The Rudolf Steiner Archive

5. Plant, Animal, Human Being

[ 1 ] In the astral body the animal form arises outwardly as a whole form and inwardly as the form of the organs. And the sentient animal substance is a result of this formative astral body. If this formation is carried to its end, the animal is formed.

[ 2 ] In humans, it is not brought to its end. It is stopped at a certain point on its path, inhibited.

[ 3 ] In the plant there is the substance that is transformed by the forces radiating onto the earth. This is the living substance. It interacts with the inanimate substance. One has to imagine that this living substance is constantly being separated out of the inanimate substance in the plant being. In it the plant form appears as the result of the forces radiating onto the earth. This results in a stream of substance. The inanimate is transformed into the living; the living is transformed into the inanimate. The plant organs are created in this current.

[ 4 ] In animals, the sentient substance arises from the living, just as in plants the living arises from the inanimate. There is a twofold flow of substance. Life within the etheric is not brought to the stage of formed life. It is preserved in the flow; and the formation pushes itself through the astral organization into the flowing life.

[ 5 ] In humans, this process is also maintained in the flow. The sentient substance is drawn into the realm of a further organization. This can be called the ego organization. The sentient substance is transformed once again. A threefold stream of substance arises. The human inner and outer form arises in this. Thus it becomes the carrier of the self-conscious spiritual life. Right down to the smallest parts of his substance, man in his formation is a result of this ego-organization.

[ 6 ] This formation can now be traced according to its substance side. When the substance is transformed from one level to another, the substance appears as a separation of the upper level from the lower and a building up of the form from the separated substance. In the plant, the living substance is separated from the inanimate substance. In this separated substance, the atheric forces radiating onto the earth act as formative forces. At first there is not an actual separation, but a complete transformation of the physical substance by the etheric forces. However, this is only the case in seed formation. This complete primordial transformation can take place because the seed is protected from the influence of the physical forces by the mother organization that envelops it. If the seed formation is freed from the mother organization, then the effect of the forces of the plant is divided into one in which the substance formation strives towards the etheric realm and another in which it strives again towards the physical formation. There are limbs of the plant being that are on the path of life and those that are striving towards death. These appear as the excretory members of the plant organism. In the bark formation of the tree, this excretion can be observed as a particularly characteristic example.

[ 7 ] In animals, there is a twofold secretion and also a twofold excretion. In addition to the vegetable, which is not brought to a conclusion but is maintained in flux, there is the transformation of living substance into sentient substance. This separates itself from the merely living. We are dealing with a substance that strives towards the sentient being and a substance that strives away from it, towards blot life.

[ 8 ] But there is an interaction of all its members in the organism. That is why the excretion towards the inanimate, which in the plant is very close to the outwardly inanimate, the mineral, is still far removed from the mineral. What appears in the bark formation of the plant as substance formation, which is on the way to the mineral and detaches itself the more it becomes mineral, appears in the animal as excretory products of digestion. It is further removed from the mineral than plant excretion.

[ 9 ] In humans, that substance is separated from the sentient substance which then becomes the carrier of the self-conscious spirit. But a continuous separation is also effected by the emergence of a substance that strives towards the mere capacity for nourishment. The animal is present within the human organism as a continuous excretion.

[ 10 ] In the waking state of the animal organism, the secretion and formation of what is secreted, as well as the secretion of the sentient substance, is under the influence of astral activity. In the human being this is supplemented by the activity of the ego-organism. In sleep the astral and ego-organisms are not directly active. But the substance is seized by this activity and continues it as if by a persistent striving. A substance that is once inwardly shaped in such a way, as it happens on the part of the astral and ego organization, then also continues to work during the sleeping state in the sense of these organizations, so to speak in the sense of a perseverance.

[ 11 ] We cannot therefore speak of a merely vegetative activity of the organism in a sleeping person. The astral and the ego organization continue to work in the substance formed by it even in this state. The difference between sleeping and waking is not one in which human-animal and vegetative-physical activity alternate. The facts are completely different. The sentient substance and that which can carry the self-conscious spirit are lifted out of the whole organism during waking and placed in the service of the astral body and the I-organization. The physical and etheric organisms must then work in such a way that only the forces radiating from the earth and radiating into it work in them. In this mode of action they are only seized from outside through the astral body and the ego-organization. In sleep, however, they are seized internally by the substances that arise under the influence of the astral body and the ego organization; while only the forces radiating from the earth and radiating into it act on the sleeping person from the universe, the forces of substance that are prepared by the astral body and the ego organization are active on him from within.

[ 12 ] If one calls the sentient substance the remnant of the astral body and the remnant of the ego organization that has arisen under its influence, then one can say: in the waking human organism, the astral body and the ego organization are themselves active, in the sleeping one, their substantial remnants are active.

[ 13 ] Waking, man lives in an activity that puts him in contact with the outside world through his astral body and through his ego organization; sleeping, his physical and etheric organisms live from what the remains of these two organizations have become substantially. A substance which, like oxygen, is absorbed through breathing both in the sleeping and in the waking state, must therefore be distinguished in its effectiveness according to these two states. Oxygen absorbed from the outside has a soporific, not an awakening effect. Increased oxygen intake puts one to sleep in an abnormal way. The astral body constantly fights the soporific effect of oxygen intake while awake. If the astral body ceases its effect on the physical body, the oxygen unfolds its own nature: it puts you to sleep.