his journey to Italy, he had been trying to discover the principle of universal evolution and becoming. He had done so, above all, in his Theory of Metamorphosis. He found that the manifold forms of Nature can be referred to certain typical or fundamental forms, in which is expressed the spiritual Law and Essence that underlies the outer things. He started, as you know, from Botany—the study of the Plant world. He tried to perceive the growth of the plant in this way: A single fundamental organ, whose basic form he recognised in the leaf, undergoes constant metamorphoses. All organs are transformations of this one. Not only so, but having thus begun, he sought to understand the several plant species as diverse manifestations of one archetypal form, the primary plant.

Likewise he looked for a connecting thread throughout the world of animals. We have often spoken of this work of Goethe's. But, as a rule, we have not a ufficiently vivid conception of what he intended. We are wont to conceive things too abytractly, and we do so in this case. Goethe, if I may put it thus, wanted to take hold in a really living way of the life of living things, in their organic metamorphosis. He wanted to discover the principle on which Nature works. In so doing, he was, indeed, steering straight towards what must be the characteristic of the Science of the fifth post-Atlantean age, even as that which the Greeks conceived and expressed in their works of art was characteristic of the fourth.

In this connection I have often called upon you to observe what is recognisable in the Golden Age of Greek Art, and notably of Grecian sculpture, in so far as it been preserved for us. The Greek artist created from an altogether different starting point. He had a certain feeling. To exprec it in our fully concrete way, we must describe it thus: He felt how the Etheric Body in its living forces and mobility underlies the forms and movements of the Physical. He felt how the Etheric is manifested or portrayed in the forms of the Physical Body, while in the movements of the latter the living forces that abound in the Etheric Body come to expression.

The Greek art of Gymnastics, the Greek Athletics, were built on this foundation. Those who partook in them were to gain thereby a real feeling of what lives invisibly within the visible being of man. And in his plastic art the Greek wanted to portray what he himself experienced in his own nature. All this, as I have often said, grew different in later times, for afterwards men copied what they saw before them with their eyes, what they had outwardly before them. The Greek copies what he felt within himself. He did not work after the model as was done in later times—(whether they do so more or less obviously or indistinctly is not the point). To work from the model is only a peculiarity of the Fifth post-Atlantean age. Nevertheless, in this very age there murst arise a new view of Nature, for which the living starting-point is given in Goethe's “Metamorphosis.” True, there are weighty obstacles, as yet, to such a view of Nature. In this sphere, as in all others, materialistic prejudices stand in the way of a healthy conception of existence. The latter will have to work its way forth in the overcoming of these hindrances. We have to witness in our time things that are little noticed yet—movements that tend in the long run to brutalise even the artistic life. Goethe recognised in a beautiful way the connection between Truth in knowledge or science and Truth in Art, in practice. Science to him was still a living life within the Spirit.

Among the hindrances in this regard is one thing to which—if able to look more deeply into all the impulses of hindrance and of progress in our timei—we cannot give a pleasant name. I refer to what are now called sports and games, athletics and the like, which—if we look more deeply—are also largely among the forces of hindrance in modern civilisation. I can describe them in no other way, than as a tendency to degrade civilisation to the level of the ape. Modern sports and athletics—themselves an outcome of the materialistic conception of life—represent, as it were, the other pole. At the one pole, materialism tends to conceive man as a merely more perfect ape, while at the other pole—through many of the activities that fall under the heading of sport—they are working hard to turn him into a kind of carnivorous monkey. The two things run parallel with one another. Needless to say, modern sports and games and athletics are regarded as a great sign of progress. Indeed, they are often thought of as a kind of resurrection of the spirit of ancient Greece. But in their real essence they can only be described as working towards the ideal, to “monkeyfy” the human race. What can become of man if he proceeds along this path of modern sports, etc? Precisely a “monkeyfied” man, whose chief distinction from the real monkey will lie in the fact that the latter is a vegetarian, while monkeyfied man—presumably—will be a carnivorous species of monkey. The hindrances that face us in the civilisation of today must sometimes be described grotesquely; otherwise we do not describe them strongly enough to bring them home—however little—to the people of today. It is quite in keeping with the propensities of our time: On the one hand theoretically, they are at pains to understand Man as a more perfect ape, while on the other hand in practice they work to bring out the apishness of Man. For if that human being were developed, who is the underlying ideal of the extremer movements in sports and games today, a scientist could truly describe him in no other way, than in all essentials as an offshoot of the ape-nature.

We must think truly on these matters, to gain some understanding of those noble forms of Humanity which underlay the Golden Age of Grecian Art. It was inevitable in the Fifth Post-Atlantean age, for man to leave behind him his life within the spiritual ... The ancient Greek was living in it still. When he moved his hand, he knew that the Spiritual—the etheric body—was in movement. Hence, too, as a creative artist, in all that he imparted to the physical material, he strove to create, as it were, the expression of what he felt within him—the movement of the etheric body. The man of today must go a different path. By way of outward vision, contemplation,—combined with the living Imagination of the weaving of the Ethereal in the organic reelm,—he must bring ancient Greece to life again on a higher level, permeated this time by conscious knowledge, according to the true impulses of the fifth post-Atlantean age. In an elementary way, Goethe was striving towards this end in his Theory of Metamorphosis.

Goethe lived with his whole being in this striving towards a living conception of the Spiritual in the world. For this reason he was glad to refresh and strengthen himself by all that came to him from the study of Greek Art.

To understand the art of ancient Greece in its proper nature—its characteristics entirely a product of the mood of soul of the fourth post Atlantean age—we must start from such ideas as we have just set forth. In this respect it is interesting to see how the Greek Art found its way. Few of the original works have been preserved. Most of them are only handed down to us through later copies. It was with the help of later copies that a man like Winckelmann, in the 18th century, strove so wonderfully to recognise the essence of the art of ancient Greece. Winckelmann, Lessing and Goethe, in the latter half of the 18th century, tried to express in words the essence of Greek Art—tried to find their way back, to re-discover it. And we may truly say: Greek Art in its essence, once it is really grasped, can bring salvation from the perils of materialism.

It would take us too far afield if I were to give you even an outline sketch of the real history, the occult history of Greek Art. Only this much may be said, in connection with the illustrations we shall see today. Even in the early works of the Fifth or of the end of the Sixth century B.C., the relics of which have come down to us; the underlying foundation which I described just now is clearly recognisable. Albeit, in that early period the Greeks had not yet the ability to express through the material what they experienced within, nevertheless even in the archaic forms, imperfect as they are, we can see that the artist's creation is based on a feeling of the inner life and movement of the etheric body. By this means the Greek could find the way to raise the human form so marvellously to the Divine. The Greek was well aware that the figures of his Gods were based on real Being in the ethereal universe. Out of this there arose quite instinctively (for everything in that time was more or less instinctive) the need to represent the world of the Gods and all that was connected with them, in such a way that the outer form was the human form idealised. The point was by no means merely to idealise the Human—that is only the idea of an age that fails to understand the real depths. Through the idealised human form they were able to express what lives and weaves in the ethereal life.

In the earliest figures we still see a certain stiffness. But out of this, in their Golden Age, the Greeks evolved the power to express in the outer physical form the etheric human being. In the earliest pictures we shall still see a certain stiffness; but even here it can be seen that the shaping of the limbs proceeds from a true feeling for the ethereal in movement.

Then as we go on to Myron and bring some of his works before our souls, we shall see how what first came to expression only in the forming of the limbs, begins to take hold of the whole body. In Myron we already see how when an arm is moved—or represented in movement—it means something for the whole breathing organism, the forming of the chest. The human being as a whole is felt through and through. And this must have been the case to the highest degree in Phidias and his School and in Polycletus—in the Golden Age of ancient Greece.

Thereafter we find a gradual descent of Art from this sublime feeling of the ethereal. Not that the ethereal is left out; but they now try to master the actual forms of Nature, they follow the forms of Nature more faithfully, more humanly and less divinely. Nevertheless, the forms are still an expression of the living etheric movement within.

In looking at the several pictures, we shall be less concerned to discuss the individual artists; we chiefly want to see the gradual evolution of the Grecian Art as a whole. Nor does it matter so much, whether we speak—as the historians of Art are wont to do—of a decline in the latest works. In the earlier period the body was conceived, as it were, more in position, thus a certain restfulness or repose pervades the older works. Movement itself is conceived as though it had come to rest. We have the feeling that the artist endeavors to represent the body in such a way that the position in which the figure is might be a lasting one. The later artists strive for a more dramatic quality, holding fast the moment of time in the progressive movement. Thus there is more of movement in the later works. It is, after all, a mere matter of choice—arbitrary human choice—whether we call this a decline or not.

After these few remarks we will see some illustrations, and whatever more there is to say can be said in connection with the single works that will be shown.

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1. Apollo of Tenea. (Glyptothek. Munich.)

This is of an early period—about 600 B.C. Observe how the limbs, especially, are permeated with the ethereal ... One feature of the earliest Greek sculpture is often emphasized: the smile, as it is called, about the lips. In time to come this will be recognized as arising from the effort to represent not the dead human being—the mere physical body—but really to seize the inner life. In the earliest period they could do this in no other way than by this feature.

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2. Dying Warrior. Eastern Pediment. Temple of Aegina. (Glyptothek. Munich.)

These works of art in the Doric Temple at Aegina were done as a thank-offering for the Battle of Salamis. They chiefly represent battle-scenes. Dominating the whole is the figure of Pallas Athene, which we shall see presently. This dying recumbent figure is a beautiful example of the figures that are found in this temple. The figures are grouped in the pediment. It is most interesting to see the composition, the perfect symmetry. The figures are distributed to the left and right with the most beautiful symmetrical effect.

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3. Pallas Athene from the Pediment of the Temple at Aegina. (Glyptothek. Munich.)

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4. Reconstruction of the Western Piedemont of the Aphaia Temple.

These works take us to the beginning of the 5th century B.C.

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5. Head of a youth.

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6. Charioteer from Delphi

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7. Runner (middle of the 5th century B.C.)

And then I ask you to note, as with Myron—as we come in to that age that one can denote as the pinnacle—as with Myron, that a very different treatment of the body arises, in that he no longer separates, what even here is still the case, but he knows how to treat the whole body in connection with the limbs.

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8. Discus Thrower

Thus we stand in the middle of the 5th century and find in such a shapes a tryly high degree of perfection in the direction, we have tried to characterize.

And now we come, or are already in, to the Age of Periclean. From the time of Phidias, of whomwe unfortunately know very little, you have the so-called Athena Lemnia:

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9. Athena Lemnia

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10. Head of Athena

We will now give a few examples of the famous Parthenon. You may read the interesting story of these figures in any History of Art. The greatest of them have in all probability been lost. We can only gain some idea of them from the drawings made by the Frenchman, Carrey, in the 17th century. Subsequently they were largely destroyed by the Venetians, and only the relics were discovered by Lord Elgin in the 19th century.

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11a. Drawings of the eastern pediment.

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11b. Remains of the left side of the eastern pediment. (Bristish Museum. London.)

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11c. Reconstruction of the figures in the last photo.

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11d. Hestia, Dione, and Aphrodite from the right side of the eastern pediment. (British Museum, London.)

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11e. Far right of the eastern pediment.

Now for the Parthenon western pediment:

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11f. Drawings of the western pediment.

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11g. Reconstruction of the western pediment.

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The Parthnon Friezes:

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12a. Drawings of the Friezes.

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12b. Calvary. (Western Frieze.)

We may assume that these works were mostly executed in the presence of Phidias himself by his pupils. The next group is from the Eastern Frieze:

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12. Poseidon Group. (Eastern Frieze.)

With Phidias, indeed, all that was typical of Greek Art was already given. The stamp, the signature, as it were, was now given to the bodily figure, as it should be represented in Art. The way in which Phidias and his pupils saw it lived on for a long time. It was felt that the line of the face, the features, the movement of the limbs, the flow of the drapery and so forth, should accord with what was evolved in this ideal age.

Through all the traditions this was handed down, even into the times when they were able to imitate quite superficially what had lived so strongly in this Golden Age of the Art of ancient Greece. Unhappily, the greatest works have been destroyed. It is no longer possible to gain by outer vision a conception of Phidias' greatest masterpieces, which were transcendent and sublime. We must realise that in the 18th century, when Goethe and others, stimulated by Winckelmann, entered so deeply into the essence of Greek Art, they could only do so with the help of poor, late imitations. Truly, great intuition was necessary to penetrate into the nature of Greek Art through the poor imitations that were then available. And if we really try to feel the truth about these things we cannot but admit: In the time when Goethe was a young man, or when he travelled in Italy, there was still quite a different instinctive feeling for Art than later in the 19th century,—let alone the 20th. For otherwise it would have been impossible for these late imitations to inspire the lofty conceptions of Greek Art which lighted forth in Winckelmann or in Goethe.

Look, for instance, at the next, the head of Zeus, which is to be seen in Rome:

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13. Zeus of Otricoli. (Vatican. Rome.)

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14. Athena

Here you can see something like a later continuation of the type that was evolved in the time of Phidias. This is, of course, a later imitation, though undoubtedly it still appears with a certain grandeur,—With a far less grandeur they imitated the Hera type which had been evolved by Polycleitus. And as to the famous Pallas Athene, which is also to be seen among these statues in Rome, here I must say the imitation has become insipid, fatuous. Indeed, this figure shows already the type of the later imitations of Pallas Athene. These things even become a little reminiscent of fashion-plates! We can but divine how magnificent were the works from which these later imitations were derived.

In this head of Zeus you see the tradition that was handed down from Phidias.

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14a. Zeus

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14b. Profile of Zeus.

And now we will go back to the figures from the temple of Zeus at Olympia. Here, too, the composition is magnificent:

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15. Western Pediment. Temple of Zeus at Olympia.

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16. Figure of Apollo.

The next, too, is from the School of Phidias:—

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17. Orpheus Relief. (Museum. Naples.)

We remember how Phidias was accused by his fellow-citizens of stealing gold for his gold-and-ivory statue of Athene. His “grateful” fellow-citizens threw him into prison.

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18. Bust of Pericles. (Berlin.)

Truly an ideal conception—lifted far beyond the sphere of portraiture.

The next is perhaps a work of Phidias' youth.—

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19. Amazon.

Here we will insert a work of Polycleitus:—

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20. Amazon.

Myron and Phidias are the artists of the Golden Age of Grecian Art; they, indeed, created the traditions.

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21. Amazon.

Another Amazon. The next is more difficult to date; it represents about the turn of the 4th and 5th centuries B.C. We insert it here to show that ancient Greece was quite capable of producing something of the character of Genre:—

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22. Boy, extracting the Thorn from his Foot. (Rome.)

And now we gradually come into the age of which I tried to indicate just now that the whole conception is lifted down into a more human realm, even though the figures be still the figures of the Gods. Take the following, for instance:—

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23. Aphrodite of Cnidos. (Vatican, Rome.)

