As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame;
As tumbled over rim in roundy wells
Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell's
Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name;
Each mortal thing does one thing and the same:
Deals out that being indoors each one dwells;
Selves — goes itself; myself it speaks and spells,
Crying Whát I dó is me: for that I came.
I say móre: the just man justices;
Keeps grace: thát keeps all his goings graces;
Acts in God's eye what in God's eye he is —
Chríst — for Christ plays in ten thousand places,
Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his
To the Father through the features of men's faces.
—Gerard Manley Hopkins, “As Kingfishers Catch Fire”
New in the Collected Works of Rudolf Steiner
The Arts and Their Mission
8 lectures, Oslo and Dornach, May 18 – June 9, 1923 (CW 276)
Translated by Virginia Moore and Lisa D. Monges
Revised by Clifford Venho
Having remained stationary, we can no longer see the spiritual in the physical; we consider only the physical as such. This is material- ism. A current has entered human evolution that is, if I may use the expression, hostile to development. Humanity shuns the coining of new concepts; it prefers to continue on with the old. We must over- come this hostility toward development. When we instead become friends of development, then we will acquire a quite natural relation- ship to anthroposophical spiritual development and pass over from antiquated needs to the truly modern need of humanity—namely, to raise ourselves to the spiritual.
—Rudolf Steiner, from a lecture of May 27, 1923, in The Arts and Their Mission (CW 276)
