Lecture I
The Creative World of Colour
Herman Grimm, the cultured Art-Critic of the nineteenth century, has
pronounced what one might call a profound utterance about Goethe. He
has aid that mankind would not realize the full importance of Goethe
till the year 2000. A goodish time, you will agree. And when one looks
at our epoch, one is hardly inclined to contradict such a statement.
For what does Herman Grimm consider as the most important fact about
Goethe? Not that he was a poet, nor that he produced this or that
particular work of art, but that he created all he did out of the
complete man, that the impulses of his full manhood underlay every
detail of his creations. One may say that our epoch is very far from
comprehending this full manhood that lived in Goethe. In saying this I
do not want in any way to refer to the oft-denounced specialized
method of observation of Science. This method is to a certain extent a
necessity. There is, however, something much more striking than the
specialization of Science, and that is the specialization of our life!
For it leads to the situation that the soul which is confined to this
or that specialized circle of ideas or sensations can understand less
and less the other soul which is specialized in another direction. And
to a certain extent all men are now specialists. This aspect of the
specialist and soul particularly strikes us when we consider the
Art-development of mankind. And precisely for this reason is it
necessary — if only in primitive beginnings — that a kind of
pulling together of spiritual life will result in artistic form. We
need not take a very comprehensive view to prove what I have said. AS
we shall probably understand each other best if we proceed from
something close at hand, I should like to refer to one of the many
instances of those misunderstanding and often ridiculous attacks on
our spiritual movement which are at present so conspicuous.
In quarters where they are anxious to blacken us before the world, it
is considered cheap and common-place in us to make our rooms as we
please. We are reproached for decorating our meeting places with
coloured walls and are ridiculed for what is called the freakishness of
the (first) Goetheanum at Dornach, which is said to be quite
unnecessary for a real Theosophy, as the expression goes. Well, in
certain circles, one considers as a “true Theosophy” a
physic hotch-potch, interspersed with all sorts of dark feelings, and
which revels in the fact that the soul can unfold in itself a higher
ego, though all the time having no other than egoistic ideas in view.
And from the point of view of this psychic hotch-potch, this cloudy
dreaming, it is found unnecessary for a spiritual movement to express
itself in an outward form, even if this outward form has to be
admittedly a tentative and primitive one. In these circles it is
imagined that one could chatter wherever one happened to be about this
hotch-potch and this misty dreaming about the divine ego in man. Why
is it necessary, therefore, that all sorts and kinds of expression in
such peculiar forms should be attempted?
Well, my dear friends, it is of course not to be expected that such
people who turn this sort of thing into a reproach are also capable of
thinking: such a demand can only be made of a very few. But we must
get clear on many points, so that we can answer the questions raised
at least in our own souls rightly.
I want to draw your spiritual attention to an artist of the eighteenth
century, who was greatly gifted as draughtsman and painter, Carstens.
I do not want to discuss the value of his art, to unroll the tale of
his activity or give you his life-story, but I want you to note that
in Carstens lay a great gift for drawing, if not for painting. If we
look into his soul, and at an artistic longing there, we can in a way
see what was wrong. He wants to set pencil to paper, he wants to draw
ideas and embody them in paint, only he is not in the position in
which — let me say — Raphael or Leonardo still were, or to take
an example from poetry, in which Dante was. Raphael, Leonardo and
Dante lived in a full, rich culture, one which was really alive in
men's souls, and surrounded them. When Raphael painted Madonnas, there
lived in human hearts and souls the understanding for a Madonna,
and — be it said in the noblest sense — out of the people's soul
there streamed something towards the creations of these artists. When
Dante led the human soul into spiritual realms, he needed only to take
his matter and material from something that in a way echoed in every
human soul. One might say these artists had some substance in their
own souls which was present in the general culture. If one picks up
some even obscure work of science of the time, one will find there is
everywhere some kind of connection between it and what was alive in
all souls, even in the lowest circles. The educated people of those
circles of culture from which Raphael created his Madonnas recognized
fully the idea of the Madonna, and in such a way that this idea of
Madonnas lived in them. Thus the creations of art appear as an
expression of the universal and unified spiritual life. This is what
arose again in a single man, in Goethe, as he was at the turn of the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. And it is this which is so little
understood in our time, namely, that Herman Grimm was inclined to wait
for the year 2000 for such an understanding to become possible for the
world again.