Although it is the figure of a Goddess, it is brought down into a more human sphere. The sublimity of the earlier artists is made more human. We see this already in Praxiteles. This picture represents the so-called Aphrodite of Cnidos. Praxiteles brings us to the 4th century B.C. In connection with this we will also show the

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24. Demeter of Cnidos. (British Museum.)

It breathes the same spirit. The next is the Hermes of Olympia:

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25. Hermes of Olympia, (By Praxiteles.)—holding the Dionysos child in his left hand.

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26. Satyr, by Praxiteles. (Capitol. Rome.)

To the same epoch belongs the famous Niobe Group,—Niobe losing all her children through the wrath of Apollo.

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27. Figure in Flight, from the Niobe Group. (Vatican. Rome.)

Going on into the 4th century, we come into the Alexandrian age. Lysippus actually worked in the service of Alexander the Great.

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28. Bust of Alexander. (Louvre. Paris.)

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29. Hermes. (Museum. Naples.)

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30. Youth, in Adoration. (By Lysippus.) (Berlin.) His arms are lifted up to Heaven in reverence, in prayer.

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31. Alexander the Great. (Munich.)

Here we already see the descent of Art from the Typical to the Individual—though in the Grecian Art the process nowhere went as far as in the later epochs.

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32. Medusa Head. (Glyptothek. Munich.)

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33. Sophocles. (Vatican. Rome.)

This status reaches back again to the best, ideal tradition of the older times; it reminds us of the Golden Age. We might equally well entitle it: The Poet, as such. This is symbolised by the rolls of script which are put there of set purpose. Compare this with the figures that now follow, tending more or less towards a portrait likeness in each case. You will see how they strive away from the ideal type, towards the quality of portraiture.

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34. Socrates.

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35. Plato. (Vatican. Rome.)

Of course, these portraits are not done from the model, but still there is an attempt at a human likeness—by which I do not mean to say that they are really like the original.

These remarks will refer especially to the Homer which will now follow:—

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36. Homer. (Museum. Naples.)

Now we gradually approach the 2nd century.

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37. The Victory of Samothrace. (Louvre. Paris.)

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38. The Venus of Milo. (Louvre. Paris.)

This famous work does, indeed, preserve the tradition of the Golden Age, although it belongs to a later period.

In the next picture, on the other hand, we see a fresh attempt to bring in movement:—

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39. Sleeping Ariadne.

This is probably a work of the same period, but you will see a distinct contrast between the two.

And now we come towards the last century before the birth of Christ. We come to the School of Rhodes.

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40. Laocoön. (Vatican. Rome.)

This is the famous Laocoön group—the starting-point, as you know, of many an artistic discussion, ever since Lessing's Laocoön of the 18th century. It is the work of three sculptors of the School of Rhodes. Lessing's writings on this subject are, indeed, most interesting. He tried to show, you will remember, how the poet describes is not placed before the eyes. We must call it to life in our imaginations. Whereas what the plastic artist has created is there before our eyes. Therefore, says Lessing, what the plastic artist portrays must contain far more repose; it must represent moments which can at least be imagined—for a single moment—in repose.

Much has been said and written about this Laocoon group, especially in relation to Lessing's explanations. It is interesting how the aestheticist, Robert Zimmermann,—without, of course, having any knowledge of Spiritual Science—arrived at an explanation which needs, no doubt, to be supplemented, but which was none the less correct for an age that had not Spiritual Science. His explanation contains—albeit only as an instinctive suggestion—some element of what I have been setting forth today. We see the priest, Laocoon, with his two sons, wound around by the serpents and going towards their death. Now we cannot but be struck by the peculiar way in which the body has been moulded. Much has been written on this subject. Robert Zimmermann rightly pointed out: The whole representation is such that we have before us the very moment where the life (or, as we should say, the etheric body) is already fleeing away. It is already a moment of unconsciousness. Hence the artist represents it as though the body of Laocoon were already falling asunder. That is the marvellous quality about this figure. The body is already being differentiated into its parts. Thus even in this late product we see how the Greek was aware of the etheric body. He brings to expression the actual moment where life is passing into death. It is the quick withdrawal of the etheric body through the shock—the shock that is expressed by the awful snakes coiling around. This effect of the etheric body withdrawing from the physical, and the physical falling asunder, is the characteristic thing in the Laocoon; not the other things that are so often said, but the peculiar way the body becomes differentiated. We could not imagine the body thus, unless we conceived it as the moment when the etheric body is drawing away.

And now two more examples—imitations of earlier works, perhaps, which have, none the less, made a great impression on later students of Art.

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41. Apollo Belvedere. (Vatican. Rome.)

This is the famous Apollo Belvedere—Apollo represented as a kind of battle-hero.

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42. Artemis. (Louvre. Paris.)

This, too, will be a later imitation of an earlier work.

Now, as we know, the Art of the ancient Greece gradually drew near its decline, when Greece was subjugated by Rome. In Rome, to begin with, there was a kind of imitation of the Greek Art. It was carried across to Rome, but it was soon submerged in the widespread unimaginativeness of the Roman people, to which we have frequently referred.

The next centuries, as you know ... were to a large extent a dark and troubled age for our evolution. Then a new age began. I will only repeat quite briefly:—In the 12th and 13th centuries in Italy, when through manifold circumstances they rediscovered some of the ancient works of Art that had been buried in the early Middle Ages, the contemplation of the ancient works kindled the rise of a new Art, which grew in time into the Art of the Renaissance. From the 13th century onwards, artists would educate themselves by means of the Antique—the works of Art that had been found or excavated, though the number at that time was relatively small.

We will now consider this re-discovery of the ancient Art in the period immediately preceding the Renaissance. In Niccola Pisano in the 13th century we find a wonderfully refined spirit who waxed enthusiastic over the relics of Greek Art, and tried to create once more in the spirit of the Greeks—out of his own imagination fructified, as it were, by the Greek Art itself.

Our first picture is the famous pulpit in the Baptistery at Pisa; note the reliefs in the upper portion:—

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43. Niccola Pisano. Pulpit in the Baptistery at Pisa.

The pulpit is supported by antique columns between which are Gothic arches. Underneath are also lion figures; above are the relief in which he expressed so wonderfully what he owed to the inspiration of the antique. Niccola Pisano worked until the end of the 13th century.

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44. Niccola Pisano. Adoration by the Three Wise Men. (Relief. Details of the above.)

Another representation of the same subject:—

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45. Niccola Pisano: The Crucifixtion. (Relief. Pulpit in the Cathedral at Siena.)

We now go on to Giovanni Pisano. In his works you will observe already a far greater element of movement. A certain quietude pervades all the figures of Niccola Pisano.

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46. Giovanni Pisano. Pulpit. (San Andrea. Pistoja.)

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47. Giovanni Pisano. Capital from the above Pulpit.

Truly, it was due to the stimulus and inspiration of the Antique, arising, to begin with, in the Pisanos, that the Christian Art afterwards became able to express its motifs so perfectly as it did in
the Renaiscance.

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48. Giovanni Pisano. Bas-Relief from the same Pulpit.

The next two are by Giovanni Pisano:—

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49. Giovanni Pisano. Pulpit in the Cathedral at Pisa.

We see at the same time how naturally the Antique grew together with the Gothic.

And two Madonnas from him:

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51. Giovanni Pisano. Madonnas. (Berlin and Padua.)

And now we have a sample of the work of Andrea Pisano, who was summoned to do one of the Bronze gates of the Baptistery at Florence.

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52. Andrea Pisano. Tubal Cain. (Campanile. Florence.)

A Bas-Relief representing Tubal Cain, inventor of the craft of metallurgy according to the Bible, the Old Testament.

We have thus approached the 15th century, and we come to Ghiberti, the great artist who at the age of twenty years was already able to compete with the others in designing the doors of the Baptistery in Florence.

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53a. Ghiberti. The Offering of Isaac. (Baptistry. Florence.)

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53b. Ghiberti. Northern Door of the Baptistery in Florence.

At the early age of twenty he was already allowed to do the Northern Portals. From a simple goldsmith's apprentice he grew to be one of the very greatest artists. These bas-reliefs of the doors of the Baptistery in Florence are, of their kind, among the greatest things in the whole evolution of Art. Afterwards the Eastern door was also given to him to do. It represents scenes from the Old Testament. Michelangelo said that these were worthy to be the gates of Paradise. [Note:the doors at the Florence Baptistery were moved causing some confusion as to where the works of Ghiberti and Andrea Pisano are located. – e.Ed.]

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54. Ghiberti. The Gates of Paradise. (Baptistery. Florence.)

This work had, indeed, a great influence on the whole Art of Michelangelo himself. Even in the details we can recognise certain motifs in Michelangelo's paintings, which he took from these bronze reliefs.

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55a. Ghiberti. Sacrifice of Isaac. (Detail from the 'Gates of Paradise.')

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55b. Ghiberti. Creation of Man. (Detail from the 'Gates of Paradise.')

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56. Ghiberti. St. Stephen

These works of Ghiberti's were undoubtedly due to a faithful contemplation of the Antique.

We will now insert the Art of the della Robbias. To begin with:—

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57. Luca della Robbia. Dancing Boys. (Cathedral. Florence.)

The della Robbias are famous as the inventors of a special art—the use of burnt clay as a material. To a large extent their works were done in this material.

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58. Luca della Robbia. Singing Boys. (Cathedral. Florence.)

Luca della Robbia covers practically the whole period of the 15th century.

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59. Luca della Robbia. Madonna in the Bower of Roses. (Museo Nazionale. Florence. )

Observe once more the age that we have now come into. The Art of antiquity that had been derived from immediate inner experience—experience of the Etheric—works as a great stimulus and inspiration. Yet at the same time the Art of this age is founded on what is seen—the faithful representation of what is actually seen. It is no longer based on something felt and sensed inwardly. It is very interesting to receive the impression of the two epochs, one after the other, in this way.

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60. Andrea della Robbia. Bambino. (Spedale degli Innocenti. Florence.)

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61. Madonna (della Cintola Fojano). Andrea della Robbia.

The Madonna is shown in the spiritual world.

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62. Giovanni della Robbia. Reception of the Pilgrims and Washing of the Feet. (Hospital. Pistoja.)

We now go on to Donatello, who was born in 1386. In him we observe the influence of the Antique combined already with a decided tendency to Naturalism. His vision has a naturalistic stamp. Donatello enters lovingly and sympathetically into Nature. But while he becomes a real naturalist, he derived his technique from what his predecessors had evolved out of the old tradition.

His naturalism went so far that his friend and companion in his strivings, Brunelleschi, seeing a Christ that Donatello attempted, exclaimed; “That is not a Christ that you are doing, that is a peasant:” Donatello at first did not understand what he meant. The anecdote is interesting, if not historically true; it gives us a right impression of the relation between the two artists—the contrast between the two artists—the contrast between Donatello and Brunelleschi with his high idealism—immersed as he was in the contemplation of the Antique, in its rebirth. Brunelleschi thereupon himself undertook to model the Christ. Donatello—for they lived together—had gone out to buy things for their breakfast. He returned with all the dainties for their common meal wrapped up in a kind of pinafore. Just as he entered, Brunelleschi unveiled his Christ. Donatello gaped with wide open mouth, and his astonishment was such that he dropped all the breakfast on the ground. What Brunelleschi had achieved was a revelation to him. We cannot say that the impression he experienced went very deep. None the less, Brunelleschi undoubtedly had an ennobling influence on him. The above story goes on to relate, Donatello was so overwhelmed that he even imagined the breakfast had disappeared. “What have we now to eat?” he said. “We'll just pick the things up again,” said Brunelleschi. “I see I shall never be able to do any more than peasants,” said Donatello.

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Donatello. Crucifix. (Florence.)

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Filippo Brunellesco. Crucifix. (Florence.)

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63. Donatello. David. (Museo Nazionale, Florence.)

And now we come to the beautifully self-contained marble statues by Donatello in Florence, showing his ability—out of his naturalistic vision—to create human figures strong and firm, even as he wanted them, their feet firmly planted on the ground.

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64. Donatello. David. (Florence.)

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65. Donatello. St. Peter. (Or San Michele. Florence.)

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66. Donatello. Jeremiah. (Campanile. Florence.)

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Habbakuk

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67. Donatello. St. John Baptist. (Campanile. Florence.)

In Donatello Naturalism certainly finds its way in. It is not the inner soul that we found in the Northern sculpture, but a decidedly naturalistic vision of what the outer senses see.

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69. Donatello. Habakkuk. (Campanile. Florence.)

Niccola Pisano and Donatello were two artists who powerfully influenced Michelangelo. Those who afterwards saw what Michelangelo created—especially in his early period—remembered Donatello and coined the phrase which then became current: Donatello Michelangelosed or Michelangelo Donatelloised.

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70. Donatello. Lodovico III Gonzaga

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71. Donatello. St. George. (Florence.)

Most characteristic is this St. George by Donatello. All the power of his naturalism is in it. Such works of Art arose out of the freedom of the free city of Florence, which also gave birth to Michelangelo.

By a wider historic necessity—a cosmopolitan historic necessity, we might say,—it was in Italy that the Antique came to life again. On the other hand, the naturalistic tendency everywhere was bound up with the mood and feeling that arose in the culture of the Free Towns or Cities. Here, as in the North—though in different ways, of course, according to the different characters of the people,—we find this element arising out of the life of the free cities, where man became conscious of his dignity, his freedom, his individual being. In the characteristic works of Art which we found in the Netherlands and other Northern parts, we were reminded again and again of the life of the free cities and the feeling that pervaded them. And so it is here, when we look at this figure of a man, so firmly established in the world of space, this Florentine St. George. We cannot but think of the civilisation of the Free Cities, whose atmosphere made such a thing possible.

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72. Donatello. Bas-Relief. St. George and the Dragon. (From the Base of the St. George Statue.)

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73. Donatello. Madonna Pazzi. (Berlin.)

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74. Donatello. Bas-Relief. Angels Singing. (Uffizi. Florence.)

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75. Donatello. Annunciation. (Santa Croce. Florence.)

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76. Donatello, Portrait of Niccolo da Uzzano.

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Donatello. Gattamelata.

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Donatello. Gattamelata.

Finally, we will show some examples of Verrocchio—teacher of Leonardo and Perugino—in his capacity as a sculptor. First the famous equestrian statue:—

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77. Verrocchio. Bertolomeo Colleoni. (Venice.)

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79. Verrocchio. Head and Shoulders. (Detail of the above.)

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80. Verrocchio. Guiliano de Medici. (Paris.)

And in conclusion:—

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81. Verrocchio. David. (Museo Nazionale. Florence.)

And so, my dear friends, we have had before us the artists of the pre-Renaissance. They entered deeply into the Antique and brought it forth again, in a time when men no longer lived within the soul in the same inward way as did the ancients. They brought to life again in outer vision, contemplation, what the ancients had felt and known inwardly—what they had feelingly known, knowingly felt, I should say. Moreover, they united this with the element which had to come in the 5th Post-Atlantean epoch—the element of naturalism, with clear outward vision. They thus became the fore-runners of the great artists of the Renaissance—of Leonardo, of Michelangelo, and, through Perugino, of Raphael himself. For all these were influenced directly by the Art of the precursors, whose works we have seen today. They stood, undoubtedly, on the shoulders of these artists of the pre- Renaissance period, the early Renaissance.

