The Rudolf Steiner Archive

4.6 The Physical and Spiritual Dependencies of the Human Being

[ 1 ] I would now like to sketch out what I have discovered about the relationship between the soul and the physical body. I may well say that I am recording the results of thirty years of research in the humanities. It is only in the last few years that it has become possible for me to put into words the thoughts that come into question in such a way that I have been able to bring what I have striven for to a kind of provisional conclusion I would also like to take the liberty of presenting the results here only in outline. Their justification can certainly be given with the scientific means available today. This would be the subject of an extensive book, which circumstances do not allow me to write at this time.

[ 2 ] If one is looking for the relationship of the soul to the body, then one cannot take as a basis the division of mental experience into imagination, judgment and the phenomena of love and hate, as given by Brentano on page 86 ff. of this book. This division leads to such a displacement of all the relationships under consideration that it is impossible to arrive at appropriate results. In such a consideration one must proceed from the division into imagination, feeling and volition rejected by Brentano. If we now summarize all the mental aspects that are experienced as imagination and search for the bodily processes with which this mental aspect is to be related, we find the corresponding connection, in that we can largely follow the results of current physiological psychology. The physical counterparts to the soul of the imagination are to be seen in the processes of the nervous system with their outflow into the sense organs on the one hand and into the bodily inner organization on the other. However much one may have to think differently from the anthroposophical point of view than present-day science does, a foundation of an excellent kind is present in this science. This is not the case when one wants to determine the bodily counterparts of feeling and willing. In this respect one must first find the right path within the results of present-day physiology. Once we have arrived at this path, we find that we must relate feeling to that rhythm of life which has its center in respiratory activity and is connected with it, just as imagination is related to nervous activity. It must be borne in mind that in order to achieve the desired goal, the respiratory rhythm and everything connected with it must be pursued right down to the outermost peripheral parts of the organization. In order to achieve concrete results in this field, the experiences of physiological research must be pursued in a direction that is still often unfamiliar today. Only when this is accomplished will all the contradictions that initially arise when feeling and respiratory rhythm are brought together disappear. What initially provokes contradiction becomes proof of this relationship on closer inspection.

From the broad field that must be pursued here, only a single example should be highlighted. The experience of music is based on a feeling. The content of the musical image, however, lives in the imagination, which is conveyed through the perceptions of the ear. How does the musical emotional experience arise? The imagination of the sound image, which is based on the organ of hearing and the nervous process, is not yet this musical experience. The latter arises when the respiratory rhythm in its continuation into this organ meets in the brain with what is accomplished by the ear and nervous system. And now the soul does not live in what is merely heard and imagined, but it lives in the respiratory rhythm; it experiences that which is triggered in the respiratory rhythm by the fact that what is happening in the nervous system, as it were, pushes against this rhythmic life. One only has to see the physiology of the respiratory rhythm in the right light, then one will comprehensively come to the recognition of the sentence: the soul experiences feeling by relying on the respiratory rhythm in a similar way as it relies on the nervous processes in imagination.

And with regard to volition, we find that it relies in a similar way on metabolic processes. Again, we must consider all the branches and offshoots of the metabolic processes in the whole organism. Just as, when something is "imagined", a nervous process takes place on the basis of which the soul becomes conscious of what it has imagined, just as, when something is "felt", a modification of the respiratory rhythm takes place through which a feeling comes to life in the soul: so, when something is "willed", a metabolic process takes place which is the bodily basis for what is experienced as volition in the soul.

Now a fully conscious awake experience is present in the soul only for the imagination mediated by the nervous system. That which is mediated by the respiratory rhythm lives in ordinary consciousness with the same strength as dream images. This includes all feelings, all emotions, all passions and so on. The volition, which is based on metabolic processes, is not experienced consciously to any greater degree than in that very dull state which is present in sleep. On closer examination of what is in question here, it will be noticed that volition is experienced quite differently from imagination. One experiences the latter as one sees a surface covered with color; the volition as one sees a black surface within a colored field. One "sees" something within the surface on which there is no color precisely because, in contrast to the surroundings from which color impressions emanate, no such impressions come from this surface: one "imagines the volition" because within the imaginative experiences of the soul at certain points a non-imagining is inserted, which introduces itself into the fully conscious experience in a similar way to the interruptions of consciousness during sleep in the conscious course of life. These different types of conscious experience give rise to the diversity of mental experience in imagination, feeling and volition.

