The Rudolf Steiner Archive

The fourth post-Atlantean epoch, the epoch of the development of humanity's intellect, was guided by the Greek mystery centers. Initially, the mysteries provided the basis of this intellectual or mind culture for the general population of Asia Minor and southern Europe. The secret of human life and its connection with the sun played a major role in these mysteries. We know from the descriptions given in my book Theosophy how the ego lights up within man's intellectual or mind soul, after which it is meant to attain to its full inner power through the consciousness soul. Now, insofar as man's ego was destined to be developed during the age of the intellectual culture, the mysteries of that age had to be occupied with the secrets of the sun's life and particularly the sun's links with the human ego. You also know from my description in Riddles of Philosophy that the Greeks still perceived their ideas and concepts in the outer world, just as we today perceive colors, sounds, and so on. For the ancient Greeks, the element that dwells in concepts was not something merely created within the mind. It was something they beheld with the objects. In this respect, Goethe definitely possessed something of a Greek nature. He made this evident in the famous conversation with Schiller. When he heard Schiller say that his mental images—something conceptual and ideal—were not perceptions but ideas, Goethe replied that in this case he saw his ideas just as he saw external perceptions around him.

The Greeks' relationship to concepts was associated with a quite definite sensation the Greeks experienced when they directed their glance upon the outer world. In fact, they regarded the conceptual content that shone forth to them everywhere as the offspring of the sun's life. When the sun rose in the morning, they sensed the rising of conceptual life in space. With the setting sun they experienced the disappearance of the life of thought. We cannot understand the evolution of nations if we do not take into consideration this change in the soul life.

That faculty, my dear friends, has actually been lost from the soul life of human beings, namely, the faculty to sense and experience the spirituality of the whole environment. Today, a person sees the rise of the sun's round globe and only has an awareness of what is encountered there in the way of colored and shining atmospheric phenomena; it is the same when the sun is viewed as it disappears in the red glow of a sunset. The Greeks had the feeling that in the morning the world arose and bestowed on them their world of ideas. It vanished in the evening and a world then appeared that withdrew from them their world of ideas. In the darkness of night, they felt bereft of their ideas. When they looked up at the sky, which appears blue to us, but for which they used the same term as for “darkness,” they actually felt that the boundaries of space consisted of what was beyond conceptual life.

Where the Greeks saw the universe reaching a boundary, there ended for them the world of ideas with which the human being is endowed. Beyond this universe, the Greeks divined the existence of other worlds, the thought worlds of the gods. Those worlds seemed to them closely linked to what they designated as light.

They were revealed to them concentrated, as it were, in the sun's life, whereas, otherwise, they withdrew into the expanse of the dark cosmic firmament. We have to have insight into this quite different world of sensations if we are to understand the way in which this manner of perception in all its inner vitality affected the evolution of the human being for some time. We have to realize what the most advanced representatives of mankind felt when they could no longer experience the spiritual reflection of the sun's life in the cosmos upon them. And especially the most advanced representatives of humanity who had received their education in the Greek mysteries then experienced the Mystery of Golgotha as a salvation inasmuch as it once again brought about the possibility of enkindling this light within their being. The light such individuals had actually experienced earlier as a divine element they now wished to experience by means of participating with their soul and spirit in the events of the Mystery of Golgotha.

We do not acquire an actual knowledge of what has come to pass in mankind in the course of millennia when we merely study these things with the intellect. We have to focus on the transformation of the whole human mind and soul life. Living since the beginning of the fifteenth century in the age of the consciousness soul development, we have retained only the shadowy nature of our inner intellectual activity, of the spirituality of reason that existed in the fourth post-Atlantean period. I have outlined this here during the past few weeks. Now, once again, we have to struggle to attain an awareness of what can permeate our form of shadowy intellect with a living perception of the universe. It was precisely because of the modern culture of the shadowy intellect that the human being, in a manner of speaking, has been fettered to the earth. Today we actually consider only what the earth offers to us, particularly when we allow ourselves to be infected by the constantly expanding, purely scientific culture. People have no idea that they belong not only to the earth with their whole being but to the whole extraterrestrial universe as well. This knowledge of their connection with the cosmos beyond earth is something mankind must acquire once again.

We simply take earthly life today as the basis of our ideas and concepts and construe a view of the whole universe in accordance with conditions on earth. The resulting picture of the universe is then not much else than the transference of earthly conditions to extraterrestrial ones. Thus, by means of the tremendous achievements of modern science, through spectral analysis and other methods, a view of the sun was developed that is really modeled entirely upon earthly conditions. A conception is formed of what a luminous body of gas might look like. This conception is then transferred to what meets our eye as the sun in the cosmos. We must once again learn to use the materials of spiritual science to arrive at a conception of the sun. The physicist believes that the sun would present itself to him as a luminous sphere of gas if he were able to travel out into space. Yet, despite the fact that it reflects the cosmic light to us in its own way in the manner it receives it, the sun is a spiritual entity through and through. We are not dealing with a physical entity that moves about somewhere out there in the universe but with a completely spiritual being.

The Greeks still had the right feeling when they experienced the light, shining down upon them from the sun, as something that must be brought into a connec tion with their ego development insofar as this ego development is tied to the conceptual nature of the intellect. The sun's rays were to the Greeks something that enkindled their ego within them. It is therefore obvious that the Greeks still had a feeling for the spirituality of the cosmos. To them, the sun being was substantially a being related to the ego. The element the human being becomes aware of when he says "I" to himself, the force that works in him and enables him to say “I” to himself, this is what the Greeks looked at. They felt called upon to address the sun in the same way they addressed their ego, to regard the sun with the same feelings they had for their ego.

Ego and sun are the inner and the outer aspects of the same being. What orbits out there through space as the sun is the cosmic I. What lives within me is the human I.

One is inclined to say that this sensation is still faintly perceptible to those who have a somewhat deeper feeling of affinity for nature. The basis of such an experience has already vanished to a large degree. Yet, something is still alive in the human being today that is attuned to the rise of the sun in springtime, that can still experience the spirituality of the sunbeam and can feel how the ego is imbued with new life when the rays of the sun illuminate the earth with greater intensity. Yet, it is but a last, faint sensation that, even in this external manner, is dying out in mankind. It is about to disappear in the abstract, shadowy culture of the intellect that has gradually become prevalent in the whole of civilized life today. However, we must once again reach the point where some recognition can be gained of humanity's relationship with super-sensible existence. In this respect I want to point out a number of things today.

By bringing together all the references found here and there in anthroposophical literature, we shall be able, first of all, to comprehend once more the sun's connection with the ego. We shall be able to perceive the significant contrast between the forces radiating from the sun to the earth and those forces that are active in what we term the moon. Sun and moon are in a certain respect total opposites. Complete polarity exists between them. When we study the sun by means of spiritual science, we find that the sun sends down to us everything that fashions us into bearers of our ego. We owe to the rays of the sun what in fact bestows on us the human form and, in the latter, molds us into an image of the ego. What works in the human being from outside and determines his form from without even as early as the embryonic stage are influences from the sun. When the human embryo is developing in the womb, a great deal more is taking place than what present-day science is dreaming about, namely, that forces originate from the impregnated mother that then develop the human being. No, the human embryo merely rests in the mother's body; it is given form by the sun's forces. It is true, however, that we must bring these sun forces into connection with the moon's forces that have opposite effects. The moon forces become evident, above all, as the inner influence in the lower, metabolic nature of man. In drawing an outline, we may therefore say: The sun's forces are the element molding the human being from outside. What develops in the metabolic processes from within are the moon's forces, positioning themselves within the human organism and radiating outward from the center.

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This does not contradict the fact that these moon forces also play a part, for instance, in forming the human countenance, They shape the face because the effects that proceed from the center, from the lower, metabolic system, exert an attracting power, as it were, from outside on the development of the human face. The moon forces have a differentiating effect on this development due to adding their influence to that of the sun's forces while counteracting the latter from within the human being. For this reason, the organism connected with human reproduction depends on the moon forces, which bestow the form. On the other hand, the result of procreation depends on the sun forces. With their whole being human beings are placed into the polarity between sun forces and moon forces.