It is interesting to see, in relation to this figure, for example, how quickly they progressed in that time. Compare this David with the David by Michelangelo. Here you still see a comparative inability to dramatise the theme—to take hold of it in movement. Michelangelo, on the other hand, in his David, has seized the very essence of dramatic movement; he has caught the actual moment of resolve to go out against Goliath.

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82. Michelangelo. David, Marble Statue (Florence, Academy)

Thus we have tried to bring these things to some extent before our souls:—On the one hand what radiates from the Greek Art itself, and on the other, its lighting-up-again in the age when Humanity was trying to find the life of Art once more with the help of the Greek Art which came to life again.

I didn't want to use several images as an introduction to my art history lecture today, but limit our observational introduction to only two images, both which will be placed into the newer historical development of mankind. We will then link these to the introduction of cultural epochs as we have done in earlier years.

Look at this first painting to which our primary observation will refer; a painting you know well, the so-called “Disputa” of Raphael.

Let us visualize the painting's content briefly: below, in the centre, we see a kind of altar with a chalice on it and the host, a sacramental symbol. To the left and right are religious individuals and we recognise them as teachers, popes and bishops according to their drapery. Opposite the middle, the group is seen as moving from left and right according to the hand gesture of a person directly right of the altar. According to this we observe that these individuals are taking part in something descending from above. As a result we see, by looking at the space close behind the altar where the group is positioned, into the landscape and directly above it—in the upper half of the picture—cloud masses accumulating. To some extent we see the infinite horizon within this space. From out of the middle of these cloud masses we see angelic genii rise, floating on both sides of the dove, bringing the Gospels, transported out of the undeterminable spiritual world. In the centre we can see the Holy Ghost depicted in the symbol of a dove. Above the somewhat receding Holy Ghost we have—clearly, the angelic figures carrying the Gospels are actually coming forward in perspective—the figure of Christ Jesus and above Him the figure of the Father God. Thus we have the Trinity above the chalice where the sanctuary is found. On both sides of the Christ figure we have corresponding groups; a heavenly group above, reflected below by the worldly group. On both sides of the central Christ figure appear Saints, the Madonna on his right and John the Baptist, followed by others: David, Abraham, Adam, Paul, Peter and so on. Still further up rising into the clouds are actual genii figures, spiritual individualities.

This image we have in front of us now—of course there are much better copies available—I would like to link this to the evolution of mankind.

Primarily we need to clearly distinguish between what is given here and what we can experience when we transport ourselves into the feelings of the time when this image was actually being painted. If we shift ourselves into the 16th Century and compare it with the complexity of sensations a painter would paint in, today, we need to say: at that time, in Rome, when Pope Julius II reigned and what worked in him as Julius II in the middle of his twentieth year to call Raphael to Rome, was at that time, and in every town, the human experience of something which lived as a deep truth depicted in this painting. Today of course something similar could be painted; but if it was to be similar to this painting in the scene design, it would not depict any true reality.

Such things need to be made completely clear otherwise one will never arrive at a concrete observation of human history but forever remain in abstract observations of a legend—a bad saga—which is called the history today in schools and universities. Every detail which we can lay our eyes on in order to understand this painting, to really understand it artistically, means every small detail has a certain meaning. Just think how Raphael, this extraordinary individuality Raphael, about whom we have often spoken, how he arrived in Rome. He too was in a body of a twenty year old and one can easily conclude that while he was mainly painting this picture, he was approaching the end of his twenties. At the time he was completely under the influence of two old people who had already experienced two great battles in life and who had plans and ideas, ideas who everyone, one could say, considered as most far-reaching.

Let us be completely clear: under the papal predecessors before Julius II, Rome was at the time basically completely different than during Julius II's reign. The most remarkable here, as predecessors, were the Borgias. One could say that during the time of Alexander VI Rome was gradually being developed as overlapping the old ruins and rubble work of the ancient world where the Church of St Peter almost expired and became impractical. Admittedly these people were filled with a certain nostalgia for the artistic immensity of antiquity and wanting to enliven it again. However, a strange incident happened between the Borgias and Julius II, just at the turn of the 15th into the 16th century. Beneath the room and hall which belonged to the Camera della Segnatura, Alexander VI had two frescoes painted which we want to talk about today. It is surely extraordinary that Julius II, the patron of Raphael, had shunned this lower room which had been the ordinary residence of his predecessor, as if ghosts of cholera and the plague circulated there. He shunned this completely, could not be bothered with artistic or any other events which had taken place there before. On the contrary he decided, according to his ideas for the rooms and halls in the upper storeys, to spruce them up as we can still see them today. We must just think of the mind-set of Pope Julius II in connection with the beginning of the 16th Century and how his mind worked quite differently to those of his predecessors.

The other patron of Raphael was Bramante. He had a plan in his head for the new St Peter's Church. Both Julius II and Bramante were already old people, as I said, who had the storms of life behind them. They called youthful individuals like Raphael to Rome to serve them, bring to expression picturesquely the new ideas powerfully rumbling in their heads, new impulses which they thought should penetrate humanity. One should look more closely at these impulses that originated in Rome and were to penetrate humanity from the beginning of the 16th Century onwards. These impulses depended from the one side on the close connection of the development of the outer Christian ecclesiastical world and then again, what the establishment of the Christian ecclesiastical world would relate to. On the other side it relates to the entire historic development of the western world. Just think for once, that today's human being has great difficulty in transporting his feelings and thoughts into a time, as it were, that have developed out of this image, so often named the “Disputa”. Even more difficult it is for contemporary mankind to transport themselves into centuries further back when Christianity already had power. I have often mentioned that people today have the impression that mankind were always as they are today. That is not quite the case, particularly in relation to their soul life, they were not like now. Just as with almost two thousand years before the Mystery of Golgotha something had been inserted into human evolution beside this Mystery which has spread into the breadth of social evolution, so something quite different to the Mystery of Golgotha came forth which we understand in a different way today. People imagine far too vaguely that at the time when this image was created, mankind was subjected to the discovery of America towards the end of the 15th century; secondly the entirely different social understanding came about through the invention of printing which finally, through Copernican and Kepler viewpoints established a new science.

Just look at this painting. I want to say: if a painter would paint it today it would not in the same sense of truth be what it was then, it can't be; because today one couldn't find the soul who would paint this image in the same sense as at that time when it was actually painted, who would objectively with such an imagination for the earth have been thus, as if America hadn't yet been discovered. These would be souls who look at up at the clouds with true faith, who imagine the spiritual world in the clouds as we imagine it today, who to a certain extent imagine the clouds as real spatial bodies. Such souls are no longer to be found today, not even amongst the most naive. However, we imagine the souls of those times incorrectly if we don't believe that the content of this painting was something directly reflected by them. Let us consider—what exactly is the content of this painting? Out of today's scientific viewpoint we could identify the content of this image: we are accustomed to say that Imagination is the first step to looking into the higher worlds. If we say: up to the 16th century mankind had a view regarding the world and cosmic space in relation to the earthly world, which depended on imagination, then this is the actual truth. Imaginations were at that time something lively; and Raphael painted lively representations of soul experiences. The view of the world, the world image, was still at that time something imaginative.

These imaginations were dispelled by the caustic power of Copernicanism, the discovery of America and the art of printing. From this time mankind took the place of imagination, what we call imaginative knowledge and imaginative perception, and replaced it with outer representational images of the world's construction in totality. Thus, while presently we imagine the sun, the circling planets around it and so on, the people then couldn't do so at all; when they wanted to speak about something similar, they spoke about imaginative images. A representation of such an imagination is this painting. In the centuries in which imaginative cognition developed gradually to allow such paintings like those Raphael made, came to a certain cessation in the 16th Century, these centuries are thus the 16th, 15th, 14th, 13th, 12th, 11th, 10th right back to the 9th Century, but no further back. If we want to go yet further back we won't find any real imaginative representations any longer if we ourselves want to experience imaginative art, as people did in these mentioned centuries, which we find difficult enough to raise in the soul today, imaginatively.

If we wish to experience what Christianity was before the 6th Century we need to imagine the Christian experience as far more spiritual than we tend to do usually. Augustine extracted only what he could use from the Christian imaginations. Yet by reading Augustine today one gets quite a different feeling for what else lived as a world view and as an image of the interconnections of the world with humanity at that time, so different from now. Of particular importance are the ideas which you find on reading Scotus Erigena, who taught at the time of Charles the Bald. One might say that these ancient centuries before the 9th were permeated with Christian thoughts experienced by those who at least elevated their thoughts to permeate their Christian thinking with highly spiritual imagination. One might say when humanity created a world view during these ancient times they included really very little of their direct sense experiences. From their world view they included much more of that which did not result from sense experiences but had been brought about by old clairvoyant sight of the world. When we go back to the first centuries after the Mystery of Golgotha and follow the Christian ideas then we find that these ideas are such than one would rather say—these people were interested in the heavenly Christ, the Christ as He was in the spiritual worlds, while what He became on the earth below they considered more as supplementary. To search for The Christ amidst spiritual beings, to think of Him in relation to super-sensory spirituality was their essential striving, and that came out of the old spiritual—then the atavistic—world view. This world view filled the ancient culture right down to the third post-Atlantean age. At that time it was thought that the earth really was some kind of supplement to the spiritual.

One should familiarise oneself with an imagination which is entirely essential if one would understand, would want to comprehend, how humanity actually developed from that time to now. With this imagination we must acquaint ourselves with the idea that the Europeans had by necessity to drive back spiritual imagination for the unfolding of their culture. This should be dealt with in sympathy and not antipathy—this should in no way be judged with a critical mind but the facts should simply be taken as they are presented: it was simply the fate, Europe's karma to acquire their culture in a way they had to. It was Europe's fate: pushing back spiritual ideas, curbing it so to speak.

Thus it became ever clearer and more meaningful that from the 9th Century Europe needed Christianity while spiritual ideas were being suppressed. A result of this necessity was the splitting of the Greek- oriental and the Roman Catholic Church. At that time it split the East from the West. This is very important. The West had the destiny to push spiritual impulses into the East. There they remained. One can really not understand what happens in the becoming of being human beings when one doesn't have a clear understanding of the need to repel spiritual impulses towards the East—to what is connected to Asia and to Russia as a European peninsula—from the 8th and 9th Centuries. These impulses were pushed together and developed independently from western European and central European life, and propagated into the present Russia.

This is very important. Only once this was properly established. Today there is a tendency not to consider things through relationships. As a result an event such as the Russian revolution apparently developed in a few months—someone or other came to this idea—while the truth pre-empting it lay in the background as a result of the specific course of events through the centuries, while spiritual life became invisible, impractical and pushed back towards the East and being stuck, yet still working in a chaotic, indefinable way made people stand right within events in the East. Yet this standing within it was really hardly living within it just like people who swim in a lake—if they have not exactly drowned—have seawater surrounding them. Likewise, what worked as spiritual impulses superficially in the East, still existed spiritually. People swam inside it and had no clue what pressed in on the surface from the 9th Century and which was then pushed back to the East, so that it could be safe guarded to survive and enter evolution later. People who originated in the East and who gradually developed from migration and similar relationships, into their souls the spiritual impulses were introduced which couldn't be used in the West, South and Central Europe.

The West retained something extraordinary. The East, without knowing—most important things run their course in the subconscious—the East, without knowing, remained steady on the basic saying of the Gospels: “My Kingdom is not of this world”. Hence in the East the leaning within the physical plane is always upwards, towards the spiritual world. The West depended on reversing the sentence: “My Kingdom is not of this World” by correcting it to make the Kingdom of Christ in this world. As a result we see Europe had the fate of constituting the realm of Christ outwardly as an empire on the physical plane. One could say from Rome the law was proclaimed since the 9th Century: break away from the sentence “My Kingdom is not of this World” by actually constituting a worldly kingdom, a kingdom for Christ Jesus on earth, which would be on the physical plane.

The Roman pope gradually became the one to say: My Kingdom is the Kingdom of Christ; but this Kingdom of Christ is from this world; we have constituted it in such a way that this Kingdom of Christ is of this world. However a consciousness prevailed that Christ's kingdom was not one which could be based on the 13 ground rules of external natural existence. People were aware that when they looked out into nature, lit by the sun's morning redness and the sunset's glow, by the stars, then it is not only a matter of what the eyes saw, what the ears heard or the hands could grip, but in the widths of infinite space at the same time existed something of the spiritual kingdom. Everything visible in the world is to some extent the last outflow, the last wave of the spiritual world. This visible world is only complete when one is totally aware that it is the outflow of a spiritual world. The spiritual world is real; humanity has but lost their sight of this spiritual world. It is hidden yet it is a reality, an actuality. When a person enters the gate of death and is particularly blessed, he or she steps into the spiritual world. In times past people were far more lively in their thoughts than we can imagine. When the blessed ones who had died went through the gate of death, they entered a world which we can imagine in the very present time—permeated with clouds, permeated with stars, piercing the orbit of the planets. It was something so concrete that the souls of the dead could create the upper group depicted in the painting. The souls of the dead combined what existed for them out of the past to depict this concrete mystery, this concrete secret of the nature of the Trinity in their midst: as the Father God—out of the character of the present: the Christ Jesus—and out of the reality of the future: the Holy Ghost.

In the reality of that present day world, if the physically sensed world did not appear as a mere illusion to people and let them live like animals, what differentiated itself in the reality of time had to appear on the physical plane in sighs, as a reference to the invisible spiritual world weaving and living above the clouds. Future generations have to have living signs for those not yet born and for those who are now passed over souls and are in possession of direct sight.

On the altar stands the Chalice with the Sanktissimum, the host. This host or wafer is no mere bit of external matter for people who stand on the right, left and around it, but this host is surrounded by its aura. Within this aura of the host forces work which pour down from the Trinity. Such imaginations experienced by the heads of church fathers, bishops and popes regarding the sanctity of an altar are incomprehensible by present day humanity. This imagination has elapsed in the course of time. A moment is eternalized in this painting by the people below the altar rising: here is the mystery which is positioned on the altar: something surrounds the host. This something can be seen by those who have died, namely the blessed ones: David, Abraham, Adam, Moses, Peter and Paul—these departed ones look upon this in the same way we on the physical plane would observe things in the sense world.

When we look at what is below, under the central sacred sacrament, we have to some measure an image in the lower layers of the painting of which a person like Pope Julius II said: This, in its great glory, I want to establish on earth in Rome if at all possible; such a kingdom, such an empire—not a state but an empire—in order for things to take place in this empire and be so enveloped by these auras that the past and its impulses live on in these auras. An empire that exists in this world but which, because it is of this world, contains signs and symbols for what lives in the spiritual world.

Ideas of this kind Julius II incited first in Bramante and then in youthful Raphael. Thus it came about that the young Raphael could compose this painting. In a way Julius II wanted this painting in his study, have it constantly before him like a holy saying on which Rome had to be based because it contained the most important things in the mysteries. However this empire had to be on this earth, of this earth with a spiritual inclusion.

