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Answers of Spiritual Science to the Great Questions of Existence
GA 60

8 December 1910, Berlin

Translated by Gerald Karnow, with revisions by Alice Wulsin

The Spirit in the Realm of Plants

How spiritual science must recognize the living and weaving spirit in all beings surrounding us by proceeding from the principle that the knowing human being should understand himself in his knowing has been touched upon in the lectures about The Human Soul and the Animal Soul and The Human Spirit and the Animal Spirit.1Berlin, November 10 and 17, 1910 It was said that the person knowing himself could never think of taking into his own spirit—as spiritual content—ideas, concepts, and mental images of things and beings if these concepts and ideas, this spiritual content through which the human being wants to make comprehensible what resides in the objects, were not first present in these objects, were not placed into them. All drawing forth of the spiritual from things and beings would be pure fantasy, would be a self-made fantasy, if we were not to presuppose that wherever we gaze and are able to discover the spirit, there this spirit is actually present.

Although still only in small circles, this general presupposition of the spiritual content of the world is made rather frequently. Even those who speak of the spirit in objects, however, usually remain with speaking about the spirit in general, i.e., they speak about the existence of spiritual weaving, of spiritual life lying at the basis of the mineral, plant, and animal realms, etc. To enter into the means by which the spirit individualizes itself for us, how it manifests itself particularly in this or that form of existence, is not yet given much thought in the wider circles of our educated contemporaries. Offense is usually taken to those who speak not only of the spirit generally but of its particular forms, its particular ways, how it makes itself felt behind this or that phenomenon. Nevertheless, in our spiritual science, we should not speak about the spirit in the vague and general way indicated today; rather, we should speak in such a way that we recognize how the spirit weaves behind the mineral or plant existence, how it is active in the animal and human existence. Our task today is to say some thing about the nature of the spirit in the realm of plants.

It must be admitted that if we do not begin with abstract philosophy, or with abstract theosophy, but if we begin with unbiased observations of reality and at the same time—as it must be on the healthy ground of spiritual science—we stand firm on the ground of natural science and then want to speak about ‘the spirit in the realm of plants,’ we not only collide with unjustified prejudices of our scientists or other educated contemporaries but also come into conflict with more-or-less justified concepts that have, and must have, the power of strong suggestion.

Especially in this contemplation, which is to concern itself with the spirit that finds its expression, its physiognomy, as it were, in the realm confronting us in the gigantic trees of the primeval forest, or those growing on Teneriffa thousands of years ago, as well as in the small, unassuming violet hiding in the quiet woods or elsewhere—especially in such a contemplation a person may feel himself in a rather difficult position, if the natural scientific concepts of the nineteenth century have been absorbed. Yes, a person feels himself in a rather difficult position if he has worked through to what should be said about the spirit in this area, for how could it be denied that great and wonderful discoveries in the realm of material research—even in the realm of the nature of plants—were made in the nineteenth century, thoroughly illuminating the nature of plants from a certain standpoint.

Again and again we should be reminded that in the second third of the nineteenth century the great botanist, Schleiden, discovered the plant cell. He was the first to place before humanity the truth that every plant body is built up out of small—they are called ‘elementary organisms’—independent entities, ‘cells,’ which appear like the building blocks of this plant body. While previously plants were able to be considered only in relation to their crude parts and organs, now attention was directed to how every leaf of the higher plants consisted of innumerable, tiny microscopic formations—the plant cells. No wonder such a discovery had a powerful influence on all thinking and feeling in relation to the plant world! It is entirely natural that the person who first discerned how the plant is built up out of these building blocks would arrive at the thought that by investigating these small formations, these building blocks, the secret of the nature of plants could be revealed.

The ingenious Gustav Theodor Fechner must already have experienced this idea when, around the middle of the nineteenth century, he actually tried to take into his thought sequences something like a ‘plant soul,’ although it could be said that his excessively fantastic elaboration of the nature of plants may have appeared somewhat too early. Fechner spoke comprehensively about a soul of plants (e.g., in his book Nanna), and he spoke not only as one who merely fantasizes but as one thoroughly and deeply acquainted with the natural scientific advances of the nineteenth century. He was unable, however, to think that plants are merely built up out of cells; rather, when he looked at the forms, the structures, of individual plants, he was led to assume that sense reality is the expression of an underlying soul element.

Now, you must admit that in contrast to what spiritual science has to say today about the life of the spirit in the realm of plants, Fechner's explanations appear rather fantastic, but his thoughts were actually an advance. In spite of this, Fechner had to experience the resistance that can come especially through the thinking into which the human spirit had penetrated by the discoveries of the nineteenth century. It must simply be understood that even the greatest individuals were fascinated by what they beheld when, under the microscope, the plant body revealed itself as a structure of small cells. They could in no way conceive how someone could still come up with the idea of a ‘plant soul’ after the material aspects had shown themselves in such a grandiose way to the searching human spirit. It is therefore easy to understand that even the discoverer of the plant cell became the greatest and most vehement opponent of what Fechner wished to say concerning the soul nature of plants. And it is rather interesting to see the fine and subtle mind of Fechner in battle with Schleiden, who became famous through his epoch-making discovery for botany but who did away, in a materialistically crude way, with everything that Fechner wanted to say about plants out of his intimate contemplations.

In a battle such as the one between Fechner and Schleiden in the nineteenth century, something basically took place that must be experienced by every soul who penetrates into the science of our time, working through the doubts and riddles that arise nevertheless, especially when one enters into the achievements of natural science. He will have grave doubts if he is able to work himself out of the frequently quite compelling concepts in such a realm. Whoever is not acquainted with this compelling quality of the materialistic natural scientific concepts of the nineteenth century may find trivial, possibly even narrow-minded, what is said out of the world view that wishes to place itself on the firm ground of natural science. One who approaches matters with a healthy sense for truth and a serious concern for solving life's riddles, however, and is at the same time armed with the botanical concepts of the nineteenth century, can have quite tragic inner soul experiences. Something about this need only be suggested here.

Thus we can learn, for example, what the botany of the nineteenth century has brought. There is much in this botany that is actually magnificent and truly astounding. A person who approaches the natural scientific concepts with a healthy sense for truth reaches the point where these concepts affect him like suggestion, with a tremendous power; they do not let him loose but whisper in his ears again and again, ‘You are doing something stupid if you leave the sure path on which one studies how cell relates to cell, how cell is nourished by cell,’ and so on. Finally it becomes necessary to tear oneself loose from the materialistic concepts in this realm. There is no other choice, no matter how firmly one wishes to be held by the suggestive power of the world views that are merely a consequence of outer materialistic concepts. After a certain point it no longer works. Not many people today experience that point. The suggestive power is experienced by most people who feel fascinated by the natural scientific results, and they do not dare take even a single step beyond what the microscope shows. The next step is taken only by very few. It is clear, however, to whoever maintains a healthy sense for truth, especially regarding the natural sciences—and this is necessary if one wishes to approach the spirit in the realm of plants—that first a person must occupy himself with a certain mental image, for otherwise he will always succumb to error, will always enter a labyrinth such as happened to Fechner despite his serious attempts to examine the symbolic, the physiognomic aspects of individual plant forms and structures.

I would like to suggest to you what is significant here first by means of a comparison. Imagine that someone found a piece of matter, some kind of tissue, on a path. If he examines this piece of tissue, in certain cases it may happen that he doesn't get anywhere. Why not? If this piece of tissue is a piece of bone from a human arm, the examiner will not get anywhere if he wants to look merely at this piece of bone and to explain it out of itself, for it would be impossible for this piece of tissue to come into existence without the prior existence of a human arm.

One cannot speak about the tissue at all if it is not considered in connection with a complete human organism. It is impossible, therefore, to speak about such a formation other than in connection with an entire being. Consider the following comparison. We find an object somewhere, a human hair. If we wanted to explain how it may have originated there, we would be led completely astray, because we can explain this only by considering it in connection with an entire human organism. By itself it is nothing; by itself it cannot be explained.

This is something that the spiritual investigator must consider in relation to the whole scope of our observations, of our explanations. He must direct his attention to the question of whether any object confronting him can be considered by itself or whether it remains inexplicable by itself, whether it belongs to something else or can be examined better as an isolated entity.

Curiously enough, the spiritual investigator becomes aware that it is generally impossible to consider the world of plants, this wonderful covering of the earth, as something existing by itself. When confronted with the plant he feels just as he does regarding a finger, which he can consider only as belonging to a complete human organism. The plant world cannot be considered in isolation, because to the view of the spiritual investigator the plant world at once relates itself to the entire planet earth and forms a whole with the earth, just as the finger or piece of bone or the brain forms a whole with our organism. And whoever merely looks at plants by themselves, remaining with the particular, does the same as one who wishes to explain a hand or a piece of human bone by itself. The common nature of plants simply cannot be considered in any other way than as a member of our common planet earth.

Here, however, we come to a matter that may annoy many today, though it is valid nevertheless for the spiritual scientific view. We come to look differently at our whole planet earth than is done customarily by today's science, for our contemporary science—be it astronomy, geology, or mineralogy—basically speaks about the earth only in so far as this earthly sphere consists of rocks, of the mineral element, of lifeless matter. Spiritual science may not speak in this way. It can only speak in such a way that everything found on our earth—that which a being coming from outer space, as it were, would find in human beings, animals, plants, and stones—belongs to the whole of our earth, just as the stones themselves belong to our earth. This means that we may not look at the earth planet as a dead rock formation but rather as something that is in itself a living whole, bringing forth the nature of plants out of itself, just as the human being brings forth the structures of his skin, of his sense organs, and the like. In other words, we may not consider the earth without the plant covering that belongs to it.

An outer circumstance might already suggest to us that, just as every stone has a certain relationship to the earth, so also everything plant-like belongs to it. Just as every stone, every lifeless body, shows its relationship to the earth by being able to fall onto the earth, where it finds a resistance, so every plant shows its relationship to the earth by the direction of its stem, which is always such that it passes through the center of the earth. All stems of plants would cross at the earth's center if we extended them to that point. This means that the earth is able to draw out of its center all those force radiations that allow the plants to arise. If we look at the mineral realm without also adding the plant covering, we are looking only at an abstraction, at something thought out. We must also add that the natural science that proceeds purely out of the outer material likes to speak about how the origins of all life—including plant-life—must lie in the lifeless, the mineral element.

This issue does not exist at all for the spiritual investigator, because the lower is never a precondition for the higher; rather the higher, the living, is always the precondition for the lower, the nonliving. We will see later, in the lecture, What Has Geology to Say About the Origin of the World,2Berlin, February 9, 1911. that spiritual research shows how everything rock-like, mineral—from granite to the crumb of soil in the field—originated in a manner similar to what natural science says today about the origin of coal. Today coal is a mineral, we dig it out of the earth. What was it millions of years ago according to natural scientific concepts? Extensive, mighty forests—so says natural science—covered large portions of the earth's surface at that time; later they sank into the earth during shifts of the earth's crust and were then transformed chemically in regard to their material composition, and what we dig up today out of the depths of the earth are the plants that have become stone. If this is admitted today in relation to coal, it should not be considered too ridiculous if spiritual science, by its methods, comes to the conclusion that all rocks found on our earth have in the final analysis originated from the plant. The plant first had to become stone, as it were. Thus the mineral is not the precondition for the plant-like, but rather the reverse is the case, the plant-like is the precondition for the mineral. Everything of a mineral nature is first something plant-like that hardens and then turns to stone.

Thus in the earth planet we have something before us concerning which we must presuppose the following: it was once, with respect to its densest quality, of a plant nature, was a structure of plant-like being, and only developed the lifeless out of what was living, progressively hardening, turning to wood, turning to stone. Just as our skeleton first separates itself out of the organism, so we have to look at the earth's rock formations as the great skeleton of the earth being, of the earth organism.

Now, if we are able to consider this earth organism from a spiritual scientific viewpoint, we can go still further. Today I can give only the first outlines of this, because this is a cycle of lectures in which one thing must lead to the next. We can ask ourselves, what is the situation with the earth organism as such?

In studying an organism we know that alternations of different conditions are revealed. The human and animal organ isms reveal a waking and a sleeping condition alternating in time. Can we, from a spiritual scientific viewpoint, find something similar regarding the body of the earth, the earth organism? To outer consideration, what follows may appear to be a mere comparison, but for spiritual research it is not a comparison but a fact. If we study the curious lawfulness of summer and winter, how it is summer on one half of the earth and winter on the other half, how this relationship alternates, and if we pay attention to how this lawfulness—as wintertime and summertime—is to be discerned in relation to all earthly life, then it will no longer appear absurd if spiritual science tells us that winter and summer in the earth organism correspond to waking and sleeping in the organisms around us. It is simply that the earth does not sleep in time in the same way as other organisms but is always awake somewhere and al ways asleep at some other portion of its being. Waking and sleeping move around spatially: the earth sleeps in the part where there is summer, and it is awake in the part of its being where there is winter. Thus the whole earth organism con fronts us spiritually with conditions like waking and sleeping in other organisms.

The summer condition of the earth organism consists of a very specific relationship of the earth to the sun, and because we are dealing with a living, spirit-filled organism we may say that it surrenders itself to an activity that proceeds spiritually from the sun. In the winter condition the earth organism closes itself off from this sun activity, drawing itself together into itself. Now let us compare this condition with human sleep. I will now speak of what appears to be a mere analogy; spiritual science, however, provides the evidence for these observations.

If we study the human being in the evening, when he is tired, as his consciousness is diminishing, we find that all thoughts and feelings that enter our soul during the day from the outside, all pleasure and suffering, joy and pain, sink into an indefinite darkness. During this time, the human spirit being—as we have shown in the lecture about the nature of sleep3Berlin, November 24, 1910.—passes out of the human physical body and enters the spiritual world, surrendering itself to the spiritual world. In this sleep condition it is a curious fact that the human being becomes unconscious. For the spiritual investigator (we will see how he comes to know this) it is revealed that the inner aspect of the human being, the astral body and ego, actually draw themselves out of the physical and etheric bodies, but they do not simply draw themselves out and float over him like a cloud formation; rather this whole inner aspect of the human being spreads itself out, pours itself out over the whole planetary world around us. As incredible as it may seem, it is nevertheless revealed that the human soul pours itself out in a unified way over the astral realm. The investigators who were acquainted with this realm knew well why they called what departs from the physical the ‘astral body.’ The reason was that this inner element draws out of heavenly space, with which it forms a unity, the forces it needs in order to replace what the day's efforts and work used up from the physical body. Thus the human being in sleep passes into the great world and in the morning draws himself back within the limits of his skin, into the small human world, into the microcosm. There, because his body offers him resistance, he again feels his ego, his self-consciousness.

This breathing out and breathing in of the soul is a wonderful alternation in human life. Of all those who have not spoken directly from an occult, spiritual scientific point of view, I have actually found only one individual who made so fitting a remark about the alternation of waking and sleeping that it can be taken directly over into spiritual science, be cause it corresponds with spiritual scientific facts. It was a thoroughly mathematical thinker, a deeply thoughtful man, who was able to encompass nature magnificently with his spirit: Novalis. He says in his Fragments:

Sleep is a mixed condition of body and soul. In sleep, body and soul are chemically united. In sleep the soul is evenly distributed throughout the body—the human being is neutralized. Waking is a divided, a polar condition; in waking the soul is pointed, localized. Sleep is soul-digestion; the body digests the soul (removal of the soul stimulus). Waking is the condition of the soul stimulus influence: the body partakes of the soul. In sleep the bonds of this system are loosened; in waking they are tightened.

Thus sleep for Novalis means the digestion of the soul by the body. Novalis is always conscious that in sleep the soul becomes one with the universe and is digested, so that the human being can be further helped in the physical world.