In seeking the moon forces within the inner human organism, we have to distinguish them in the metabolic process from the forces originating within this process itself. The moon forces play into the metabolism but the latter possesses its own forces. These are the earth forces. The forces contained in food substances, in vegetables and other foods, work in the human being by virtue of their own nature. Here, they are active as earth forces. Metabolism is primarily a result of the earth's forces, but elements of the moon's forces work into them. If the human being possessed only the metabolic process with its forces, if only the substances of his foods would unfold their forces in his body after having been consumed, then he would have nothing but a chaotic play of all kinds of forces. The fact that these forces continuously work to renew the human being from within does not depend at all on the earth; it is due to the moon that is added to earth. The human being is shaped from within outwards by the moon, from without inwards by the sun. Inasmuch as the sun's rays are received through the eye into the human head organization, they also have an inward effect; nevertheless, they still work from outside in.

Thus, on the one hand, in regard to his whole ego development the human being depends on the influence of the sun; without the sun he could not be an ego dwelling solidly on the earth. On the other hand, there would be no human race, no propagation, if the moon were not the earth's companion. It is possible to say that it is the sun that firmly places the human being as a personality, as an individual, on the earth. It is the moon that conjured human beings in their multitude, in their whole evolution, upon the earth. The human race in its physical succession of generations is the result of the moon forces, which stimulate human beings. Man as a single being, an individuality, is the product of the sun forces. Therefore, if we wish to study the human being as well as the human race, we cannot study merely the conditions of earth. Geologists seek in vain to investigate the earth's conditions in order to comprehend the human being; they study in vain the other forces of earth so as to arrive at this understanding. Human beings are not primarily a creation of the earth. They are formed out of the cosmos; they are the offspring of the world of the stars, above all, of sun and moon. From the earth, only those forces are derived that are contained in matter itself. They are effective outside man and then continue their effects when, through eating and drinking, they have entered into the human being, but there they are received by something that is of an unearthly nature.

The processes that take place within the human being are by no means merely earthly ones; they are definitely something provided for out of starry worlds. It is this insight that human beings have to struggle to attain once again.

When we observe the human being further, we can take into consideration, first of all, that he is a physical body. This body absorbs the external foods. They in turn extend their forces into this physical body. But the latter is also taken hold of by the astral body, and in it the moon's influence is active in the manner I have just described. The sun's effect also plays into this astral body. Imbuing it with their forces, sun and moon permeate the astral body, and the latter works in the manner I have outlined above. The etheric body stands in the middle between physical and astral body.

When we study the forces coming from foodstuffs, we find, to begin with, that they are active in the physical body, and, in the manner I described earlier, are then taken hold of by the astral body containing the sun and moon influences. But in between the physical and astral bodies we find something else that is active in the etheric body. It, too, is not derived from the earth but from the whole surrounding cosmos. When we study the earth with its products in relation to the human being, the substances composed of solid, liquid, or aeriform ingredients, we see that they are consumed by the human being and then worked upon by the forces of sun and moon. In addition, there are also active in man forces that stream in from all directions of the universe. The forces active in the foodstuffs come from the earth. Those streaming into the human being from all corners of the universe are the etheric forces. They also take hold of the foodstuffs, but in a much more uniform manner, and transform them in such a way that they become inwardly capable of life. In addition, the etheric forces turn these foodstuffs into something that can inwardly experience the etheric element as such, namely, light and warmth. Thus, we can say that because of his physical body the human being is part of the earth, because of his etheric body he is related to the whole surrounding sphere, and because of his astral body man in connected above all with the effects of moon and sun.

Now, these effects of moon and sun contained in the astral body are in turn modified. They are modified to the extent that a powerful difference exists between the effects upon the upper human organization and those on the lower human organism.

Let us refer today to the part of the human being that is permeated by the bloodstream flowing upwards toward the head as “upper human organization”; let us refer to what lies below the heart as “lower human organism.” In viewing the human being thus, we have, first of all, the upper part including his head and whatever is organically connected with it. Its formation is dependent mainly on the sun's effects and also develops first during embryonic life. Already in the embryo, the sun's effects work on this organization in a quite special way, but these effects then continue after birth when the human being is present physically in the life between birth and death. Roughly speaking, what lies in this part of the human organism above the heart—a more detailed description would have to trace the blood circulation above the heart—is then modified in regard to the astral influences by Saturn, Jupiter, and Mars (see outline p. 248).

According to the Copernican world view, Saturn has forces it develops in its orbit around the sun and then sends down to the earth. It possesses those forces that are effective in the whole human astral body, particularly in the part belonging to the above mentioned upper organism of man. Saturn possesses the forces that stream into this astral body. As these forces penetrate and enliven the latter, they essentially determine the extent to which the astral body places itself in a proper relationship to the physical body. When a person cannot sleep well, for example, when his astral body does not properly emerge from the etheric and physical bodies, when it does not correctly reenter them upon awakening, or in some other way does not fit itself properly into the physical body, then this is an effect, but an irregular one, of the Saturn forces. Saturn is chiefly that celestial body that, by way of the human head, brings about a correct relationship of the astral body to the human physical and etheric bodies. By means of this, on the other hand, it is the Saturn forces that produce the connection between astral body and ego because of Saturn's relation to the sun. This relationship of Saturn to the sun's effect is expressed in regard to space and time in the fact that Saturn completes its orbit around the sun in a period of thirty years.

In the human being this relationship of Saturn to the sun comes to expression in the ego achieving an appropriate relationship to the astral body, and above all, in the proper incorporation of the astral body into the whole human organization. Thus, we can say Saturn possesses a relationship to the upper part of the whole human astral body. This relationship was definitely an important factor for people in ancient times. Even in Egypto-Chaldean times, going back to the third and fourth millennium prior to the Mystery of Golgotha, we would find that among the teachers, the sages in the mysteries, every individual was judged according to how he had determined his relationship to Saturn by the date of his birth. For these wise men knew quite well that depending on whether a person was born during one or another of Saturn's celestial positions, he was one who could use his astral body in the physical body in a more efficient or less efficient manner. Insight into such things played an important role in ancient times. The progress of mankind's evolution, however, is denoted precisely by the fact that in our age, which, as you know, began in the fifteenth century, we are freeing ourselves of the influences affecting us there.

My dear friends, do not misunderstand this. It does not mean that Saturn is not active in us today. It works in us just as it did in antiquity; the point is that we have to free ourselves from it. And do you know in what this freeing ourselves in the proper way from the Saturn influences consists? You free yourself most poorly from the Saturn influences if you follow the shadowy intellect of the present time. In doing so you actually permit the Saturn effects to run riot within yourself, to shoot hither and thither, and actually to turn you into what is nowadays called a nervous person. A nervous condition in a person is caused mainly by the fact that the astral body does not fit properly into the whole physical configuration. The nervousness of our age is due to this. Human beings must be induced to strive for real perception, for Imagination. If they remain with abstract conception, they will become more and more nervous, for they are actually growing out of the Saturn activity, which is nevertheless within them, shooting back and forth, pulling the astral body out of the nerves, thus making people nervous. In a cosmic sense, the nervousness of our age has to be recognized as an effect of Saturn.

Just as Saturn is chiefly involved with the upper part of the whole astral body inasmuch as the latter is connected with the whole organism through the nervous system, so Jupiter is active in thinking (see outline p. 248).

Human thinking, after all, is also based in a certain way on a partial activity of the astral body. I should say, a smaller part of the astral body is active in thinking than in sustaining the whole human being. It is Jupiter's effect that works in our astral body and, above all, strengthens our thinking. The effect of Jupiter deals mainly with the astral permeation and organization of the human brain.

Now, Saturn's effects actually extend over the whole of adult human life after the first three decades of our life. For our whole life and health depend on how we develop in our astral body during the periods of growth, and in fact, they only cease after age thirty. That is why Saturn requires thirty years to circle around the sun. This completely fits the human being. The thinking that develops in us has to do with the first twelve years of life. After all, what orbits out there in space is not without a connection to the human being.

Just as Jupiter has to do with thinking, so Mars has to do with speech.

Saturn—upper part of the whole astral body

Jupiter—thinking

Mars—speech

Mars separates a still smaller part of the astral body from its incorporation into the remaining human organization than the one that comes into play in regard to thinking. And it depends on the Mars effects within us that the forces can unfold that then pour into speech. The small revolution of Mars also has a bearing on this. A human being acquires the first sounds of speech within a time span that corresponds roughly to half the Martian orbit around the sun.