If one allows all these experiences we have spoken about to work on one's soul, from its impression one might say: the spiritual world has been pushed back into the East since the 9th Century as is shown by the clouds driven backward and up, waiting for their time to come.

In contrast there were preparations being made in the West for the 5th post-Atlantean epoch in which we are all still living and in which we will live for a long time, which exists under the signature: My kingdom is of this world and this kingdom will increasingly become more of this world. However this kingdom which is of this world was founded nearly from the beginning of the 5th post-Atlantean epoch under the influence of old people like Bramante and Julius II, but also the youth Raphael. The most important historical things happen subconsciously and from this subconscious yet wise basis Julius II called Raphael. We know that humanity was becoming ever younger through the centuries; we know that since the beginning of the 5th post-Atlantean epoch the age of the twenty eight had been reached and it was now “27 years old”. Certainly Bramante and Julius II were old people but they were not as directly placed in the world as could the youthful Raphael in his young body with youthful forces of twenty-eight when he painted this way. This is an important spiritual background in the development of humanity.

We can recall how Raphael painted in the characterized thought (explained above) of Rome at the time; he painted to a certain extent in protest against the 5th post-Atlantean epoch for the fourth post-Atlantean epoch. This was not the case but let us hypothetically argue that it was thus in Raphael's soul: we can imagine that in his soul, in his subconscious soul lived knowledge which would be coming out of the 5th post Atlantean time. Out of this godless, spirit-robbed world of the 5th post-Atlantean time humanity's thoughts would be permeated with bare, barren and icy space where sun and spiritless planets depict the dreary space, spiritlessly imagining the world and try, according to spiritless laws of nature, construct the unfolding of the world. Let us imagine what had been presented to Raphael's soul: the reality of the spiritual emptiness of the 5th post-Atlantean epoch. Raphael's soul had counter acted: It should not be like this, I will throw myself against this mindless epoch with its imposed notions in frozen space with mindless mist in the form of the Kant-Laplace theories, with my lively spiritual existence. I want to permeate the imagination as much as possible in this dreary existence with true imagination which offers itself to clairvoyant understanding of the world.—Suppose this is what Raphael's soul depicted. Thus it appeared in his subconscious soul; it had even appeared in the same way in the soul of Julius II.

Our age really doesn't need to despise great minds like Julius II or even the Borgias as is done with historical winners, because history still has to reduce some judgements regarding our contemporaries—the greatest ones of our times—just as it did with the Borgias or Julius II and will be the case of individuals in the future. People present at that time just did not have a distance to it.

Raphael was born at the start of the 5th post-Atlantic epoch, one could say, as a child of the 5th post-Atlantic epoch. He was really born out of this 5th post-Atlantic epoch but as a lively protest against his age—he wanted to stand within its beauty which this epoch no longer experienced as real; this epoch strived to insert sensible spirituality into de-spiritualized certainty and impose that on the 5th post-Atlantean epoch, as has been discovered from spiritual research. Raphael's aim was more or less to depict clear images visible in the spiritual realm, imported from that realm into this world, in a painting filled with signs of the supersensible, thereby creating another world. As a result this image is through and through a true picture because it has originated in a lively experience arising from that time.

Just consider this particular time when the child of the 5th post-Atlantic epoch drew the entire imaginative, spiritual imagery of the 4th post-Atlantean time into the 5th. Roughly at this time, during nearly the same year, a Nordic personality slipped up the penitent's stair in Rome, the stairs acclaimed for their ability to be equated to godly work according to the number of stairs climbed, because the number of steps taken on the stairs meant the same number of days relieved of hell fire. While Raphael was painting in the Vatican the Camera della Segnatura and similar images, this Nordic person, so devoted, in full of belief, so concerned for his soul's salvation, ascended the stair—so many stairs for so many days free from purgatory, doing work to please God. While he was thus climbing the stair, he had a vision—the vision showed him the futility of such holy work rushing up the stairs—a vision which ripped open the veil between him and that world which Raphael as a child of the 5th post-Atlantean time was painting as a testament of the 4th post-Atlantean time.

You can recognise this person as Luther, the antitheses of Raphael. Raphael, even when he was looking around in the outer world, would see colour and form, all kinds of spiritual images, everything as expressions of the supersensible world yet reflected, expressed as sensual colour, forms and gestures. Luther was at the same time in Rome, filled with song and poetry, yet amorphous, formless in his soul, rejecting everything in this world which surrounded him in Rome. Like the spiritual world was pushed back in the 9th century into the East, it was now a testament of the 4th post-Atlantean epoch in Europe. Luther pushed it all back. Thus in the future the threefold world presented itself: in the East spirituality was pushed back, in the South it was somewhat divided as the testament of the 4th post-Atlantean epoch and again became pushed back and rejected. The musical element of the North took the place of the colour and form-rich testament of the South. Luther is really the antithesis of Raphael. Raphael is a child of the 5th post-Atlantean epoch, his soul however contained everything which lived in the 4th post-Atlantean time. Luther is a late-comer of the 4th post-Atlantean time, he doesn't belong in the 5th post-Atlantean epoch; one might say he was transferred from the 4th into the 5th. In his frame of mind Luther was completely within the 4th post-Atlantean time. His thoughts and feelings were like a person living in the 4th epoch but he was transferred into the 5th and lived now out of an echo sounding into the 5th epoch with its blatancy, its obvious natural history and ice fields of barren spirituality. Raphael had the soul content of the 4th post-Atlantean time; Luther, even though he was transferred out of the 4th into the 5th, had a soul standing right in the 4th post-Atlantean time but rejected everything external, he wanted by contrast to create everything which had nothing to do with external work and external human activities—a soul based solely between the formless inner connection of the human soul and the spiritual world, dependant on faith only.

Just think for a moment how a painter like Raphael would have painted out of southern Catholicism, and compare how it could be painted from a Lutheran standpoint. What would he paint? He would paint a Christ figure somewhat like Albrecht Dürer's; or he would paint a religious person in whose physiognomic expression one would recognise a soul with nothing in common regarding the material surroundings and the objects within this environment into which it has been imposed.

Thus one age connects to another. In the present time mankind has quite different ideas. This you see in paintings where Christ is depicted as a person amongst the people: “Come, Master Jesus, be our guest”—as human and equal as possible:

In our painting we have a group of Bishops, learned church fathers, and in the middle the obvious sign, the symbol. This points to the supersensible world; the Trinity is concretely included.

Let us lift out this “Trinity” in particular. We have another painting which represents this Trinity on its own.

At the top we see the Father God, below that, Holy Ghost and the Son. You behold these members as concrete content of the future, the present, taken out of the past. It would not have been appropriate in the world view of that present time to mix the blessed souls of the dead directly with the observation of the outer visible world. However Raphael used, in the sense of the imagination of that time, what he observed as the truth, the free view in the widths of natural realms. To a certain extend he had to express the blatant obviousness that filled the space was not the truth; but the truth places them within the space. Thus we have at the bottom—you still notice the line of the horizon—the width, infinity within the expanding perspective. To a certain extent protest is expressed against representing nature at present as a purely sense perceptible image.

Raphael didn't simply arrive at this image and hit upon the composition. In order for it to become clear, let us consider two of Raphael's preliminary sketches towards the painting's gradual development:

Imagine the entire story, from the time Raphael came to Rome roundabout the time Julius II called him to execute the commission in 1507, 1508, and try include this into the painting which he had in his imagination. Gradually he was first instructed by Julius II; gradually a relationship developed in him between space, nature and the supersensible and sensible aspects in the human group, how it had to be.

Also the other sketch refers more to the lower part than the first sketch, with still incomplete indications. You see it hasn't come into its own. What Raphael came to was this: he had to really imagine himself into that time and the relationship between the spiritual world and nature. In olden times, still up to the 9th Century, there was still a clear imagination of the relationship between the human past and the natural present. The people before the 9th Century—as grotesque as it may sound to mankind today—didn't think that when something was happening to them, it was by chance; no, they knew that when something happened to them it was because of the events into which they were being spun was where the dead were living, connected to them through karma. Before the 9th century the events which surrounded us place the dead before us. Such images diminished gradually and remained in the past as I have characterised for you in the 16th Century.

Returning once more to the 9th Century we arrive at an imagination which needs consideration: a timely separation between the natural- and the spiritual world was not apparent for these ancient folk. Nature was at the same time a continuation—before the 9th Century, mind you—a continuation of the spiritual world. Already during the Greek times the human being had introduced their own I into their world view, by using thinking. Raphael was painting—he expressed this in the upper part of the canvas in the image later called “Disputa” even though certainly nothing was being disputed—and introduced a female figure out of the symbolism of that time with the motto: DIVINARUM RERUM NOTITIA = divinely written comment. Basically before the 9th Century the world view included the “divinely written comment” and nature was like a wave of the godlike world extending below to where mankind found itself.

This entire notion, as I've mentioned, was pushed back to the East and the echo remained within the imagination, like a testament painted by Raphael from the 4th post-Atlantic epoch. In those days it was deliberated from the south to establish the kingdom of Christ on the physical plane itself as a real empire of power. Pope Julius II had even, like other similar personalities, written on his flag what he really wanted. He wanted to really establish this which could not happen because Luther came along, as did Calvin and Zwingli. He wanted to create the foundation for Christ's Empire in this world. He dared not say so. One can usually see this in such personalities as something esoteric. Julius II did not dare go through Italy as a commander in order to harness the Italians to his empire. He said it differently. He said he was going through Italy as a commander in order to free the Italian folk. This is what was said. In later times it was said something or other should be done to free the folk while this only hid the real goal. At the time however, many believed Julius II went through Italy to free the separate Italian nations. It didn't occur to him, just as little as it occurred or could in anyway occur to Woodrow Wilson, to set some or other folk free.

Now, you see, here we have this immense border, one might say, between the two time periods: the backward push to everything southerly. Retained from this is the division in the world view in the Greek time. It was clearly as follows: What had streamed through nature as deeds of the dead was no longer present when people developed spiritual powers in themselves, unfolding it in their souls; it then doesn't become DIVINARUM RERUM NOTITIA, not something “written up as godly things” but becomes CAUSARUM COGNITIO—and attains “direct knowledge of causes in the world”. Here care should be taken not to want an interpretation of nature in its totality as an outcome. To come to an idea of nature—this Julius II felt compelled to shout in thunderous words—an imagination was to be made to show that the sun rises, the morning- and evening glow exists as do the stars, and just as people did in the 5th post-Atlantean epoch, it meant lying. In fact one denied that the souls of the dead were within the Trinity which was really something capable of imaginative expression by looking back to the dead souls, David, Abraham, Paul, Peter and express the Holy Trinity. Julius said: Leave away nature and the old Eons, only depict the youngest Eons! Do you want to rely on yourselves? If you want to develop through only human forces, depend only on what is inherent in the physical body, then you arrive at an external science regarding the outer nature of people, a science only in so far as the human being has no connection with the endless expanse of the world, but is hemmed in, interwoven within the boundaries it sets itself.

This is roughly what Julius II told Raphael: If you want to paint what the human being through his own soul faculties know about humanity then you must not paint the people out of an endless perspective in nature, but include the people, whether genial or wise, in their self-made borders. You must include them in halls to show: from these rooms where the world is governed—because Julius wanted to have the world depicted as it would have become had no Luther arrived, nor a Zwingli, or any Calvinist.—If you want to paint the world as it is governed from these rooms, then paint on the one side the reality existing in the breadth of nature and on the other side, what people can find if they only sought forces from within their own souls. Then you may not paint nature but paint the people in their self-imposed borders.

This is what we have when we allow the contrasting aspects in the image to work on us ... the so-called “School of Athens”.

This painting, later becoming known as the “School of Athens”, was often painted over in the course of time and so the man standing in the middle had his book painted over with “Ethics” then later with “Time”—that was painted even later. The painting is in many ways ruined and one can't find the true image of the original painting today in Rome. In Raphael's time it was never called “The School of Athens”, this only happened later and then theories developed about it. We can imagine it essentially thus: truly the world is measured through the changed painting (197) when we peer into the endless realms of space and imagine nature not with obvious senses but permeated with everything existing in eternity and temporality, permeated with that which has gone through the gate of death. Taking knowledge from within one's own soul and representing it in everything coming together, like these wise men, here (202); the heavenly knowledge which can only be found built up within oneself, is represented in a personality which points upwards (203). No inartistic stupidity is needed to see Plato in this figure. (See below)

You can imagine the following: the gesture of the rising hand represents the word being spoken by the figure on the right. The personality on the right begins to speak as if his expression is translated into words. Everything originating by itself in the human soul can only be truly imagined if it is contained within an enclosed space, where one remains within oneself. If one searches within for an image of nature then nothing other than an abstract image of nature will be found, much like the Copernican world view represents which is not a picture of concrete nature.

Thus Raphael took the task from Julius II and placed it before the godly experience which could live by itself in the human soul in the beginning of the 5th post-Atlantic epoch. Here everything of worldly science is grouped, but worldly science raised up to divine concepts, to intellectual understanding of the godly. On analysis the seven free arts appear: grammar, rhetoric, dialectic, geometry, arithmetic, astronomy and music.

Up to the culminating expression you can find the whole of worldly science applied to the divine and how this is expressed by the human word—here the opposites of looking and speaking are alive—expressed in the image itself. Un-artistic, amateurishly learned chitchat saw the entire Greek philosophy in the same image. That is unnecessary and has no relevance to the artwork we have been speaking about and of which we finally want to point out: it shows us how this painting, in the sense of that time, represents a true human experience—an experience which the soul discovers when it is allowed to find wisdom within itself regarding mankind.

We have more details of this painting which I want to show you:

If you allow yourself to be drawn in more you will recognise the right sided figures are linked to the central main figure who is entering into speech; here on the right (205) we have everything which depends more on Inspiration, and to the left, (204) it touches more on Imagination and its equivalent.

We have one more image of the central figures:

The opposite of looking and speaking is presented. Let us be clear about it—the present time can only be understood if we try to throw more and more of such glances into the past which we can do by experiencing such paintings in an artistic sense. Our time is the time in which something returns to itself. In our time there is a return in Europe—Central Europe, Northern Europe and in certain moods in Western Europe—of karmic connections with the European development of the 9th Century. This hasn't become particularly observable to most people, actually in fact, not at all. What happens today takes place out of necessity, the opposite manner used to spiritually grasp what Europe's destiny had to be in the 9th century. What had been pushed back to the East at that time was the spiritual world, so now it has once again to be manifested on the physical plane. The moods of the 9th Century after Christ are now reappearing in western European, in Central and Northern Europe. Out of Europe's east will develop something like moods out of the terrible chaos, spreading out in something like moods which will mysteriously remind us of the 16th Century. Only out of the combined harmonising of the 9th and 16th Centuries will mysteries originate which to some extent can give a degree of clarity for present day humanity who wants to rise to its own understanding of evolution.

