eat service to humanity.

I cannot help smiling when I read in certain papers, over names which
carry weight, articles in which my method is compared to other gymnastic
systems. The fact is, my book is simply a register of the different
exercises which I have invented, and says nothing of my ideas in
general, for it is written for those who have learnt to interpret my
meaning under my personal tuition at Geneva and Hellerau.

Quite naturally, half the critics who have done me the honour of
discussing the book, have only glanced through it and looked at the
photographs. Not one of them has undergone the special training upon
which I lay stress and without which I deny absolutely that any one has
the right to pass a definite judgment on my meaning; for one does not
learn to ride by reading a book on horsemanship, and eurhythmics are
above all a matter of personal experience.

The object of the method is, in the first instance, to create by the
help of rhythm a rapid and regular current of communication between
brain and body; and what differentiates my physical exercises from those
of present-day methods of muscular development is that each of them is
conceived in the form which can most quickly establish in the brain the
image of the movement studied.

It is a question of eliminating in every muscular movement, by the help
of will, the untimely intervention of muscles useless for the movement
in question, and thus developing attention, consciousness and
will-power. Next must be created an automatic technique for all those
muscular movements which do not need the help of the consciousness, so
that the latter may be reserved for those forms of expression which are
purely intelligent. Thanks to the co-ordination of the nerve-centres, to
the formation and development of the greatest possible number of motor
habits, my method assures the freest possible play to subconscious
expression. The creation in the organism of a rapid and easy means of
communication between thought and its means of expression by movements
allows the personality free play, giving it character, strength and life
to an extraordinary degree.

Neurasthenia is often nothing else than intellectual confusion produced
by the inability of the nervous system to obtain from the muscular
system regular obedience to the order from the brain. Training the nerve
centres, establishing order in the organism, is the only remedy for
intellectual perversion produced b