Ascending and descending development! We see how this whole development is linked with the forces of Saturn, Jupiter, and Mars insofar as it is tied to the region of the human head.

We have thus considered the outer planets' activity in the human astral body. Whereas the sun is connected more with the ego, these three cosmic bodies, Saturn, Jupiter, and Mars, have to do with the development of what is tied to the astral body, namely, speech, thinking, and the whole conduct of the human soul in the human organism.

Besides the sun, which has to do with the actual ego, we also have in addition those planets called the inner planets. They are the ones that are closer to earth than to the sun, having their place between earth and sun, whereas, seen from the earth, the other planets, Saturn, Jupiter, and Mars, are on the other side of the sun. When we focus on these inner planets, we likewise arrive at a consideration of the connections between their forces and the human being. To begin with, we shall consider Mercury.

Similar to the moon, Mercury has its target points more in the inner being of man, working from outside only on the human countenance. In the part lying below the region of the heart, its forces are effective by taking hold inwardly of the human organization and, in turn, streaming forth from there. Mercury's chief task is to bring the astral body's activity into all breathing and circulation processes of the human being. Mercury is the intercessor between the astral body and the rhythmic processes in man. Thus, we are able to say that its forces intercede between the astral element and the rhythmic activity (see outline on p. 250). Due to this, similar to the moon forces, the Mercury forces also intervene in the whole human metabolism, but only insofar as the metabolism is subject to rhythm, reacting upon rhythmic activity.

Then there is Venus. Venus is active especially in the human etheric body, in what works out of the cosmos in the human etheric body and its activities.

Finally we have the moon, which we have already mentioned. It is the element in the human being that is the polar opposite of the sun forces. From within, it leads substances into the realm of life and therefore is also connected with reproduction. In the fullest sense, the moon stimulates inner reproduction as well as the procreative process of reproduction.

You realize now that what actually takes place in the human being is becoming evident to you in its dependence on the surrounding cosmos. On the one hand, with the physical body, the human being is tied to the earthly forces. On the other hand, he is linked to the whole cosmic environment with his etheric body. In that body, differentiations occur in the manner I have just outlined, and inasmuch as the differentiation proceeds primarily from man's astral body, the forces of Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Mercury, Venus and moon integrate themselves into this body. By way of the ego, the sun is also active in man. Now take into consideration that due to the fact that the human being is integrated into the cosmos in this manner, it makes a difference whether a person stands at a given spot on the earth, and Jupiter, for instance, shines down on him from the sky, or whether he is in a location where Jupiter is covered by the earth. In the first case, Jupiter's effects on the person are direct ones; in the second case, the earth is placed in between. This results in a significant difference.

We have said that Jupiter is connected with thinking. Let us assume a person receives the direct Jupiter influence during the period when his physical organ of thinking is in the stage of major development after birth. His brain will be formed into a quite special organ of thinking; the person receives a certain predisposition to thinking. Assume that a person spends these years in a place where Jupiter is on the opposite side of the earth, the latter thus hindering Jupiter's influences. Such a person's brain is less developed into an organ for thinking. If, on the other hand, the earth with its substances and forces is active in a person and everything proceeding from them is transformed, say, by the moon influences, which, in a certain sense, are always present, such a person turns into a dull dreamer, one who is barely aware. Between these two possibilities we find any number of variations.

Let us take the case of an individual possessing forces from his former incarnation that predestine his thinking to develop in a pronounced way in the earth life on which he is about to embark. He is on the verge of descending to earth. Since Jupiter has its set time for completing its orbit, he chooses the moment when he is to appear on earth, when he is to be born, so that Jupiter sends down its rays directly.

In this manner, the starry constellation provides the setting into which the human being allows himself to be born, depending on the conditions of his former incarnations.

Today, in the age of the consciousness soul, the human being must free himself increasingly from what is becoming evident to you here. It is a matter, however, of freeing oneself from these forces in the proper manner, of actually doing something I have indicated in regard to the Saturn effects, namely of trying to turn once again from the mere shadowy, intellectual developing of thoughts to a pictorial, concrete one. What is developed out of spiritual science in the way I described it in Knowledge of the Higher Worlds is also a guideline for human beings to become independent in the right way from the cosmic forces that are nevertheless active in them.

It depends on the starry constellations how a human being finds his way into earth life as he allows himself to be born. Yet, he has to equip himself with forces that make him independent in the right way from this starry constellation.

It is to such insights that our civilization must attain once again, insights concerning the relationship of the human being with the cosmos beyond the earth. Human beings must acquire an attitude that makes them realize that it is not only the ordinary forces of heredity acknowledged by today's science that are active in the human organization. In regard to the actual facts it is sheer nonsense, for example, to believe that the forces transmitted through heredity are contained in the structure of the female organism. Nowadays, heredity is an unclear, mystical concept; it is thought that the above forces then develop a heart, a liver, and so on. There would be no heart in the human organism if the sun did not incorporate it into the latter, and proceeding from the head at that. There would be no liver if Venus would not incorporate it into the human organism. And so it is with each single organ. They are certainly connected with extraterrestrial effects. The Jupiter forces are active in the human brain. The Saturn forces influence the healthy or pathological way in which the astral body is fitted into the physical organization. Human beings learn to speak because the Mars forces work in them; they become evident through speech.

These are matters humanity must once again learn to understand. We must realize that human beings cannot be explained by a science that merely considers earthly phenomena. Then, the connection between the human being and the earth will also become better known. After all, the other beings dwelling in our surroundings are also not merely creatures of the earth. To begin with, only the minerals are earth beings. Yet, in the minerals, too, changes have taken place that in turn were dependent upon forces in the earth's cosmic environment. Insofar as they are crystallized, all our metals owe their shape to extraterrestrial forces. They were formed when the earth had not yet evolved its own forces intensely but when forces from outside the earth were still active in it. Healing properties contained in minerals and particularly in metals are connected with the way the metals developed within the earth through cosmic forces.

When we go back in the post-Atlantean age to the first epoch, when the ancient Indian culture was at its prime, we see that the human being definitely experienced himself in the whole universe, as a citizen of the cosmos. Although he had not yet developed the faculties mankind is so proud of today, he was Man in the true sense of the word.

Subsequently, the human being was more or less diverted from the cosmic forces. Still, in the whole Chaldean epoch and early Greek time, we see that human beings looked up at least to the sun. In a certain sense, they were still like a kind of amphibian, a being that was happy when the rays of the sun poured down upon it and it no longer had to burrow in the earth's dankness. The human being had turned into an amphibian. Now, inasmuch as he believes he is related only to the earth's forces, one cannot even say any longer that man is like a mole. At most, he is really an earthworm that is aware of the return of something that rose in the first place from earth into space, namely, of rain water. This is the only thing the human being still perceives of extraterrestrial forces. But even earthworms perceive that—you could have seen it this morning if you had set foot in the streets! In his materialism, the human being today has basically turned into an earthworm. Once again, we must overcome this earthworm nature. We can do that only when we develop to the point of recognizing our connection with the cosmos outside the earth.

Therefore, my dear friends, the point is that we must bring it about in our age to lift ourselves out of our civilization and this earthworm-state to a new spirituality.

I am somewhat anxious about what I have to say today, for if I could spare three months in which to develop the aspects of my subject, it could not easily be dismissed as fantasy. But I must offer you a mere cursory introduction, within the limits of an hour, in order to make the following special problems of healing quite clear. Therefore much will seem without foundation. Nevertheless I will try to show in the presentation of the subject, that these matters are indeed well-founded—even better-founded than those on which the natural science of today has been built.

Let us first consider the formative process of plants as such, in its relationship to the cosmos. We have already pointed out that in man the opposite process to that of plant formation is active in a functional sense. Therefore, in order to find the direct correspondence in man, we must at least indicate in outline the formative process of plants As is apparent, there are two distinct and quite opposite tendencies in this process. One tendency is earthwards, and I have already suggested that in trees the main stem forms a sort of excrescence of the earth, so that the flowers and leaves are rooted in the trunk, just as herbs and plants of lower types are rooted in the earth. There is this tendency of the plant towards the earth; but on the other hand, the plant has an impulse upwards, away from the earth. The plant strives to escape from the earth, not merely mechanically by virtue of a force opposed to the pull of gravity but also in its whole formative process, internal as well. The processes in the flower become different from those in the root; they become far more dependent on extra-terrestrial or extra-telluric forces than the root. This dependence of the flower formation upon forces originating outside the earth must first be considered and we shall find that the same forces utilised by the plant to initiate the formation of flower and seed are also necessary to the human hypogastrium, because of the functional reversal of the plant process in man. They are utilised through the abdomen as well as in all functions of evacuation secretion and the physical base of sex. So if we examine the complementary relationship of man and the plant, we find special correspondences to the extra-telluric as well as to the telluric.

