The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Second Lecture

[ 1 ] In this lecture, which is still part of the introduction to our actual “General Assembly Campaign,” one purpose will be pursued in particular: to show that spiritual science, or rather the spiritual view of the world on which it is based, is in complete accord and harmony with certain findings of special science. As can be seen especially in popular and public lectures, it is not easy for anthroposophists to find full understanding among a completely unprepared audience. When spiritual science encounters a completely unprepared audience, anthroposophists must be somewhat aware that they are speaking a completely different language in relation to many things than those who have heard nothing or only very superficially and externally about the insights that underlie the spiritual scientific movement. It takes a certain deeper insight to find the harmony between what can be so easily presented in outer science today, namely the experiences of sensory research, and what is given to us through the knowledge of spiritual, higher, supersensible consciousness. One has to settle in to gradually gain a real overview of this harmony. But then one will see how there is a beautiful harmony between what the spiritual researcher asserts and the assertions, that is, the enumeration of facts, put forward by physical research. One should therefore not be too unfair to those who cannot understand anthroposophists, because they lack all the preparation that is absolutely necessary to grasp the results of spiritual research, and so in most cases they think something completely different from what is meant, even in the words and concepts themselves. For this reason, a greater understanding of spiritual science can only be achieved to a large extent by speaking quite openly from a spiritual point of view, even to an unprepared audience. Then there will be a large number of these unprepared people who will say: “This is all nonsense, fantasy, just cleverly devised nonsense!” But there will always be some who, through the innermost needs of their souls, will first get a hint that there is something behind it, and they will go on and gradually settle in. It is this patient settling in that is essential, and it is also what we can achieve. It will therefore be quite natural that a large proportion of those who come to a lecture on spiritual science out of mere curiosity will afterwards readily spread the opinion that this is a sect that only propagates its own special gibberish! But if one is aware of the difficulties, one will also have the calm patience to make the selection that is necessary. The personalities will emerge from the audience themselves and form a core through which spiritual science will gradually flow into our whole life.

[ 2 ] Today, a special example will be given to show how it becomes easy for prepared students of spiritual science, who have already become accustomed to thinking and living in the ideas awakened by spiritual knowledge, to come to terms with the seemingly most difficult statements made by positive physical and sensory research. In this way, the learner will gradually acquire the awareness that it is entirely possible for them, the further they progress, to see what a good foundation spiritual research is for all knowledge of the world. This will give the seeker the peace he needs in the face of the storms that rage against spiritual science because it speaks a language that is completely foreign to many. And if we have the patience to live into this harmony, we will also gain ever greater certainty. When people then say, “What you are telling us does not agree with the most elementary research of science! the anthroposophist will answer: 'I know that through what spiritual science can give, complete harmony can be created in relation to all these facts, even if there is perhaps no possibility of agreement at the moment. As a special chapter to strengthen our awareness, let us bring what is now to be said before our souls.

[ 3 ] The student of spiritual science, after living for a time in the spiritual worldview, is accustomed to speaking of the physical body, the etheric body, and the astral body in such a way that they become more and more concepts that he can handle and that guide and direct him when he seeks an understanding of the external world. They must gradually become accustomed to seeing not a uniform physical body around them, but a differentiated physical body. They look at a stone and do not say: The stone consists of these and those substances, as does the human body, and therefore I can treat the human body in the same way as the stone. For even though the plant body consists of the same physical substances as the stone, it is something completely different: it has an etheric body within it, and the physical body of the plant would disintegrate if it were not permeated in all its parts by the etheric body. Therefore, the spiritual scientist says: The physical body of the plant would decay if, during its life, the etheric body did not protect it from this dissolution, did not fight against this dissolution. When we look at the plant in this way, we find it to be an interweaving of the principle of the physical body and the etheric body.

[ 4 ] Now, it has already been emphasized several times what the most elementary principle of the etheric body is, namely that of repetition. A being that existed only under the principle of the etheric body and the physical body would express the principle of repetition within itself. We see this emerge most clearly in plants. We see how leaf after leaf develops on a plant. This comes from the fact that the physical body of the plant is permeated by an etheric body, and this has the principle of repetition. It forms one leaf, then a second, a third, and so on, adding leaf after leaf in constant repetition. But even when the plant's growth comes to an end at the top, repetition still prevails. At the top of the plant, you see, so to speak, a wreath of leaves that form the calyx of the flower. These calyx leaves have a different shape from the other leaves. But you can also develop the awareness that this is only a slightly modified form of the repetition of the same leaves, which unfold in the same repetition up the entire stem. So we can say that even up there, where the plant comes to completion, the green sepals are a kind of repetition. And even the petals are a repetition. Of course, they have a different color. They are essentially still leaves, but already strongly transformed leaves. Now it was Goethe's great work in the field of botany to show that not only the sepals and petals are transformed leaves, but that the pistils and stamens must also be regarded as such a transformed repetition of the leaves.