With respect to his inner being, then, the human being alternates in such a way that in the daytime he draws himself together into the small world, into the limits of his skin, and then expands into the great world during the night, drawing forth through surrender forces from that world in which he is then imbedded. We will not understand the human being unless we understand him as formed out of the entire macrocosm.

For that part of the earth where it is summer, there is something similar to what goes on in the human being in the condition of sleep. The earth gives itself to everything that comes down from the sun and forms itself as it should form itself under the influence of the sun activity. In that part of the earth where it is winter, it closes itself off from the influence of the sun, lives within itself. There it is the same as when the human being has drawn together into the small, inner world, living in himself, while for the part of the earth where it is summer it is the same as when the human being is surrendered to the whole outer world.

There is a law in the spiritual world: if we direct our attention to spiritual entities far removed from one another—such as, for example, the human being here on one side and the earth organism on the other—the states of consciousness must be pictured as reversed in a certain sense. With the human being, stepping out into the great world is the sleep condition. For the earth, the summer (which one would be inclined to consider a waking condition) is something that can only be compared with the human being falling asleep. The human being steps out into the great world when he falls asleep; in summer the earth with all its forces enters the realm of sun activity, only we must be able to think of the earth and the sun as spirit-filled organisms.

In wintertime, when the earth rests within itself, we must be able to think of its condition as corresponding to the waking condition of the human being, although it may be tempting to consider winter as the earth's sleep. When we consider entities as different from one another as the human being and the earth, however, the states of consciousness appear re versed in a certain way. Now, what does the earth accomplish when it is under the influence of surrender to the sun being, to the sun spirit? To have an easier comparison, we would do well to turn the concepts around now. The earth's surrender to the sun being is simply something that may be compared spiritually with the condition of the human being when he awakens in the morning and emerges out of the dark womb of existence, out of the night, into his joys and sorrows. When the earth enters the realm of sun activity—although this could be compared with the sleep condition of the human being—all the forces that sprout forth from the earth allow the resting winter condition of the earth to pass over into the active, the living, summer condition.

What, then, are the plants in this whole web of existence? We could say that when spring approaches, the earth organ ism begins to think and to feel, because the sun with its being lures out the thoughts and feelings. The plants are nothing but a kind of sense organ for the earth organism, awakening anew every spring, so that the earth organism with its thinking and feeling can be in the realm of the sun activity. Just as in the human organism light creates the eye for itself in order to be able to manifest through the eye as ‘light,’ so every spring the sun organism creates for itself the plant covering in order to look at itself, to feel, to sense, to think by means of this plant covering. The plants cannot directly be considered the thoughts of the earth, but they are the organs through which the awakening organization of the earth in spring, together with the sun, develops its thoughts and feelings. Just as we can see our nerves emanating from the brain, developing our feeling and conceptual life through the eyes and ears together with the nerves, so the spiritual investigator sees in what transpires between earth and sun with the help of the plants the marvelous weaving of a cosmic world of thoughts, feelings, and sensations. The spiritual investigator finds that the earth is surrounded not merely by the mineral air of the earth, by the purely physical earth atmosphere, but by an aura of thoughts and feelings. For spiritual research the earth is a spiritual being whose thoughts and feelings awaken every spring, and throughout the summer they pass through the soul of our entire earth.

The plant world, however, which is a part of our entire earth organism, provides the organs through which our earth can think and feel. Woven into the spirit of the earth are the plants, just as our eyes and ears are woven into the activities of our spirit.

In spring a living, spirit-filled organism awakens, and in the plants we can see something that is pushed out of the countenance of our earth in some realm where it wants to begin to feel and think. Just as everything in the human being tends toward a self-conscious ego, so it is also in the realm of plants. The whole plant world belongs to the earth. I have already said that a person would be close to insanity if he did not think of how all feelings, sensations, and mental images are directed toward our ego. Similarly, everything the plants mediate during summertime is directed toward the earth's center, which is the earth ego. This should not be said merely symbolically! As the human being has his ego, so the earth has its self-conscious ego. That is why all plants strive toward the earth's center. That is why we may not consider plants by themselves but rather must consider them in interaction with the self-conscious ego of the earth. What unfolds itself as thoughts and sensations of the earth is similar to the thoughts and sensations that live in us, similar to whatever arises and disappears in us during our waking state, what lives in us astrally, if we speak from the viewpoint of spiritual science.

Thus we cannot picture the earth only as a physical structure, for the physical structure is for us something like our own physical body, which can be seen with the outer eyes and touched with the hands, and which is observed by outer science. This is the earth body that present-day astronomy or geology studies. Then we have to direct our attention to what in the human being we have come to know as the etheric body or life body. The earth also has such an etheric body, and it also has an astral body. This is what awakens every spring as the thoughts and feelings of the earth, which recede when winter approaches so that the earth rests in its own ego, closed off within itself, retaining only what it needs in order, through memory, to carry over the preceding into the following, retaining in the plant's seed forces what it has conquered for itself. Just as the human being, when he falls asleep, does not lose his thoughts and sensations but finds them again the next morning, so the earth, awakening again from sleep in the spring, finds the seed forces of the plants in order to permit what has been conquered in an earlier time to emerge again from the living memory of the seed forces.

When regarded in this way, the plants can be compared with our eyes and ears. What our senses are for us, the plants are for the earth organism. But what perceives, what achieves consciousness, is the spiritual world streaming down from the sun to the earth. This spiritual world would not be able to achieve consciousness if it did not have its sense organs in the plants, mediating a self-consciousness just as our eyes and ears and nerves mediate our self-consciousness. This makes us aware that we speak correctly only if we say that those beings who stream from the sun down to the earth, unfolding their spiritual activity, encounter from spring through summertime the being that belongs to the earth itself. In this exchange the organs are formed through which the earth perceives those beings, for the plants do not perceive. It is a superstition, shared also by natural science, when it is said that the plant perceives. The spiritual entities that belong to the earth activity and the sun activity perceive through the plant organs, and these entities direct toward the center of the earth all organs they need in order to unite them with the center of the earth. Thus what we have to see behind the plant covering are the spiritual entities that weave around the earth and have their organs in the plants.

It is remarkable that in our time natural science is actually moving toward a recognition of such spiritual scientific findings, for it is nothing less than full recognition of the situation to say that our physical earth is only a part of the whole earth, that the gaseous sun ball is only a part of the whole sun, and that our sun, as it appears to us physically, is only a part of the soul-spiritual entities who interact with the soul-spiritual entities of the earth. Just as the human world is connected with its environment, and just as human beings have their organs in order to live and to develop themselves, so these entities, which are real, create for themselves in the plant covering an organ in order to perceive themselves. As I said, it is superstitious to believe that the plant as such perceives or that the single plant has a kind of soul. This is just as superstitious as speaking of the soul of an eye. Although a remark able linking of facts, self-evident to spiritual science, impelled outer science throughout the nineteenth century to recognize what has just been said, it is nevertheless a fact that outer science does not know its way around very well in this realm; this is still so today, for what science has brought together so far about the sense life of plants completely sup ports what I have just said about the spirit and its activity in the realm of plants, but in outer science it cannot be comprehended as such. We can see this in the following example. In 1804 Sydenham Edward discovered the unusual plant called the Venus fly-trap, which has bristles on its leaves. When an insect comes near this plant so that contact with the bristles occurs, the insect is trapped by the leaf and then seemingly devoured and digested. It was remarkable when man discovered that plants can eat, can even take in animals, are meat eaters! But it was not known quite what to do with this, and this is interesting, because this discovery has repeatedly been forgotten and then rediscovered, in 1818 by Nuttal, in 1834 by Curtis, in 1848 by Lindley, and in 1859 by Oudemans. Five people in succession discovered the same thing! And science could not do much more with this discovery than for Schleiden, who made such a contribution to research of the plant world, to say that one should be on guard and not succumb to all kinds of mystical speculations attributing a soul to plants! Today, however, science is again prepared to attribute a soul to the individual plant, for example the Venus fly trap. This would be as superstitious as attributing a soul to the eye, however. Especially people such as Raoul France, for example, have immediately interpreted these things in an outer sense, saying, ‘There the soul element is evident, manifesting in a way analogous to the soul element of the animal!’

This shows how necessary it is, especially in the realm of spiritual science, not to succumb to all kinds of fantasies, for here outer science has succumbed to the fantasy that by attributing a soul nature to the Venus fly-trap, it can be thrown together with the human or animal soul nature. If this is done, a soul should also be attributed to other entities that attract small animals and, when these animals have come near, surround them with their tentacles so that they remain caught within. If one speaks of a soul in the Venus fly-trap, a soul can also be attributed to a mouse trap! We should not speak like this, however. As soon as there is the wish to penetrate into the spirit, things must be understood accurately and exactly, and one must not conclude from apparently similar outer qualities that the inner qualities work in the same way.

I have already directed attention to the fact that some animals exhibit something similar to memory. When an elephant is led to the drinking trough and on the way there someone irritates him, it can happen that when the elephant returns he has retained water in his trunk and sprays the person who irritated him earlier. It is said that here we can see that the elephant has a memory, that he remembered the person who irritated him and resolved: ‘On the way back I will spray him with water!’ But this is not the case. With the soul life it is important for us to follow the inner process exactly and not immediately to speak of memory when a later event occurs as an effect of an earlier cause. Only when a being truly looks back to something that took place at an earlier time do we have to do with memory; in every other case we are dealing only with cause and effect. This means that we would have to look exactly into the structure of the elephant's soul if we wished to see how the stimulus applied results in something that calls forth an effect after a certain time.

Therefore we must not interpret things such as what we encounter in the Venus fly-trap by thinking that the entire arrangement of the plant is there in order to determine an inner soul nature of the plant, but rather that what goes on there is brought about from outside. The plant serves as organ of the entire earth organism even in such a case. How the plants on the one hand pertain to the ego of the earth and on the other hand to the aura of the earth—the astral body, the earth's world of sensations and feelings—was shown particularly by this research in the nineteenth century. One can actually be grateful to those natural scientists—such as Gottlieb Haberlandt—who simply presented the facts they discovered in their research, and did not—like Raoul France or others—draw from these results purely outer conclusions. If the natural scientist were to present things as they really are, then one could be grateful to him; if he draws from them conclusions regarding the soul life of a single plant, however, then he should also immediately conclude something about the soul life of the single hair or tooth.

If we now study grain-producing plants, we discover remarkable little organs present in all these plants. Small structures in the starch cells are discovered. These cells are constructed in quite a remarkable way, so that within them there is something like a loose kernel. These structures have the unique property that the cell wall remains insensitive to the kernel at only one spot. If the kernel slips to another spot, it touches the cell wall, leading the plant to return to its earlier position. Such starch cells are found in all plants whose main orientation is toward the center of the earth, so that the plant has an organ within that always makes it possible for it to direct itself in its main orientation toward the center of the earth. This discovery, made during the nineteenth century by various scientists, is certainly wonderful, and it is most remarkable if it is simply presented as it is. Even if Haberlandt, for example, believes that this is a matter of a kind of sense perception by plants, he nevertheless presents the facts so clearly that one must be especially grateful for his dry and sober presentation.

But now let us turn to something else. If the leaf of a plant is studied, it is discovered that the outer surface is actually always a composite of many small, lens-like structures, similar to the lens in our eye. These ‘lenses’ are arranged in such a way that the light is effective only if it falls onto the surface of the leaf from a very specific direction. If it falls from another direction, the leaf instinctively begins to turn in such a way that the light can fall into the center of the lens, because when it falls to the side it works in another way. Thus there are organs for light on the surface of the leaves of plants. These light organs, which actually can be compared with a kind of eye, are spread out over the plants, but the plant does not see by means of them; rather the sun being looks through them to the earth being. These light organs bring it about that the leaves of the plant always have the tendency to place themselves perpendicularly to the sunlight.

In this—in the way the plant surrenders itself to the sun's activity in spring and summertime—we have the plant's second main orientation. The first orientation is that of the stem, through which the plants reveal themselves as belonging to the earth's self-consciousness; the second orientation is the one through which the plants express the earth's surrender to the activity of the sun beings.

If we now wished to go still further, we would have to find, if the previous considerations are correct, that through this surrender of the earth to the sun, the plants somehow ex press how the earth, through what it brings forth, really lives in the great macrocosm. We would have to perceive some thing in the plants, so to speak, which would indicate to us that something works into the plant world that is brought about outside especially by the sun being. Linnaeus pointed out that certain plants open their blossoms at 5 a.m. and at no other time. This means that the earth surrenders itself to the sun, which is expressed in the fact that certain plants are able to open their blossoms only at very specific times of the day; for example, Hemerocallis fulva, the day lily, blossoms only at 5 a.m.; Nymphaea alba, the water lily, only at 7 a.m., and Calendula, the marigold, only at 9 a.m. In this way we see a marvelous expression of the earth's relationship to the sun, a relationship that Linnaeus termed the ‘sun clock.’ The plant's falling asleep, the folding together of the petals, is also limited to very specific times of the day. A wonderful lawfulness and regularity is evident in the life of plants.

All of this shows us how the earth is surrendered—like the human being in sleep—to the great world, living within it. Just as it allows the plants to bloom and wilt, it shows us the spiritual weaving between sun and earth. Looking at matters in this way, however, we would have to say that we gaze there into deep, deep mysteries of our environment. For the serious seeker after truth, this puts a stop to the possibility—regardless of how fascinating the results of purely material research are—to think of the sun merely as a ball of gas racing through space; it puts a stop to the possibility that the earth can be considered as it is by astronomy and geology today. There are compelling reasons that must lead the conscientious natural scientist to admit the following: ‘In what natural science reveals, you may no longer see anything but an expression of the spiritual life lying at the foundation of everything!’ Then we regard the plants as a physiognomic expression of the earth, as the expression of the features of our earth. Thus what we call our aesthetic feeling in relation to the plant world deepens especially through spiritual science. We stand before the gigantic trees in the primeval forest, before the quiet violet or lily of the valley, and we look at them as single individualities, yes, but in such a way that we say, there the spirit that lives throughout space expresses it self to us—sun spirit! earth spirit! Just as we recognize in a human being the piety or impiety of his soul, so we can come to an impression, from what looks at us out of the plants, of what lives as earth spirit, as sun spirit, of how they battle with one another or are in harmony. There we feel ourselves as living and weaving within the spirit.

Just as an illustration of how spiritual science can be verified by the natural science of the nineteenth century, I will relate to you the following. Listeners who have heard lectures here in the past will recall how I have indicated that there are plants in the earthly world that are misplaced, that do not belong in our world. One such plant is mistletoe, which plays such a remarkable role in legends and myths, because it be longs to an earlier planetary condition of our earth and has remained behind as a remnant of a pre-earthly evolution. This is why it cannot grow on the earth but must take root in other plants. Natural science shows us that mistletoe does not have those curious starch cells that orient the plant toward the center of the earth. I could now begin briefly to take apart the entire botany of the nineteenth century bit by bit, and you will find little by little how the plant covering of our earth is the sense organ through which earth spirit and sun spirit behold each other.

If we pay heed to this, we receive a science—as seems appropriate for the plant world that we love and that gives us so much joy—a science that can at the same time raise our soul, bring it close to this plant world. With our soul and spirit we feel ourselves belonging to the earth and to the sun; we feel as if we had to look up to the plant world, as it were, we feel that it belongs to our great mother earth. We must do this. Everything that as animal or human being seems to be independent of the immediate effect of the sun is actually, through the plant world and its dependence on the plant world, indirectly dependent on the sun. The human being does not undergo the kinds of transformations that plants go through in winter and summer, but it is the plant that gives him the possibility of having such a constancy within himself. The substances that the plant develops can be developed only under the influence of the sun, through the interrelationship of sun spirit and earth spirit. The carbohydrates can arise only if the sun spirit and the earth spirit kiss through the plant being. The substances developed here yield what the higher organisms must take into themselves in order to develop warmth. The higher organisms can only thrive through the warmth developed by taking up the substances prepared by the sun via the plants.