Please notice here that what I maintain has not been derived from the medical works of the past, but is based entirely on contemporary spiritual-scientific research. I only try to use sometimes the terms of the old literature of medicine, as modern literature contains no suitable vocabulary. But it would be a complete mistake to suppose that any item of my course here is simply derived from archaic sources.

Observe the growth of the plant as it rises upwards out of the earth. You must take note of the spiral sequence in the actual formation of the leaves and of the flower. You might say that the formative forces follow a spiral course around the central stalk. This spiral course cannot be explained by internal forces of tension in the plant. No; its origin is to be sought in the influence that works from the extra-telluric sphere, and chiefly in the influence of the sun's apparent path through the heavens. (Let us say “apparent,” for the respective motions of earth and sun can only be taken relatively.) There are indeed points of view better than the mathematics of Galileo, from which to study the paths of the heavenly bodies; they trace themselves in the sequence of formative processes in the plant. For what the stars do is faithfully copied by the plant.

It would be quite mistaken, however, to reckon only with the vertical upward impulse in plants, that depends upon the sun. The stars co-operate in a resultant with movements caused by the sun. If the sun's action were the sole operating force, it would take complete possession, so to speak, and the plant would be drawn upwards into the infinite. (See Diagram 9). The solar force is, however, counteracted to some degree by that of the outer planets, in their spiral courses. For planets as a matter of fact, do not move in an ellipse; their orbits are spiral. It is time today that the whole Copernican system was re-examined and superseded by another. The so-called outer planets are Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. (Uranus and Neptune are only members of the solar system in an astronomical sense; they do not really belong to it by origin; they are foreign bodies that have become attracted and attached to our system. They are guests, invited to our planetary system, and we are right to omit them.) The forces of the superior planets deflect the plant's upward tendency, so as to bank up the formative forces which cause the formation of flower and seed. So if you consider the plant's upward development, from the region of formation of the foliage, you must ascribe it to the combined action of of the Sun's influence and that of Mars, Jupiter and Saturn.

There are not only these two elements in co-operation. Marshalled against them are the influences from the Moon and the so-called inferior planets, Mercury, and Venus. The Moon, Mercury and Venus cause the earthward, downward tendency in the plant, which manifests itself most characteristically in the formation of the root. Thus all that seems essentially earthy is really a joint product of the action of the Moon, and that of the inferior planets. So I would say that the plant expresses and bears the imprint of our whole planetary system. Until we know this, and learn also how to recognise the planetary manifestations in man as well we cannot thoroughly understand the relationship between the plant structure and the human structure.

Now consider the fact that plants with a prevailing tendency towards root-formation leave much more ash when they are burnt than is left by plants that tend towards the formation of blossoms or even by mistletoe and, tree-plants. This difference is caused by the greater influence of the inner heavenly bodies, Moon, Mercury and Venus, on plants with great root development. And if you search in their ashes, iron, manganese, and silicon will be found, all of them substances with direct remedial qualities, as is shown when any portion of the plant is used.

But if plants of the opposite type are exposed to the action of fire, there is but little ash. And in these different results of the same process of incineration, we have something I would describe as an external document of the plant's relation to the whole cosmic order, and not to forces ruling on earth alone.

Now consider the plant world more closely. In the case of annual plants, growth stops abruptly at a certain season of the year with the formation of seed. As we have seen, seed formation is mainly governed by extra-terrestrial forces. But its course is interrupted and it is given over to the earth again. It must, as it were, continue at a lower stage in the new year, what had reached a higher stage in the old year The course of plant life and growth is a remarkable one. Take the earth's surface; the plant emerges from the soil, reaching out to its fullest extent towards the extra-terrestrial spheres. But then what has developed extra-terrestrially is sown again in the soil, and the cycle begins anew. (See Diagram 10). Thus every year the heavenly forces sink into the ground, mingle with the forces of the earth, and again complete their course. Year by year the seed of the flower is returned again to the root region, to complete the rhythmic cycle to which all plant life is subject.

This rhythmic cycle is proof that what we term the flora of earth is in truth a manifestation of the whole earth's interaction with the extra-terrestrial cosmos. This interaction, therefore, is not restricted to the form of our planet, but extends to its internal chemistry and its whole system of organic life. Just as what is earthly in the mechanism in the form is overcome by the cosmic forces, so also is the terrestrial chemistry in plants overcome by the forces outside the earth; and when this overcoming has reached a certain point, the process must return again to earth and display earthly chemistry. From these facts it is not a farfetched conclusion that the specific chemistry of the earth is revealed in the ashes; it is represented in the refuse, the dross of the living sphere. This dross and ash is subject to gravity, whereas the upward urge and growth of the plant is a continual conquest of gravity, and of other earth-bound forces, so that we may properly speak of a polar opposition between gravity and light. Light is that which continually overcomes gravity. And the plant is so to speak set into the tension of this combat between light and weight, between that which strives towards ashes and that which strives towards fire. And this polar contrast between what becomes ashes and what is revealed in flame, is the opposition of ponderable and imponderable elements. There we have revealed the cosmic place and role of plant life.

What of man? We have already maintained that we shall not understand him aright, unless we recognise his polar orientation also. I have pointed out that the part that grows upwards from below, in man grows downwards from above; the sexual and excretory processes in man correspond to the flowers and seed vessels, whereas his root formation points upwards. In man, however, it remains in the realm of functions; in plants it becomes a material process.

So man presents us with manifestations that are the direct opposite of those of the plant. In him we have not only the manifestations, but the bearer of them. So you must distinguish in man the functions sending their roots upwards, and the functions tending downward; and as surrounding sheath of both, his material body, which in its turn has an upward tendency. That which happens artificially and externally in respect of plants—the removal from the upper sphere and implanting into the lower level—in man becomes a continuous process. In him there is a constant double current in every process from above downwards and from below upwards, and the relationship of these currents is the core of health and disease. We cannot begin to understand the complex processes in man, if we do not consider the facts I have just described. On the one hand is a material carrier working upwards from the earth, and on the other, something else, working from above downwards, is inserted into the carrier.

It is easy to see that the interaction of these forces determines health or disease in man, especially when, half in despair, so to say, one meets the most important fact, that the human organism has to be treated quite differently according to whether the upper region or the “sub-cardiac” regions are affected. They must be viewed according to quite different principles.

Let us cite an example; the relationship of common rickets to cranio-tabes, which to many people is quite mysterious. These two afflictions seem so closely related if the human individual is viewed as a unity, whereas in truth they should be considered in the in the light of perfectly different principles, as they originate in regions of man that are polar to one another. This has an important bearing upon the healing process. Medical men who obtain certain favourable results in cases of rickets, through some form of phosphoric application, will probably fail completely in cases of cranio-tabes, which require an opposite therapeutic method, probably an application of some form of carbonate of lime. But this is a mere illustration of a truth that is quite general; though its statement is apt to be unwelcome. Where the treatment of human beings is in question in the domain of medicine, it is a fact that whatever remedy is prescribed, and whatever rule is laid down, their exact opposites may also be true and efficacious in certain cases. A very annoying circumstance! It is perfectly possible to prescribe a thoroughly sound and effective method of treatment for such and such a case; and then if it is applied to what appear to be the very same symptoms, to find that it proves no remedy, and that the exact opposite must be applied. Thus it is always possible to meet, and even beat, one theory of treatment with another on the medical field; for most people are not aware that only one part of man can be treated remedially according to any one method, and that another region requires a different method, this is the point we must grasp here.

Now let us carefully examine the sphere that in plants appears visibly separated in two, whereas in man it forms one aspect of his whole constitution. I referred to the three formative impulses which are in some degree inherent in external nature; the impulse to saline formation the impulse to mercurial formation and the tendency peculiar to certain substances such as phosphorus and sulphur to conserve within themselves the imponderable forces to become their carriers.