On the other hand let us look at Carstens. He takes Homer's Iliad and
imprints its events he reads into the forms his pencil creates. Just
think how different was the attitude of the eighteenth and early
nineteenth centuries to the Homeric figures from Raphael to the
figures of the Madonnas or the other motives of the time! One might
say the content of art was inevitable in the great periods because it
flowed from things that touched the very inmost hearts of men. In the
nineteenth century the time began when the artist had to look for the
content of what he purposed to create. It was not long before the
artist became a kind of cultural hermit who was really dependent only
on himself, of whom one might ask: What is his own relation to his
world of forms? One could unroll the history of human art in the
nineteenth century to see how Art stands in this respect.
And so it has come about that not only that cool, but cold
relationship of mankind to Art began which exists at present. One may
imagine a man today going through a picture gallery or exhibition in a
modern city. Well, my dear friends, he is not faced with something
that moves his soul, something that echoes inwardly, but he is faced
with a number of riddles which he can solve only when he has deeply
studied the special attitude of this or that artist to Nature or to
something else. We are confronted with a lot of individual problems or
tasks. And — this is the significant thing — while one thinks
one is solving artistic problems, one is solving really for the most
part problems that are not artistic ones but psychological. The way in
which this or that artist regards Nature today is an exercise in
philosophy or something of the sort, which simply does not come into
account at all when one steeps oneself in the great Art-periods. On
the contrary there enter these real artistic questions, for the
onlooker also, because the “How” is something which makes
the artist creative, whereas the substance is merely something that
surrounds him, in which he is steeped. We may say that our artists are
not artists at all any more, they are world observers from a
particular point of view, and they put into form what they see and
what strikes them. But these are psychological tasks, tasks of
historical interpretation and so on; the essential thing about the
artistic view of “How” has disappeared almost completely
from our time. The heart is often lacking for such artistic
considerations as “How.”
A great deal of the blame for all this to which I have briefly drawn
your attention must be ascribed to our thoroughly theoretic
world-philosophy. Men have become as theoretic in their thought as
they have become practical in their industry and technique and
commercial relations. To build a bridge between, for example, the
pursuits of modern science and the artist's conception of the world is
not only difficult, but also few people feel the need to do it. And a
saying like Goethe's: “The beautiful is a manifestation of the
secret laws of Nature, which, without this revelation, would for ever
have remained hid.” Is completely unintelligible to our time,
even if here and there somebody believes he understands it. For our
time clings to the most superficial, most abstract laws of Nature, to
those which approach, one might say, the most abstract Mathematics,
and will allow no importance to any research into reality which
transcends the abstract-mathematical, or anything that is similar to
the abstract-mathematical. And so it is not surprising if our time has
lost that living element in the soul which finds that substantiality
in world relationships which must spring from them actively if Art is
to arise at all.
Art can never be evolved from scientific concepts, or
abstract-theosophical concepts, at the most it would be an allegory of
straw or a stiff symbolism. The representations that the present time
makes of the world is in itself inartistic, and makes an effort to be
inartistic. Colours — what have they become in our scientific view?
Vibrations of the most abstract kind in the material of the ether,
vibrations of the ether-waves so and so much in length, etc. Imagine
how far removed the waves of vibrating ether, which are science seeks
today, are from the direct and living colour. How is it possible to do
anything but forget completely to pay any attention to this living
element in colour? We have already pointed out how this element in
colour is fundamentally a flowing, living one, in which we with our
sols are also living. And a time will come (I have pointed this out)_
in which the living connection of the flowing colour-world with coloured
beings and objects will again be realized.
It is difficult for man, my dear friends, because man, on account of
having to perfect his ego in the course of earth's evolution, has
risen from this flowing sea of colour to a pure Ego perception. Man
raises himself from this sea of colour with his ego; the animal-world
is still deep in it, and the fact that an animal has feathers or hair
of this or that colour, is connected with the animal's soul-relation
with this flowing sea of colour. An animal regards objects with its
astral body (as we do with the ego) and there flows into this astral
body whatever forces there are in the group-souls of animals. It is
nonsense to believe that even the higher animals see the world as man
sees it. But the truth of this point is quite unintelligible to modern
man. He believes that if he is standing beside a horse, it sees him
exactly as he sees it. What is more natural? And yet, it is complete
nonsense. For just as little as a man sees an angel without
clairvoyance, does a horse see a man without clairvoyance, for the
man is not a physical being to the horse, but a spiritual being, and
only because the horse is endowed with a certain clairvoyance does he
perceive man as a kind of angel. What the horse sees in man is quite
different from what we see in the horse. As we humans wander about, we
are very ghostly beings to the higher animals. If they could talk a
real language of their own, man would soon see that it does not occur
to animals at all to regard man as a similar being to themselves, but
as a higher, ghostly being. If they regard their own body as
consisting of flesh and blood, they certainly would not regard man as
consisting of flesh and blood. If one expresses this today, it sounds
to modern minds the purest rubbish — so far is the present age
removed from truth.