It is remarkable to see how in the 16th Century everything most secret and mysterious in nature, man and God, was visibly represented outwardly in art. The holy secret of the Trinity we have found in the most meaningful images of the world set before our souls. The opposite appears at the same time—the Protestant-Evangelistic mood which totally denies these holy secrets being able to share this historic period. At intervals Herman Grimm, a truly northern Lutheran spirit, speaks about the thoughts his contemporaries have regarding Christ, thoughts they treasure as wholly good within their souls—the exact opposite in Raphael's mood when he painted the world.

You see, at the beginning of the 16th Century the Reformation brought evolution further which became the world's lot, even in Rome, in the sphere of Julius II, of the popes. But how? It became the lot of the world that people wanted to reflect about the supersensible worlds as if they were visible but visible through human development. As a result—this Herman Grimm discovered rightly—the Pauline Christianity became a particular problem for Raphael and his contemporaries—yes, even the figure of Paul himself. It can be said that up to the 16th Century Christianity was far more permeated by what one could call the Peter Christianity—Peter who saw the supersensible and sensible worlds as undivided, experiencing in the sensible world the supersensible within it, finding the supersensible in the sense perceptions. The extrasensory world disappeared from it. People were aware of this right up to the 16th Century. The experience of the Damascus secret living in Paul as a seer, and the figure of Paul himself, became a problem. As a result Raphael tried in his later development to depict, and include, Paul's figure in various paintings. It can be said: from the south a Reformation wanted to be established with the aim to depict the Pauline vision in the world in such a way as I set before you now, as it lived in Raphael's paintings which originated through the inspiration of Julius II.

Paul was a problem for him. You appreciate this when you research Paul's form in Raphael's other paintings. You see a visual expression of the music of the spheres in the “Saint Cecile”.

Naturally it is inaccurately expressed. Left, in the corner, is the practical shape of Paul. Raphael made a study of Paul in a painterly way. Repeatedly Paul posed a problem. Why?—Because Paul's quest originates from within him as a human individuality through which he strives to have sight, penetrate into the sight. Here we see it in his whole attitude, in his gesture: Paul as he participates in something self-evident to others as a seeker. He develops both sides, therefore if it comes down to him, he shows Christian revelation differently. As Paul understands—you see it here, how Paul teaches—it became a problem for Raphael.

Now we have another painting: Paul speaking in Athens.

You can see Raphael studied Paul. What did Paul become for him?—The hero, the spiritual hero of the Reformation who should have succeeded from the south, but did not succeed. This impulse was pushed back and later Jesuitism from the South was put in the place of the Reformation—more about that at another time. Paul should have established the Kingdom of Christ on earth as foreseen by Julius II.

Now characterise for yourself the two Paul heads, which we have before us now and allow it to really work on us.

These are heads studied by Raphael in which he wanted to depict through the physiognomy a gaze penetrating the secrets of the spiritual Christian world, into the spiritual secrets enabling words to outwardly pronounce these secrets; we have in Paul the binding link between the world of causes and the world into which only those with blessed vision have access, the supersensible world. Paul is looking and teaching, the connecting link between the world of the 5th post-Atlantean epoch and the ancient spiritual time. Remind yourselves of your consideration of the Paul physiognomy, the Pauline gestures right up to the movement of the fingers—here only the arm is lifted—and be reminded of that ...

... consider these and then look once more at the figure in the so-called “School of Athens”:

... and compare that to the two heads of Paul which we have looked at (235, 236) with the heads here (203) on your right and you have such a personality in whom seeing has become words, one might say: because Paul, who grew out of seeing the results of the Mystery of Damascus and became the orator of Christianity, made his pact of compromise with what can be found in the Causarum Cognitio when the experience of the physical causal world is elevated into a relation of possible experiences of divine things. As a result you will experience something like the constant “Signatur” which wafts through the “Camera della Segnatura” when you look over the image which later was called the “Disputa”, to what is called the “School of Athens”. In the “Disputa” is the truth, the spiritual truth in a nature filled space; glancing over to the other, opposite wall, so companions and visionaries encounter Paul the teacher who points to the worldly learning from which everything can arise which the human soul can find within itself. Looking at the fresco, which is the so-called “School of Athens”:

...so one finds a soul living in the central figure with a content which is painted in the opposite fresco:

... then one roughly has the connection. Take the one wall—everything that is within the soul, all one does not see except as the outer bodily aspect, that very aspect is revealed on the opposite wall, on the fresco of the so-called “Disputa”.

I would like to say: if you could see into the souls of these two people painted on the one wall, then you will see what lives in the souls of these two people on the opposite wall, on the fresco. More about this later.

I think that it is good right now to become familiar with the most varied areas of life and the laws of existence which I have been referring to during these lectures. I want to say these laws of existence take on an importance in their realm of the spiritual life, an importance of being, which up to now has frequently not been taken into account in world opinion. Particularly in our present time it is imperative to totally understand the current 5th post-Atlantean epoch in which we stand, with all its peculiarities, in order for us to become ever more and more conscious of how affective we are within it. You know of course that we consider the beginning of the 5th post-Atlantean epoch beginning at the start of the 15th Century, from about 1413 onward. The beginning of the 15th Century was a significant, profound, incisive point for western humanity. The creation of such an about-turn which came about didn't happen all at once, it was preparatory. In the first moments of this epoch one only sees a gradual expansion. Old patterns from the earlier epochs transform into the new one and so on. Preparations were being made for a long time which were only really being experienced as a mighty reversal at the start of the 15th Century.

If we want to consider another strong western historical impact in the centre of the Middle Ages, we may look at the rule of Charlemagne from 768 to 814. If you wish to visualize everything which happened in the West to the furthest boundaries up to the time of Charlemagne, you will have difficulties with this self-visualization. For many observers of history today such difficulties do not exist because they all shear it under the same comb. Only for those who want to look at reality, will such deep differences exist. It becomes quite difficult for people in today's world of experiences and impressions to reach a concept about the completely different condition of life in Europe up to the time of Charlemagne and beyond. We may however say that after Charlemagne, in the 10th, 11th and 12th Centuries a time began in preparation of our own epoch, the 5th post-Atlantean epoch. Up to the time of Charlemagne old relationships actually flowed which in our present day, as we have already said, we can't have a true imagination. Then again preparations were beginning for a new epoch, and in these three centuries, the 10th, 11th and 12th—it started in the 9th already—events took place in Europe in all areas of life producing forces which were expressed later, particularly in the 15th century.

One can say these centuries just mentioned was a time for preparation but people today are hardly inclined to refer to this just as little as they will say Rome is in control of European affairs. The papacy in the time from the 9th century, before the middle of the 9th century where the ruling of Europe was so vigorously taken under control, where all relationships effectively extended, must not be imagined as the same effective papacy in a later century or even today. It can rather be said that in those times the papacy knew instinctively what the most important areas of life needed, in west, central or southern Europe. I already pointed out last time that the oriental culture was gradually pushed back; it had to wait in eastern Europe, in Byzantianism, in Russianness. There it waited indeed, waited right up to our present time.

General observations can develop particular clarity in those areas which, in the broadest sense, one can refer to as artistic. If you want an idea about what had been pushed back at the time to the East, what the west, central and southern Europe should not acquire, if you want to reach an understanding about it, then compare it with a Russian icon:

In the picture of the Virgin Mary of the East is an echo of what had been pushed back into the East at the time. In such a picture quite another spirit holds sway than can ever be found reigning in western, southern and central art; it is something quite different. Such an icon picture still today presents an image which has been born directly out of the spiritual world. If you imagine it in a lively manner you can't imagine a physical space behind the Russian Madonna image. You can imagine that behind the picture is the spiritual world and out of the spiritual world this image has appeared: just so are the lines, so is everything in it. When you take the basic character of this image as it is born out of the spiritual world then you have exactly that which had been held at a distance in the 9th Century from western, southern and central Europe:

Why? Such things should be thoroughly and objectively considered historically. Why did this have to be held back? Simply on the grounds that the nations of Europe—central, western and southern Europe—had completely different soul impulses which were not in the position to understand humanity out of original elementary nature, this was being pushed back, stopped in the East. The nature of the western European soul was quite differently focussed.

When this which was being pushed back to the East was transplanted into central, western and southern Europe, it could only remain external, outside the east of Europe; it could never grow together with the central, western or southern European soul distinctions. An area had to be created in western, southern and central Europe, an area for what gradually wanted to come out of the depths of the very folk soul itself.

I would like to say Rome, in actual fact, understood this with genial instinct. With disputes regarding dogmatism showing quite a different character, the content of dogma disputes is not the real story; the content of these disputes is merely the final spiritual expression. It goes much further. Among other things it was about what I have just been characterising for you. So we see that from the 9th Century and into the next centuries Rome worked ever more strongly for a space in Europe where the real striving of the folk souls could unfold. The striving of the folk souls also appeared in greater clarity.

You see, when you focus on what could have been brought to the fore if the eastern influence had not been pushed back but could stretch over Europe—Charlemagne made a large contribution - if it had stretched over Europe then Europe, as I've already mentioned, would have made available certain observations of representations which speak directly out of the spiritual world. This did not happen, firstly because Europe had to prepare itself for the materialistic 5th post-Atlantean period which was prepared most intensely in central Europe. Interest centred mainly on everything other than what came directly out of the spiritual world like line, form and colouring. Humanity was interested in something different. Above all there was an interest in Europe for contemporary events, for reporting and for results. By studying individuals, singled out in humanity, you realize they have positioned themselves in the course of historic, relatable events. The 10th, 11th, 12th Centuries can also be called the Germanic Roman Empire because from Rome the capacity was created, a capacity which spread for an interest in relating stories, an interest in the working of time and for conceptualising a particular form set in time.

You see, this is again a different viewpoint from the viewpoint I indicated in similar lectures in previous years. This cooperation of the central European empire with the Roman church and its spread is an inner image of the way the 5th post-Atlantic epoch prepared central Europe at the time. From this it is clear that central Europe prepared itself in this period with very little interest for spatial educational art. Constituted informative art became borrowed - just remember the presentation which I gave you in previous years—borrowed from what came over from the East, spread, one might say, through to the very joints of principal interest. What shot up out of the folklore itself was being told. The content which was to be told had to be taken out of national character, intimately connected with nationality.

You can encounter amazing images of central European life, life in the areas of the Rhine, the Donau and the northern coastline in the depiction of the songs of the Nibelungen, the Walthari and `Gudrun'. The manner and way in which these writings are presented indicate their obvious interest in events of the time. Look how in the time of Charles the Great when the poem `Heiland' originated, the stories of the Gospels are woven into the poem with central European characters, characters extracted from biblical events and placed directly into the central European interests of the `Heiland'. It had to be born out of the life of the European folk soul. Through this the eastern tradition, which cares little for the temporal and historical, was pushed back. For this reason, it was pushed back. If we observe how these concerns of the European nations rise from deep underground and reach the surface, then it is often only possible, and with difficulty, to really penetrate into the depth of feeling, into the deep soul experience which the European human spirit connected to in its own deepening encounter with the essential spiritual events. One might say, that which was pushed back to the East from spatial infinity and its manifestation out of space, which had to appear superficially in central Europe should reappear directly out of the human souls themselves, out of the depths of the soul, not out of the widths of space—but out of the depth of souls.

The mysterious prevailing of soul depths under the surface of direct observation was already something living at that time in human souls. During the centuries we've been talking about, people were instinctively permeated with the knowledge that their souls had in the depths of their being secret impulses, appearing only sometimes at celebratory moments in their soul experiences. Life seemed deeper than what the eyes could see, the ears could hear and so on; something unfathomable rose from soul depths as a profound experience. I could say we experience an echo of this kind of thing when we hear something as beautiful as the poetry of Walthers von der Vogelweide, who to some extend created an ending to a purely linguistic age, an age when the ability to depict formless manifestations in soul depths in a pictorial manner had not yet developed. In these soul depths we are stirred when we allow Walthers von der Vogelweide's small poem to work on us, where he speaks about his own life in retrospect. Maturing as a man when knowledge grew in his soul and light fell on his soul depths from which knowledge had previously appeared as mysterious waves in a dream, now appeared in a mood, he expressed as follows:

“Oh, whereto did all my years disappear!
I dreaming my life or is it real?
What appears for real, was it illusion's face?
I've slept so long and didn't even know it.
I've been woken and all is as unfamiliar
once was familiar, like my own hand.”

Thus speaks Walther von der Vogelweide at the end of the three long centuries, the 10, 11, 12th centuries, the epoch in which the Holy Roman Empire blossomed at the close of this time period. It was the period of time in which the interest for current events developed. Art demanded expression, images were to express events happening and going to happen in central, western and southern Europe. A glance to the East gives the impression of existence and peace, of a quiet contemplation out of the spiritual world. Events directly taking place here, born in the human soul, binding the soul with the greatest of all, the most mysterious, all this was eager to be represented in a pictorial manner. Fertilization from the South was needed anyway, where echoes of all the traditions having come from the East were still maintained. Bringing events to expression was the primary goal.

In this way striving in art was contained in the West, one might say, in two opposing streams, for certainly the representation of existence was pushed back East, but only pushed back—many things remained. Above all, something remained which can be observed in the East where strict rules determined the depiction of the icons, and old rules were being adhered to, where no violation was allowed through lines, expression, and so on. All this was transplanted into the West and alongside this was the requirement for everything experienced in the surroundings, united with traditions coming into central Europe from the South. Naturally depictions with this requirement firstly appeared in primitive, simplistic images according to biblical narratives, Bible stories. Only at the beginning of the next three centuries, the 13th, 14th and 15th did a power, one could call it, rise up out of Central Europe which could depict image-rich pictures. This power is thanks to specific facts; facts which during these centuries, the 13th, 14th and 15th, expanded and matured over the whole Central and Southern Europe as something one could call city domination, the blossoming of rural development. The cities, so proud at the time of their powerful autonomy, developed the particular powers of their folk in their midst. Such cities were not uniform, either as the old Germanic Roman Empire which was in decline, nor uniform as in the later state communities, because these cities were autonomous and could develop their individual strength according to the needs of the specific land, lifestyle and place. One doesn't understand the times of the 13th, 14th and 15th Centuries if one does not again and again glance at the blossoming of city freedom at the time.

Let us visualize this flowering of city freedom—by roughly taking the 11th to 15th centuries—and consider what this freedom in the cities discovered in relation to art impulses. Some traditions originating from Rome remained. The main issue had been pushed to the East; yet some traditions remained behind, traditions of alignment, colour application and, in relation to facial expression, the eyes and nose had to be done in a certain way. Yet all of that counteracted with the aim to represent facts. These battles had two sides, we can see it here where the artistic element first only dares to appear, turns from within itself outward, where, I might say, the trained monk from Rome allows himself to be inundated with the influence from central Europe, the impulse to not merely depict biblical events but that the imagery appearing in the Bible, which are glimpses from the spiritual worlds, are depicted in such a manner that the Bible itself becomes the very expression of how people live in daily life. This was now imposed on the monk in his solitary work. When he paints his miniatures and represents biblical scenes in a small manner, he must be accountable on the one side for the remains of tradition and on the other side, what wants to manifest as life under the surface.