What is the difference between these formative impulses of external nature, in so far as our present subject is concerned? All that is saline in its process tends to saline formation, leading our internal processes in to the realm of gravity. Those who study the medical works of the past would do well to keep in mind, wherever they find references to the “salification” of substances, that by this process the substance in question is subjected to the force of gravity, and by the opposite process, the light process, it is liberated from gravity; that is, the imponderables are so liberated. Accordingly if we accept light as the representative of all other imponderable forces, we must conceive the whole of external nature as involved in the struggle between light and gravity, between the force that strives towards the extra-terrestrial and the force that makes earth's substances tend towards the centre. We have here the polarity between light and gravity; and in between, that which perpetually seeks the balance between the two and manifests mercurially For the mercurial element is simply something that continually seeks to maintain a state of equilibrium between light and gravity.

We have to visualise the place and office of the imponderables working between the saline, the phosphoric, and the mercurial elements in the whole cosmic scheme, i.e., in gravity, in the light forces, and in that which ever seeks an equilibrium midway between them. Now into the very centre of these mighty forces and tensions is placed in a remarkable way the whole activity of our human heart. It is an appalling feature of the current natural scientific view, that quite apart from the pump-theory, which is untenable, as I have already demonstrated, all heart functions are thought to be enclosed within the limits of the individual being's skin. It is assumed that the heart is somehow connected with the substances that pulsate rhythmically within the limits of the body. But in truth, man with his organic system is inserted into the whole process of the universe, and the human heart is not merely an organ pertaining to his organism, but belongs to the whole world process. That tension of opposite forces which we have traced in the plant, that alternation and interplay of super-solar and infra-solar forces, is also manifest in man in the movements of the heart. The heart movements are not only an imprint of what takes place in man, they are also an imprint of extra-human conditions. For in the human heart you may see reflected as in a mirror, the whole process of the universe. Man is individualised merely as a being of soul and spirit. In other aspects of being, he is inserted into the universal process, so that, for instance, the beats of his heart are not only an expression of what takes place within man, but also of that contest between light and gravity that fills the whole cosmic stage.

I have often had occasion to put this cosmic-human interaction before laymen, in a rough and obvious way, by means of the following calculation. Let us assume that the human being draws breath eighteen times in the course of one minute. In one day of twenty-four hours, this will amount to 25,920 breaths. Now take one day of human life and note further that there are 360 or 365 days in the year assume that the human individual attains average old age, that of seventy-one years (one may, of course, become much older). In that case we shall find as many days in the course of life, as there are breaths in one day of twenty-four hours: namely 25,915. Now take the path of the sun through the constellations of the Zodiac, the platonic year, namely, the time necessary for the point of sunrise to return to Aries at the Vernal Equinox; this amounts to 25,920 of our terrestrial years. Here you have a remarkable example in numbers of the human relation to the whole universe. The course of the sun through the heavens in the platonic year is expressed by the same number as the days of a human life. This is easily reckoned, but it points the way into profound depths of the foundations of the world. Bear in mind—as we have had occasion to stress in Anthroposophy—that in sleep the ego and the astral body of man leave the physical and etheric bodies, and that on awakening, they return to them again. Visualise these exits and re-entries as exhalations and inhalations of the soul and spiritual element by the physical body; you will find that there are 25,915 or 25,920 of such “breaths” in the course of a normal life (the difference of five is due to leap-year days), which obviously must represent a “day” in relation to some other rhythm. And again there must be something in the cosmos which is inserted according to the same numerical terms into the solar revolution. Here is a rhythm in world occurrences that manifests on a large scale; it manifests also in an individual human life, and in the function of respiration during the day. You will no longer find it unaccountably strange that the ancient world, out of their old clairvoyance, spoke of the days and nights of Brahma, the in-breathing and out-breathing of the world; for these ancients had found the breathing of heaven reflected in the mirror of the everyday life-process of man.

Because of these concrete facts, and not because of any sympathies or antipathies, we arrive at a true reverence for primeval wisdom. I can assure you that I should not reverence the ancient wisdom, had I not had the proof in countless cases, that we can re-discover today things already contained in it, things that had been lost and forgotten between the knowledge accumulated of old and that which we are now able to attain. The reverence for ancient wisdom that grows on the seeker after real knowledge is not the result of any vague general inclination, but springs from the comprehension of certain quite concrete conditions and facts.

If we are in quest of the forces akin to light, we must turn to the outer planets of our system, to Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. And as all that happens on earth is in some degree the effect of extra-terrestrial agents, we must look here for the effects of what happens in the cosmos. This leads us to examine the various substances in the earth, but not to look for the causes of their configuration or general consistency in the abstract and fantastic manner of the molecular physics and molecular atomic chemistry of today. This atomic chemistry which looks, as it were, into what is impenetrable to our vision, into the inmost recesses of the constitution of matter. devises all kinds of fine guesswork about atoms and molecules. It then proudly talks of “astronomical recognition” of what goes on in the interior of material structure: or rather, it did so twenty years ago, and does so perhaps less often today. That was a subject of discussion some time ago; today these processes are photographed, as I mentioned in a recent public lecture, and in spiritualistic circles photography is also called in to depict spirits!

Just as scientific investigators are disinclined to believe in “spirit” photography, so must they permit us, who see through these things from another angle, to reject their atomic photography as well. For the same delusion is at work here also.

In plants, it is not forces bound to atoms and molecules that we have to consider, but those that affect the earth by their impact from without, and permeate its substances. Not those tiny demons, the molecules and atoms, but the cosmic forces, shape the internal and external structure of matter. Let us take an example. Suppose that a planet in extra-terrestrial space is in an especially favourable position for working on a certain portion of our sphere. Assume Saturn to be the planet in question and that Saturn can best exercise its full influence when the direction of other planetary influences strike the earth as far away as possible from its own, and do not mingle with nor deflect them; (See Diagram 11) i.e., when the Sun, Mars, and other bodies are not in or near a line from Saturn to the earth. Then the Saturnian force impinges directly on our planet. And if conditions are favourable in the portion of earth directly under Saturn's influence, that Unmixed and undeflected Saturnian influence causes a structure to he formed there differing from that due to the action of Mars under similar conditions.

Earth's substances are the combined result of forces from the stars In the case cited as illustration, the effect of such action is shown in the production of lead. This is why we must associate certain substances in the earth—especially metals—with certain planetary positions in the extra-telluric universe. What the ancient wisdom of mankind offers us, can only be truly understood when it is discovered afresh. It is impossible for anyone accustomed to think in modern chemical and physical terms to read the ancient writings. This is shown by the following example. In a history of alchemy an extremely clever Norwegian scholar described a process, which, as he quite truly remarks, is mere nonsense according to modern chemical concepts, for it gives no result. It is a process concerned with lead. But he failed to see that this process explained the process of seed formation! He referred the statements to a laboratory experiment, which, of course, made nonsense. He did not realise that the terminology of archaic alchemy must be transferred, so to speak, to another plane, and that many of its expressions must be read in a wholly different sense. Therefore he made nonsense of the passage. His opinion was, of course, both right and wrong. Thus we cannot but assume a relationship between terrestrial substances and the forces impinging on the earth from the surrounding world.

The study of metals in particular, on the lines indicated, leads to concrete relationships, so that we must ascribe their formations as follows. Lead results from the unimpeded action of Saturn, tin from that of Jupiter, iron from Mars, copper from Venus, and what is now termed quicksilver from Mercury. Similarly we must recognise a relationship between everything of the nature of silver, all that is silvery—I use this term with intention—and the unimpeded action of the Moon. It is pleasantly amusing to read in contemporary books that the reason why the ancient world associated silver with the Moon, was because of the Moon's silvery radiance—merely because of this external appearance! Anyone who is aware how careful and minute were the studies made of old as to the properties of the various metals—along their own lines, naturally—will not fall into such error. Moreover, the conception I have given leaves, as you will perceive, ample room for other substances than the six most distinctive metals (lead, tin, iron, copper, quicksilver and silver) to come into being through the combination of planetary forces. This joint action of planetary forces means that various other planetary influences combine with the typical ones which we indicated. In this manner, the less representative metals originate. And in any case, earth's wealth of metals is the result of forces acting on the earth from without. Here is the link between the workings of metals and the formation of plants. If you summarise the agencies contained in lead, tin and iron, you have there everything connected with flower and seed formation in plants; inasmuch as these processes take place extra-terrestrially above the surface of the earth. And all that is of the nature of copper, silver or mercury, must be related to everything connected with the formation of plant roots.