The susceptibility for the living, creative element of colour flows
into animals because of their peculiar connection between astral body
and group-soul. And just as we look at an object which rouses our
desire and seize it with a movement of the hand, so in the case of
animals, the whole of their organization is such that the directly
creative element of colour makes an impression, and it flows into the
feathers or wool and colours the animal. I have already expressed my
opinion that our time cannot even realize why the polar bear is white;
the whiteness is the product of his environment and that the polar bear
makes himself white has approximately the same significance, on
another plane, as when, through desire, a man stretches out his hand
to pick a rose. The living productive element in his environment works
on the polar-bear in such a way that it releases in him an impulse and
he completely “whitens” himself.
Now this living weaving and existence in colour is suppressed in man,
for he would never have been able to perfect his ego if he had stayed
in the colour-sea, and he would never, for example, have developed the
urge regarding a certain red colour, let us say the red of dawn, to
impress it on certain parts of his skin. Such was still the case
during the old Moon-Period. Then the effect of contemplating such a
drama of nature as the red of dawn was such that it impressed the man
of that time and the reflection of the impression was at the same time
thrown back into his own colouring, it permeated his being and then
expressed itself again outwardly in certain parts of his body. Man had
to lose this immersion of his body in this flowing colour-sea during
his earth-period, so that he could develop in his ego his own
world-outlook. And man had to be come in his form neutral towards the
flowing colour-sea. The colour man's skin in the temperate zones is in
essentials the expression of the ego, the expression of absolute
neutrality towards the colour-waves streaming without, and it denotes
the rising above the flowing colour-sea. But, my dear friends, if we
take even primitive scientific knowledge, we shall remember that it is
man's task to find the way back again. Physical, etheric and astral
body were formed during the epochs of Saturn, Sun and Moon
respectively, the ego during the earth-period. Man must find the means
to spiritualize the astral body again, to permeate it with what the
ego gains for itself by working upon it. And in spiritualizing the
astral body and thus finding the way back again, man must once more
find the flowing and ebbing colour-waves, from which he arose in order
to develop the ego, just as when he rises out of the ocean, he sees
only what is outside. And we really do live at a time when a
beginning must be made — unless man's living in accordance with the
universe is to cease altogether — with this diving down into the
spiritual waters of Nature's forces, what is, the spiritual forces
that lie behind Nature. We must make it again possible not merely
to look at colours and to apply them outwardly, but to “live”
with the colour, to share its inner power of life. We cannot do it if
we study the effect of this or that colour from a painter's point of
view, as we stare at it; we can do it only if we experience with
our souls the manner in which red, for example, or blue flows; if
this flowing of colour becomes directly alive for us. We can only do
it, my dear friends, if we are able so to instill life into the colour,
that we do not produce mere symbolism in colour — that would of
course be the worse way — but that we really discover what actually
lies in the colour itself, as the power to laugh lies in a laughing
man.
If a man in feeling the sensation of red or blue has no other reaction
to it than in feeling — here is red, and here is blue, he can never
proceed onwards to a living experience of the real nature of colour.
Still less can he do so if he clothes the colour-content with
intelligence and finds one symbol behind the red, and another behind
the blue; that would lead still less to experiencing the element of
colour. The point is we must know how to surrender our whole soul to
the message of colour. Then, in approaching red, we shall feel
something aggressive towards ourselves, something that attacks us. Red
seems to “come for” us. If all ladies went about the streets
in red, anyone with a fine feeling for the colour might inwardly
believe that they might all fall upon him, on account of their red
clothes. Blue, on the contrary, has something in it which goes away
from us, which leaves us looking after I with a certain sadness,
perhaps even with a kind of longing.