Today I have two such miniatures to show you from which you will see, how during the 11th, 12th and also in the 13th Centuries the battle between traditional painting and history was still visible in small paintings.

Look at such a painting from an evangelist representing the “Birth of Christ”—we considered this image in previous years.

See how much you are reminded of the tradition of mere existence. Consider how still here, I might say, these figures are shown in such a way which does not reflect how people in an outer naturalistic reality live but observe how the figures are born out of the imagination people made up of what the spiritual worlds were for them. From there the saints, the Christ figure himself appears; all this came out of another world. Behind the surface of the painting we can only imagine the spiritual world—of course pictorially and radically spoken.

Above all there is no trace of naturalism. Observe how there is no trace of perspective, no trace or an attempt in this painting to somehow represent space—everything is on the surface, all but intellectual representation. Despite all this, when you look at the single figures, you experience the urge of something wanting to be expressed. You will notice there are two things fighting with one another. Look at the face on the right and the one on the left and you will see how the eyes, maintaining something from tradition by the person in his monk cell had a thought from his teaching that somehow or other eyes had to be done, this and that way the expression had to be done—but he battled with it, he adjusted to a certain extent the view of the situation to the events.

Even in these tiny paintings made in the gospels, in books of the bible, this battle of the two elements can be seen in a struggle. Besides this you see again, for example in Cimabue even more, how existence was expressed in the oriental form. How we are absolutely reminded of the angel figures above - which already appear when it comes to Cimabue as an oriental echo of the conception of the pictorial—as a proclamation out of the spiritual world itself, as an experience of being, not of historical events!

Another test is the second picture, which I have prepared, which comes from the Trier Gospels:

Here we see the proclamation to the shepherds, above is Christ's birth. When you take this shepherds' proclamation of the angel announcing “Glory in the Heights and peace on earth to men of goodwill”, when you take this you discover a mixing of these two impulses.

In all three of the men's faces we find the endeavour: represent the facts! On the other side however everything at a distance is about natural observation; how traditions play into this! I would like to say, feel how the wings of the angels are in the book: wings should be depicted in such a manner that they are at an angle to the main scene, pointing to both sides, and so on. You sense the requirement and at the same time sense such a depiction impinges on the endeavour which can't be achieved according to the observation of historical events. Sense this and observe in all of them how little nature observation is apparent, how there is no trace of spatial application, no trace of perspective in this image, that everything is, I want to say, or implied in the place where they are depicted due to requirements of how something like this was to be done, teach, while still substantially in control.

Now we see how at the end of the three centuries of the Germanic Roman Empire the impulse from the establishment of cities to depict history and unite it with the requirements of experiential representation, how this urge in Central Europe came to a sudden and most beautiful flowering. Cologne is one of those cities where the city's freedom flowered the most intensively and at the same time had the possibility, through intensive expansion of the Roman Catholic dominance, to take up traditional design art coming over from the East. No wonder as a result that just in Cologne the possibility encounters us in how, in the most wonderful way this comes together, weaving the two impulses into one another: the one most ancient and revered tradition depicted—what a Madonna looks like—and the urge to represent history. How a Madonna had to look like—in the East was petrified spiritually, majestic, serene, but still, solidified. It had to wait. Movement was brought in from the West. The revelation brought in from above, from heaven, revealed in the Madonna figure, is to be experienced in the Russian Madonna as magnificently elevated and permeated with something one can see directly: the greatest beauty possibly revealed in a human face, the loveliest direct expression of the ability to love, human friendliness, human goodwill, everything living in the surroundings lived in an inner relationship with the revealed figure of the Madonna.

Consider this and then look at the painting done by Master Wilhelm:

Here you can see what I actually want to point out: you can see how an attempt is made to bring life, that means events, into being in the Virgin Mary depiction. Here individual observation merges with tradition right into the details, one might say: old prescriptions were only applicable to attitude, nobility of form, serenity but not much further than in the expression of line, thus tradition was already being experienced from individual observation. This is what we can admire so much in these masters.

Another painting by the same master:

Another painting by the same master ... to indicate what I have just mentioned, shown in another representation. Consider just how much has come through the traditional heavenly figure, the revealed form of the Redeemer's face, of Veronica's face, in which we can see something revealed directly out of soul depths. See for yourself how those angel faces looking up are already individualized! Consider how with this image, as a result of the individualizing of figures it is no longer possible to actually imagine heaven behind it. However, something else is possible. At the back of the image, which came out of the Eastern inclination (245) we can actually imagine the spiritual world, something in addition to what the image presents. Here (237) we can also imagine something else; we must feel something different from what the image depicts. We feel much of what has gone before due to knowledge from the Bible; we feel much of what has resulted, events have been experienced and what is depicted are scenes from before and after. Thus there is not something like a spiritual realm behind it; the experience is of something before and something afterwards. When the singular is represented—visual art does this after all—then a single element is lifted out of the events. This is what we find towards the conclusion of every time period, towards which Rome out of such a deep understanding through the three to four centuries created in the European realm, which wanted to rise out of folklore. The conclusion appears to us and how this works in Cologne, by such genial Masters being capable of creating something like this.

These two intertwining impulses which I have characterised flow together most remarkably here. Now I would like to indicate their power which had worked everywhere by showing you a couple of paintings, starting with Constance who probably learnt from this and many countries through which he travelled, to arrive in Cologne and gradually became the follower of so-called Master Wilhelm, Stephan Lochner. The first is the image of the Virgin Mary—we know it already:

In this image—you need only compare the single heads—you already notice the individualizing impulse which is fully expressed by the figures. This aspiration you can observe. You hardly see a tendency to use space; everything is on one plane, you see no possibility of somehow applying perspective, but you see the yearning, the desire and instinct which can be declared as events, fixed in the imagery, you see the desire characterized; you see the past and what will follow established in the imagery as a scene.

Now I ask you to look at the two preceding demonstrated paintings (237,238) by the Cologne masters which appeared when these masters were blossoming, somewhat around the years 1370 to 1410, therefore directly during the time the fourth post-Atlantean epoch was coming to a close. This painting by Stephan Lochner (239) already falls into the fifth post-Atlantean time. I have shown you images in consecutive order between the boundaries of the fourth and fifth post-Atlantean time.

What are the particular characteristics? Don't we see particular characteristics playing into representations in the 5th post-Atlantean time? Don't we see in the lowering gaze of Mary, the blessing little hand of the child, the differences in the right and left figures' expression, in the individual depiction of the additional figures—do we not see the characteristics of the 5th post-Atlantean time—how the character's act in the pictorial representation? Do we not see how the impact of personality arrives? Above all, don't we already here see the desire to express the element of the 5th post-Atlantean time within the imagery, the most important element for Central Europe: light-and-dark or chiaroscuro?—How little meaning the distribution of light and dark had in the old tradition! People lived in light and shadows but were not observing it, yet were feeling it - because they experienced light bringing joy, sensing life in light while darkness sank into rest, in darkness they withdrew into mysterious soul depths. This inner living in the world in the souls of single individuals which particularly comes to the fore in the 5th post-Atlantean time, as well as the application of chiaroscuro, indicate a distribution of light masses: in the middle the light is above the Child, we see this light dividing itself right and left in single masses, becoming lighter upwards, no longer completed as in earlier version only in a golden ground, but in a brightness. Thus the encroachment of individual characters is what we see here; nobody can actually look at these consecutive elements which I have demonstrated to you, without becoming aware that something, albeit quietly, but something new was coming into the 5th post-Atlantean time while the 4th post-Atlantean epoch faded.

Let us look once more at the previous Madonnas:

Memorise this child's face well and try to feel how much tradition still lives in it. Now consider once again another one:

Look at the Madonna and the Child and note how a really new impulse has entered just like a new impulse does enter with each individual. Considering the following paintings of Stephan Lochner. I want to stress that Stephan Lochner originated from a region where most people were incapable of absorbing tradition because most of them had the impulse to develop individualism. It is the region around the Bodensee in the region of Bavaria, the area of western Austria. Here the tribes strived out of their folk nature towards individualism, mostly rejecting tradition. Stephan Lochner was lucky, one might say, to aim for the Bavarian anticipation of individual expression, where, despite the striving for the individual, there still lived the great sublime sacred tradition of olden times. As a result, his individual impulse, much more pronounced than Master Wilhelm with his radical individual urge, he connected to his revolutionary individuation impulse with the smooth, typically Cologne imaging tradition to produce this image.

For an artist like Stephan Lochner depicting space within art had not yet been invented; to depict space could simply not be done at that time in Cologne, but his soul tried to introduce this into the images.

Fully within the historical events, completely within development this can be ascertained by a comparison between the Virgin Mary image of the West compared to that of the East:

Look at the next image:

... which you also know already; look at it particularly in the way the specific fits into the general, so typical in Stephan Lochner's work, how the dark and light come to the fore even if there is no continual intention of capturing space, to indicate perspective, but in the chiaroscuro we see another kind of spatial capture than that of perspective. The perspective is more to the South, one could say: invented by Brunellesco—I have explained this to you in previous years.

And now …

... in which you see there is no trace yet of composition and how here also, where the depiction would have insisted on a study of space, there is nothing about space, and how on the other side an attempt is made to depict each of the six accompanying figures as individuals, with an attempt to individualise the Redeemer Himself. Please recall the paintings of the Cologne Masters (237, 238) and compare these with the paintings of Stephan Lochner (239-242) which we have seen. It can't be overlooked how deeply this incision imprints on us what lies between the two: because this incision lies between the 4th and 5th post-Atlantean epochs. Stephan Lochner attempted to depict soul qualities, but he looked for representation in nature to find forms which express the soul. Master Wilhelm still hovered in a supersensible experience of the soul and his impressions came out of his inner feelings. He didn't depict them by looking at a model. Here (237) we still see a reference to the model in order for the soul itself to identify with it. Master Wilhelm still expresses his own feelings. Stephan Lochner is already a copier of nature. This is in fact realism: realism rising. We can clearly draw the boundaries between these two so divergent painters, during hardly decades.

So you see how the laws which we search for in spiritual science really come to expression in single spheres of life when these spheres are not taken as unimportant, but with their importance are led before the soul.

Now I would like to place this fact once again before your souls, by introducing two painters who worked more in the South. This took place in Cologne. Let us look more towards the South, to Bavaria, Ulm or the Rhine area and we will see the how conditions appear before and after the incision of the 5th into the 4th post-Atlantean epoch. I want to present two paintings to you by Lukas Moser, who lived in the beginning of the 15th Century, who can certainly be counted as being from the 4th post-Atlantean time.

Look at these paintings:

Try to sense how everything painted in it is done in such a way that one notices how the painter went through schooling which insisted: when you place figures beside one another you must place the one facing you, the other in profile; when you paint waves, you must paint them like this.

Thus you see the entire play of the sea's waves, not as they are observed, but “according to the rules”; you see the figures as prescribed “according to the rules”; nothing observed, everything composed. This image from the Tiefenbronn altar thus depicts the ocean voyage of the saints.

The following image shows the time of repose, the night time rest of the same saints:

... A medieval house built on to a church, strongly suggestive that nothing was observed but everything was painted out of the head. Look at the sleeping Saint Zedonius: he still wears the mitre as well as his gloves. It had to be painted according to the rules where the main interest is located. Consider this as an ongoing journey, because the saints are taking a trip, they sail on the sea, they rest at night, it tells a story. Yet it is presented as set out in an existed image remaining within tradition. Lazarus resting in the bosom of this mother!

We can look back to representations of earlier times when we have such an image in front of us. This is at the point where the 4th post-Atlantean time came to a close. In the West there were still prescriptions regarding how church imagery should be painted. Painting was done according to particular traditional rules. The painters obtained their method out of tradition: this is what the Saint Zedonius looked like, what Saint Lazarus looked like, Saint Magdalene and so on; they had to be painted according to prescriptions, not quite as strictly as in the East, but still according to the laws. However, he still had to depict desires, instincts and reveal a story! In this way the elements swim in and around and battle with the end of the epoch.

Let us also look back to the 13th, 12th and 11th centuries. In all the churches strict rules were set. Each picture had to look the same as another right through the whole of Christendom, only with a slight variation in the way the things were ordered. If Saint Zedonius was ordered, then he was to be painted according to prescription - that was the tradition.

Let us now think of the incision of the beginning of the 15th Century and go from Lukas Moser, the last latecomer of the 4th post-Atlantean epoch, over to Hans Multscher and see how these painters really already stood in the beginning of the initial blossoming of the 5th post-Atlantean epoch. Look at these paintings:

... and you observe how in these paintings the individual-personal appear, characterising the personality. Moser does not have any desire to look at nature. Here, (399) you find an artist who strives to work out of the soul—yet who does not have the slightest inkling of spatial treatment and above all mixes up multi-coloured things in relation to space and perspective - yet who strives to characterise it out of the soul, in such a manner as if nature itself is characterised in the soul. He already tries to depict individual figures.

It will become even clearer for you, what I've just been speaking about, particularly when you look at the three sleeping figures below. There is already an attempt, first of all, to express the soul element, but there is also an attempt to depict the nature of those sleeping. Compare this with what you can remember about the sleeping saints on their sea voyage (335) the resting time (336) and then you will realise what a mighty incision lies between these developments. See how the light-dark depiction is consciously brought in. Solely characterized this way and not by working with perspective does the painter reveal spatial relationships. Perspective is in fact incorrect because an actual cohesive vanishing point can't be found in any area of the painting; nowhere can a central point be found from where the layout is arranged; yet still a spatial relationship of a certain beauty exists through the chiaroscuro.

Look at this “burial” scene. You find everything, even in the depiction of the landscape itself, as characterised by the individual's penetration of tradition: interest in events without any indication coming out of the spiritual world.

You see here how particular individualizing elements enter the entire painting, an attempt is made in a corresponding manner to represent the guardians, the twist of their bodies enhancing the individualisation. I ask you to look up, to the left, how an attempt was made to represent the figure's particular situation, his unique experience, portraying his peculiar individual inattentiveness. Try and imagine how the painter tried to show the front view of the head, how on the right he characterises the skull of the other guardian, from behind. One can see how the attempt is made to show individual forms and also how the chiaroscuro comes in. One can see how through individualising, depiction of spatial element enters while perspective is not at all yet clear. You can imagine the point from which the individual lines go from the characters, but now you need to think apparently quite far towards the front, where the coffin is placed and you have to think again about another reference point—regarding the trees! These are painted in full frontal positions.

I wanted to show you how the legitimate developmental impulses I spoke about already last time in the Italian paintings have a profound effect and what rises as characteristic in our time, originating from the 15th Century, can only now be understood if you clearly take the entire, deep meaning of every time period, from the beginning of the 15th Century, which built the boundary between the 4th and the 5th post-Atlantean epochs.