As on the one side, the mercurial element acts as an equalising agent, you will certainly look for a corresponding equilibrium on the other side. The mercury element is the balancing factor between the telluric and that which is to some degree supra-telluric. But our whole universe is permeated with spirit. Thus another polarity arises. The terrestrial and extra-terrestrial poles represent the polar opposite of gravity and light. This offers only one possibility—the existence of a state of balance between the terrestrial and the extra-terrestrial elements. But there is another state of equilibrium between that which permeates all matter equally, whether it be terrestrial or extra-terrestrial, and matter itself; an equilibrium between the spiritual and the material, whether the latter be ponderable or imponderable. At every point of the material world, the balance must be held between it and the spiritual, and equally so in the universe. For us, the first and nearest agency that holds the balance in the universe, is the Sun itself. The Sun holds the balance between the spiritual in the universe and the material in the universe. Thus the Sun has a twofold aspect; as a heavenly body it establishes order in the planetary system, but at the same time it maintains order among the forces that permeate the material system. Just as we are able to link the individual planets with the metals as I have already described, so can we also establish the relationship of the Sun to gold. The ancients actually prized gold, not for its material value, but on account of its relationship with the Sun, and with the balance between spirit and matter.

We should recognise that all that we divide and separate on earth, both in our thoughts and in our actions, in nature is actually united in some way or another. In our thoughts we separate what is subject to gravity, and therefore tends to salt formation, from that which bears the light and is therefore akin to the workings of light; and we separate both these categories from what is contained in the state of equilibrium between the two. But in nature there are no such absolute divisions. All these ways of working are connected one with another, adjusted to one another, so that they form highly intricate constructions, and one of these intricate structural systems is shown in the lustre of the metal gold; for it is through gold that the spiritual realm looks, as it were, right into the external world. This directs your attention to possibilities with which I will deal parenthetically—for you may be able to do fruitful work, by utilising in contemporary literature suggestions obtainable from ancient literature. In doing the scientific papers suggested yesterday, you will be able to make use of indications in the ancient literature, if you can understand it aright. Thus it is most important to notice how in old writings all these primary principles, salt, mercury and phosphorus, were seen to be in every substance in different combinations, and to note the diligence with which it was sought to liberate and extract these three principles from a given substance. The ancients believed that lead was formed in the manner described above, but lead—like gold or copper—contains all three principles, salt, mercury and phosphorus. So, in order that we may be able to treat man with one or all of these, we must be able to extract or separate it in some way, from the substances with which it is united. In the chemistry of ancient times, the most meticulous care was devoted to this process. It was found to be particularly difficult in the case of gold, hence the Roman proverb which may well lead us to reverence the ancients: “Facilius est aurum facere quam destruere” (It is easier to make gold than to destroy it). For they held that in this metal, the three primary natural constituents, salt, mercury and phosphorous, were so firmly united that to extract them from gold was hardest of all.

Now we must readily admit that we should not get much further in the matter today, if we took the very same measures as the men of old times. But let us leave them, for we are dealing with the methods and medicine of today, and only occasionally referring to the light thrown by the past. Consider what we are now in a position to investigate. In order to extract the requisite amount of the three primary principles characterised yesterday and today, from the raw materials of nature, it will be necessary to subject these to combustion, in order first, to isolate the fire-bearing, light-bearing parts, then to try to extract the mercurial portions so that the portions with a saline tendency remain. These can be treated with some acid substance, which extracts them and produces an effective saline therapeutic remedy, whether of vegetable or mineral derivation. I shall give further details later on. Thus we shall either have to seek for the light-bearing substances in nature, in order to get extra-terrestrial factors, or try to remove the extra-terrestrial from earthly substances, and to retain the telluric; then we shall have a genuinely saline residue. Or finally we can try to attain something midway between the two poles.

Here we have a choice of two paths, each different in kind, and each taking us part of the way to our goal. We can take the standpoint of the ancient physicians, who always began by extracting the essentially phosphoric, saline or mercurial from various substances, and then made use of the result. In the opinion of these physicians, the specific action of the remedies they obtained depended on the matrix from which they had been extracted. What was obtained from lead acted differently from what was obtained from copper, for example. They laid most stress on origin: salt derived from lead was essentially different from salt derived from copper. So that when they spoke of salt, they knew that in it they had something common to all salts. Because it was salt, it was of the earth, yet because salt derived from the various metals is something extra-telluric, it has relationships to the most diverse parts of man. This we can consider in more detail in the next lecture.

This method is a possible choice, for instance, for the production of saline material in therapeutics. But there is the other way, chosen after the ancient method had ceased to work, and chosen in definite awareness of the fact that man is something more than a chemical apparatus. This way simply tries to take the substances as found in nature and to make available through “potentising” the forces hidden in them. This is the way chosen by Hahnemann's school, representing a new departure in the whole of man's medical researches. It left the archaic way, now blocked because of the ignorance concerning the extra-telluric and other relationships.

This is what causes—I would almost say—the despair of modern medicine; that people have ceased to pay attention to the extra-terrestrial that is really the basis of the earthly elements. The extra-terrestrial sphere is ignored and the earthly sphere is treated as all-sufficient. The homeopathic system strives to get beyond this; so does the “open-air treatment,” which uses light and air directly, because it has lost the secret of how to make right use of the light-bearer, phosphorus, and the air-carrier mercury. That of course is a third possibility. But a genuinely favourable and hopeful way will only be found when mankind has learnt, through spiritual science, the respective inter-relationships of the mineral, vegetable and animal kingdoms to extra-telluric forces. And as I indicated yesterday, the animal sphere is near—dangerously near to mankind. The ancients, knowing this, set a boundary which we will investigate anew in the light of our later knowledge. They thought as follows: plants remain within the realm of the planetary system; minerals are also within that sphere: but with the animal kingdom we leave the planetary system, and deal with something much more serious. We may not deal here with things as though we were still within the planetary extra-telluric domain. Those forces that lead to the formation of animals, and further to that of mankind, lie scattered farther and wider in the universe than do those that shaped minerals and plants. And so the ancients, knowing this, set a boundary which we will investigate anew in the light of our later knowledge. They thought as follows: plants remain within the realm of the planetary system; minerals are also within that sphere: but with the animal kingdom we leave the planetary system, and deal with something much more serious. We may not deal here with things as though we were still within the planetary extra-telluric domain. Those forces that lead to the formation of animals, and further to that of mankind, lie scattered farther and wider in the universe than do those that shaped minerals and plants. And so the ancients traced the Zodiac in the heavens as a warning not to seek remedial forces beyond the boundary of minerals and plants; or at least to be aware that beyond is perilous ground.

But this perilous ground has been entered upon, as I have already begun to tell you in outline. This must be elaborated when we come to deal with pathology and serotherapy. The methods in question often bring startling results in individual cases, and arouse illusory hopes, completely masking the danger in the background.

The wishes that are to be considered first have already been expressed by you, and we will begin today by addressing some of them. I hope that everything can be covered in the three hours that we have available. In these few introductory remarks, I would like to speak about these matters as they arise out of anthroposophy. We do not want to consider how these things are currently being discussed in other fields, but rather we want to address the issues as they arise out of anthroposophy, especially in relation to the wishes that have been expressed.

The first question that has been raised, and with which many others can also be dealt with at the same time, at least in principle, is the question of the diseases of the luetic type. The diseases of the luetic type, which we have so far discussed only briefly, are those which, firstly, must be carefully distinguished from all kinds of secondary symptoms, neighboring symptoms, and so on, and which actually indicate to the most intense degree how the organism behaves in general in a diseased state. The reason why the symptoms of tuberculosis are such an important medical and therapeutic issue is that for them, quite unequivocally – let us speak without prejudice, you will see that we do not want to stop at prejudice – a specific remedy is available in the mercury cure. But a consideration of the mercury cure will show us how to deal with the evil that lies therein in a more appropriate way.