How far the present day is from such a living understanding of colour
can be seen from something I have already pointed out: in the case of
the excellent artist Hildebrandt it was expressly emphasized that the
colour is on the surface, and there is nothing else but surface-colour,
thus differing from form, which gives us, for example, distance. But
colour gives us more than distance, and that an artist like Hildebrandt
does not feel this must be taken as a deep symbol of the whole modern
manner. It is impossible to steep oneself in the living nature of
colour, if one cannot have a direct transition from immobility to
movement, if one is not directly made aware that the red disk is
coming nearer and the blue retreating; they move in opposite
directions. In steeping oneself in this living element of colour, one
gets to a stage of realizing that if we had two coloured balls, for
instance, of this kind, one is quite unable to conceive the
possibility of their standing still; it is inconceivable. If it were
conceived it would mean the death of living feeling, which gives the
direct idea that the red and the blue balls are revolving, one towards
the spectator, the other away from him. And the red on a figure, in
opposition to the blue, results in giving to a figure composition life
and movement through colour. And what is portrayed, my dear friends, is
made part of the living world, because it shines in colour. If you have
The form before you, it is restful, it remains stationary; but the
moment the form receives colour, the inner movement of the colour stands
out from the form, and the whirl of the world, the whirl of
spirituality, permeates it. If you colour a figure you vivify it
directly with soul, with the world-soul, because the colour does not
belong only to the form, the colour which you apportion to the single
figure places the latter in its full relationships with its
environment, yes, in its full relationship with the world. One might
say that when one colours a form one must have the feeling: “Now
you are going to approach the form so that you endow it with
soul.” You breathe soul into the dead form, when you animate it
with colour.
You need only get a little closer to this inner weaving of colour to
feel as if you are not approaching it directly, but are standing
slightly above or below it; one feels how living the colour itself
inwardly becomes. For a lover of the abstract, who stares at the colour
without that living inner sympathy, a red ball can revolve round a
blue one and he has no desire to alter the movement in any way. He may
be the greatest mathematician or the greatest metaphysician, but he
does not understand how to live with colour, because for him it moves
from one place to another like a dead substance. In reality, if one
lives with it, colour does not do this. It radiates, it changes in
itself, and a colour such as the red colour drives in its advance
something before it like an orange or yellow or green aura. And the
blue in its movement drives something different before it.
So you have here a kind of colour-game. You experience something, when
you enter into the life of colours, which makes the red appear to be
attacking and the blue retreating — which makes you feel that you
must flee from the red and follow the blue with longing. And when you
can feel all this, you would also actually feel yourself in harmony
with the living, moving flow of colour. You would feel in your soul
also the onslaughts and longings superimposed on each other as in a
vortex, the fleeing and the prayer of devotion, which follow each
other and pass by. And if you were to transform this into a detail on
a figure, of course as an artist would do, you would tear away the
figure from its natural repose. The moment you paint, let us say, a
figure in repose, you would have a living weaving movement, which
belongs not merely to the form, but also to the forces and weaving
elements round the figure: this is what you would have. You take away
the mere immobility of the figure, its mere form, by means of soul.
One would like to say that something of this sort must some day be
painted into this world, something depicting the elementary powers of
this world; for all that man is able to receive through the power of
longing could be expressed in the blue colour. Man would have to
represent this plastically in his head, and everything that is
expressed in red, man would have to have in such a form that it flows
out of his organism up to the brain: outside him the world, the object
of his longing, which is ever permeated by that which rises upwards
from his own body. By day the blue half flows stronger than the red,
or the yellow half. At night it is the reverse in the human organism.
An accurate reproduction of this is what we usually call the
two-leaved lotus flower, (See
Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and its Attainment
by Rudolf Steiner) in which the beholder sees both such
movement and such colouring. And no one will ever be able to
investigate what lives in the world of form as the productive element,
as the upper part of the human head, unless he is in a position to
follow this flow of colour which is hidden in man.
Art, my dear friends, must make an effort again to get down to the
bottom of elemental life; it has studied Nature long enough, and tried
long enough to solve all kinds of enigmas in Nature, and to reproduce
in works of art in another form what can be seen by penetration into
Nature. But that which lives in the elements, that is still dead for
modern Art: air and water and light, as they are painted today are
dead; form, as exemplified in modern sculpture, is dead. A new Art
will arise when the human soul learns to steep itself in the living
elemental world. One can argue against this, one can be of the
opinion that one should not do this. But it is only human indolence
arguing against it; for either man will come to live with his whole
manhood in the elemental world and its forces, will acknowledge the
spirit and soul or outer things, or else Art will become more and more
the hermit-like work of the individual soul., whereby perhaps
extremely interesting things may appear for the psychology of this or
that soul, but never will those things be attained with Art alone can
attain. One speaks of a very distant future, my dear friends, in
speaking thus, but we have to approach this future with an eye
strengthened by spiritual science, otherwise we look out only upon
what is dead and decaying in the future of mankind.