[ 5 ] However, it is not merely a repetition that we encounter in plants. If only the elementary principle of the etheric body were at work, the etheric body would penetrate the plant from bottom to top. Leaf after leaf would develop, and there would be no end to it; nowhere would there be a conclusion.

[ 6 ] How does this conclusion come about in the flower, so that the plant ends its existence and becomes fertile again to produce a new plant? This happens because, to the same extent that the plant grows upward, the astral body of the plant comes toward it from above, closing itself externally. The plant has no astral body of its own, but as it grows upward, the plant's astral body meets it from above. It completes what the etheric body would do in eternal repetition; it brings about the transformation of the green leaves into sepals, petals, stamens, and pistils. We can therefore say that, from an occult point of view, the plant grows toward its soul part, its astral part, which brings about the transformation. The fact that the plant remains a plant and does not pass over into arbitrary movement or sensation stems from the fact that this astral body, which encounters the plant above, does not take possession of its organs internally, but only encompasses them externally, working in from above. To the extent that the astral body touches the organs internally, the plant passes into the animal. That is the whole difference.

[ 7 ] Take a petal of a plant, for example. You can say that the etheric body and the astral body also work together in the petal, but the etheric body has, so to speak, the upper hand. The astral body is not able to extend its feeling threads inward; it only acts from the outside. If we want to express this spiritually, we can say: What is internal in the animal, what it experiences internally as pleasure and pain, joy and sorrow, drive, desire, and instinct, is not internal in the plant, but descends continuously from outside onto the plant. This is definitely something soul-like. And while the animal turns its eyes outward, enjoys its surroundings, directs its sense of taste outward, and refreshes itself with the pleasures that come its way, that is, feels pleasure within itself, someone who can really look at things spiritually can tell you that this astral being of the plant also has joy and pain, lust, and suffering, but in such a way that it looks down on what it is doing. It rejoices in the red color of the rose and in everything that comes its way. And when the plants form leaves and flowers, this permeates and is tasted by the plant soul looking down. There is an exchange between the descending part of the plant soul and the plants themselves. The plant world, in its soulfulness, exists for joy, and sometimes also for suffering. Thus we really see an exchange of feelings between the plant cover of our earth and the astrality of the earth that envelops the plants, which represents the soulfulness of the plants. What acts externally on the plants as astrality seizes the soulfulness of the animal internally and makes it an animal in the first place. But there is an important difference between the soul nature that acts in the astrality of the plant world and in the astrality of animal life.

[ 8 ] If you examine clairvoyantly what acts as astrality on the plant cover, you will find in the soul nature of plants a certain sum of forces, and all these forces that act in the plant souls have a certain peculiarity. When I speak of plant soul-life, of that astrality which permeates the earth and in which the soul life of plants takes place, you must be clear that these plant souls do not live in their astrality in the same way as, for example, physical beings on our earth. Plant souls can permeate each other, so that they flow like a liquid element. But one thing is peculiar to them: they develop certain forces, and all these forces have the property of flowing toward the center of the planet. There is a force at work in all plants that goes from top to bottom and strives toward the center of the Earth. This is precisely what regulates the direction of plant growth. If you extend the axis of the plants, you will hit the center of the Earth. This is the direction given to them by the soul nature coming from above. If we examine the soul nature of plants, we find that its most important characteristic is that it is permeated by forces that all strive toward the center of the Earth.

