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Rudolf Steiner – The Inner Nature of Music and the Experience of Tone 1906

One now comprehends Goethe, who says that art is a revelation of nature’s secret intentions and that the creative artist reveals the continuation of nature.  The artist takes nature into himself; he causes it to arise in him again and then lets it go forth from him.  It is as if nature were not complete and in man found the possibility of guiding her work to an end.  In man, nature finds her completion, her fulfilment, and she rejoices, as it were, in man and his works.

In the human heart lies the capability of thinking things through to the end and of pouring forth what has been the intention of nature.  Goethe sees nature as the great, creative artist that cannot completely attain her intentions, presenting us with something of a riddle.  The artist, however, solves these riddles; he thinks the intentions of nature through to the end and expresses them in his works.