Therefore it is that an inner connection must be sought between all
that in form and colour is created in our domain, and that which stirs
our soul in its deepest depths as spiritual knowledge, as something
that lives in our spirit, just as the Madonnas lived in Raphael, so
that he could thus become the painter of Madonnas, because they lived
in him as they did in the scholar, the peasant and the artisan of his
time. This is what made him the true painter of Madonnas. Only if we
succeed in bringing into form livingly, artistically, without
symbolism or allegory, what in our whole world outlook lives in us,
not as abstract thoughts, not as lifeless knowledge, nor as science,
but as the living substance of the soul, can we get an idea of
what is meant by this future to which I have just alluded.
For this there must be a unity, as there was, one might say, with
Goethe through a special Karma, between outward creation and what
permeates the deepest recesses of the soul. Bridges must be thrown
between what or many is still today abstract idea in the content of
spiritual science, and the produce of our hand, our chisel, and our
paint-brush. The obstacle to building this bridge today is the
superficial, abstract culture, which does not allow what is being done
to become living. Only so is it comprehensible that the completely
unfounded belief has grown up that spiritual knowledge can kill Art.
It has certainly killed much in many people; all the dead allegorizing
and symbolizing, all the inquiry — what is the meaning of this, or
of that? I have already pointed out that one should not always be
asking: What does this or that mean? We do not have to ask what the
larynx “means,” we know it is the living organ of human
speech, and in the same way we must look upon what lives in form and
in colour as the living organ of the spiritual world. As long as we
have not accustomed ourselves to stop asking about symbols and
allegories, as long as we represent myths and sagas allegorically and
symbolically, instead of feeling the living breath of the spirit
surging through the whole Cosmos, and realizing how the cosmic content
enters livingly into the figures of the myths and legends, we shall
never attain a true spiritual knowledge.
But a beginning must be made! It will be imperfect. No one must think
that we regard the beginning as perfect: but the objection is as silly
as many other objections which the present age makes against our
spiritual movement, namely that what we have tried to do in our
building has nothing to do with this spiritual stream. What these
people think they can prove, we know already ourselves. That all the
silly nonsense about the “higher Ego,” all the sentimental
talking about the “spiritualization of the human soul,” that
all this can of course be babbled about in the present-day outward
forms, we know ourselves also. And we know of course as well that
spiritual science can be pursued in its ideal and conceptual character
anywhere. But we feel that a living spiritual science demands an
environment which is different from that supplied by a dying culture,
if it is to be pursued beyond theory. And there is really no need for
that platitude to be announced to us by the outer world, that one can
carry on spiritual science in the ideal sense in other rooms than
those enlivened by our forms. But the ideal of our spiritual science,
my dear friends, must be poured into our souls seriously and ever more
seriously. And we still require much in order to instill this
seriousness, this inner psychic energy completely into ourselves. It
is easy to talk of this spiritual science and its practice in the
outer world in such a way as to miss its nature and its nerve. When
one often sees nowadays how the strongest attacks against our movement
are formed, and how they are only directed at us, one has a remarkable
sensation. One reads this or that onslaught, and if one is of sound
mind, one must say to oneself: what is really being described here?
All sorts of fantastic things are described which have not the
remotest connection with us! And then these are attacked. There is so
little capacity in the world to accept a new spiritual element, that
it sketches a completely unlike caricature, discusses this and marches
into battle against it. There are even some who think that we should
refute these matters. We might reply, though we cannot refute every
sort of thing which a person may imagine for himself and which has no
resemblance whatever to that which he wishes to describe. But whatever
sense of truth and sincerity lies at the bottom of such matters, this,
my dear friends, we must carefully and earnestly consider. For thereby
we may become strong in that which ought to arise in us through
Spiritual Science — in that which out of spiritual Science, I would
say, should with living force come to realization externally in
material existence. That the world has not grown more tolerant in
understanding is shown precisely in the attitude it takes up towards
this spiritual science.
Perhaps we can celebrate the more intimate union of our souls with
spiritual science in no greater way than in steeping ourselves in such
problems as the problem of colour. For by experiencing the living
element in the flow of colour we come, one might say, out of our own
form, and share the cosmic life. Colour is the soul of nature and of
the whole Cosmos, and by experiencing the life of colour, we
participate in this soul.
I wanted to allude to these things today, in order to investigate next
time further into the nature of colour and of painting.