Thus we must look to mother earth as to our great nourishing mother. We have seen, however, that in the plant covering we have the physiognomy of the plant spirit, and through this we feel as though standing in soul and spirit. We gaze, as it were—just as we gaze into the eyes of another person—into the soul of the earth, if we understand how it manifests its soul in the blossoms and leaves of the plant world.

This is what led Goethe to occupy himself with the plant world, which led him to an activity that consisted fundamentally of showing how the spirit is active in the plant world and how in the plant the leaf is formed out of the spirit in the most diverse forms. Goethe was delighted that the spirit in the plant forms the leaves, rounds them, and also leads them to wind around the stem. And it was remarkable when a man who truly recognized the spirit—Schiller, who met Goethe after a botanical lecture in Jena—when Schiller, who was not satisfied by the lecture, said, “That was just an observation of plants as they are in isolation!” whereupon Goethe took out a sheet of paper and sketched in his way, with a few lines, how for him the spirit is active in the plant. Schiller, who was un able to understand such a concrete presentation of the spirit of the plant, said in reply, “What you are drawing there is only an idea!” to which Goethe could only say, “Isn't it nice that I can have ideas without knowing it and can even see them with my own eyes!”

Especially in the way in which a man like Goethe studied the plant world on his journey over the Brenner—when he looked at the coltsfoot with completely different eyes—the way in which he saw in this how the spirit is active on the earth and forms the leaves, shows us how we can speak of a common spirit of the earth that brings itself to expression only in the manifold plant being as in his own special organ. What is physical is spirit; we simply have the task of pursuing the spirit always in the right way. Whoever pursues the plant as it grows out of the common spirit of the earth will find the earth spirit that Goethe already had in view when he let his Faust address the spirit active in the earth, who says of him self:

In the tides of life, in action's storm,
Up and down I wave,
To and fro weave free,
Birth and the grave,
An infinite sea,
A varied weaving,
A radiant living,
Thus at Time's humming loom it's my hand that prepares
The robe ever-living the Deity wears.

The person who beholds in this way the spirit in the plant life of the earth feels himself strengthened by seeing what he must consider his inner being poured out over the whole environment he is allowed to inhabit. And he must say to himself, “If I study what encircles my space, I find it confirmed that the origin of all things is to be found in the domain of the spirit.” And an expression of the relationship of human spirit and human soul, and also the relationship of plant soul and plant spirit, we can encompass in these words:

To the sense of man there speak
The things in breadths of space
Transforming themselves in course of time.
Knowing lives the human soul
Unbounded by the breadths of space,
Unaltered by the course of time;
It finds in the realm of spirit
Its own being's deepest ground!

Der Geist im Pflanzenreich

Wie die Geisteswissenschaft den in allen uns umgebenden Wesen lebenden und webenden Geist anerkennen muß, wenn sie nur von dem Grundsatze ausgeht, daß der erkennende Mensch sich selbst in seinem Erkennen verstehen soll, das ist in den Vorträgen über «Menschenseele und Tierseele» und «Menschengeist und Tiergeist» erwähnt worden. Es ist gesagt worden, daß im Grunde genommen der sich selbst erkennende Mensch nimmermehr daran denken könne, in seinem eigenen Geist als geistigen Inhalt Ideen, Begriffe und Vorstellungen von Dingen und Wesenheiten aufzunehmen, wenn diese Begriffe und Ideen — dieser geistige Inhalt, durch den sich der Mensch begreiflich machen will, was in den Dingen liegt — nicht zuerst in den Dingen vorhanden, nicht in sie gelegt wären. Alles Herausziehen von Geistigem aus den Dingen und Wesenheiten wäre die reine Phantasterei, wäre eine selbstgemachte Phantastik, wenn man nicht voraussetzen würde, daß allüberall, wohin wir blicken und woraus wir den Geist ziehen können, dieser Geist auch vorhanden ist. Nun darf man wohl sagen, daß — wenn auch nur in kleinen Kreisen — dennoch diese allgemeine Voraussetzung von dem geistigen Inhalt der Welt doch schon vielfach gemacht wird. Aber auch bei denjenigen, die vom Geist in den Dingen sprechen, bleibt es in der Regel dabei, sozusagen von diesem Geist im allgemeinen zu sprechen, das heißt davon zu sprechen, daß allem Mineralischen, Pflanzlichen, Tierischen und so weiter geistiges Weben, geistiges Leben zugrunde liegt. Aber auf die Art und Weise einzugehen, wie der Geist sich uns spezialisiert, wie er sich im besonderen in diesen oder jenen Daseinsformen auslebt, daran denkt man in den weitesten Kreisen unserer gegenwärtigen Bildung noch nicht. Man nimmt es im Grunde genommen denjenigen recht übel, die nicht nur von dem Geist im allgemeinen sprechen, sondern die von den besonderen Formen, den besonderen Arten des Geistes sprechen, wie er sich hinter dieser oder jener Erscheinung geltend macht. Dennoch aber muß auf dem Boden unserer Geisteswissenschaft nicht nur in so vager, allgemeiner Art von dem Geist gesprochen werden, wie es jetzt angedeutet ist, sondern so, daß wir erkennen: wie webt der Geist hinter dem mineralischen oder pflanzlichen Dasein, wie im tierischen und menschlichen Dasein?

Über das Wesen des Geistes im Pflanzenreiche einiges zu sagen, soll die Aufgabe der heutigen Betrachtung sein. Man muß gestehen, wenn man nicht von abstrakter Philosophie, nicht von abstrakter Theosophie, sondern wenn man vom unbefangenen Betrachten der Wirklichkeit ausgeht und zu gleicher Zeit — wie es ja auf einem gesunden Boden der Geisteswissenschaft sein muß — auf dem Boden der Naturwissenschaft feststeht und über den «Geist im Pflanzenreich» sprechen will, dann greift man nicht nur — ich möchte sagen — in unberechtigte Vorurteile unserer wissenschaftlichen und sonstigen Zeitbildung hinein, sondern iman greift da auch in mehr oder weniger berechtigte Vorstellungen hinein, die stark suggestiv wirken und suggestiv wirken müssen. Gerade bei dieser Betrachtung, welche von dem Geist handeln soll, der seinen Ausdruck, gleichsam seine Physiognomie in dem Reiche findet, das uns entgegenschaut sowohl von den gigantischen Riesenbäumen des Urwaldes oder solchen, wie sie sich auf Teneriffa jahrtausendelang erhalten haben, bis zu dem kleinen, sich bescheiden im stillen Walde oder sonstwo bergenden Veilchen, — gerade bei einer solchen Betrachtung fühlt man sich, wenn man die naturwissenschaftlichen Begriffe des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts in sich aufgenommen hat, in einer recht schwierigen Lage. Ja man fühlt sich in einer recht schwierigen Lage, wenn man sich zu dem durchgearbeitet hat, was auf diesem Gebiete über den Geist gesagt werden soll. Denn wie könnte es in Abrede gestellt werden, daß große und wunderbare Entdeckungen auf dem Gebiete der materiellen Forschung — auch auf dem Gebiete des Pflanzenwesens — im neunzehnten Jahrhundert gemacht worden sind, die tief hmemgeleuchtet haben von einem gewissen Standpunkte aus in das Wesen der Pflanzennatur. Da muß immer wieder daran erinnert werden, wie im zweiten Drittel des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts der große Botaniker Schleiden die Entdeckung der Pflanzenzelle gemacht hat, das heißt zunächst vor die Menschen die Wahrheit hingestellt hat, daß ein jeglicher Pflanzenleib aufgebaut ist aus kleinen — man nennt sie wohl Elementarorganismen — selbständigen Wesenheiten, Zellen, die sich wie die Bausteine dieses PflanzenJeibes ausnehmen. Hatte man vorher nur die Pflanzen in bezug auf ihre groben Teile und Organe betrachten können, so wurde jetzt der Blick darauf gelenkt, wie jedes Blatt der höheren Pflanzen aus unzähligen solcher kleinen winzigen mikroskopischen Gebilden — den Pflanzenzellen — besteht. Und wie sollte man darüber verwundert sein, daß eine solche Entdeckung großen, gewaltigen Einfluß hatte auf das ganze Denken und Empfinden gegenüber der Pflanzenwelt. Schließlich ist es ganz natürlich, daß derjenige, der zunächst gesehen hat, wie sich der Pflanzenleib so aus diesen Bausteinen aufbaut, auf die Idee verfallen mußte, daß mit der Untersuchung dieser kleinen Gebilde, dieser Bausteine im Grunde genommen überhaupt das Geheimnis der Pflanzennatur enthüllt werden kann. Das mußte schon der geistvolle Gustav Theodor Fechner erfahren, der um die Mitte des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts in der Tat so etwas in seine Gedankenreihen aufzunehmen versucht hat wie die «Pflanzenseele», obwohl man sagen könnte, daß seine zu phantastischen Auseinandersetzungen über die Pflanzennatur vielleicht etwas zu früh gekommen sind. Von einer Seele des Pflanzenwesens sprach Fechner im umfassenden Sinne, zum Beispiel in seinem Buche «Nanna», und er sprach nicht als ein bloßer Phantast, sondern als ein gründlicher und tiefer Kenner der naturwissenschaftJichen Fortschritte des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts. Aber er konnte nicht umhin, sich die Pflanzen nicht bloß aufgebaut zu denken aus den Zellen, sondern wenn er sich die Formen, die Ausgestaltungen der einzelnen Pflanzen ansah, wurde er zu der Annahme gedrängt, daß das SinnlichWirkliche der Ausdruck für ein dahinterliegendes Seelisches sei.

Nun muß gesagt werden: Gegenüber dem, was die Geisteswissenschaft heute über das Leben des Geistes im Pflanzenreich zu sagen hat, nimmt sich allerdings das, was man in Fechners Auseinandersetzungen findet, recht phantastisch aus, aber seine Gedanken waren ein Vorstoß. 'Trotzdem hat es Fechner erfahren müssen, welcher Widerstand gerade durch jenes Denken kommen kann, in welches der Menschengeist hineingedrungen ist durch die Entdeckungen des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts. Man muß billig denken und verstehen, daß selbst die größten Geister, wenn sich ihnen unter dem Mikroskop zeigte, wie der Pflanzenleib ein Gefüge ist der kleinen Zellen, von diesem Anschauen fasziniert waren und sich gar nicht vorstellen konnten, wie jemand da noch auf die Idee kommen konnte, von einer «Pflanzenseele» zu sprechen, nachdem sich das Materielle in einer so grandiosen Weise dem forschenden Menschengeiste gezeigt hatte. Daher müssen wir es billig verstehen, daß gerade der Erforscher der Pflanzenzelle auch der größte und heftigste Gegner wurde gegenüber dem, was Fechner über das Seelenwesen der Pflanzen sagen wollte. Und es ist einer gewissen Weise reizvoll, den feinen und subtilen Fechner im Kampf zu sehen mit dem durch seine epochemachende Entdeckung für die Botanik berühmt gewordenen Schleiden, der aber in einer materialistisch groben Weise alles das abtut, was Fechner aus seinen intimen Betrachtungen heraus über die Pflanzen sagen wollte. In einem solchen Kampf zwischen Fechner und Schleiden im neunzehnten Jahrhundert spielt sich im Grunde genommen etwas ab, was eine jede Seele, die durch die Wissenschaft unserer Zeit hindurchgeht, empfinden muß, wenn sie sich durch die Zweifel und Rätsel hindurcharbeitet, die dann doch kommen, gerade wenn man auf die naturwissenschaftlichen Errungenschaften eingeht. Sie wird sehr zweifeln, ob sie sich sozusagen auf einem solchen Gebiete aus den manchmal recht zwingenden Vorstellungen herausarbeiten kann. Wer dieses Zwingende der materialistischen naturwissenschaftlichen Vorstellungen des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts nicht kennt, dem mag es manchmal trivial, vielleicht auch kleinlich erscheinen, was von seiten der Weltanschauung gesagt wird, die sich auf den festen Boden der Naturwissenschaft stellen will. Wer aber mit gesundem Wahrheitssinn und mit einem ernsten Bedürfnis, die Lebensrätsel zu lösen, und zugleich ausgerüstet mit den Begriffen der Botanik des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts an die Sache herangeht, für den kann sich manche innere Seelentragik da ergeben. Nur angedeutet soll etwas davon werden. So lernt man zum Beispiel erkennen, was die Botanik des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts gebracht hat. Es ist darin wirklich manches Großartige und wahrhaft Frappierende. Dann kommt der, welcher so mit gesundem Wahrheitssinn gerade an die naturwissenschaftlichen Begriffe geht, auf der einen Seite dahin, daß diese Begriffe suggestiv, mit einer ungeheuren Gewalt auf ihn wirken, daß sie ihn nicht loslassen, sondern ihm immer wieder und wieder in die Ohren raunen: Du begehst einen Unsinn, wenn du den sicheren Pfad verläßt, wo man verfolgt, wie Zelle zu Zelle sich verhält, wie Zelle durch Zelle ernährt wird und so weiter. Zuletzt kommt dann die Notwendigkeit, sich von den materialistischen Begriffen loszureißen auf diesem Gebiete. Es geht nicht mehr anders, gerade bei den naturwissenschaftlichen Voraussetzungen, wenn man noch so sehr sich festhalten lassen wollte durch die suggestive Gewalt der den äußeren materialistischen Vorstellungen bloß folgenden Weltanschauungen. Es geht nicht mehr von einem bestimmten Punkte ab. Das letztere machen nun heute noch nicht viele mit. Das erstere macht der weitaus größte Teil derjenigen mit, die sich von den naturwissenschaftlichen Ergebnissen fasziniert fühlen und sich nicht getrauen, auch nur einen Schritt über das hinauszugehen, was das Mikroskop zeigt. Den andern Schritt machen die allerwenigsten. Aber klar ergibt sich für den, der sich einen gesunden Wahrheitssinn gerade auf naturwissenschaftlichem Boden erhält — und der ist notwendig, wenn man an den Geist im Pflanzenreich herantreten will —, daß man sich zunächst mit einer gewissen Vorstellung zu befassen hat, denn sonst wird man immer in die Irre gehen, wird immer in ein Labyrinth hineinkommen, in das auch Fechner hineingekommen ist, trotzdem er sich so sehr bemüht hat, feinsinnig das Symbolische, das Physiognomische der einzelnen Pflanzenformen und Pflanzengestaltungen zu untersuchen. Worauf es hier ankommt, das möchte ich zuerst wieder durch einen Vergleich vor Ihre Seele führen.

Nehmen Sie an, es fände jemand auf diesem oder jenem Wege irgendeinen Teil einer Materie, irgendeinen Stoffteil. Wenn er diesen Stoffteil, wie er sich ihm darbietet, in gewissen Fällen untersucht, so kann es sein, daß er niemals zurechtkommen wird. Warum nicht? Wenn dieser Stoffteil ein Stück Knochen aus einem menschlichen Arm ist, wird der Betreffende, wenn er bloß dieses Stück Knochen anschaut und es aus sich selbst heraus erklären will, nicht zurechtkommen können. Denn nirgends in aller Welt wäre es möglich, daß ohne die Voraussetzung eines menschlichen Armes dieser Stoffteil entstehen würde. Man kann gar nicht über ihn sprechen, wenn man ihn nicht in Zusammenhang stehend mit einem ganzen menschlichen Organismus auffaßt. So ist es unmöglich, daß wir von einem solchen uns entgegentretenden Gebilde anders sprechen als im Zusammenhange mit einem ganzen Wesen. Ein anderer Vergleich könnte der folgende sein. Wir finden irgendwo ein Gebilde, das ein menschliches Haar ist. Wollten wir es erklären, wie es entstanden sein müßte dort, wo es liegt, so würden wir ganz in die Irre gehen, denn wir können es nur so erklären, daß wir es im Zusammenhange mit einem ganzen menschlichen Organismus betrachten. Für sich ist es nichts, für sich ist es unerklärbar.