[ 9 ] It is different when we consider, in general, the astrality in the vicinity of our Earth that belongs to the animal realm and gives rise to the animal. What plant soul nature is would not, as such, be capable of bringing forth animal life. For animal life, it is necessary that other forces also permeate the astral, so that the occult researcher, if he remains solely in the astral, can distinguish whether any astral substance will give rise to plant growth or animal growth. This can be distinguished in the astral sphere. For everything that shows forces that tend toward the center of the Earth or another planet will give rise to plant growth. If, on the other hand, forces appear that are perpendicular to these but move around the entire planet in continuous circular movements with extraordinary mobility in every direction, then this is a different substance that gives rise to animal life. At every point where you make observations, you will find that the earth is surrounded in every position and in every direction and height by currents which, if their direction is continued, form circles that fly around the earth. This astrality is quite compatible with plant astrality. Both penetrate each other and yet are internally separate. However, they differ in their inner properties. Thus, both types of astrality can flow together in one and the same place on the earth's surface. When the clairvoyant examines a certain part of space, he finds forces that tend only toward the center of the earth; these are interspersed with other forces that are only circumferential, and the clairvoyant then knows that these contain the cause of animal life.

[ 10 ] I have already emphasized here and there that the astral has completely different laws, including different laws of space than the physical. When we are able to present some ideas about the four-dimensional concept of space tomorrow, you will be able to understand even better some of what I am now telling you based on occult facts. Today, we want to focus on just one peculiarity of this animal astrality based on occult facts.

[ 11 ] If you have a physical body, whether it's a plant or an animal, you have to think of it as something spatially enclosed, and you don't really have the right to count anything that's spatially separated from it as part of that body. Wherever there is spatial separation, you must speak of different bodies. Only when there is also a spatial connection can you speak of a single body. This is not the case in the astral world, especially not in the one that gives rise to the formation of the animal kingdom. There, astral formations that actually live separately from one another can form a whole. There can be any astral formation in one part of space, and in a completely different part of space there can be another astral formation that is again spatially separate. But it can be that these two astral formations, which are not connected by the slightest stretch of space, nevertheless constitute a single being. Yes, three, four, or five such spatially separate structures can be connected. And the following can even happen: Suppose you have such an astral being that has not embodied itself physically in any way; then you can find another structure that belongs to it. Now observe the one structure and find that something is going on in it which you describe as the intake of certain substances and the elimination of others, as the consumption of something. And while you perceive this in one structure, you may notice that in another astral structure, spatially separated from it, other processes are taking place which correspond exactly to what is happening in the one as food intake. On the one hand, the being eats, and on the other hand, it perceives the taste. And although there is no spatial connection, the process in one structure corresponds completely to the process in the other structure. Thus, astral structures that are completely separate in space can nevertheless belong together internally. Indeed, it happens that a hundred astral bodies separated from each other by great distances are so dependent on each other that no process can take place without also taking place in the other bodies in a corresponding manner. When beings then find their embodiment in the physical world, you can still discover echoes of this astral peculiarity in the physical world. You will have heard that twins exhibit a remarkable parallelism. This comes from the fact that, while they are spatially separated in their physical bodies, they remain related in their astral bodies. And while something happens in the astral body of one, it cannot happen there alone, but also manifests itself in the astral part of the other. Even where it appears as plant astrality, the astral shows this peculiarity of dependence between things that are spatially completely separated from each other. In relation to plants, you will have heard of the peculiarity that wine in barrels undergoes a very strange process when the wine season comes around again. What causes the ripening of the new grapes becomes noticeable again, even in the wine barrels.

[ 12 ] I just wanted to point out that something of the hidden always reveals itself in the manifest, which can be brought to light by the methods of occult research. From this you will recognize that it is not at all unnatural that our entire organism is astral, composed of completely different elements.

[ 13 ] There are peculiar sea creatures that can be explained if you assume what we have now developed a little about the secrets of the astral world. In the astral world, it is by no means the case that the astral forces that mediate the intake of food must be connected with those that regulate movement or reproduction. When the clairvoyant researcher searches the astral space for such formations that give rise to animal life, he finds something very remarkable. He finds a certain astral substantiality, about which he must say: When it works in an animal body, it is particularly suited, through the forces that operate within it, to transform the physical so that it becomes an organ of food intake. Now, there may be completely different astral elements somewhere else, which, when they sink into a body, do not form organs of food intake, but organs of movement or perception. You can imagine: if you have an apparatus for taking in food on one side, you have an apparatus for moving your hands and feet on the other. In this way, the forces from the astral world have sunk into you, but these forces can flow together from completely different sides. One astral force mass has given you one thing, the other has given you another, and they come together in your physical body because your physical body must be a spatially coherent physical entity. This depends on the laws of the physical world. The various force masses that come together from outside must form a unified whole. They do not form a unified whole right from the start. We can actually observe the effect on the physical world of what we have just learned as a result of occult research in the astral realm.