What transformed itself here had already been living in all the events and becoming of Europe, but it was pushed back from the 9th Century because Europe was made incapable at that time; Europe first had to allow something else to take form out of the depths of its being. Those in the East waited in the meantime. We should promote an awareness today for what waited there and what wanted to rise to the surface in the East because these forces are available, these forces weave into present day events, still wanting to be active. A clear understanding of what pulsates through the world, what works in the world, we need to take possession of, this which is an urgent requirement for the present time epoch. This I am now and have repeatedly stressed in the past. Through the development of the middle age art in its characteristic time period I wanted to make this clear for you. You see, here we approach two incisive waves in history: one swell is everything which came easterly from the south, the other is, I would like to call it, coming from the depths itself. In these centuries - 13th, 14th and 15th, in the centuries of freedom in cities, what wanted to rise from soul depths to the surface was most strongly applicable. Then again from the 16th Century another setback came - development rose and fell, oscillated—and then, obviously not simultaneously, the continuation of what had been started in of the 15th Century became outwardly visible as I've indicated to you, on the one side living in van Eyck, on the other side Dürer, Holbein and so on.

We see in the lower lands, towards Burgundy on the one side and Nürnberg on the other, Augsburg, Basel, the results of what wanted to come as a wave rising from soul depths to introduce the 5th post-Atlantean period.

I wanted to introduce only one of the impulses of this 5th post-Atlantean epoch to you. About other impulses I have various opportunities to speak at the moment.

Today I will introduce some observations and the way in which these will be presented will appear to be more loosely connected than those of the previous discussions which I have been giving you during these past weeks. Despite the aphoristic form in which I will speak today there is still a part for future considerations; I'm thinking of the next time when it will be possible to come back to some items which were attached to these contemplations in order to arrive at a culmination, a world view tableau, which I believe is necessary now, into which the human being may be placed.

Today I would first like to show through some observations which can't be supported by images—because I don't have images to illustrate this—how within history, within Europe's unfolding evolution during the last two to three centuries the most varied impulses worked together, impulses of a threefold nature. There were of course actually an infinite number of impulses but it is actually sufficient to look at particular elements which are the closest to reality in these impulses.

We live in the 5th post-Atlantean epoch. We stand in this epoch which expresses itself outwardly in many antagonistic and battling impulses these days. We live right inside many things which admonish mankind to be ever more and more awake for what is happening around us. One can say that never in the unfolding of history, as far as it can be researched, is mankind so called upon to wake up. In no other time had mankind shown such sleepiness as in ours. In this 5th post-Atlantean time with its particular impulses which we have come to know through our anthroposophical considerations, there play echoes of the 4th post-Atlantean time into it, but also echoes of the 3rd post-Atlantean epoch. Inside all that is bristling and playing in our present events we can distinguish between various things but today we will focus from a particular viewpoint on three principal impulses, echoes of the 3rd and 4th post-Atlantean epochs and how these work on our present 5th post-Atlantean epoch.

In the 4th post-Atlantic epoch one element asserted itself in particular—here we approach the development in art for our observation—in particular, and most valid, in artistic development's depiction was what there was to be discovered within the human being him- or herself. The Greeks and after them the Romans strived to present time and space as experienced within themselves as part of being human. We know why this is so; we have often considered this. In other cultural forms of the 4th post-Atlantean epoch, the Greek-Latin time, this also revealed itself and we find it expressed particularly in art. As a result, in the Greek time period typical individuals were idealized and particularly elevated in art. One could say the highest, most elevated form which could be found in the sense world were the beautiful people who took on such attractive forms and wandered around at that time, in the most beautiful movements in the widest sense of the word—Hellenism strived to depict them this way. During no other time of earth's development can such a similar striving be found; because each epoch of the earth's evolution has its particular impulse.

Within this representation of the beautiful humanity of the 4th post-Atlantean time was a resonance from the 3rd post-Atlantean time. This echo was not limited to a particular territory but rayed out over the cultural world of the 4th post-Atlantic epoch. Thus one can say: the 3rd post-Atlantean epoch became particularly active by influencing the 4th post-Atlantic epoch and continued to be active, even though it was now a weak echo, in the 5th post-Atlantean epoch.

As Christianity and the Christ impulse spread, it had to deal with these interweaving impulses. Art impulses simply could not unfold in the 3rd post-Atlantean time on the physical plane as was the case in the 4th post-Atlantean time, because even in the 4th the depiction of the physical world was granted through beautiful people, in beauty humanity was created. The 3rd post-Atlantic epoch had to express many more, even if they were atavistic, internalized impulses. In order to bring this about, it had been necessary to reach back to grasp this kind of impulse from the 3rd post-Atlantean epoch, in a certain sense. Thus we see, while the Christ impulse spread through the world, the artistic depiction of beauty within humanity reaches back, and sometimes has an impact which is like a kind of renewal of an impulse from the 3rd post-Atlantean epoch.

The Greek impulse which brought art to such a blossoming, quite within the style and sense of the 4th post-Atlantean epoch, had to preferably be limited to express growing, flowering and thriving. Beauty for the Greeks was never adornment. The idea of embellishment was unknown to the Greeks. The Greek had the idea of everything alive, growing and flourishing. The idea that embellishment could be added was something which came much later into the world again, namely in the continuing cultural development. The idea to which the Greek world was the furthest removed can perhaps be found in the word “elegant”. Elegance was unknown to the Greeks—elegance which the living used to bedeck themselves with adornments so that they would “shine” on the outside—this was unknown to the Greeks. The Greek only knew form and expression as originating from what was alive itself.

The impulses of Christianity also represented death; the Greek epoch mainly represented all that sprouted, grew, and was life-giving. The Cross of Golgotha had to stand opposite Apollo. Yes, this was the great task of humanity, the great artistic work of humanity, to work against death, in other words all that could come from the world beyond because Hellenism regarded ideals sensually represented as its highest accomplishment.

This becomes obvious in all that is juxtaposed in an artistic expression. This is evident when one sees how artistic skill strived to express the beautiful, growing and blossoming, youthful and prosperous people. This artistic skill brought the Greek-Latin time particularly far. One can also see how Hellenism was already growing in the first artistic Christian creations, but how simultaneously these artistic creations struggled with what couldn't be captured in the physical world or dealt with artistically. As a result, we see how the perfection of the representation of youth, vitality and prosperity is placed beside the still clumsy representation of death, eternity, including infinity which is the door to it all.

I have put together two motifs from the ancient Christian art of the first centuries, to illustrate what I'm trying to present. Firstly, the “Good Shepherd”:

... a statue to be found in Lateran, in which you can see how the artistic skill is presented in the growing, blossoming and prospering element, the vitality as it grows within the Christian art; if one believes that the Jesus figure is linked to the “Good Shepherd”. Greek art was dedicated to life, dedicated to depicting the world of the senses with the human being as the highest accomplishment of life, who in death will grasp the consciousness which alone will give access to infinity, eternity, and the supernatural. One can see how they tried to adapt this to Apollo, Pallas Athene and Aphrodite who really represented youthful blossoming, growing and thriving, how this development wants to merge with the other form, yet still holding on to the striving in the artistic sense, with death, the infinite, towards the supernatural. This is the echo in art which came out of the sense world and became the magnificent flowering in the 4th post-Atlantic epoch.

Now we take another artwork carved out of wood—coming from about the same time period—the representation of the crosses on Golgotha:

Christ on the cross, between the two thieves.

If you look at it you realize how unskilful it looks in comparison with the previous image. The mystery of Christianity could not be mastered artistically, it still had the work of an entire century ahead. During the very first centuries of Christianity one finds such inadequate representations of the central mystery of Christianity.

One can already say that these things should not be taken up in the sense of false aesthetics or in hostility towards sensory impressions, because the gaze, the soul gaze during the first Christian times was focussed on the mystery of death, which had to be validated in a super-sensory way through knowledge of the Mystery of Golgotha. By believing one is connected to the mystery of Golgotha, it was believed that one could grow into feelings and experiences and see the infinite validity of the human soul which lay behind the door of death. No wonder that as a result, in the field of the most varied cultural forms of worship of the dead during the first centuries this was particularly noticeable in sensitive Christians. So you see why this characteristic style which I want bring into expression is directly linked for you in the Good Shepherd (661) to this “Representation of the Mystery of Golgotha” (662). Thus we see the characteristic style in the artistic creations of the first Christian centuries depicted in reliefs and most of all in the carved reliefs found in sarcophagi. The dead, the remains of the dead, memories of the dead combined in the sarcophagus, are linked to the Mystery of the Dead, this was a profound need of the first sensitive Christians. The secrets of the Old and New Testament were the favoured elements to be depicted on the walls of the sarcophagus. To study the sarcophagus art of the first Christian centuries in particular, means to delve into what was being done in Christianity, to a certain extent the Mystery of Death is also there, where it shows itself in reality: with the sarcophagus, expressed artistically with the mystery of death, it is brought together with the knowledge of the revelation of everlasting life, with biblical mysteries.

So we see for example the sarcophagus of the early Christian art:

In the centre is the married couple to which the sarcophagus is dedicated, presented in portraits, then the two rows above and below of biblical scenes from the Old and New Testaments. It starts, as you can see, at the left top with the resurrection of Lazarus. You then see the continuation, to the right of the rounding shell, the sacrifice of Isaac, continuing further one recognises the betrayal by Peter. Below, right, you see for example—they are all biblical figures—here it is unfortunately too small—above and below are Bible scenes. We see what Greek art created up to its culmination, the free standing human figure, which here has to be squashed into reality, but reality connecting this world to the world of the afterlife. So we see the figures lined up. Here we see the free depiction obviously impaired, this impaired composition is exactly what we want to look at in particular. In this example we have for example a sarcophagus configuration, an extraction of the materials in form, as an example of an entire composition pressed into it. Please look carefully, the entire composition is compressed and composed of human forms. Overall we have physical forms: Moses, Peter, the Lord Himself, Lazarus being awakened, Jonah there in the centre; thus we have the composition, possibly reducing spatial depiction, the geometric figural moving back to allow the refinement of human form. I ask you please to particularly consider this because we shall see quite different things in the following sarcophagus. Already here you see that not everything is pressed into the human depiction, these are only one behind another, but look at the centre, below, how in the Jonah scene composition comes very obviously to the fore.

The central figure: the Christ. Notice how the two other figures are produced, and behind them the plant motifs on both sides.

Do you remember the very first lecture which I held here in Dornach, in which I tried to show the motifs of the acanthus leaf, how it didn't grow as a copy of nature but came out of geometric form, out of an understanding of guidelines and only later, as I showed, did it adapt itself to the naturalistic acanthus leaf? So we see, like here (667) lines and line ratios build a kind of central theme ... and how to some extent the pictorial, which Hellenism brought to its highest expression, now recedes and becomes threaded into the compositional. We can say we have vertical lines, then two opposing angular lines and a centre. When we draw these lines we start to consider spatial relationships:

Let us then add two plant motifs and two figures—ostensibly filled with reverence—rushing towards the centre

We see that it is possible to say that the symbolic image becomes connected with something which can only be suggested as naturalistic because naturalism itself is idealistic: the human figure or even the organic being and the symbol are interwoven and become hardly distinguishable from one another.

We shall see that quite other, quite different motifs will come to meet us in other sarcophagi as for example with the following one.

Here we have something quite different. Here we have admittedly also plant motifs; you have the same lines—now not with human beings—but filled in with animals. You have the central motif but this motif itself is symbolic; this motif is a sign, a monogram of Christ, Chi (X) and Rho (P); therefore, Christ construed as the Wheel of Life in the centre. Considered spatially this composition is the same as the one before. Instead of the central Christ figure we have the Christ monogram in the centre; instead of the two figures approaching in reverence, we have animals; and on the sides, plant motifs. Yet, in a remarkable way, we see the image formed here as more complete.

The basis of such a monogram representation is always linked to an ancient view but in today's opinion may appear somewhat bizarre, yet that is the basis of it. You must clearly understand that people had some knowledge, even before atavistic Gnostic wisdom—which only really withered in the 18th Century, some even as late as the 19th century. When you take this presentation (666) then you will easily find yourself entering into the artwork despite the naturalistic drawing: the stone as such—physical; the plant motifs left and right—etheric; the animal motif - astral; and the monogram of Christ in the centre—the indwelling of Christ in the “I”.

When we gaze as such signs, at the imagery, the naturalistic images shown in such signs, we see an interplay coming out of the 3rd into the 4th post-Atlantean epochs. What were the most profound characteristics of the 3rd post-Atlantean epoch? There where it really acted out of its own impulses, this 3rd post-Atlantean epoch mainly strived to find the sign, the actual symbol which works magic. Understand this well: the sign which works magic. The symbolism was there and gave birth to script. Remember how within the Egyptian culture the priest was handed the letters through the god Hermes himself, the revealed words were received from above. These sign were revealed from the supersensible by the sensible. The signs were to reappear as something in the sense world which had come out of the super-sensible as a Christ impulse because the Christ impulse had to speak not merely of outer manifestations but the Christ figure had to represent the embodied Apollo. The Christ impulse had to present the Christ in such a way that it could be said: “In the beginning was the Word” which means that the sign originated in the heights of heaven, and has come down, “and the Word became flesh”.

Thus we need to bring together what lived in the signs as impulses in the 3rd post-Atlantic times with the Christ impulse living in the 4th post-Atlantic time. In Egypt during a relatively earlier time signs could be transformed into script; we see also in northern countries signs in the runes are charged with their own magic, and the rune priests who threw the runes tried to read them, tried to recognise what revelations the runes revealed from spiritual heights. Thus we see the influence of the runes in the 3rd post-Atlantean time, runes which can be found way back in all the centuries before Christendom. This propagated and streamed together with the naturalistic, Hellenic presentation, then already presented out of nature by spiritually beautiful people. Both streams merge. This we can see in the motif (666) as coming together. This is most important here: the grasping of one over the other, the flowing together of the 3rd and 4th post-Atlantean epochs.

Look at the next motif, the “Presentation of the Offerings of the Kings”:

... we see how the expression of the linear lives beside the naturalistic reality.

Let us look at the next sarcophagus motif:

Once again we have something else, despite the succession of the figures which mainly present a biblical scene, although we have the figures simply in a row we see how an attempt was made in the movement of the linear quality of the figures, how the spatial aspect is expressed. So this again is done in the other way (like 664).

The following motif is from the sarcophagus of the grave of Galla Placidia:

Here the spatial aspect is expressed to a strong degree yet we only see the same thing we've often encountered before (664, 666), the secret of multiples of five you see expressed here, in the centre is the Lamb this time—one could say the Lamb is supported by others—and once again the plants close off the periphery. In the most diverse ways the spatial artistic element of the 3rd Post-Atlantean time will support Christianity, and again penetrate it, as a support for Christianity. All that comes as sarcophagus art.

I ask you to really hold on to the idea that the basis of these signs was allowed to flow into Christianity, secretively: you have the pentagonal, you have the triangle in the centre, again a sign; besides this you have the line as I explored earlier. Why did Christianity allow these signs to flow into it? Because they saw magic within the signs, magical effects which did not only happen in the naturalistic area where it became blurred, but worked through the supersensible; within the signs a supersensible expression came about.