Das ist etwas, was der Geistesforscher für den ganzen Umfang unserer Beobachtungen, unserer Erklärungen festhalten muß. Er muß ein jegliches Ding, wo es ihm entgegentritt, daraufhin anschauen, ob es für sich selbst betrachtet werden kann, oder ob es für sich selbst unerklärbar bleibt, ob es nicht zu einem anderen dazugehört — oder besser als eine Individualität für sich betrachtet werden kann. Merkwürdigerweise zeigt sich dem Geistesforscher, daß es überhaupt unmöglich ist, die Pflanzenwelt, diese wunderbare Erdendecke, jemals als etwas für sich selbst Bestehendes zu betrachten. Es fühlt sich der geistige Betrachter gegenüber der Pflanzendecke so, wie er sich einem Finger gegenüber fühlt, den er nur als einem ganzen menschlichen Organismus zugehörig betrachten kann. Die Pflanzenwelt kann aus dem Grunde nicht für sich allein betrachtet werden, weil sie sich für den geistesforscherischen Blick gleich hinzugesellt zu dem ganzen Erdplaneten und mit ihm ein Ganzes bildet wie der Finger mit unserm Organismus oder ein Stück Knochen oder das Gehirn mit unserm Organismus. Und wer die Pflanzen für sich betrachtet, einzelnstehend, der tut dasselbe wie der, welcher eine Hand oder ein Stück Menschenknochen für sich allein erklären wollte. Die gesamten Pflanzenwesen sind gar nicht anders zu betrachten denn als ein Glied unseres gesamten Erdplaneten.

Da kommen wir allerdings schon zu einer Sache, die für viele heute ärgerlich sein mag, die aber dennoch für den geistesforscherischen Blick gilt. Wir kommen dazu, unsern ganzen Erdplaneten anders anzusehen, als er gewöhnlich von der heutigen Wissenschaft betrachtet wird. Denn unsere heutige Wissenschaft — sei es Astronomie, Geologie oder Mineralogie — spricht im Grunde genommen von der Erde nur in dem Sinne, daß diese Erdkugel zusammengesetzt ist aus den Gesteinen, dem Mineralischen, dem Leblosen. Die Geisteswissenschaft darf nicht so sprechen. Sie kann nur so sprechen, daß alles, was auf unserer Erde gefunden wird, was sozusagen ein Wesen, das aus dem Weltenraum auf unsere Erde herniederstiege, an Menschen, Tieren, Pflanzen und Steinen finden würde, so zu dem Ganzen unserer Erde gehörte, wie die Steine selber zu unserer Erde gehören. Das heißt, wir dürfen den Erdplaneten nicht bloß als totes Gesteinsgefüge betrachten, sondern als etwas, was ein in sich lebendes Ganzes ist, das auch die Pflanzenwesen aus sich selbst so hervorbringt wie der Mensch die Gebilde seiner Haut, seiner Sinnesorgane und dergleichen. Mit andern Worten: wir dürfen nicht die Erde ohne die dazu gehörige Pflanzendecke betrachten.

Schon ein äußerlicher Umstand könnte die Menschen darauf hinweisen, daß, wie ein jeglicher Stein zu der Erde in gewisser Beziehung gehört, ebenso auch alles Pflanzliche zu ihr gehört. Denn wie jeder Stein, jeder leblose Körper seine Zugehörigkeit zu der Erde zeigt, indem er auf dieErde fallen kann, wo er eine Widerlage findet, so zeigt jede Pflanze ihre Zugehörigkeit zur Erde dadurch, daß die Stengelrichtung der Pflanzen immer eine solche ist, die durch den Mittelpunkt der Erde geht. Alle Pflanzenstengel würden sich im Mittelpunkt der Erde schneiden, wenn wir sie bis zum Mittelpunkt der Erde verlängerten, das heißt die Erde ist imstande, aus ihrem Mittelpunkt alle die Kraftstrahlen zu ziehen, welche die Pflanzen aus sich hervorgehen lassen. Wir betrachten sonst nur ein Abstraktes, ein Ausgedachtes, wenn wir das Gesteinsreich betrachten, ohne die Pflanzendecke dazuzunehmen. Es kommt dazu nun, daß die rein auf das äußere Materielle gehende Naturwissenschaft sehr gern davon spricht, wie alles Leben — also auch das Pflanzenleben — einmal aus dem Leblosen, dem Mineralischen entstanden sein müsse. Diese Frage gibt es für den Geistesforscher gar nicht, weil nie das Untergeordnete, das Niedere die Voraussetzungen des Höheren sind, sondern immer ist das Höhere, das Belebte die Voraussetzung des Niederen, des Unbelebten. Wir werden später bei dem Vortrage «Was hat die Geologie über Weltentstehung zu sagen?» noch sehen, daß die Geistesforschung zeigt, wie alles Steinige, Mineralische — vom Granit bis zur Ackerkrume — in einer ähnlichen Weise entstanden ist, wie es heute die Naturwissenschaft noch glaubt in bezug auf die Steinkohle. Denn die Steinkohle ist heute ein Mineral, wir graben sie aus der Erde heraus. Was war sie auch nach naturwissenschaftlichen Begriffen vor Jahrmillionen? Große, mächtige Wälder — so sagt die Naturwissenschaft — bedeckten damals einen großen Teil der Erdoberfläche; später sanken sie bei Erdumwälzungen in die Erde hinein, verwandelten sich chemisch in bezug auf ihre stoffliche Zusammensetzung, und was wir heute aus den Tiefen der Erde herausgraben, das sind die zu Stein gewordenen Pflanzen. Wenn man das heute der Steinkohle gegenüber zugibt, wird man es auch nicht mehr gar zu lächerlich finden, wenn die Geisteswissenschaft durch ihre Methoden, die sie anwendet, darauf kommt, daß nun alles Gestein, das unsere Erde birgt, zuletzt aus der Pflanze entstanden ist, daß sozusagen die Pflanze erst hat zu Stein werden müssen, so daß also nicht das Steinige die Voraussetzung des Pflanzlichen ist, sondern daß umgekehrt das Pflanzliche die Voraussetzung des Mineralischen ist. Alles Mineralische ist zunächst eine Verhärtung, dann eine Versteinerung des Pflanzlichen.

So haben wir auch in dem Erdplaneten etwas vor uns, von dem wir voraussetzen müssen: das war einstmals in bezug auf seine dichteste Qualität pflanzlicher Natur, war ein Gefüge aus pflanzlichen Wesen, und aus diesem Lebendigen hat sich erst das Leblose herausentwickelt, indem es sich nacheinander verhärtet, verholzt, versteint hat. Wie unser Knochengerüst, das sich im Grunde genommen auch erst aus dem Organismus heraus absondert, so haben wir das Gesteinsgerüst als das große Knochengerüst des Erdenwesens, des Erdenorganismus anzusehen.

Nun können wir, wenn wir diesen Erdenorganismus geisteswissenschaftlich betrachten, noch weiter gehen. Ich kann heute nur die allerersten Linien dafür angeben, denn wir haben es mit einem Zyklus von Vorträgen zu tun, wo eines in das andere hineingreifen muß. Wir können uns fragen: Wie steht es mit dem Erdenorganismus als solchem?

Wir wissen, wenn wir einen Organismus betrachten, zeigt er uns abwechselnd verschiedene Zustände. Der menschliche und der tierische Organismus zeigen in der Zeit abwechselnd einen Wach- und einen Schlafzustand. Können wir nun geisteswissenschaftlich etwas Ähnliches für den Erdenleib, für den Erdenorganismus finden? Es nimmt sich das Folgende für eine äußere Betrachtung zunächst wie ein Vergleich aus, aber für die geistige Forschung ist es nicht ein Vergleich, sondern ein Tatbestand. Wenn wir auf der Erde die eigentümliche Gesetzmäßigkeit von Sommer und Winter betrachten, wie sie sich geltend macht, indem auf der einen Hälfte Sommer, auf der andern Winter ist, wie dieses Verhältnis abwechselt, und wenn wir einen Blick darauf werfen, wie es sich — als Winterzeit und Sommerzeit — unterscheidet in bezug auf das ganze Erdenleben, so wird es nicht mehr absurd erscheinen, wenn die Geisteswissenschaft erzählt, daß Winter und Sommer für den Erdenorganismus entsprechen dem Wachen und Schlafen derjenigen Organismen, die wir selbst um uns herum haben. Die Erde schläft nur nicht so in der Zeit wie die andern Organismen, sondern sie wacht immer irgendwo und schläft immer irgendwo an irgendeiner Stelle ihres Wesens. Wachen und Schlafen ziehen herum, indem die Erde in einem Teil schläft, wo sie Sommer hat; sie wacht mit einem Teil ihres Wesens, wo sie Winter hat. So steht der ganze Erdenorganismus geistig mit Zuständen wie Wachen und Schlafen wie ein anderer Organismus vor uns.

Der Sommerzustand des Erdenorganismus besteht ja nun in einem ganz besonderen Verhältnis der Erde zur Sonne, nämlich darin, daß die Erde in eine solche Beziehung zur Wirkung der Sonne tritt — und das dürfen wir sagen, weil wir es mit einem lebendigen, geisterfüllten Organismus zu tun haben —, daß sie sich einer Wirkung hingibt, die geistig von der Sonne ausgeht. Für den Winterzustand verschließt sich der Erdenorganismus dieser Sonnenwirkung, zieht sich gleichsam in sich selber zusammen. Vergleichen wir nun einmal diesen Zustand mit dem menschlichen Schlafzustand. Ich will jetzt scheinbar äußerlich von einer bloßen Analogie sprechen; die Geisteswissenschaft liefert aber die Belege für den Tatbestand.

Betrachten wir den Menschen des Abends, wenn er ermüdet ist, wie sein Bewußtsein heruntersinkt, wie alle Gedanken und Empfindungen, die während des Tages durch die äußeren Dinge in unsere Seele hereinziehen, alle Lust und Leid, Freuden und Schmerzen in ein unbestimmtes Dunkel hinuntersinken. In dieser Zeit geht das menschliche Geistwesen — wie wir es in dem Vortrage über das «Wesen des Schlafes» gezeigt haben — aus dem physischen Menschenleib heraus und tritt ein in die geistige Welt, ist hingegeben der geistigen Welt. In diesem Schlafzustand ist nur das Eigentümliche für den Menschen, daß er bewußtlos wird. Für den Geistesforscher — wir werden sehen, wodurch er das weiß — zeigt sich, daß das menschliche Innere, Astralleib und Ich, in der Tat aus dem physischen Leib und Ätherleib sich herauszieht, aber nicht nur sich herauszieht und wie ein Wolkengebilde über ihm schwebt; sondern dieses menschliche Innere breitet sich aus, ergießt sich über die ganze planetarische Welt, die um uns ist. So unwahrscheinlich es ist: es zeigt sich doch, daß sich die Menschenseele einheitlich ausgießt über das Astralische. Die Forscher, die auf diesem Gebiete beschlagen waren, haben wohl gewußt, warum sie das, was herausgeht, den Astralleib nannten, weil nämlich dieses Innere aus dem Himmelsraum, mit dem es eine Einheit bildet, sich die Kräfte holt, die es braucht, um das zu ersetzen, was des Tages Mühe und Arbeit am physischen Leib abgenutzt hat. So geht der Mensch im Schlafe auf in die große Welt, so zieht er sich des Morgens wieder zurück in die Grenzen seiner Haut, in die kleine Menschenwelt, in den Mikrokosmos. Da fühlt er wieder, weil der Leib ihm Widerstand bietet, sein Ich, sein Selbstbewußtsein.

Dieses Ausatmen und Wiedereinatmen der Seele ist das wunderbare Wechselspiel im menschlichen Leben. Von alle denen, die nicht direkt vom okkulten, geisteswissenschaftlichen Standpunkt aus gesprochen haben, habe ich eigentlich nur bei einem einzigen Geist eine so treffende Bemerkung gefunden über das Wechselspiel von Wachen und Schlafen, daß man sie direkt in die Geisteswissenschaft hineinnehmen kann, weil sie sich mit dem geisteswissenschaftlichen Tatbestand deckt. Allerdings war es ein gründlicher mathematischer Denker, aber ein sinniger Mensch, der mit seinem Geist großartig die Natur zu umfassen verstand: Novalis. Er sagt: «Schlaf ist ein vermischter Zustand des Körpers und der Seele. Im Schlafe ist Körper und Seele chymisch verbunden. Im Schlafe ist die Seele durch den Körper gleichmäßig verteilt — der Mensch ist neutralisiert. Wachen ist ein geteilter — polarischer Zustand. Im Wachen ist die Seele punktiert — lokalisiert. Schlaf ist Seelenverdauung; der Körper verdaut die Seele. (Entziehung des Seelenreizes.) — Wachen ist Einwirkungszustand des Seelenreizes — der Körper genießt die Seele. Im Schlafe sind die Bande des Systems locker — im Wachen angezogen.»

Schlaf bedeutet also für Novalis das Verdauen der Seele durch den Leib. Novalis ist sich immer bewußt, daß in der Tat im Schlafe die Seele eins wird mit dem Universum und verdaut wird, damit sich der Mensch weiterhelfen kann für die physische Welt.

So wechselt der Mensch in bezug auf sein inneres Wesen in der Weise, daß er sich beim Tagwachen in die kleine Welt, in die Grenzen seiner Haut zusammenzieht und sich in der Nacht im großen ausdehnt, sich durch die Hingabe Kräfte holt aus der Welt, in die er da hineingebettet ist. Denn wir verstehen den Menschen nicht, wenn wir ihn nicht herausgebildet verstehen aus dem ganzen Makrokosmos.

Für den Teil der Erde nun, der Sommer hat, liegt etwas Ahnliches vor wie bei einem Menschen, der im Schlafzustande ist. Die Erde gibt sich hin alledem, was von der Sonne herunterkommt, und gestaltet sich so, wie sie sich gestalten soll unter dem Einfluß der Sonnenwirksamkeit. Für den Teil, wo die Erde Winter hat, verschließt sie sich der Einwirkung der Sonne, lebt in sich selber. Da ist es so, wie wenn der Mensch in die kleine, innere Welt zusammengezogen ist und in sich selbst lebt, während es für den Teil der Erde, wo Sommer ist, so ist, wie wenn der Mensch hingegeben ist der ganzen äußeren Welt.

Nun gibt es ein Gesetz der geistigen Welt, daß wir uns, wenn wir weiter voneinander liegende geistige Wesenheiten ins Auge fassen — wie zum Beispiel hier den Menschen auf der einen Seite und den Erdorganismus auf der andern Seite —, die Bewußtseinszustände in gewisser Beziehung umgekehrt vorzustellen haben. Beim Menschen ist das Hinaustreten in die große Welt der Schlafzustand. Für die Erde ist der Sommerzustand — den man vielleicht einen Wachzustand nennen möchte — etwas, was sich doch nur vergleichen läßt mit dem, was beim Menschen das Einschlafen ist. Der Mensch tritt mit dem Einschlafen in die große Welt hinaus; die Erde tritt mit dem Sommer mit allen ihren Kräften in den Bereich der Sonnenwirksamkeit, nur müssen wir uns die Erde und die Sonne als geisterfüllte Organismen denken.