[ 14 ] There are certain animals, the siphonophores, which live very strangely as sea creatures. We see something like a communal trunk in them, which is a kind of hollow tube. Something forms at the top that has no other function than to fill itself with air and then empty itself again; and this process causes the entire structure to stand upright. If this bell-shaped structure were not there, the whole thing that hangs from it would not be able to remain upright. It is therefore a kind of balancing entity that gives the whole its equilibrium. This may not seem particularly remarkable to us. But it is remarkable when we realize that the structure at the top, which gives the whole creature its balance, cannot exist without nourishment. It is an animal, and animals must feed themselves. However, it is unable to do so because it has no means of obtaining food. In order for this structure to feed itself, certain outgrowths, which are simply real polyps, are distributed at various points along this tube. These would constantly tumble around and be unable to maintain their balance if they were not attached to a common stem. However, they are now able to take in food from outside. They pass it on to the entire tube through which it passes, thereby also feeding the air-balance system. So, on the one hand, there is a creature that can only maintain its balance, and on the other hand, a creature that can feed the whole organism. Now we have a structure that can nevertheless have great difficulty in obtaining food: Once the food has been absorbed, there is nothing left. The animal must seek out other places where it can find new food. To do this, it must have organs of movement. This is also provided for, because other structures have grown onto this tube that can do something else, that cannot maintain equilibrium or provide nourishment, but which have certain muscle formations within them. These structures can contract, thereby squeezing out the water and causing a counterforce in the water, so that when the water is expelled, the entire structure must move to the opposite side. This enables it to obtain other animals for food. The jellyfish move forward in this way, squeezing out water and thereby causing the counterforce. Such jellyfish, which are, so to speak, genuine structures of movement, have now also grown there.

[ 15 ] So here you have a conglomerate of different animal structures: one type that only maintains balance, another type that only feeds, and then other beings that mediate movement. However, such a creature would perish if it were alone, as it would be unable to reproduce. But provision has been made for this too. Spherical structures grow in other parts of the tube, which have no other function than reproduction. Inside these beings, male and female reproductive substances form in a hollow space, which fertilize each other internally, thereby producing beings of their own kind. Thus, the reproductive function in these beings is also distributed among very specific structures that cannot do anything else.

[ 16 ] In addition, you will find certain outgrowths on this tube, on this common trunk: these are other creatures in which everything is atrophied. They are only there to provide a certain protection for what lies beneath them. Certain structures have sacrificed themselves, given up everything else and become nothing more than protective polyps. Now you can see certain long threads called tentacles, which are also transformed organs. They do not have the abilities of the other structures, but when the animal is attacked by an enemy, they ward off the attack. These are defensive organs. And there is another type of organ called a tactile organ. These are fine, mobile, and very sensitive organs of touch and feeling, a kind of sensory organ. The sense of touch, which is spread throughout the human body, is present here in a special limb.

[ 17 ] Such a siphonophore—that is the name of this animal that you see swimming around in the water—what is it for someone who can see things with the eyes of an occultist? There are all kinds of structures that have come together astralically: structures for nutrition, movement, reproduction, and so on. And because these different virtues of astral substantiality wanted to embody themselves physically, they had to string themselves together on a common substantiality. So here you see a being that, in a most remarkable way, foreshadows us humans. Imagine all the organs that appear here as independent beings in inner contact with one another, intertwined with one another, and you have human beings, and also higher animals, in physical relation. Here you see how the facts of the physical world confirm what clairvoyant research shows you, namely that the most diverse astral forces also flow together within the human being, which he then holds together through his ego, and which, when they no longer work together, cause the human being to drift apart as a being that no longer feels itself to be a unity.

[ 18 ] The Gospel speaks of this: so many demonic entities have flowed together and are within human beings to form a unity. You remember that in certain abnormal situations, in cases of illness of the soul, human beings lose their inner connection. There are certain cases of insanity where human beings can no longer hold on to their ego and become aware that their being is divided into different entities; they confuse themselves with the original partial entities that have flowed together within them.