In his book "Leitfaden der physiologischen Psychologie" (Guide to Physiological Psychology), Theodor Ziehen is led to meaningful descriptions of feeling and volition. In many respects, this book is exemplary for the current scientific approach to the relationship between the physical and the psychological. Imagination in its various forms is placed in a relationship to nervous life that must also be recognized from the anthroposophical point of view. But Ziehen says about feeling (compare the 9th lecture in his book mentioned above): "The older psychology almost without exception regards the affects as the manifestations of a special, independent faculty of the soul. Kant placed the feeling of pleasure and displeasure as a special faculty of the soul between the faculty of cognition and the faculty of desire and expressly emphasized that a further derivation of these three faculties of the soul from a common ground was not possible. On the other hand, our previous discussions have already taught us that the feelings of pleasure and displeasure do not exist in this independence, that they rather only appear as qualities or characteristics of sensations and ideas as so-called emotional tones."

This way of thinking therefore does not grant feeling any independence in the life of the soul; it sees it only as a property of the imagination. The consequence of this is that it allows not only the imaginative life but also the emotional life to be supported by the nervous processes. For them, the nervous life is the corporeal, to which the entire soul is assigned. But this way of thinking is basically based on the fact that it already thinks ahead in an unconscious way what it wants to find. It only accepts as mental that which is related to nervous processes, and for this reason must regard that which cannot be attributed to nervous life, feeling, as not existing independently, as a mere characteristic of imagination.

Whoever does not in this way misdirect himself with his concepts will, firstly, by an unbiased observation of the soul reveal the independence of the emotional life in the most definite way; secondly, the unprejudiced utilization of physiological knowledge will provide him with the insight that feeling is to be attributed to the respiratory rhythm in the manner indicated above.

The scientific way of thinking denies that volition has any independent essence in the life of the soul. It does not even regard it as a characteristic of imagination, as it does feeling. But this denial is also only based on the fact that one wants to attribute everything that is essential to the soul to nervous processes (compare the 15th lecture in Theodor Ziehen's "Physiological Psychology"). Now, however, volition in its particular character cannot be related to actual nervous processes. It is precisely when this is worked out with exemplary clarity, as Theodor Ziehen does, that one can be forced to the view that the analysis of the processes of the soul in their relationship to bodily life "gives no reason to assume a special volitional faculty". And yet: the unbiased observation of the soul forces the recognition of the independent life of the will; and the proper insight into the physiological results shows that the will as such must not be related to nervous processes, but to metabolic processes.

If one wants to create clear concepts in this field, then one must see the physiological and psychological results in the light that is demanded by reality; but not, as is often the case in contemporary physiology and psychology, in an illumination that stems from preconceived opinions, definitions, even theoretical sympathies and antipathies. Above all, the relationship between nervous activity, respiratory rhythms and metabolic activity must be brought into sharp focus. For these forms of activity are not juxtaposed, but interpenetrate and merge into one another. Metabolic activity is present in the whole organism; it permeates the organs of rhythm and those of nervous activity. But in rhythm it is not the bodily basis of feeling, in nervous activity not that of imagination; but in both it is to be attributed the volitional activity that permeates rhythm and nerves. What exists in the nerve as metabolic activity can only be related to imagination by a materialistic prejudice. An observation rooted in reality says something quite different. It must recognize that metabolism is present in the nerve insofar as volition permeates it. It is the same in the bodily apparatus for rhythm. What is metabolic activity in it has to do with the will present in this organ. We must associate volition with metabolic activity and feeling with rhythmic activity, regardless of the organs in which metabolism or rhythm manifest themselves. In the nerves, however, something quite different takes place than metabolism and rhythm. The bodily processes in the nervous system, which provide the basis for imagination, are difficult to grasp physiologically. For where nervous activity takes place, there is imagination of ordinary consciousness. However, the reverse is also true: where there is no imagination, there can never be found nervous activity, but only metabolic activity in the nerves, and rhythmic events to some extent.