Zur Winterzeit, wo die Erde in sich selber ruht, müssen wir uns ihren Zustand entsprechend dem Wachzustande des Menschen denken, während man gewohnt sein könnte, das, was die Erde im Winter ist, als den Erdenschlaf zu betrachten. Aber wenn wir weit auseinanderliegende Wesenheiten — wie Mensch und Erde — betrachten, zeigen sich die Bewußtseinszustände in einer Art entgegengesetzt.

Was ist nun das, was die Erde vollzieht unter dem Einfluß der Hingabe an das Sonnenwesen, an den Sonnengeist? Es ist nichts anderes als etwas, was sich vergleichen läßt geistig — wir werden jetzt, um einen leichteren Vergleich zu haben, gut tun die Begriffe umzudrehen — mit dem Zustande des Menschen, wenn er des Morgens aufwacht und aus dem dunklen Schoße des Daseins, aus der Nacht auftaucht in seine Lust und sein Leid. Wenn die Erde in den Bereich der Sonnenwirksamkeit tritt, dann können — obwohl es sich vergleichen läßt mit dem Schlafzustande des Menschen — alle die Kräfte, die aus der Erde hervorsprießen, den ruhenden Winterzustand der Erde in den tätigen, den lebendigen Sommerzustand übergehen lassen.

Was sind nun die Pflanzen in dem ganzen Gewebe des Seins? Wir könnten sagen: Wenn der Frühling herannaht, beginnt der Erdenorganismus zu denken und zu fühlen, weil die Sonne mit ihren Wesen seine Gedanken und Gefühle herauslockt. Die Pflanzen sind für den Erdenorganismus nichts anderes als eine Art Sinnesorgane, die jeden Frühling von neuem erwachen, damit der Erdenorganismus mit seinem Denken und Fühlen in dem Bereich der Sonnenwirksamkeit sein kann. Wie sich im Menschenorganismus das Licht das Auge schafft, um durch das Auge als «Licht» erscheinen zu können, so schafft sich der Sonnenorganismus am Erdenorganismus in jedem Frühling die ausgebreitete Pflanzendecke, um durch diese Pflanzendecke sich selber zu beschauen, zu fühlen, zu empfinden, zu denken. Nicht etwa sind die Pflanzen unmittelbar die Gedanken der Erde zu nennen, aber sie sind die Organe, durch welche die im Frühling aufwachende Organisation der Erde mit der Sonne zusammen ihre Gefühle und Gedanken entwickelt. Wie wir unsere Nerven vom Gehirn ausgehen sehen und Augen und Ohren mit den Nerven zusammen unser Empfindungs- und Vorstellungsleben entwickeln, so sieht der Geistesforscher in dem, was sich abspielt zwischen Erde und Sonne mit Hilfe der Pflanzen, das wunderbare Weben einer kosmischen Gedanken-, Gefühls- und Empfindungswelt. Denn für den Geistesforscher ist die Erde nicht nur mit der mineralischen Erdenluft, mit der rein physischen Erdenatmosphäre umgeben, sondern von einer Aura von Gedanken und Gefühlen. Für die Geistesforschung ist die Erde ein geistiges Wesen, und die Gedanken und Gefühle erwachen in jedem Frühling und gehen den Sommer hindurch durch die Seele unserer ganzen Erde. Die Pflanzenwelt aber, die ein Teil unseres ganzen Erdenorganismus ist, gibt die Organe ab, daß unsere Erde denken und fühlen kann. In den Geist der Erde sind die Pflanzen hineinverwoben wie unsere Augen oder Ohren in das Getriebe unseres Geistes. Da erwacht im Frühling ein lebendiger, geisterfüllter Organismus, und in den Pflanzen sehen wir etwas, was sich heraustreibt aus dem Antlitz unserer Erde, wo sie auf irgendeinem Gebiete anfangen will zu fühlen und zu denken. Und wie alles, was in uns Menschen ist, nach einem selbstbewußten Ich hin tendiert, so ist es auch in der Pflanzenwelt. Die ganze Pflanzenwelt gehört zur Erde. Ich habe schon gesagt, daß ein Mensch dem Wahnsinn nahe sein müßte, der nicht denken würde, wie in uns alles, was Empfindungen, Vorstellungen, Gefühle sind, nach unserm Ich hin gerichtet ist. So ist alles, was die Pflanzen während der Sommerzeit vermitteln, nach dem Erdmittelpunkt gerichtet, der das ErdenIch ist. Das soll nicht bloß symbolisch gesagt sein! Wie der Mensch sein Ich hat, so hat die Erde ihr selbstbewußtes Ich. Deshalb streben alle Pflanzen nach dem Mittelpunkt der Erde hin. Daher dürfen wir die Pflanzen gar nicht für sich betrachten, sondern müssen sie im Wechsel mit dem selbstbewußten Ich der Erde betrachten. Was sich als Gedanken und Empfindungen der Erde abspielt, das ist so, wie in uns die Empfindungen und Vorstellungen leben, was in uns auf- und abwogt zur Wachenszeit, was in uns astralisch lebt, wenn wir geisteswissenschaftlich sprechen.

So können wir uns die Erde nicht nur als ein physisches Gebilde vorstellen. Denn das physische Gebilde ist uns so etwas wie unser eigener physischer Leib, den man mit den äußeren Augen sehen und mit den Händen greifen kann, und den die äußere Wissenschaft beobachtet; so ist der Erdenleib, den die heutige Astronomie oder Geologie betrachtet. Dann haben wir das zu nennen, was wir beim Menschen kennengelernt haben als Ätherleib oder Lebensleib. Einen solchen Ätherleib hat auch die Erde. Und endlich hat sie auch einen Astralleib. Das ist das, was jeden Frühling erwacht als die Gedanken und Gefühle der Erde, die zurücktreten, wenn der Winter herannaht, so daß dann die Erde in sich selbst verschlossen in ihrem eigenen Ich ruht und sich nur bewahrt, was sie braucht, um durch das Gedächtnis hinüberzutragen das Vorhergehende zu dem Nachfolgenden, sich bewahrt in den Pflanzen-Samenkräften, was sie sich erobert hat. Wie der Mensch, wenn er einschläft, auch nicht seine Gedanken und Empfindungen verliert, sondern sie am nächsten Morgen wiederfindet, so findet die aus dem Schlafzustand im Frühling wieder erwachende Erde die Samenkräfte der Pflanzen, um aus ihrem lebendigen Gedächtnis das wiedererstehen zu lassen, was die Eroberung der früheren Zeit ist.

So aufgefaßt, Jassen sich die Pflanzen mit dem vergleichen, was unsere Augen und Ohren, unsere Sinne an uns selber sind. Das sind sie für den Erdenorganismus. Aber was wahrnimmt, was zu einem Bewußtsein kommt, das ist die von der Sonne zur Erde herniederströmende geistige Welt. Diese geistige Welt würde nicht zu einem Bewußtsein kommen können, wenn sie nicht in den Pflanzen ihre Organe hätte, die ebenso ein Selbstbewußtsein vermitteln, wie unsere Augen und Ohren und Nerven unser Selbstbewußtsein vermitteln. Das macht uns darauf aufmerksam, daß wir eigentlich nur richtig sprechen, wenn wir sagen: Jene Wesen, die von der Sonne herunterströmen zur Erde und ihre geistige Wirksamkeit entfalten, begegnen sich vom Frühling durch die Sommerzeit hindurch mit dem Wesen, das zur Erde selbst gehört. Im Austausch werden die Organe gebildet, durch welche die Erde sie wahrnimmt, denn nicht die Pflanze nimmt wahr. — Es ist ein Aberglaube, auch von seiten der Naturwissenschaft, wenn man sagt, die Pflanze nehme wahr. — Die geistigen Wesenheiten, die zur Erdenwirksamkeit und Sonnenwirksamkeit gehören, nehmen durch die Pflanzenorgane wahr, und alle Organe, die sie brauchen, um sie zusammenzuschließen nach dem Mittelpunkt der Erde, richten sie daher hin nach dem Mittelpunkt der Erde. Was wir also hinter der Pflanzendecke zu sehen haben, sind die geistigen Wesenheiten, welche die Erde umspielen und die in den Pflanzen ihre Organe haben.

Es ist in unserer Zeit so merkwürdig, daß die Naturwissenschaft geradezu hindrängt, diese Dinge der Geisteswissenschaft anzuerkennen. Denn es ist ja nichts Geringeres als die volle Anerkennung des Umstandes, daß unsere physische Erde nur ein Teil der gesamten Erde ist, daß auch der gasige Sonnenball nur ein Teil der ganzen Sonne ist, und daß unsere Sonne, wie sie uns physisch erscheint, nur ein Teil ist der geistig-seelischen Wesenheiten, die in Wechselwirkung treten mit den geistig-seelischen Wesenheiten der Erde. Wie die Menschenwelt mit ihrer Umwelt in Zusammenhang ist und wie die Menschen ihre Organe haben, um zu leben und sich zu entwickeln, so schaffen sich diese Wesenheiten, die real und wirklich sind, in der Pflanzendecke ein Organ, um sich selbst wahrzunehmen. Aberglaube - sagte ich — ist es, wenn man glaubt, daß die Pflanze als solche wahrnehme oder als einzelne Pflanze eine Art Seele hätte. Das ist ein ebensolcher Aberglaube, wie wenn man von der Seele eines Auges sprechen wollte. Trotzdem durch eine merkwürdige, für die Geisteswissenschaft aber selbstverständliche Verkettung der Tatsachen die äußere Wissenschaft durch das ganze neunzehnte Jahrhundert hindurch mit Notwendigkeit dazu gedrängt hat, das, was jetzt gesagt worden ist, anzuerkennen, ist es in der Tat so, daß sich die äußere Wissenschaft auf diesem Gebiete doch sehr wenig ausgekannt hat, auch heute noch. Denn was die Wissenschaft über das Sinnesleben der Pflanzen bis jetzt zustande gebracht hat, ist restlos eine Bestätigung dessen, was ich jetzt über den Geist und seine Wirksamkeit im Pflanzenreich gesagt habe, aber in der äußeren Wissenschaft kann man es nicht als solches einsehen. Das können wir an folgendem Beispiel sehen.

Im Jahre 1804 machte Sydenham Edwards die Entdeckung von der merkwürdigen Beschaffenheit der VenusFliegenfalle, die auf ihren Blättern gewisse Borsten hat. Wenn ein Insekt in die Nähe dieser Pflanze kommt, so daß eine gewisse Berührung der Borsten stattfindet, wird das Insekt von dem Blatt umfangen, wird wie aufgefressen und verdaut. Es war merkwürdig, als die Menschen entdeckten: Pflanzen können fressen, können in ihrem Innern sogar Tiere aufnehmen, sind Fleischfresser! Aber man konnte nichts Rechtes damit anfangen. Es ist interessant, wie man nichts damit anfangen konnte, denn diese Entdeckung ist immer wieder vergessen worden und wieder neu gefunden worden, so 1818 durch Nuttall, 1834 durch Curtis, 1848 durch Lindley und 1859 durch Oudemans. Fünf Leute hintereinander haben dieselbe Sache gefunden! Es ließ sich weiter nichts für die Wissenschaft damit machen, als daß der um die Erforschung der Pflanzenwelt so verdienstvolle Schleiden sagte, man solle sich hüten, dadurch in allerlei mystische Sachen zu verfallen, daß man etwa den Pflanzen Seele zusprechen wolle! Aber auch heute ist man in der Wissenschaft wieder bereit, der einzelnen Pflanze — wie zum Beispiel der Venus-Fliegenfalle — eine Seele zuzuschreiben, was aber ein Aberglaube wäre, wie wenn man dem Auge eine Seele zuschreiben wollte. Gerade Leute wie Raoul Franc& zum Beispiel haben solche Dinge gleich im äußerlichen Sinne genommen und gesagt: Da sieht man Seelisches, das sich analog dem Seelischen des Tieres ausnimmt!

Das zeigt also die Notwendigkeit, daß man gerade auf dem Gebiete der Geisteswissenschaft nicht in die Phantastik verfallen darf, denn hier ist die äußere Wissenschaft in die Phantastik verfallen, wenn man der Venus-Fliegenfalle ein seelisches Wesen zuschreiben will, das man mit dem menschlichen oder tierischen seelischen Wesen zusammenwerfen dürfe. Dann dürfte man auch einem andern Wesen eine Seele zuschreiben, das auch andere Wesen, auch kleine Tiere anzieht und, wenn diese in seine Nähe gekommen sind, sie mit seinen Fangarmen umschlingt, so daß sie darinnenbleiben müssen. Denn man kann, wenn man bei verdaut. Es war merkwürdig, als die Menschen entdeckten: Pflanzen können fressen, können in ihrem Innern sogar Tiere aufnehmen, sind Fleischfresser! Aber man konnte nichts Rechtes damit anfangen. Es ist interessant, wie man nichts damit anfangen konnte, denn diese Entdeckung ist immer wieder vergessen worden und wieder neu gefunden worden, so 1818 durch Nuttall, 1834 durch Curtis, 1848 durch Lindley und 1859 durch Oudemans. Fünf Leute hintereinander haben dieselbe Sache gefunden! Es ließ sich weiter nichts für die Wissenschaft damit machen, als daß der um die Erforschung der Pflanzenwelt so verdienstvolle Schleiden sagte, man solle sich hüten, dadurch in allerlei mystische Sachen zu verfallen, daß man etwa den Pflanzen Seele zusprechen wolle! Aber auch heute ist man in der Wissenschaft wieder bereit, der einzelnen Pflanze — wie zum Beispiel der Venus-Fliegenfalle — eine Seele zuzuschreiben, was aber ein Aberglaube wäre, wie wenn man dem Auge eine Seele zuschreiben wollte. Gerade Leute wie Raoul Franc€ zum Beispiel haben solche Dinge gleich im äußerlichen Sinne genommen und gesagt: Da sieht man Seelisches, das sich analog dem Seelischen des Tieres ausnimmt!

Das zeigt also die Notwendigkeit, daß man gerade auf dem Gebiete der Geisteswissenschaft nicht in die Phantastik verfallen darf, denn hier ist die äußere Wissenschaft in die Phantastik verfallen, wenn man der Venus-Fliegenfalle ein seelisches Wesen zuschreiben will, das man mit dem menschlichen oder tierischen seelischen Wesen zusammenwerfen dürfe. Dann dürfte man auch einem andern Wesen eine Seele zuschreiben, das auch andere Wesen, auch kleine Tiere anzieht und, wenn diese in seine Nähe gekommen sind, sie mit seinen Fangarmen umschlingt, so daß sie darinnenbleiben müssen. Denn man kann, wenn man bei der Venus-Fliegenfalle von Seele spricht, auch bei der Mausefalle davon sprechen, daß sie eine Seele hat. So dürfen wir aber nicht sprechen. Sobald man in den Geist eindringen will, muß man genau und exakt die Dinge ins Auge fassen und nicht aus einem scheinbar gleichen Außeren schließen, daß auch das Innere in derselben Weise vor sich ginge.