The next motif:

Here we see the signs again mixed in a particular way with the naturalistic elements: the monogram of Christ in the centre and the two animal figures which you have seen already, on both sides. However, the plant motifs are designed in multiples. Above you can see the sign applied. Here you have signs and naturalistic depictions intermingled, the signs as magic, the signs which originate from the same world if they are depicted meaningfully, which the dead enter at the portal of death. One felt something like this: out of the world into which the dead enter at the portal of death these signs come, they are transformed into script. The naturalistic element however exists there where humanity lives between birth and death.

The next motif is the Miracle of the multiplication of Bread:

Here in contrast is another way (663, 338) where the mere architectural has inserted the signs.

The following is not a sarcophagus motif but is an ivory carving.

With this I want to make a definite point regarding the way the material was worked in the same way it had remained in the art of the 4th post-Atlantean epoch. The manner in which it was created out of the ivory as relief art during the first Christian centuries was a capability of the 4th post-Atlantean time when naturalism was expressed artistically.

The following motif is likewise an ivory carving:

Here you already see likewise more signs complimenting the lines as well as the figures and images being applied to the imagery, you can clearly see how it is possible to fill to a certain extent the area into which the figures are threaded, pulled in, how they can be expanded as geometrical figures.

These are, one could say, the backbones which Christianity has brought in the form of the symbolic art of the 3rd post-Atlantean epoch and which we see appearing everywhere.

I have another example out of the Dome in Ravenna:

... in which I can show how completely the motifs are converted by the application of the signs. On the left at the top we have the Christ monogram, below left and right we again have geometrical and figurative motifs, above in a similar fashion the Christ monogram, a simple motif, symmetrical left and right. We can, if we get a bit of help from our imagination, see how a real evolution has taken place from the first to the second motif. Just imagine in the top left under the curvature, the Chi (X) and the Rho (P), the Christ monogram simplified, think of the Chi crossbars simplified and then you arrive at the central motif, top right, as the monogram forming the cross. Imagine the growing together of the monogram at the top left, with the wreath, a mere plant motive of creeper with leaves, and you will come to the animal motif on the left and right. Simultaneously you could imagine the top right motif in a simplified and more elevated configuration as the evolution of the left motif. In the same way the right sided monogram can be a forerunner of the left. Just imagine for a moment the left palm of the monogram configured in these entanglements around the monogram, consider how the left motif is similarly growing here as is apparent in our (Goetheanum) Building, where column motifs develop out of one another; consider the simplified geometric forms more organically depicted, then you have the right side motif as it develops from the left one.

When one goes back into the mysteries of the 3rd post-Atlantean epoch, you find spread all over Europe, from the north and even into America—because there has always been a connection between Scandinavia and America which was only lost for a short while, a few centuries before America was discovered by Spain, much earlier one always sailed from Scandinavia to America; they lost their connection for a short while and it was only re-established after Columbus rediscovered it—one finds, spread out over southern Europe, over North Africa, over familiar regions of Asia, the front area of Asia in particular in the 3rd post-Atlantean epoch of the Mysteries, afterwards some latecomers—one finds the real mystery centres of earlier, of the third post-Atlantean epoch. Here magic and signs were spoken about in particular. What Egyptian mythology related in regard to the priesthood of Hermes are the outer exoteric echoes of the esoteric elements in the Mysteries regarding the magic of signs, which was learnt in northern lands as the magic of the runes. This was the magic which came, on the one side, from a spiritual side, from magic which was used to try and form signs which came forth purely out of the spiritual realm and to some extent permeate this realm of signs by human will in order to create particular signs into which the forces of the supernatural would be poured.

This was not the only place where magic was searched for. It is very significant that magic was looked for on the other side, one could say, in the supernatural. Isn't it true that the naturalistic as well as art was simultaneously spiritual for the Greeks? In supernatural signs magic was searched for which merely lay within the signs themselves. However, magic was also sought in sub-nature. Besides the mysteries which speaks about the runes and signs in olden times, there were other mysteries which spoke about other riddles regarding sub-nature. This sub-nature one discovers in quite particular products when one looks for them mainly under the surface of the earth. If one goes above then one meets the gods in the heights who give sense to the signs, where the supersensible works as magic, then it is possible to grasp it in the sensual sense and unite it artistically. If one goes however into sub-nature, into the inner earth, one finds a kind of magic held there.

Among the manifold magical things, one sought in particular for the identification of two riddles. If we today express the knowledge of these two riddles, we could say that in the secret mysteries the riddle of gold was well kept, as it is sought in the veins of the earth, and also the riddle of gemstones. This sounds extraordinary but it really correlates historic fact. The magic of the signs was particularly connected to the church. In the 3rd post-Atlantean time they sought to incorporate magic into the signs. The magic of gold—where in particular it is formed as it appears in nature—and then the magic of gemstones which bring light into what had been dark, where light is held in something material, material which was held in darkness—this didn't enter into the priesthood but gave itself into the profaneness of humankind who stood outside the church.

So it happened that out of certain impulses which were very, very old—when liberated town culture established itself in art which I have just recently explained, as everywhere the liberated town teachings developed, that these liberated town developments came to the surface -the joy of gemstones, the joy of gold, the delight in gold processing and the delight in precious stone application came through as waves in the spiritual life. Just as the church wanted to bring signs out of the heights of heaven so from the depths of the earth came the secret of gold and the secret of the gemstones as part of the liberated town culture. Not just by coincidence, but through deep historic necessity the art of the goldsmith developed and I would like to say, only as an annexure to the goldsmith art, other metal art grew out of the desires of town culture, by applying gemstones, because gold and gemstones contained magic, a magic from below in nature that should be loosened and spread before the senses.

Still today an echo of this urban working with gold and gemstones can be seen in art, as founded by the Bishop Bernward of Hildesheim. In Hildesheim, situated in the midst of northern Europe's centre one sees many such works of art—otherwise also available but particularly concentrated there—where gemstones are incorporated into the most delicate artistic metallic works of art.

Bernward of Hildesheim

In Hildesheim it comes across to one as phenomenally important in its ancient form. It spread out, and actually this which I have pointed out as appearing and blossoming particularly because Central European impulses are also found in Italian cities. Basically the art of the goldsmith in Florence and what was designed by later goldsmiths to become the great art in the arena of sculptural relief and sculpture as such, dates back to this same origin. These things are interlinked in the most manifold ways.

Now consider the following. I had said that in the 9th Century when the church of Rome and the papacy had a different understanding than later, of what actually had to happen in the western world, from a certain viewpoint I represented this, how from the 9th Century onward forces in Rome, which one could say rose from below and became valid, how these laws from Rome became systemized just like laws originating from the spiritual world should have been included. On the one side Rome can seem thus: from the South rose the magic and sign world which came from above but with a focus towards the North where liberated town culture was being developed, focussing towards the North where joy grew in the secret of gold, in the secret of gemstones. However, this northern influence had already produced something out of its old mysteries, which necessarily had connections through the mysteries to, on the one side, the mystery of gemstones—this we can leave out of the game today—and on the other side, connections to the mystery of gold. Christianity didn't simply develop out of a single impulse and impulses also worked against Christianity. Just as it was opposed in the South by the magic of signs, so in the North it was opposed by the world of Central European legends and out of the North incorporated by the great gold mystery, as illustrated.

With the gold mystery the figure of Siegfried is connected, who looted gold and perished through the tragedy of gold. Everything which is connected to the Siegfried figure is related to the mystery of gold. The theme that gold and its magic only belong to the supersensible world is like a red thread throughout the Nibelungenlied, gold is not to be dedicated to the sense world.

If one considers it in this way, then your mind understands the deepest mystery of gold. What did Siegfried's friend tell him? What does the Nibelungenlied say? What is its great teaching? Offer the gold to the dead! Leave it to the supersensible realm; in the sensible world it makes mischief.

That was the teaching which propagated through Christianity in the northern countries. This is what was understood in Rome during the great synthesis taking place between Roman elements of the 9th Century in the northern European areas when within art it united with what rose from the one side out of signs and on the other side from symbols added into the gold and gemstone work. How beautiful this confluence of symbol-rich art and gold-gemstone art is during the 8, 9, 10, 11, 12th centuries. Everywhere we see this ancient Christian art of symbols. By connecting other impulses, we see the incorporation of the symbols into the working of the gold and gems.

This was now systematically sought in Rome, but was also prepared for in Europe. As a result in the early days we see, rising from the south, the Christian traditions in a form that even in a non-pictorial, purely by word-of-mouth form, the symbols moved and worked. The heathens coming from the North were heralds of everything worldly, embellished, and ornamental, linking the magic of the symbols to the sub-nature. By associating the cross of the South with the gold and gems of the North which originated in the heathen mysteries, just like the symbol of the cross itself out of the mysteries is applied to the Mystery of Golgotha, so we see three impulses combining: the naturalistic depiction of spiritualised nature taking the Greek power of form from the 4th post-Atlantean epoch, and the other two impulses: the symbol of the magic in signs, and the magic of sub-nature, of gold and gems.

Yes, to find the preparation of ancient times in the historic development of becoming, the further back we need to go. Our time is already in the epoch in which, I might say, everything battles with the human being, in order for him to learn and not remain sleepy by gazing into the present, but that lively impulses of evolution are really grasped, otherwise he might nevermore be forced to see how chaotic the present has become.

Today I have the opportunity, but in the near future this opportunity might not be so, to show you how, by the art influenced by the South being brought towards the North, that a particularly strong motif is expressed by the merging of the animalistic and human. In earlier time this started to appear and later became seen as the interworking of darkness and light. Out of the figurative dark animalistic realm the bright human form rises in the relationship of the dragon with Michael, and so on, also seen in other compilations of the animal and human. This becomes the light-dark artistic expression later. All these things are interconnected. Much, very much has to be spoken about if one wants to show the artistic expression of this interworking between the olden and newer times, this penetration of the naturalistic heathen impulses with the Christian impulses, which however, to be valid, has to renew the old magical motifs, now to have this magic in the old heathen sense undressed and lifted up into the real spiritual world.

This was known particularly in the 9, 10, 11, 12, 13th centuries. It was then known that the ancient heathen elements had become obsolete, but lots remained behind—yet these elements had become old—and that the young Christianity of that time had to work into this, was known. This we meet in literature, in art, in the creation of legends, everywhere. I have already often pointed this out, how present time humanity has become completely lost to the idea of spirituality working in outer reality. In the 5th post-Atlantean time when materialism is written on people's banners, this idea has nearly become lost completely. People are unable to imagine the streaming in of the spiritual, of the meaningful elements in pure naturalism, in pure matter. As a result, the gradual dying of the heathen and the gradual becoming of the Christ impulse in European culture is considered, at best, in abstract terms. In the 9, 10, 11, 12, and 13th centuries this was not the case. Then one presented it, if a representation was wanted at all, in such a way that the soul and outer corporeality were considered simultaneously as outside of the human being in history and in natural events. Everywhere one looks at the physical geographical surroundings something spiritual is simultaneously expressed. Hence much in the prophetic line came to be seen in these ideas.

People at present, if they do not only want to have superficial feelings but have a heart for the monstrous events taking place in our time, cannot today think of the Nibelungen legend without seeing prophetic depths within it. Whoever understands the Nibelungen legend in its depths, feel prepared for all the terrible events which flash through the present. By thinking in the same way in which thoughts are shaped in the Nibelungenlied, one thinks in a prophetic manner because then thoughts are formed through the mystery of gold. Hagan allowing the Nibelungen treasure, the gold treasure, to sink into the Rhine, was a prophetic idea at the time the Nibelungen saga was created and is experienced as deeply tragic in view of the future, on all that the Rhine will become as a cause for antagonistic impulses against the future. At that time the outer geographic natural world was not regarded as soulless, but was seen in connection with the soul, in every breath of wind was a soul quality, in every flowing stream something of a soul. At that time, it was also really known in what sense the purely materialistic reference meant regarding “the old Rhine River”. What is the Rhine actually in a materialistic sense? It is the water of the Rhine. What flows in it these days will in future be somewhere else. The water of the Rhine is actually not really something one can call the old Rhine, and one does not usually think of the mere coincidence of the earth. All that is matter flows on, it doesn't remain. In olden times external matter was given no thought, other than everything being an illusion; it was not believed that external events were merely embedded in the flow of what was described as naturalistic. Whatever was external was simultaneously a soul expression permeating physical existence. For this reason and particularly during this time it was a necessity to allow the old heathendom to dissolve and allow the new introduction of the Christian impulse—that was necessary in Europe in the later centuries—there people tried to think soulfully about geography, making geography plausible to the soul, the heart, to the mind.

Let us look at the example of the Odilienberg there in the Vosges and see the Christian monastery of Odile, to whose father, the pagan Duke, she was born blind; we see on this site the pagan walls of the Christian monastery. These pagan walls are nothing other than the remainders of old pagan mysteries. We see a merging of dying paganism and the rise of the Christ impulse at this geographic location. We see this expressed in the myth with remnants of the own pagan ancestry imposed by Odile being blind but who becomes inwardly, spiritually seeing through the Priest of Regensburg, through a Christ impulse. We see a working together in Regensburg a blossoming later as in the great fruitfulness of Albertus Magnus, we see it blooming, we see it instilling the Christ impulse in the eyes of Odile whose pagan ancestors had blinded her. We see geographically at this place the telescoping of the Christian light into the old pagan darkness. We see this as the basis imposed by Rome: take up the gold, but bring the gold as offering from the realms of the supersensible. Let the gold enter into that, of which the Cross is a sign! In our time we see by contrast, the flood of gold taken up by the senses as it was brought into expression in the old heathen legends.

We see how time takes a stand of opposition to the supersensible light contrasted by the gold. Siegfried was drawn to Isenland to fetch the Nibelungen gold. The Nibelungen gold he brought was offered to the Christ impulse. This Christ impulse dared not turn pagan again!

Oh, one could use many, many fiery words, as human words are, to really depict the terrible sense of this time. This time is filled with signs. During this time human ears unfortunately wanted to hear very little. The first year of chaos arrived - and it was believed that it would soon be the past. They didn't want to listen to the deep powers moving within this chaos - also into the second, the third year—and also now. Firstly, when this adored gold can be eroded, will people have ears to hear that no ordinary tools can be found which are so needed during this time, tools brought over from the past, but that it is only possible with the forces of renewal brought about from within the flowing Christ impulse, which in many cases had already been forgotten as Christ impulses. In no other way could these things improve than if as many people as possible decided to learn from the spirit.

Let us look for once at the manner in which earlier humanity comprehended things, even thinking of the direction of the wind not in a materialistic sense but that the windsock was inspired, ensouled by the region with, on the one side, the Odilienberg and on the other side, Regensburg. It was the same with other places.

Learn once again how humanity experienced not mere air moving over the earth but that there is spirit above the earth, spirit which must be searched for; that beneath the earth there is not only stuff which they could take out with the aid of material tools, but that which was to be unearthed from the sub nature had to be offered up to the super-sensory. To understand mankind again, that is the mystery of gold! Not only spiritual science teaches this but this can also be learnt through the real understanding of the history of art in a spiritual sense. Oh, how terrible it is to see how the present day humanity wait day after day and do not want to understand the necessity to grasp the new; that they make no progress through old, worn-out imaginations. More about this again at another time.