Physiology will never arrive at concepts that are realistic for neuroscience as long as it does not realize that true nervous activity cannot be the subject of physiological sensory observation at all. Anatomy and physiology must come to the realization that they can only find nervous activity by a method of exclusion. That which is not sensually observable in nervous life, but of which the sensory results in the necessity of its existence and also the peculiarity of its activity, that is nervous activity. One arrives at a positive conception of nervous activity if one sees in it that material happening by which, in the sense of the first chapter of this writing, the purely spiritual-soulful essentiality of the living content of the imagination is paralyzed down to the inanimate imagination of ordinary consciousness. Without this concept, which must be introduced into physiology, it will be impossible to say what nervous activity is. Physiology has developed methods which at present conceal rather than reveal this concept. And psychology has also blocked the way in this field. Just look at how Herbartian psychology, for example, has worked in this direction. It has looked only at the life of imagination, and sees in feeling and willing only the effects of the life of imagination. But these efficacies melt away before cognition if one does not at the same time direct one's gaze impartially to the reality of feeling and willing. Through such distortion, one does not arrive at a realistic assignment of feeling and willing to bodily processes.

The body as a whole, not merely the nervous activity enclosed within it, is the physical basis of the life of the soul. And just as the latter can be described for ordinary consciousness by imagination, feeling and volition, so bodily life can be described by nervous activity, rhythmic events and metabolic processes.

The question immediately arises: how do the actual sensory perception, into which the nervous activity only flows, and the ability to move, into which the volition flows, fit into the organism? Impartial observation shows that both do not belong to the organism in the same sense as nervous activity, rhythmic events and metabolic processes. What happens in the senses is something that does not belong directly to the organism. The outside world extends into the senses, as in golf, into the essence of the organism. By encompassing the events taking place in the senses, the soul does not participate in an inner organic event, but in the continuation of the outer event into the organism. (I discussed these relationships critically in a lecture for the Bologna Congress of Philosophers in 1911.)

And in a process of movement we are not dealing physically with something whose essence lies within the organism, but with an effectiveness of the organism in the balance and power relations in which the organism is placed in relation to the outside world. Within the organism, only a metabolic process can be attributed to volition; but the event triggered by this process is at the same time an essential being within the relations of equilibrium and forces of the external world; and the soul, by volitional activity, transcends the realm of the organism and lives with its activity the events of the external world. The division of the nerves into sensory and motor nerves has caused great confusion in the consideration of all these things. As firmly anchored as this division appears in current physiological concepts, it is not based on unbiased observation. What physiology puts forward on the basis of the cutting up of the nerves, or the pathological elimination of certain nerves, proves not what results from experiment or experience, but something quite different. It proves that the difference that is assumed to exist between sensory and motor nerves does not exist at all. On the contrary, both kinds of nerves are essentially the same. The so-called motor nerve does not serve movement in the sense assumed by the doctrine of this division, but as the carrier of nervous activity it serves the inner perception of that metabolic process which underlies volition, just as the sensory nerve serves the perception of that which takes place in the sense organ. Until the theory of nerves works with clear concepts in this respect, a correct assignment of the life of the soul to the life of the body will not be possible.

[ 3 ] In a similar way that one can search psycho-physiologically for the relationships between the life of the soul, which proceeds in imagination, feeling and volition, and the life of the body, one can strive anthroposophically for knowledge of the relationships that the soul of ordinary consciousness has to spiritual life. And there, through the anthroposophical methods described in this and my other writings, one finds that there is a basis for the imagination in the spiritual as there is in the nervous activity of the body. The soul stands on the other side, facing away from the body, in relation to a spiritual entity which is the basis for the imagination of ordinary consciousness. However, this spiritual essence can only be experienced through visual cognition. And it is experienced in such a way that its content presents itself to the seeing consciousness as structured imaginations. Just as the imagination rests on nervous activity towards the body, so it flows from the other side out of a spiritual essence that reveals itself in imaginations. This spiritual entity is what is called in my writings the etheric or vital body. (Whereby, when I discuss it, I always point out that one should not be offended by the term "body" any more than by the other "ether", for what I explain clearly shows that what is meant should not be interpreted in a materialistic sense). And this life-body (in the 4th book of the 1st volume of the journal "Das Reich" I also used the expression "body of formative forces") is the spiritual, from which the imaginative life of the ordinary consciousness flows from birth (or conception) to death.