Ich habe schon darauf aufmerksam gemacht, daß manche Tiere etwas Gleichartiges wie ein Gedächtnis zeigen. Wenn ein Elefant zur Tränke geführt wird und dabei auf dem Wege von einem Menschen gereizt wird, dann kann es vorkommen, daß er, wenn er wieder zurückkommt, Wasser in seinem Rüssel drinnenbehalten hat und jetzt den Menschen anspritzt, der ihn vorher gereizt hat. Da wird dann gesagt: Da sieht man also, daß der Elefant ein Gedächtnis hat; er hat sich den Menschen gemerkt, der ihn gereizt hat, und sich vorgenommen: auf dem Rückwege werde ich ihn mit Wasser spritzen! Das ist aber nicht so. Beim Seelenleben ist es wichtig, daß wir den inneren Vorgang genau verfolgen und nicht gleich von Gedächtnis sprechen, wenn später ein Geschehnis eintritt als Wirkung einer früheren Ursache. Nur dann, wenn ein Wesen wirklich zurückschaut auf etwas, was in einer früheren Zeit vorgegangen ist, haben wir es mit Gedächtnis zu tun; in jedem andern Falle nur mit Ursache und Wirkung. Das heißt: wir müßten jetzt genau in die Struktur der Elefantenseele hineinschauen, wenn wir sehen wollten, wie der Reiz, der ausgeübt wird, dann so etwas auslöst, daß er noch nach einer gewissen Zeit eine Wirkung hervorruft.

Deshalb müssen wir sagen: Wir dürfen derartige Dinge, wie sie uns bei der Venus-Fliegenfalle entgegentreten, nicht anders auffassen, als daß die ganze Einrichtung der Pflanze nicht dazu da ist, um ein inneres Seelenwesen der Pflanze zu bedingen, sondern was dabei vorgeht, ist von außen bewirkt. Die Pflanze dient als Organ dem ganzen Erdenorganismus auch für eine solche Sache. Wie die Pflanzen auf der einen Seite dem Ich der Erde, auf der andern Seite der Aura der Erde — dem Astralleib, der Empfindungs- und Gefühlswelt der Erde — angehören, das hat insbesondere gerade diese Forschung des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts gezeigt. Man ist eigentlich wirklich denjenigen Naturforschern — wie etwa Gottlieb Haberlandt — dankbar, welche trocken die Tatsachen hinstellen, die sie erforscht haben, und nicht — wie Raoul France oder andere — daraus rein äußere Schlüsse ziehen. Wenn er dabei bliebe, die Dinge nur hinzustellen, wie sie sind, so könnte man ihm wirklich dankbar sein; wenn er aber daraus Schlüsse ziehen will auf das Seelenleben einer einzelnen Pflanze, so mag er auch gleich auf das Seelenleben eines einzelnen Haares oder Zahnes schließen.

Wenn wir dann diejenigen Pflanzen betrachten, die in Wirklichkeit Ahrenpflanzen sind, so zeigt sich, daß bei allen diesen Pflanzen merkwürdige kleine Organe vorhanden sind. Kleine Gebilde von Stärkezellen wurden aufgefunden. Diese Zellen sind merkwürdigerweise so gebaut, daß in ihrem Innern etwas ist wie ein lockerer Kern. Das Eigentümliche ist, daß die Zellenwand nur an einer Stelle unempfindlich bleibt für den Kern. Wenn dieser anderswohin rutscht, so wird die Zellenwand von ihm berührt, und die Folge ist, daß die Pflanze ihn wieder in die frühere Lage zurückbringt. Solche Stärkemehlzellen finden sich bei allen Pflanzen, die in ihrer Hauptrichtung nach dem Mittelpunkt der Erde hinweisen, so daß die Pflanze ein Organ in sich hat, welches es ihr immer möglich macht, sich in ihrer Hauptrichtung nach dem Mittelpunkt der Erde zu richten. Das ist allerdings eine wunderbare Sache, die im Laufe des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts von verschiedenen Forschern gefunden worden ist, und die sich am besten ausnimmt, wenn die Dinge einfach hingestellt werden. Wenn zum Beispiel Haberlandt meint, daß man es da mit einer Art von Sinnesempfindung der Pflanze zu tun habe, so setzt er doch die Tatsachen so klar auseinander, daß man gerade für diese trockene und nüchterne Darstellung ganz besonders dankbar sein muß.

Nun aber etwas anderes. Wenn man ein Pflanzenblatt betrachtet, ist immer eigentlich die äußere Oberfläche eine Zusammenfügung von lauter kleinen linsenartigen Gebilden, ähnlich der Linse unseres Auges. Diese Linsen sind so eingerichtet, daß das Licht nur dann wirkt, wenn es in einer ganz bestimmten Richtung auf die Oberfläche des Blattes auffällt. Wenn das Licht in einer andern Richtung auffällt, bekommt das Blatt sogleich den Antrieb, sich so zu wenden, daß das Licht in die Linsenmitte hineinfallen kann, weil es nach der Seite hin in anderer Weise wirkt. So sind also an der Oberfläche der Blätter der Pflanzen Organe für das Licht vorhanden. Diese Lichtorgane, die sich tatsächlich mit einer Art Auge vergleichen lassen, das über die Pflanzen ausgebreitet ist, durch das aber nicht die Pflanze sieht, sondern das Sonnenwesen schaut durch dasselbe auf das Erdenwesen, — diese Lichtorgane bewirken, daß die Pflanzenblätter immer die Tendenz haben, sich senkrecht zum einfallenden Sonnenlicht zu stellen.

Darin — wie sich die Pflanze hingibt zur Frühlings- und Sommerzeit der Sonnenwirkung — haben wir eine zweite Hauptrichtung der Pflanze. Die Stengelrichtung, wodurch sich die Pflanzen als hinzugehörig zum Erden-Selbstbewußtsein erweisen, ist die eine; die andere ist die, wodurch die Pflanzen die Hingabe der Erde an die W1rksamkeit der Sonnenwesen ausdrücken. durch den Raum gehe in der Sonne, hört auf die Möglichkeit, daß die Erde so betrachtet werden darf, wie die Astronomie oder Geologie sie heute betrachtet. Da gibt es zwingende Gründe, denen sich auch der gewissenhafte Naturdenker unterwerfen muß, daß er sich sagt: Du darfst nicht mehr anderes sehen in dem, was dir die Naturwissenschaft enthüllt, als einen Ausdruck des allem zugrunde liegenden geistigen Lebens! — Dann betrachten wir aber die Pflanzen wie einen physiognomischen Ausdruck der Erde, als den Ausdruck des Antlitzes unserer Erde. So vertieft sich das, was wir unser ästhetisches Gefühl gegenüber der Pflanzenwelt nennen, gerade durch die Geisteswissenschaft. Wir gehen hin vor die gigantischen Bäume des Urwaldes, vor das stille Veilchen oder Schneeglöckchen und betrachten sie als einzelne Individuen zwar, aber so, daß wir sagen: Da spricht sich uns der Geist aus, der den Raum durchlebt — Sonnengeist, Erdengeist! Was wir beim Menschen aus dem Ausdruck seines Geistes erschauen, wenn wir seine Stimme hören und auf das Fromme oder Unfromme seiner Seele schließen, so schließen wir aus dem, was uns aus den Pflanzen entgegenschaut, auf das, was lebt als Erdengeist, als Sonnengeist, wie sie miteinander im Kampfe oder in gegenseitiger Harmonie stehen. Da fühlen wir uns selber im Geist drinnen weben und leben.

Und um nur anzuzeigen, wie sich tatsächlich durch die Naturwissenschaft des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts die Geisteswissenschaft wohl bestätigen läßt, kann man noch folgendes erwähnen. Diejenigen Zuhörer, welche früher die Vorträge hier angehört haben, werden sich an den Hinweis erinnern, daß es Pflanzen gibt in der Erdenwelt, die deplaziert sind, die nicht hereingehören in unsere Erdenwelt. Eine solche Pflanze ist zum Beispiel die Mistel, die in Sage und Mythos deshalb eine so merkwürdige Rolle spielt, weil sie zu einem früheren planetarischen Zustand unserer Erde gehört und wie ein Rest zurückgeblieben ist von einer vorirdischen Entwickelung. Daher kann sie nicht in der Erde wachsen, sondern sie muß in andern Pflanzen wurzeln. Die Naturwissenschaft zeigt uns, daß die Mistel nicht jene eigentümlichen Stärkezellen hat, welche die Pflanzen dahin bringen, nach dem Mittelpunkt der Erde zu zeigen. Kurz, ich könnte jetzt beginnen und die ganze Botanik des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts Stück für Stück auseinanderlegen, und Sie würden Stück für Stück die Belege dafür finden, wie die Pflanzendecke unserer Erde das Sinnesorgan ist, durch welches sich beschauen Erdengeist und Sonnengeist. Wenn wir das beachten, bekommen wir gerade — wie es uns ja geziemend erscheinen muß für die von uns geliebte und uns erfreuende Pflanzenwelt — eine Wissenschaft, welche zugleich unsere Seele erheben, nahebringen kann dieser Pflanzenwelt. Wir fühlen uns mit Seele und Geist selber zur Erde und zur Sonne gehörig und fühlen so, wie wenn wir gleichsam aufschauen müßten zur Pflanzenwelt, wie sie zu unserer großen Erdenmutter gehört. Das müssen wir im Grunde genommen auch. Denn alles, was als Tier oder Mensch scheinbar unabhängig ist von der unmittelbaren Wirkung der Sonne, das ist durch die Pflanzenwelt und dadurch, daß es angewiesen ist auf die Pflanzenwelt, wieder indirekt abhängig von der Sonne. Der Mensch macht zwar im Winter und Sommer keine solche Verwandlungen durch wie die Pflanzen, aber die Pflanze ist es, die ihm die Möglichkeit gibt, in sich selber jene Beständigkeit zu haben. Was die Pflanze an Stoffen entwickelt, kann sie nur unter dem Einfluß der Sonnenwirkung entwickeln, durch das Wechselverhältnis von Sonnengeist und Erdengeist. Namentlich die Kohlehydrate sind es, die nur entstehen, wenn sich Sonnengeist und Erdengeist küssen durch das Pflanzenwesen. Die Stoffe, die da entwickelt werden, liefern erst das, was die höheren Organismen zur Wärme-Entwickelung in sich hereinnehmen müssen. Denn nur durch das, was die höheren Organismen als Wärme entwickeln, indem sie die von der Sonne auf dem Umwege durch die Pflanze zubereiteten Stoffe aufnehmen, können sie erst gedeihen.

So müssen wir materiell allerdings hinblicken auf unsere Erdenmutter als auf unsere große Nährmutter, Aber wir haben gesehen, daß wir in der Pflanzendecke die Physiognomie des Erdengeistes haben, und wir fühlen uns dadurch in Geist und Seele stehend. Wir blicken gleichsam — wie wir einem andern Menschen ins Auge blicken — der Erde in die Seele, wenn wir verstehen, wie sie ihre Seele uns ankündigt in den Blüten und Blättern der Pflanzenwelt.

Das war es, was Goethe sich beschäftigen ließ mit der Pflanzenwelt, was ihn zu einer Beschäftigung führte, die im Grunde genommen in nichts anderem besteht, als daß er zeigt, wie der Geist in der Pflanzenwelt wirksam ist, und wie das Blatt, das bald so, bald so in der Pflanze erscheint, von dem Geist herausgestaltet wird in den verschiedensten Formen. Goethe war entzückt, daß der Geist in der Pflanze die Blätter formt, sie rundet und sie auch im Gewinde um den Stengel herumführt. Und ebenso denkwürdig mußte es bleiben, als ein den Geist wirklich erkennender Mensch — als Goethe Schiller nach einem Vortrage des Botanikers Batsch in der naturforschenden Gesellschaft zu Jena gegenüberstand. Als Schiller, den der Vortrag nicht befriedigt hatte, meinte: Das ist doch eine Betrachtung der Pflanzen, wie sie einseitig dasteht! — nahm Goethe ein Blatt heraus und zeichnete in seiner Weise mit einigen Strichen, wie für ihn der Geist in der Pflanze wirkt. Da sagte Schiller, der solche konkrete Erfassung des Geistes der Pflanzen nicht verstehen konnte: Was Sie da zeichnen, ist aber doch nur eine Idee! Darauf konnte Goethe nur sagen: «Das kann mir sehr lieb sein, wenn ich Ideen habe, ohne es zu wissen, und sie sogar mit Augen sehe!»

Gerade die Art, wie ein solcher Mensch wie Goethe in der Pflanzenwelt forscht, als er über den Brenner geht und den Huflattich mit ganz anderen Augen ansieht, wie er darin sieht, wie der Geist über der Erde wirkt und die Blätter gestaltet, das zeigt uns, wie wir von einem gemeinsamen Geist der Erde sprechen können, der sich nur zum Ausdruck bringt in den mannigfaltigen Pflanzenwesen als in seinem besonderen Organ. Was physisch ist, ist Geist. Wir haben immer nur die Aufgabe, den Geist in der richtigen Weise zu verfolgen. Wer die Pflanze so verfolgt, wie sie aus dem Gesamtgeist der Erde herauswächst, der findet den Erdengeist, den Goethe schon im Auge hatte, als er seinen Faust anrufen ließ den die Erde durchwirkenden Geist, der von sich sagt:

In Lebensfluten, in Tatensturm
Wall” ich auf und ab,
Webe hin und her!
Geburt und Grab,
Ein ewiges Meer,
Ein wechselnd Weben,
Ein glühend Leben,
So schaff’ ich am sausenden Webstuhl der Zeit
Und wirke der Gottheit lebendiges Kleid.

Der Mensch aber, der so den Geist in dem Pflanzenleben der Erde erblickt, fühlt sich selber gestärkt und gekräftigt, indem er das, was er als sein inneres Wesen ansehen muß, ergossen sieht über den ganzen Schauplatz, den er bewohnen darf. Und er muß sich sagen: Betrachte ich den Umkreis meines Raumes, so finde ich bestätigt, was aller Dinge Ursprung ist, das finde ich im Schoß des Geistes! Und was als Ausdruck gelten kann des Verhältnisses von Menschengeist und Menschenseele, auch für das Verhältnis von Pflanzenseele und Pflanzengeist, das können wir zusammenfassen in die Worte:

Es sprechen zu dem Menschensinn
Die Dinge in den Raumesweiten,
Sie wandeln sich im Zeitenlauf.
Erkennend lebt die Menschenseele
Durch Raumesweiten unbegrenzt
Und unversehrt durch Zeitenlauf.
Sie findet in dem Geistgebiet
Des eignen Wesens tiefsten Grund!

The Spirit in the Plant Kingdom

How spiritual science must recognize the spirit living and weaving in all the beings around us, if it proceeds from the principle that the knowing human being should understand himself in his knowing, has been mentioned in the lectures on “The Human Soul and the Animal Soul” and “The Human Spirit and the Animal Spirit.” It has been said that, fundamentally, the self-aware human being can never think of taking in ideas, concepts, and representations of things and beings as spiritual content in his own spirit if these concepts and ideas — this spiritual content through which the human being wants to understand what lies in things — were not first present in things, were not placed in them. Any extraction of spiritual content from things and beings would be pure fantasy, a self-made fantasy, if one did not assume that this spirit is also present everywhere we look and from which we can draw the spirit. Now, it is fair to say that — even if only in small circles — this general assumption about the spiritual content of the world is already widely held. But even those who speak of spirit in things usually remain at the level of speaking of this spirit in general, that is, of speaking of spiritual weaving, spiritual life, as the basis of everything mineral, vegetable, animal, and so on. But to go into the way in which the spirit specializes itself for us, how it lives itself out in particular in this or that form of existence, is not yet thought of in the widest circles of our present education. Basically, people take a rather dim view of those who speak not only of the spirit in general, but of the particular forms, the particular kinds of spirit, as it asserts itself behind this or that phenomenon. Nevertheless, on the basis of our spiritual science, we must not only speak of the spirit in such a vague, general way as has now been indicated, but in such a way that we recognize how the spirit weaves behind mineral or plant existence, as well as in animal and human existence.