Every illness is fundamentally based on the fact that the three systems of the human organism – the nervous-sensory system, the rhythmic system and the metabolic-limb system – are not working together harmoniously. You only have to consider what this harmonious interaction is based on. In the metabolism-limb system, we have an activity of the human organism that takes place with the preferential involvement of the etheric body. But the other parts of the human organism also play a role in each system. So one cannot say, for example, that in the metabolism-limb system the two parts of the human organism, the physical organism and the etheric organism, work together, but rather that the two mainly work together. The other two, the astral body and the ego organization, also play a role. For example, in the main organization, that is, in the entire nerve-sense organization, we have the ego organization and the astral organization playing the main role, with the etheric and physical organizations playing a subordinate role. Above all, we must realize that the difference between the waking state and the sleeping state is that during sleep, the activities that emanate from the astral organism and the ego organism and are directly effected during the waking state continue, so to speak, through a kind of persistence of the organism. In the sleeping state, these activities resonate without the astral body and ego organization being present. Can you understand that? They continue, just as when I push a ball and the ball still runs away even when I stop pushing, so the activities of the astral body and the ego organization continue during sleep. Therefore, one should not say that if something is derived from the ego organization or the astral organization, it could not therefore be there during sleep. Sleep must only cease when there is danger that the astral or ego after-effects will cease. At that moment, sleep must in turn cease and wakefulness must occur.

These things cannot be taken in the same schematic way as they sometimes have to be presented in anthroposophy for the sake of laypeople's understanding.

What is really important now is to present the facts correctly. All these questions about causes should not really relate to the internal organization of the organism, but rather only to the external causes of the matter. These should always be known. The diagnosis should always be made up of a complete history of the disease. But speculating about causes within the organism does not actually lead to finding the right remedy.

If I now ask the question with this in mind, I have to say: what is it that is present in the case of syphilis itself? Let us therefore separate syphilis from all the other possible sexually transmitted diseases, from all gonorrheal diseases, from all chancre symptoms and so on, in other words, from all the things that basically — we will deal with this separately — do not belong to the actual syphilis, but are basically a different disease. The actual syphilitic disease is essentially based on the fact that the human ego organization is overburdened for the metabolic limb system, preferably for the metabolic system. In a sense, the human ego organization slides down into the abdomen. And all the symptoms that occur stem from the fact that the ego organization slides too far down into the abdomen. This is precisely how the processes arise that are expressed through the symptoms you are familiar with, those processes that cause the ego organization to predominate over the etheric organization, which is not supposed to be present in this part of the human organism. There is simply too strong an ego organization in the sexual tract. That is the fact. We must first look at this fact, rather than at the infection and so on; we must look at this fact, because it is there. And the cure must actually start from this fact.

Now let us consider the effect of mercury therapy on this condition. What actually occurs in the human organism with every mercury treatment? Mercury treatment, as you know, is a very old treatment, and it is sometimes extraordinarily beneficial, not only for luetic patients but also for others. But what happens during mercury treatment?

Mercury is one of those remedies that was actually found to be beneficial in times when medicine was based on a certain instinctive knowledge of the human organism. But what actually cures when one has to have a mercury treatment for syphilis? It cures exactly as much as one introduces into the blood in the correct dosage of the mercury preparation. It cures exactly as much. Now think about what the consequences of this are. Firstly, as far as I know, it is not common practice to inject mercury into syphilitic diseases. In recent years, however, this has become the norm because, as we shall hear in a moment, the earlier smear cures are no longer effective, or are too strong; but on the whole, this partial transition has also been brought about empirically because it was seen that there is something about the smear cure that leads to disaster.

And what is the case here? When you use the smearing cure, it basically leads to a partial, even general infection. It is calculated on the whole to enter the blood circulation. That is what it is calculated on. But when you use the smearing cure, there are other channels for the mercury impulse in the human organism. What is healing is essentially that which enters the blood; while that which does not enter the blood but comes through etheric channels is carried along in etheric channels that, for example, run along the nervous system, along the nerve cords, and this is all bad. All this spreads, so to speak, the ego organization throughout the whole organism, and you basically just get the evil spread throughout the whole organism in a different form, which, after years of internal preparatory processes, causes you to suffer from all those symptoms that occur as a result of the mercury cure.

Therefore, it can be said that the healing effect of mercury is already evident in the treatment of syphilitic diseases with mercury. What is the reason for this? We can really say, in very general terms, what the factors involved are, as I said in my general lecture yesterday. From a certain moment onwards, organic substances are no longer influenced by terrestrial forces, but by the cosmic forces that act peripherally from the periphery to the center of the earth. And from a certain moment on, everything that we get into our organism through ordinary digestion is also under the influence of cosmic forces, cosmic rounding-off forces, right cosmic rounding-off forces, when it has passed through the intestines.

Now, the ego organization primarily lives in these cosmic rounding-off forces. If it interferes too strongly with the metabolic system, then there is simply a tendency for the ego organization to atomize, to round off and organize individual links in the human organism instead of organizing the whole body according to its shape. And all the phenomena of syphilis, all the symptoms of syphilis, are the result of this partial atomization, this atomistic organization. Thus the ego organization intervenes in very small systems of the human organism, while these small systems should reserve themselves for the organization of their own etheric body, which alone, not by the detour of the ego organization, is subject to the cosmic-peripheral forces.

Now, mercury has the peculiarity that, when introduced into the human organism, it is the substance that most strongly and most intensely mimics the outer form of the cosmos in earthly terms. The moment the mercury is introduced directly into the blood circulation by injection, the tendency arises for the mercury to give up this partial organization, this small atomistic organization, and the ego organization is released again, acting through the whole organism and is thereby able to restore the state of health by reaction.

But all this depends on the patient never taking in more mercury than is absolutely necessary. This is a problem that can never really be solved. Because you must never expose yourself to the danger of giving just a little too much mercury during the mercury cure. You have to give exactly as much as can be absorbed into the circulation according to the respective medical condition, because everything else remains behind as a residuum and causes precisely those sequelae that then occur and that you know.

Therefore, when using mercury therapy, it will always turn out that one cures, but that the patient may have to pay for the cure quite heavily with the terrible consequences, which then also look syphilis-like, but which actually have to destroy the organism little by little and irrevocably. It is precisely the certainty of healing that mercury provides that shows how problematic its use is.

It was not always problematic. You see, not exactly for syphilis, but for many other diseases, mercury was always used, we may talk about it in the next few days. Mercury did indeed evoke a very specific emotional response in the highly instinctive patient. The patient knew when he had had enough. He was saturated with mercury. Today, of course, the instincts have degenerated. The patient can no longer provide a yardstick for what happens to him through the mercury. He no longer gets enough of the mercury, he becomes oversaturated. That is what usually happens today: The patient becomes oversaturated with mercury, and then the well-known consequences occur in a very devastating way, so that just as one can clearly see the effect of sulfur and phosphorus in the organism, and just as one can clearly see what happens in the organism when salt dissolves, so one can clearly see what happens in the organism when mercury is taken, but one must always pay close attention to the dosage. We know the basis for the effect of mercury.

Now the question is whether it would be possible to carry out such a treatment that would be harmless even if too much was dosed, because simply an excretion would occur if the dosage was too high. Mercury has the peculiarity of not being excreted outwards if too much is administered to the body, but of being excreted inwards. In this respect, it was extremely important to me in my younger years how Hyrtl simply took the bones from people who had been treated with mercury, and then smashed them open at autopsy, and how one could then find the small mercury droplets in the bones under the microscope. So the whole bone system had been contaminated with mercury. That is the peculiar thing about mercury: it is not excreted outwards, but the organism takes it up, and the whole ego organization of someone treated for mercury has to constantly deal with the organization of these tiny mercury droplets, mercury atoms, which are everywhere in the organism, especially in the calcareous parts.

And so we can already say: We must try to find something in nature that, when applied like mercury, is absorbed by the organism and replaces the ego organization in the organism, thus relieving and freeing it. But if too much of it is taken in, which is unavoidable, then it must be excreted not inwardly but outwardly, like anything else that is digested.

It is therefore important to come up with something that corresponds to the ego organization in the external nature and that can be prepared in such a way that it actually enters the blood circulation and, so to speak, creates a phantom of the ego organization in the blood circulation. It is necessary to introduce an artificial ego into the blood circulation.

And our doctors in particular should carry out the appropriate experiments, and without doubt you will see that you will get results that will certainly be surprising.