The feeling of the ordinary consciousness rests on the rhythmic events on the bodily side. From the spiritual side it flows from a spiritual essence which is found within anthroposophical research through methods which I characterize in my writings as those of inspiration. (Whereby one should again bear in mind that within this term I understand only that which I have paraphrased, so that one should not confuse my designation with that which is often understood by the layman with this word). That which is inherent in man as a spiritual being beyond birth and death is revealed to the observing consciousness in the spiritual essence underlying the soul and which can be grasped through inspiration. It is in this area that anthroposophy conducts its spiritual-scientific investigations into the question of immortality. Just as the mortal part of the sentient human being reveals itself in the body through the rhythmic events, so does the immortal spiritual soul essence in the inspirational content of the seeing consciousness.

The volition, which is based on the metabolic processes in the body, flows out of the spirit for the seeing consciousness through what I call in my writings the true intuitions. That which reveals itself in the body through the lowest, so to speak, activity of metabolism, corresponds to a highest in the spirit: that which expresses itself through intuitions. Therefore imagination, which is based on nervous activity, is almost completely expressed in the body; volition has only a faint reflection in the metabolic processes associated with it in the body. The real imagination is the living one; the bodily conditioned one is the paralyzed one. The content is the same. The real volition, even that which realizes itself in the physical world, runs in the regions which are only accessible to intuitive vision; its bodily counterpart has almost nothing to do with its content. The spiritual essence that reveals itself to intuition contains that which extends from previous earthly lives into subsequent ones. And it is in the field under consideration here that anthroposophy approaches the questions of repeated earth lives and the question of destiny. Just as the body lives itself out in nervous activity, rhythmic events and metabolic processes, so does the spirit of man in that which reveals itself in imaginations, inspirations and intuitions. And just as the body in its sphere allows the essence of its external world to be experienced on two sides, namely in the processes of sense and movement, so the spirit on the one side, by experiencing the imaginative life of the soul also in ordinary consciousness imaginatively; and on the other side, by developing intuitive impulses in the will, which are realized through metabolic processes. If we look towards the body, we find the nervous activity that lives as the imaginative being; if we look towards the spirit, we see the spiritual content of the imaginations, which flows into this very imaginative being.

Brentano initially perceives the spiritual side of the imaginative life of the soul; he therefore characterizes this life as a pictorial life (imaginative event). But if not only an inner soul is experienced, but through the judgement something to be acknowledged or rejected, then a soul experience flowing from the spirit is added to the imagining, the content of which remains unconscious as long as it is only a matter of ordinary consciousness, because it consists in the imaginations of a spiritual beingness underlying the physical object, which only add to the imagination that its content exists. It is for this reason that Brentano divides the life of imagination in his classification into pure imagination, which only imaginatively experiences what exists internally; and judgment, which imaginatively experiences what is given externally, but only brings the experience to consciousness as recognition or rejection. In contrast to feeling, Brentano does not look at the basis of the body, the rhythmic events, but only brings into the sphere of his attention that which arises from unconscious inspirations in the realm of ordinary consciousness as love and hate. The wanting, however, is completely omitted from his attention, because this only wants to direct itself to phenomena in the soul, but in the wanting lies something that is not decided in the soul, but with which the soul co-experiences an external world. Brentano's classification of the phenomena of the soul is thus based on the fact that he organizes them according to points of view that experience their true illumination when one directs one's gaze to the spirit-core of the soul, and that he nevertheless wants to hit the phenomena of ordinary consciousness. With what I have said here about Brentano, I have wanted to supplement what has been said about him above on page 90 ff.