The task of today's consideration is to say something about the nature of spirit in the plant kingdom. One must admit that if one starts not from abstract philosophy, not from abstract theosophy, but from an unbiased observation of reality and at the same time — as must be the case on the sound ground of spiritual science — on the ground of natural science and wants to speak about the “spirit in the plant kingdom,” then one not only — I would say — interferes with the unjustified prejudices of our scientific and other contemporary education, but also interferes with more or less justified ideas that have a strong suggestive effect and must have a suggestive effect. It is precisely in this consideration, which is supposed to deal with the spirit that finds its expression, its physiognomy, as it were, in the realm that confronts us, from the gigantic giant trees of the primeval forest or those that have survived for thousands of years on Tenerife, to the small violet that hides modestly in the quiet forest or elsewhere, — especially when considering this, if one has absorbed the scientific concepts of the nineteenth century, one finds oneself in a rather difficult position. Indeed, one finds oneself in a rather difficult position when one has worked through what is to be said about the spirit in this field. For how could it be denied that great and wonderful discoveries were made in the nineteenth century in the field of material research — including in the field of plant life — which shed deep light on the nature of plants from a certain point of view? We must always remember how, in the second third of the nineteenth century, the great botanist Schleiden made the discovery of the plant cell, that is, he first presented to people the truth that every plant body is made up of small — they are called elementary organisms — independent entities, cells, which look like the building blocks of this plant body. Whereas previously it had only been possible to observe plants in terms of their coarse parts and organs, attention was now drawn to how each leaf of higher plants consists of countless such tiny microscopic structures — the plant cells. And how could one be surprised that such a discovery had a great, powerful influence on the whole way of thinking and feeling about the plant world? After all, it is only natural that those who first saw how the plant body is constructed from these building blocks should have come up with the idea that, by studying these small structures, these building blocks, the secret of plant nature could basically be revealed. The brilliant Gustav Theodor Fechner had to learn this, who in the middle of the nineteenth century actually tried to incorporate something like the “plant soul” into his train of thought, although one could say that his overly fantastical discussions about the nature of plants may have come a little too early. Fechner spoke of the soul of the plant in a comprehensive sense, for example in his book “Nanna,” and he spoke not as a mere fantasist, but as a thorough and profound connoisseur of the scientific advances of the nineteenth century. But he could not help thinking of plants as being more than just a structure of cells; when he looked at the forms and shapes of individual plants, he was compelled to assume that their sensory reality was the expression of an underlying spiritual reality.

Now it must be said: Compared to what spiritual science has to say today about the life of the spirit in the plant kingdom, what we find in Fechner's discussions seems quite fantastic, but his thoughts were a breakthrough. Nevertheless, Fechner had to experience the resistance that can come from precisely that thinking into which the human spirit has penetrated through the discoveries of the nineteenth century. One must reasonably think and understand that even the greatest minds, when they saw under the microscope how the plant body is a structure of small cells, were fascinated by this sight and could not imagine how anyone could still come up with the idea of speaking of a “plant soul” after the material had revealed itself in such a grandiose way to the inquiring human spirit. Therefore, we must reasonably understand that it was precisely the researcher of the plant cell who became the greatest and most vehement opponent of what Fechner wanted to say about the soul of plants. And in a certain way, it is fascinating to see the refined and subtle Fechner in battle with Schleiden, who became famous for his epoch-making discovery in botany, but who dismisses in a materialistically crude manner everything that Fechner wanted to say about plants based on his intimate observations. In such a battle between Fechner and Schleiden in the nineteenth century, something is essentially taking place that every soul passing through the science of our time must feel when working its way through the doubts and mysteries that inevitably arise when one engages with the achievements of natural science. They will have great doubts as to whether they can work their way out of the sometimes quite compelling ideas in such a field, so to speak. Those who are unfamiliar with the compelling nature of nineteenth-century materialistic scientific ideas may sometimes find it trivial, perhaps even petty, what is said from the perspective of a worldview that seeks to stand on the firm ground of natural science. But for those who approach the matter with a healthy sense of truth and a serious need to solve the mysteries of life, and at the same time are equipped with the concepts of nineteenth-century botany, there can be some inner soul tragedy. Only a hint of this will be given. For example, one learns to recognize what nineteenth-century botany has brought. There are indeed some magnificent and truly striking things in it. Then, on the one hand, those who approach scientific concepts with a healthy sense of truth come to the conclusion that these concepts have a suggestive effect on them, exerting an enormous force, that they do not let them go, but whisper in their ears again and again: You are committing nonsense if you leave the safe path where one follows how cell relates to cell, how cell is nourished by cell, and so on. Finally, there comes the necessity of breaking away from materialistic concepts in this field. There is no other way, especially given the scientific premises, if one wants to hold on to the suggestive power of worldviews that merely follow external materialistic ideas. It is no longer possible to start from a certain point. Not many people are willing to do the latter today. The former is done by the vast majority of those who are fascinated by scientific findings and do not dare to take even one step beyond what the microscope shows. Very few take the other step. But it is clear to those who maintain a healthy sense of truth, especially in the field of natural science—and this is necessary if one wants to approach the spirit in the plant kingdom—that one must first deal with a certain idea, because otherwise one will always go astray, will always enter a labyrinth, into which Fechner also entered, despite his great efforts to subtly examine the symbolic, physiognomic aspects of individual plant forms and structures. I would like to begin by illustrating what is important here by means of a comparison.

Suppose someone finds a piece of matter, a piece of substance, in one way or another. If they examine this piece of material as it presents itself to them in certain cases, they may never be able to make sense of it. Why not? If this piece of material is a piece of bone from a human arm, the person concerned will not be able to make sense of it if they merely look at this piece of bone and try to explain it on its own. For nowhere in the world would it be possible for this piece of matter to come into being without the prerequisite of a human arm. It is impossible to talk about it unless one understands it in relation to a whole human organism. Thus, it is impossible for us to talk about such a structure that we encounter other than in connection with a whole being. Another comparison could be the following. We find somewhere a structure that is a human hair. If we wanted to explain how it must have come to be where it is, we would be completely misled, because we can only explain it by considering it in connection with an entire human organism. On its own, it is nothing; on its own, it is inexplicable.

This is something that the spiritual researcher must keep in mind for the entire scope of our observations and explanations. He must look at every thing he encounters to see whether it can be considered on its own, or whether it remains inexplicable on its own, whether it does not belong to something else — or rather, whether it can be considered as an individuality in itself. Strangely enough, it becomes apparent to the spiritual researcher that it is impossible to ever regard the plant world, this wonderful covering of the earth, as something existing in itself. The spiritual observer feels toward the plant cover as he feels toward a finger, which he can only regard as belonging to a whole human organism. The plant world cannot be regarded on its own because, to the spiritual researcher's eye, it immediately joins the whole planet Earth and forms a whole with it, just as the finger does with our organism, or a piece of bone, or the brain. And anyone who considers plants on their own, in isolation, is doing the same as someone who wanted to explain a hand or a piece of human bone on its own. The entire plant kingdom can only be viewed as a limb of our entire planet Earth.

This brings us to a point that may be annoying to many today, but which nevertheless applies to the spiritual researcher's view. We come to view our entire planet Earth differently than it is usually viewed by today's science. For our science today — be it astronomy, geology, or mineralogy — basically speaks of the Earth only in the sense that this globe is composed of rocks, minerals, and inanimate matter. Spiritual science cannot speak in this way. It can only speak in such a way that everything found on our Earth, everything that a being descending from outer space onto our Earth would find in humans, animals, plants, and stones, belongs to the whole of our Earth, just as the stones themselves belong to our Earth. This means that we must not regard the Earth as merely a dead structure of rock, but as something that is a living whole in itself, which also produces plant beings from itself, just as human beings produce the structures of their skin, their sense organs, and the like. In other words, we must not regard the Earth without the plant cover that belongs to it.

An external circumstance alone could point out to people that, just as every stone belongs to the earth in a certain way, so too does everything plant-like belong to it. For just as every stone, every lifeless body, shows its belonging to the earth by being able to fall to the earth, where it finds a resting place, so every plant shows its belonging to the earth by the fact that the direction of the plant's stem always passes through the center of the earth. All plant stems would intersect at the center of the earth if we extended them to the center of the earth, which means that the earth is able to draw from its center all the rays of energy that the plants emit from themselves. Otherwise, we are only looking at something abstract, something imagined, when we look at the mineral kingdom without including the plant cover. In addition, natural science, which focuses purely on the external material, likes to talk about how all life — including plant life — must have originated from the inanimate, the mineral. This question does not arise for the spiritual researcher, because the subordinate, the lower, is never the prerequisite for the higher; rather, it is always the higher, the animate, that is the prerequisite for the lower, the inanimate. Later, in the lecture “What does geology have to say about the origin of the world?”, we will see that spiritual research shows how everything stony and mineral — from granite to topsoil — came into being in a similar way to how natural science still believes coal came into being. For coal is a mineral today; we dig it out of the earth. What was it millions of years ago, according to scientific concepts? Large, mighty forests — so says science — covered a large part of the earth's surface at that time; later, during earth upheavals, they sank into the earth, underwent chemical changes in their material composition, and what we dig out of the depths of the earth today are the plants that have turned to stone. If we accept this in relation to coal today, we will no longer find it ridiculous when spiritual science, through the methods it applies, that all the rock that our earth contains ultimately originated from plants, that plants first had to turn to stone, so to speak, and that therefore it is not the stony that is the prerequisite for the plant, but conversely, the plant that is the prerequisite for the mineral. Everything mineral is first a hardening, then a fossilization of the plant.

Thus, in the Earth planet, we also have something before us of which we must assume that, in terms of its densest quality, it was once of a plant nature, a structure of plant beings, and that it was from this living being that the inanimate first developed, hardening, lignifying, and petrifying one after the other. Just as our skeleton, which is basically also secreted from the organism, we must regard the rock skeleton as the great skeleton of the earth being, the earth organism.

Now, if we look at this Earth organism from a spiritual scientific point of view, we can go even further. Today I can only give the very first outlines for this, because we are dealing with a cycle of lectures in which one must intertwine with the other. We can ask ourselves: What about the Earth organism as such?

We know that when we observe an organism, it shows us different states alternately. The human and animal organisms show alternating states of wakefulness and sleep over time. Can we now find something similar for the Earth body, for the Earth organism, from a spiritual scientific point of view? At first glance, the following may seem like a comparison, but for spiritual research it is not a comparison, but a fact. When we consider the peculiar lawfulness of summer and winter on Earth, as it manifests itself in one half being summer and the other half being winter, how this relationship alternates, and when we take a look at how it differs — as winter time and summer time — in relation to the whole of earthly life, it will no longer seem absurd when spiritual science tells us that winter and summer correspond to the waking and sleeping of those organisms that we ourselves have around us. The earth does not sleep in the same way as other organisms, but is always awake somewhere and always asleep somewhere else in some part of its being. Waking and sleeping move around, with the earth sleeping in the part where it is summer and awake in the part where it is winter. Thus, the entire Earth organism stands before us spiritually with states such as waking and sleeping, like another organism.

The summer state of the Earth organism consists of a very special relationship between the Earth and the Sun, namely that the Earth enters into such a relationship with the Sun's influence — and we can say this because we are dealing with a living, spirit-filled organism — that it surrenders itself to an influence that emanates spiritually from the Sun. In its winter state, the Earth organism closes itself off from this solar influence, withdrawing, as it were, into itself. Let us now compare this state with the human state of sleep. I will now speak of a mere analogy, seemingly from an external point of view; but spiritual science provides the evidence for this fact.

Let us consider the human being in the evening, when he is tired, how his consciousness sinks, how all the thoughts and feelings that enter our soul during the day through external things, all the pleasures and pains, joys and sorrows sink into an indefinite darkness. At this time, as we showed in the lecture on the “Nature of Sleep,” the human spirit being leaves the physical human body and enters the spiritual world, surrendering itself to the spiritual world. In this state of sleep, the only thing peculiar to humans is that they become unconscious. For the spiritual researcher — we will see how he knows this — it becomes apparent that the human inner being, the astral body and the I, does indeed withdraw from the physical body and etheric body, but does not merely withdraw and hover above it like a cloud formation; rather, this human inner being spreads out, pours out over the entire planetary world that surrounds us. As improbable as it is, it nevertheless appears that the human soul pours itself out uniformly over the astral world. Researchers who were well versed in this field knew why they called what emanates the astral body, because this inner being draws from the heavenly space, with which it forms a unity, the forces it needs to replace what the day's toil and labor on the physical body has worn away. Thus, in sleep, the human being ascends into the great world, and in the morning he withdraws again into the confines of his skin, into the small human world, into the microcosm. There he feels again, because the body offers him resistance, his I, his self-consciousness.

This exhalation and re-inhalation of the soul is the wonderful interplay in human life. Of all those who have not spoken directly from an occult, spiritual scientific point of view, I have actually found only one spirit who has made such an apt remark about the interplay of waking and sleeping that it can be taken directly into spiritual science because it coincides with spiritual scientific facts. However, it was a thorough mathematical thinker, but a sensible person who understood nature magnificently with his spirit: Novalis. He says: "Sleep is a mixed state of the body and the soul. In sleep, body and soul are chemically connected. In sleep, the soul is evenly distributed through the body — the human being is neutralized. Waking is a divided — polar state. In waking, the soul is punctured — localized. Sleep is soul digestion; the body digests the soul. (Withdrawal of the soul's stimulus.) — Waking is a state of influence of the soul's stimulus — the body enjoys the soul. In sleep, the bonds of the system are loose — in waking, they are tightened."

For Novalis, sleep therefore means the digestion of the soul by the body. Novalis is always aware that, in fact, during sleep the soul becomes one with the universe and is digested so that the human being can continue to help himself in the physical world.

Thus, in relation to his inner being, man changes in such a way that when he wakes up in the morning, he contracts into the small world, into the boundaries of his skin, and at night he expands into the large world, drawing strength from the world in which he is embedded through his devotion. For we do not understand man unless we understand him as having been formed from the entire macrocosm.

For the part of the earth that is in summer, something similar occurs as with a human being who is asleep. The earth surrenders itself to everything that comes down from the sun and shapes itself as it should under the influence of the sun's activity. In the part of the earth where it is winter, it closes itself off from the influence of the sun and lives within itself. It is as if a human being has withdrawn into their small inner world and lives within themselves, while in the part of the earth where it is summer, it is as if a human being is devoted to the whole outer world.

Now there is a law of the spiritual world that when we consider spiritual beings that are further apart from each other — such as, for example, human beings on the one hand and the Earth organism on the other — we must imagine the states of consciousness to be reversed in a certain respect. For human beings, stepping out into the great world is the state of sleep. For the earth, the summer state — which one might call a waking state — is something that can only be compared to what falling asleep is for humans. When humans fall asleep, they step out into the great world; when summer comes, the earth steps into the realm of the sun's activity with all its powers, but we must think of the earth and the sun as spirit-filled organisms.

In winter, when the Earth rests within itself, we must think of its state as corresponding to the waking state of human beings, whereas one might be accustomed to thinking of what the Earth is in winter as the Earth's sleep. But when we consider entities that are far apart — such as human beings and the Earth — the states of consciousness appear to be opposite.

What, then, is it that the earth accomplishes under the influence of its devotion to the sun being, to the sun spirit? It is nothing other than something that can be compared spiritually — to make the comparison easier, we would do well to reverse the concepts — with the state of a human being when he wakes up in the morning and emerges from the dark womb of existence, from the night, into his joys and sorrows. When the earth enters the sphere of the sun's activity, then — although it can be compared to the state of sleep in human beings — all the forces that spring forth from the earth can transform the earth's dormant winter state into the active, living summer state.