My dear friends, I had to introduce into these remarks some allusions
to the attacks which are now pouring in upon us from all sides. They
originate in a world which cannot have any idea of what is the object
of our movement. One can only wish, my dear friends, that through a
deepening in all directions those who are in the movement will find
the possibility of being clear about a fact which is indeed
symptomatic of our time: the intrusion of unreality and untruthfulness
in the comprehension of what is trying to find its place in the
spiritual world. We shall certainly not be the cause of shutting out
our spiritual movement from the world; it can have as much of it as it
wishes. But what it will have to accept, if it wishes to understand
our direction, is the unifying principle in the whole nature of man,
whereby every detail of human accomplishment arises from the whole of
man's nature.
What I have been saying is not an attack on the present age, but I
have said it with a certain sadness because one sees that the wider
our movement spreads, the more spiteful the forces of opposition
become — perhaps not consciously, but more or less unconsciously
and because the way one should judge such things is not sufficiently
known, even in our ranks, for one should earnestly take up the
standpoint that something new, that a new beginning is at least
intended in our movement. One can only wish, my dear friends, that
through a deepening in all directions those who are in the movement
will find the possibility of being clear about a fact which is indeed
symptomatic of our time: the intrusion of unreality and untruthfulness
in the comprehension of what is trying to find its place in the
spiritual world. We shall certainly not be the cause of shutting out
our spiritual movement from the world; it can have as much of it as it
wishes. But what it will have to accept, if it wishes to understand
our direction, is the unifying principle in the whole nature of man,
whereby every detail of human accomplishment arises from the whole of
man's nature.
What I have been saying is not an attack on the present age, but I
have said it with a certain sadness because one sees that the wider
our movement spreads, the more spiteful the forces of opposition
become — perhaps not consciously, but more or less unconsciously
and because the way one should judge such things is not sufficiently
known, even in our ranks, for one should earnestly take up the
standpoint that something new, that a new beginning is at least
intended in our movement. What the “intention” will lead to
will no doubt appear. And also our “building” is surely only
expressive of an “intention.” People will come who can do
more than “intend” — if perhaps only at the date Herman
Grimm assumes that Goethe will be fully understood. A certain modestly
is requisite to understand such a saying and this is rare in the
intellectual life of today. Spiritual science is well adapted to bring
this modesty, as well as the earnestness of the situation, near to our
souls.
These attacks from all sides on our spiritual movement make a
saddening impression, since the world is beginning to see something of
it; as long as it was only spiritually there, the world could see
nothing; now, when it can see something it cannot understand, it
begins to blow its cacophonous sounds from all nooks and corners; and
this will become ever stronger and stronger. If we are able to see
this, we shall at first be filled with a certain sadness; but the
strength to stand for what we accept, not merely as a conviction but
as life itself, will increase in us. Etheric life will also permeate
the human soul, and what will live in it will be more than theoretic
conviction, of which the people of today are still so proud. The man
who imbues his soul with such earnestness, will find also the
assurance that the foundations of our world, the foundations of our
human existence can support us if they are sought in the spiritual
world — and one needs this assurance, my dear friends, at one time
more, at another time less.
And if one can speak of regrets, in considering the relation of our
spiritual movement to the echo it finds in the world, if this is
regret, then from this mood of melancholy must proceed the feeling of
strength which rises from the knowledge that the sources of human life
are in the spirit, and that the spirit will lead man out of everything
concerning which, like disharmony, he can feel only regret. From this
mood of strength one will also receive strength.
One would have to speak today, my dear friends, of spiritual affairs
with a still greater regret than is caused by the discrepancy between
the intentions in our spiritual movement and the echo which they
arouse in the world. The disharmony in the world would disappear in
another way if mankind once realized what our spiritual science means
by the spiritual light which can illuminate in the human heart. And if
we look at the fate of Europe today, the anxiety concerning our
movement is but relatively small. Filled and shaken by this anxiety, I
have spoken these words to you, but at the same time I am filled with
the living conviction that with whatever painful experiences Europe is
faced in the near or distant future, we can be reassured by the living
knowledge that the spirit will lead man victoriously through all
perplexities. Truly in days of anxiety, in hours so fraught with
seriousness as these, we not only may, we must speak of the sacred
concerns of our spiritual science, for we may believe that however
small its sun appears today, it will grow and grow and become brighter
and brighter — a sun of peace, a sun of love and harmony over all
men.
These are earnest words, my dear friends, but they are such as justify
us in thinking of the narrower affairs of spiritual science with all
our souls and hearts, just because such terribly serious times are
looking in at our windows.
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