[ 19 ] There is a certain occult principle that says: Everything that exists in the spiritual world is such that it ultimately reveals itself somewhere in the outer world. Thus, you see the unity of the human astral body physically embodied in such a siphonophore. The occult world peeks into the physical world through a peephole. If the human being with his embodiment had not been able to wait until he attained sufficient physical density, he would be—not physically, but spiritually—a being composed of such a patchwork. Size has nothing to do with it. Such a being, which belongs to the genus of hollow animals, which every natural history book today describes beautifully and which, in a certain sense, is a source of delight for the scientific researcher, becomes intelligible to us when we can understand it from the occult foundations of animal astrality. That is one such example. You can calmly listen to those who speak a completely different language and say that physical research contradicts what anthroposophy proclaims, because you can answer: If you really take the time to bring things into harmony, then harmony will emerge even for the most complicated things. The idea we usually have of development is mostly a very simple one. But development has by no means been so simple.

[ 20 ] Finally, I would like to raise a kind of problem that is intended to serve as a task, and we will try to solve such a problem from the occult point of view. We have seen an important occult truth documented externally in a relatively low animal. Let us now move on to a somewhat higher animal species, for example fish, which can present us with even more puzzles. I will only mention a few individual characteristics.

[ 21 ] When you observe fish in aquariums, you will repeatedly marvel at the wonderful life of water. But do not believe that any occult insight will disturb these observations. If you shine the light of occult research on these facts and see what other occult beings are swarming around to form these animals exactly as they are, your admiration will not diminish, but only increase. But let us take an ordinary fish. It already presents us with quite a formidable mystery. The average fish has, first of all, strange stripes running along its sides, which also show the scales in a different form. They run along both sides like two longitudinal lines. If you destroyed these longitudinal lines, the fish would go mad. This is because it would have lost the ability to detect differences in water pressure, to find where the water is more buoyant and where it is less, where it is thinner and denser. The fish would then no longer be able to move according to the pressure differences in the water. The water has different densities at different points, so different pressures are exerted. The fish moves differently at the surface of the water than it does at the bottom. The fish senses the different pressure conditions and all the movements caused by the movement of the water through these longitudinal lines. But now the individual points of these longitudinal lines are connected to the very primitive hearing organ of fish by means of fine organs, which you can also find described in any natural history book. And the way in which fish perceive the movements and inner life of the water is very similar to the way humans perceive air pressure. Initially, the pressure conditions exert their influence on the longitudinal lines, and this is transmitted to the hearing organ. The fish hears this. But the matter is even more complicated. Fish have a swim bladder. This serves them primarily to utilize the pressure conditions of the water and to move in specific pressure conditions. The pressure exerted on the swim bladder enables it to swim. But because the various movements and vibrations touch the swim bladder and treat it like a membrane, this in turn has an effect on the auditory organ, and with the help of the auditory organ, the fish orientates itself in all its movements. The swim bladder is therefore in fact a kind of membrane that is stretched out and vibrates, which the fish hears. Where the fish's head ends at the back, it has gills, which enable it to use the air in the water to breathe.

[ 22 ] If you follow all these things in the usual biological theories of evolution, you will always find the development presented in a rather primitive way. One thinks: the head of the fish develops a little higher, and then the head of a higher animal emerges, and the fin develops a little higher, and then the organs of movement of higher animals emerge, and so on. But it is not that simple when you follow the processes with spiritual observation. For a spiritual structure that has embodied itself as a fish to develop further, something much more complicated must happen. Many of the organs must be turned inside out and changed. The same forces that are at work in the swim bladder of the fish contain within themselves, as it were in a mother substance, the forces that humans have in their lungs. But they themselves are not lost. Small pieces remain behind, only they are turned inside out; everything that belongs to them disappears materially, and they then form the eardrum of the human being. In fact, the eardrum, as an organ that is very far removed from the human body in terms of space, is a piece of that membrane; the forces that functioned in the swim bladder of the fish are at work in it. And further: the gills are transformed into the ossicles, at least in part, so that in the human auditory organ, for example, you have modified gills. Now you can see that it is something like the swim bladder of a fish being turned inside out and placed over the gills. That is why in humans the eardrum is outside and the auditory organs are inside. What is completely outside in fish, the strange longitudinal lines through which fish orient themselves, form the three semicircular canals in humans through which humans maintain their balance. If you destroyed these three semicircular canals, humans would become dizzy and unable to maintain their balance.

[ 23 ] So you don't have a simple process from natural history, but rather a strange astral work in which things are constantly being turned inside out. Imagine that you have covered this hand with a glove, but inside you have structures that are elastic. If you now turn it inside out, it will be a very small structure; the organs that were on the outside will become small and tiny, and the organs that were on the inside will form a wide surface. Only then can we understand development, when we know that such an inversion takes place in the most mysterious way within the astral, and how the progression of the physical comes about from there.