What, then, are plants in the whole fabric of being? We could say that when spring approaches, the earth organism begins to think and feel because the sun, with its beings, elicits its thoughts and feelings. Plants are nothing more than a kind of sensory organ for the earth organism, awakening anew each spring so that the earth organism can be in the sphere of the sun's activity with its thinking and feeling. Just as light creates the eye in the human organism in order to appear as “light” through the eye, so the sun organism creates the spread of plant cover on the earth organism every spring in order to see, feel, sense, and think itself through this plant cover. The plants are not directly the thoughts of the earth, but they are the organs through which the earth's organization, awakening in spring, develops its feelings and thoughts together with the sun. Just as we see our nerves emanating from the brain and our eyes and ears developing our sensory and imaginative life together with the nerves, so the spiritual researcher sees in what takes place between the earth and the sun with the help of plants the wonderful weaving of a cosmic world of thoughts, feelings, and sensations. For the spiritual researcher, the earth is not only surrounded by the mineral earth air, by the purely physical earth atmosphere, but also by an aura of thoughts and feelings. For spiritual research, the earth is a spiritual being, and thoughts and feelings awaken every spring and pass through the soul of our entire earth throughout the summer. The plant world, however, which is part of our entire earth organism, provides the organs that enable our earth to think and feel. Plants are woven into the spirit of the earth like our eyes or ears are woven into the workings of our spirit. In spring, a living, spirit-filled organism awakens, and in plants we see something that springs forth from the face of our earth, where it wants to begin to feel and think in some area. And just as everything in us humans tends toward a self-conscious ego, so it is in the plant world. The entire plant world belongs to the earth. I have already said that a person would have to be close to madness if they did not think that everything in us that is sensation, imagination, and feeling is directed toward our ego. So everything that plants convey during the summertime is directed toward the center of the earth, which is the earth's I. This is not meant to be said merely symbolically! Just as human beings have their I, so the earth has its self-conscious I. That is why all plants strive toward the center of the earth. Therefore, we must not consider plants in isolation, but must consider them in relation to the self-conscious ego of the earth. What takes place as thoughts and feelings of the earth is like the feelings and ideas that live within us, what ebbs and flows within us during waking hours, what lives within us astralistically, if we speak in spiritual scientific terms.

Thus, we cannot imagine the earth as merely a physical entity. For the physical entity is something like our own physical body, which we can see with our outer eyes and touch with our hands, and which external science observes; such is the earth's body as viewed by modern astronomy or geology. Then we have to name what we have come to know in human beings as the etheric body or life body. The Earth also has such an etheric body. And finally, it also has an astral body. This is what awakens every spring as the thoughts and feelings of the earth, which recede when winter approaches, so that the earth then rests enclosed within itself in its own ego and preserves only what it needs to carry over what has gone before to what follows through memory, preserving in the seed forces of plants what it has conquered. Just as a person does not lose their thoughts and feelings when they fall asleep, but finds them again the next morning, so the earth, awakening from its state of sleep in spring, finds the seed forces of the plants in order to resurrect from its living memory what it has conquered in earlier times.

Understood in this way, plants can be compared to what our eyes and ears, our senses, are to us. That is what they are to the earth organism. But what perceives, what comes to consciousness, is the spiritual world streaming down from the sun to the earth. This spiritual world would not be able to come to consciousness if it did not have its organs in the plants, which convey self-consciousness just as our eyes, ears, and nerves convey our self-consciousness. This makes us aware that we are actually only speaking correctly when we say: Those beings that stream down from the sun to the earth and unfold their spiritual activity encounter, from spring through summer, the being that belongs to the earth itself. In this exchange, the organs are formed through which the earth perceives them, for it is not the plant that perceives. — It is a superstition, even on the part of natural science, to say that plants perceive. — The spiritual beings that belong to the activity of the earth and the sun perceive through the organs of plants, and all the organs they need to connect them to the center of the earth are therefore directed toward the center of the earth. What we see behind the plant cover, then, are the spiritual beings that surround the earth and have their organs in the plants.

It is so remarkable in our time that natural science is actually pushing for these things to be recognized by spiritual science. For it is nothing less than the full recognition of the fact that our physical Earth is only a part of the whole Earth, that the gaseous sun is only a part of the whole sun, and that our sun, as it appears to us physically, is only a part of the spiritual-soul beings that interact with the spiritual-soul beings of the Earth. Just as the human world is connected to its environment and just as human beings have organs in order to live and develop, so these beings, which are real and actual, create an organ for themselves in the plant cover in order to perceive themselves. Superstition, I said, is believing that the plant as such perceives or that an individual plant has a kind of soul. That is just as much superstition as talking about the soul of an eye. Nevertheless, through a strange chain of events that is self-evident to spiritual science, external science has been compelled throughout the entire nineteenth century to acknowledge what has now been said. The fact is that external science has been very unfamiliar with this field, even today. For what science has achieved so far regarding the sensory life of plants is a complete confirmation of what I have now said about the spirit and its activity in the plant kingdom, but in external science this cannot be seen as such. We can see this in the following example.

In 1804, Sydenham Edwards discovered the remarkable nature of the Venus flytrap, which has certain bristles on its leaves. When an insect comes close to this plant and touches the bristles, the insect is enveloped by the leaf, eaten, and digested. It was remarkable when people discovered that plants can eat, can even absorb animals inside themselves, are carnivores! But no one knew what to make of it. It is interesting how they could not make sense of it, because this discovery has been forgotten again and again and rediscovered, for example in 1818 by Nuttall, in 1834 by Curtis, in 1848 by Lindley, and in 1859 by Oudemans. Five people in a row discovered the same thing! Nothing more could be done with it for science than that Schleiden, who was so deserving in the study of the plant world, said that one should beware of falling into all kinds of mystical things, such as attributing souls to plants! But even today, science is once again prepared to attribute a soul to individual plants — such as the Venus flytrap — which would be superstition, just as it would be to attribute a soul to the eye. People like Raoul Franc&, for example, took such things at face value and said: Here you can see something spiritual that is analogous to the spirituality of animals!

This shows the necessity of not falling into fantasy, especially in the field of spiritual science, because here external science has fallen into fantasy when it wants to attribute a soul to the Venus flytrap that can be equated with the human or animal soul. Then one might also attribute a soul to another being that attracts other beings, including small animals, and, when they come close to it, wraps its tentacles around them so that they must remain inside. For one can, if one digests. It was strange when people discovered that plants can eat, can even absorb animals inside themselves, are carnivores! But they couldn't really do anything with it. It is interesting how they couldn't do anything with it, because this discovery has been forgotten again and again and rediscovered, for example in 1818 by Nuttall, in 1834 by Curtis, in 1848 by Lindley, and in 1859 by Oudemans. Five people in a row discovered the same thing! There was nothing more to be done with it for science than for Schleiden, who was so deserving of credit for his research into the plant world, to say that one should beware of falling into all kinds of mystical things, such as attributing souls to plants! But even today, science is once again prepared to attribute a soul to individual plants — such as the Venus flytrap — which would be superstition, just as it would be to attribute a soul to the eye. People like Raoul Franc€, for example, took such things at face value and said: Here we see something spiritual that is analogous to the spirituality of animals!

This shows the necessity of not falling into fantasy, especially in the field of spiritual science, because here external science has fallen into fantasy when it wants to attribute a soul to the Venus flytrap that can be equated with the human or animal soul. Then one might also attribute a soul to another being that attracts other beings, including small animals, and, when they come near it, wraps its tentacles around them so that they cannot escape. For if one speaks of a soul in the Venus flytrap, one might also say that the mousetrap has a soul. But we must not speak in this way. As soon as one wants to penetrate the spirit, one must look at things precisely and exactly and not conclude from an apparently similar exterior that the interior would also proceed in the same way.

I have already pointed out that some animals display something similar to memory. If an elephant is led to a watering hole and is provoked by a human being on the way, it may happen that when it returns, it has kept water in its trunk and now sprays the person who provoked it earlier. People then say: So you see, the elephant has a memory; it remembered the person who provoked it and decided: on the way back, I will spray him with water! But that is not the case. When it comes to the life of the soul, it is important that we follow the inner process closely and do not immediately speak of memory when an event occurs later as the effect of an earlier cause. Only when a being really looks back on something that happened in the past are we dealing with memory; in every other case, we are dealing only with cause and effect. This means that we would now have to look closely into the structure of the elephant's soul if we wanted to see how the stimulus that is exerted triggers something that still has an effect after a certain time.

Therefore, we must say that we cannot understand things such as those we encounter in the Venus flytrap in any other way than that the entire structure of the plant is not there to condition an inner soul being of the plant, but that what is happening is caused from outside. The plant serves as an organ of the whole Earth organism for such a thing as well. How plants belong on the one hand to the I of the Earth and on the other hand to the aura of the Earth — the astral body, the world of feeling and emotion of the Earth — has been shown in particular by this research of the nineteenth century. We are truly grateful to those natural scientists — such as Gottlieb Haberlandt — who dryly present the facts they have researched and do not — like Raoul France or others — draw purely external conclusions from them. If he were to stick to presenting things as they are, we could be truly grateful to him; but if he wants to draw conclusions about the soul life of a single plant, he might as well draw conclusions about the soul life of a single hair or tooth.

If we then consider those plants that are actually spikelet plants, we see that all of these plants have strange little organs. Small structures of starch cells have been found. Strangely enough, these cells are constructed in such a way that there is something like a loose nucleus inside them. The peculiar thing is that the cell wall remains insensitive to the core in only one place. If it slips elsewhere, the cell wall is touched by it, and the result is that the plant returns it to its former position. Such starch cells are found in all plants that point in their main direction toward the center of the earth, so that the plant has an organ within itself that always enables it to orient itself in its main direction toward the center of the earth. This is indeed a wonderful thing, which was discovered by various researchers during the nineteenth century and which is best understood when things are simply stated. When Haberlandt, for example, suggests that we are dealing with a kind of sensory perception in plants, he sets out the facts so clearly that we must be particularly grateful for this dry and sober presentation.

But now to something else. When you look at a plant leaf, the outer surface is actually a collection of tiny lens-like structures, similar to the lens of our eye. These lenses are arranged in such a way that light only has an effect when it falls on the surface of the leaf in a very specific direction. If the light falls in a different direction, the leaf immediately receives the impulse to turn so that the light can fall into the center of the lens, because it acts differently on the side. So there are organs for light on the surface of plant leaves. These light organs, which can actually be compared to a kind of eye spread over the plants, through which, however, the plant does not see, but the sun being looks through it at the earth being, — these light organs cause the plant leaves to always tend to position themselves perpendicular to the incident sunlight.

In this — how the plant surrenders itself to the sun's influence in spring and summer — we have a second main direction of the plant. The stem direction, through which plants prove themselves to belong to the earth's self-consciousness, is one; the other is that through which plants express the earth's devotion to the activity of the sun beings. If we go through space in the sun, we cease to see the earth as it is viewed today by astronomy or geology. There are compelling reasons to which even the conscientious natural thinker must submit, telling himself: You must see nothing else in what natural science reveals to you than an expression of the spiritual life underlying everything! — But then we regard plants as a physiognomic expression of the earth, as the expression of the face of our earth. Thus, what we call our aesthetic feeling towards the plant world is deepened precisely through spiritual science. We go before the gigantic trees of the primeval forest, before the quiet violet or snowdrop, and regard them as individual beings, but in such a way that we say: Here the spirit that lives through space speaks to us — the spirit of the sun, the spirit of the earth! What we see in human beings from the expression of their spirit when we hear their voice and conclude on the piety or impiety of their soul, we conclude from what we see in plants about what lives as the spirit of the earth, as the spirit of the sun, how they stand in conflict or in mutual harmony with each other. There we feel ourselves weaving and living within the spirit.

And just to show how spiritual science can indeed be confirmed by nineteenth-century natural science, the following can be mentioned. Those listeners who have heard the lectures here before will remember the reference to the fact that there are plants in the earthly world that are out of place, that do not belong in our earthly world. One such plant is mistletoe, which plays such a strange role in legends and myths because it belongs to an earlier planetary state of our Earth and has remained as a remnant of a pre-Earth development. Therefore, it cannot grow in the earth, but must take root in other plants. Natural science shows us that mistletoe does not have those peculiar starch cells that cause plants to point toward the center of the earth. In short, I could now begin to dismantle the entire botany of the nineteenth century piece by piece, and you would find piece by piece the evidence that the plant cover of our earth is the sensory organ through which the earth spirit and sun spirit contemplate each other. If we take this into account, we will obtain — as seems fitting for the plant world we love and enjoy — a science that can at the same time uplift our souls and bring us closer to this plant world. We feel that our souls and spirits belong to the earth and the sun, and we feel as if we must look up to the plant world, as it belongs to our great Earth Mother. In fact, we must do so. For everything that appears to be independent of the direct influence of the sun, whether animal or human, is indirectly dependent on the sun through the plant world and through its dependence on the plant world. Although humans do not undergo the same transformations as plants in winter and summer, it is the plant that gives them the opportunity to have that constancy within themselves. Plants can only develop the substances they do under the influence of the sun, through the interaction of the sun spirit and the earth spirit. It is carbohydrates in particular that only arise when the sun spirit and the earth spirit kiss through the plant kingdom. The substances that are developed there provide what higher organisms need to take in to generate heat. For it is only through what higher organisms develop as heat, by taking in the substances prepared by the sun via the plant, that they can thrive.

So we must look at our Earth Mother as our great nourishing mother in material terms. But we have seen that in the plant cover we have the physiognomy of the Earth spirit, and we feel ourselves standing in spirit and soul. We look, as it were, into the soul of the earth, just as we look into the eyes of another human being, when we understand how it reveals its soul to us in the flowers and leaves of the plant world.

This was what led Goethe to study the plant world, which led him to an occupation that basically consists of nothing other than showing how the spirit is at work in the plant world and how the leaf, which appears in the plant in various forms, is shaped by the spirit into the most diverse shapes. Goethe was delighted that the spirit in the plant forms the leaves, rounds them, and also guides them around the stem. And it must have been just as memorable when a person who truly recognized the spirit — when Goethe confronted Schiller after a lecture by the botanist Batsch at the natural history society in Jena. When Schiller, who was not satisfied with the lecture, said, “But that is a one-sided view of plants!” Goethe took out a leaf and drew in his own way, with a few strokes, how he thought the spirit worked in the plant. Schiller, who could not understand such a concrete grasp of the spirit of plants, said, “But what you are drawing is only an idea!” To which Goethe could only reply: “I can be very happy when I have ideas without knowing it, and can even see them with my eyes!”

It is precisely the way in which a person like Goethe researches the plant world, as he crosses the Brenner Pass and looks at coltsfoot with completely different eyes, how he sees in it how the spirit works above the earth and shapes the leaves, that shows us how we can speak of a common spirit of the earth, which expresses itself only in the manifold plant beings as in its special organ. What is physical is spirit. Our task is always to pursue the spirit in the right way. Those who pursue the plant as it grows out of the overall spirit of the earth will find the spirit of the earth that Goethe already had in mind when he had his Faust invoke the spirit that permeates the earth, which says of itself:

In floods of life, in storms of action
I surge up and down,
Weaving back and forth!
Birth and grave,
An eternal sea,
A changing weave,
A glowing life,
Thus I create on the whirring loom of time
And weave the living garment of the deity.

But the person who sees the spirit in this way in the plant life of the earth feels strengthened and invigorated by seeing what he must regard as his inner being poured out over the whole scene he is allowed to inhabit. And he must say to himself: When I look at the surroundings of my space, I find confirmation of the origin of all things, I find it in the bosom of the spirit! And what can be considered an expression of the relationship between the human spirit and the human soul, and also of the relationship between the plant soul and the plant spirit, can be summarized in the words:

The things in the vastness of space speak to the human mind
The things in the vastness of space,
They change in the course of time.
The human soul lives in recognition
Unlimited by the vastness of space
And unharmed by the passage of time.
It finds in the realm of the spirit
The deepest foundation of its own being!