Take what you can gain from those parts of the plant that have become extremely hardened, that have thus transferred the root process of the plant to the rest of the plant. In the root process of the plant lies an extraordinarily strong imitation of the ego organization. The flower of the plant is of etheric organization. In what is below the flower, the plant plays around the astral organization; where the plant is rooted in the soil, the I-organization intervenes. In every strongly lignified root, which is still attached to the plant, which has not yet passed over into the inorganic because it has been separated from the living plant, we have impulses of the I-organization.

Now, however, if one were to take plant roots directly and extract substances from them to inject, one would hardly be able to cope for the reason that although the root of the plant contains the I-organization very strongly, it is, so to speak, a phantom of the I-organization, but what lives in it as impulses is limited to the nerve sense system and does not have a strong effect down into the rest of the organization. Therefore, one can say: If you only take hold of the root organization at the root, then you will hardly be able to form a preparation suitable for the purpose mentioned. On the other hand, there are plants in which the root organization has a strong effect on the whole plant. And one such plant, in which the root organization actually penetrates the whole plant right up to the fruit, is Astragalus exscapus, the tragacanth root, which is also known as wolfberry. It has fruits that look like pods, but they are as hard as stone and inside them are grains. I am talking about what is, as it were, completely cornified. Or take certain woods that are already used, where the effectiveness is based on what I say.

But then it is a matter of taking these grains from a plant, let us say from the tragacanth root, from the wolfberry, grinding them finely, but then treating them with the juice of one's own plant, that is, with the flower and leaf juice of one's own plant. In this way, one obtains a preparation that can perhaps be brought up to the third decimal place. In the third decimal, if it is now injected, it will actually introduce this phantom of the ego into the blood circulation, and then, under the influence of this preparation, in the case of actual syphilitic disease, which is already the disease of the whole blood, one has exactly the same picture as with the mercury cure, and then one has to ensure that the excess is driven out by means of strongly heating baths. So you will have to combine these two things: on the one hand, injection with a preparation as indicated, and then drive out what is in excess through strong baths.

But something else comes out as well. What comes out is what is present in the blood of the syphilis patient as harmful substances. This must also come out through perspiration. So we have to say: what has to be brought out must be brought out by sweat secretion alone. But first it has to be held. And it can be held by this rounding-off effect of the impulses contained in the wolfberry seeds. Now, you see, you can only cope with these things if you combine diagnosis and therapy closely.

Individualization is indispensable in medicine, and you can very well observe that especially in syphilitic diseases, the clinical picture in a fat person is quite different from that in a lean person. In a fat person, the syphilis toxin is extremely difficult to remove. I don't know if there are friends here who have experience in this. It is more difficult to remove the syphilis toxin from a fat person than from a thin person. A thin person eliminates it relatively easily. With a thin person, you may be able to do well by proceeding as I have described. But you must be sure that a reaction will occur, that there really is a strong perspiration, otherwise you will naturally get all kinds of internal diseases as a result, because the disease process will not occur. The reaction must be there. But it could be that in order to achieve the effect with fat people, too, so to speak, you have to resort to something else. And here it will be very good to turn to that which has already emerged more in nature, also in the astral process. It will be very good to take gallnuts in certain cases where you see that you cannot achieve a reaction with the usual plant. I mentioned them yesterday in a different context.

In the gallnuts you have already mentioned the essential roundness; the gallnut already shows you the mercurial nature in the vegetable kingdom. If you now treat the gall apple by grinding it on one side and taking the poison from the wasp that produced the gall apple on the other side and grinding it in with a very small dose, you will get a preparation that has a considerable effect and can even cause a reaction where it would otherwise be difficult to do so.

It is really the case with us that we actually have far too few cases of illness that we can observe piece by piece. I can imagine that for our friends who are treating physicians, bringing syphilis patients into the institute is not exactly ideal. But such things shed light on the whole therapy. You really learn something from such a treatment for the whole therapy, and I am also convinced that if someone sees how a patient who has been injected in this way and gets out of the bath, his skin looks different than it did before the bath ; how his skin looks, so that to the finer eye – one can perhaps see it with a microscope – it looks as if it is covered with little pockmarks, almost with smallpox, then one will learn how the organism is affected by something like this. So I think that this is the way to go in terms of syphilis treatment.

Because, you see, with this disease in particular, it is necessary not only to see to it that the patient is helped and then released, but it is also necessary to see to it that the patient endures the cure in his or her next life. And here I come to a question that was asked at the same time and that will be extremely interesting for most of you: meditation in addition to drug treatment, is there some kind of typical advice?

Well, I mention the previous syphilis just in connection with this question for the reason that in fact this question can perhaps be answered most intensively precisely in the case of syphilis. It will depend on whether the apparently cured syphilitic patient – and every syphilitic patient is initially only apparently cured, because it depends entirely on whether the disease can flare up again due to some later cause, and every apparently cured syphilis can flare up again later under certain circumstances – has made his organism anything other than a non-syphilitic patient. He has a different constitution, and it must be ensured that this different constitution is actually maintained for the future life, otherwise it will simply prove to be too weak in the face of certain attacks of ordinary life, and the syphilis can flare up again.

Now, of course, we will only deal with the question of meditative treatment in general, but it can be linked precisely to this. What happens with syphilis is that the ego organization becomes somewhat independent, which is not otherwise the case in a normal person. The syphilis patient has, through the injection, created a phantom out of his own organism, and as a result, for the rest of his life on earth, his ego organization is more independent than that of someone who has never had syphilis. He has this more independently, and this must be taken into account. So if you want to permanently cure a syphilis patient, you have to make sure that he begins to take a strong interest in pondering certain highly abstract thoughts over and over again in his mind, pondering them meditatively. You must therefore recommend that he meditatively think through, for example, geometric or mathematical problems, that is, in recurring rhythmic repetition, so that he never fails to actually maintain this artificial abstraction of his ego organization. You must accustom his thinking to entering into a certain inner constitution. Therefore, you will do him a great favor if you advise him: Every morning after you wake up, think about how a small triangle that resembles a large one behaves. They have the same angles but different sides. Think about it slowly at first: the same angles, different sides. Then think about it a little faster, then think about it even faster, then think about it so quickly that you can hardly keep up. Then start thinking more slowly again.

So thinking at different speeds, brought about by your own arbitrariness, will guide you in caring for this independent ego organization. That is one type of meditation. But wherever you see that the ego organization has become more independent through some healing process, you can try to make it possible for it to continue on its path through life by means of such a meditation, which, however, has to be applied particularly strongly in the case of the syphilis patient. Actually, the syphilitic patient must be encouraged to really supply his independent ego organization with such a meditation, which proceeds in a modified rhythm, on a permanent basis. Can you understand it?

These things lead us to consider other questions that have been asked. We will come back to everything again, I just want to have a context that is required by the matter.

Question about tragacanth.

They are pods. You open the pods and inside are seeds that are as hard as stones and have to be ground into a very fine powder.

Now another question that has been asked, which apparently has nothing to do with it – but inwardly things are connected – is about the occurrence of glaucoma. Today, I believe, glaucoma is hardly treated in any other way than by surgery, at most by homeopaths; but homeopathy is not yet rational. But now it is a matter of realizing what exactly such a phenomenon as glaucoma is based on. Glaucoma is, in a sense, viewed organically, according to the four limbs of human nature, physical body, etheric body, astral body and I, actually the opposite phenomenon of all possible ear infections from the overall process of the organism. The two things are almost polar. Ear infections are on one side, and glaucoma-like phenomena are on the other. If you just take the facts, it is like this: in glaucoma, there is a strong activity that infiltrates and substantially constitutes the vitreous humor of the eye. The vitreous humor becomes too intense internally in relation to its own substance. This results in a hypertrophy of the vitreous humor activity, and the glaucoma disease is actually based on this hypertrophy of the vitreous humor activity. But what then occurs?

The eye, as a sensory organ, is at the point where it is sufficiently independent according to the general bodily constitution, sufficiently objectively separated from the whole organism. If it is somewhat more separated from the whole organism than is the case with normal vision, then it is so diseased that the whole organism can no longer expand its activity over this organ.

In the case of glaucoma, it is extremely interesting to see how the etheric body – which is so extraordinarily important in the case of the eye – permeates the eyeball, so permeates it that the physical substance in the vitreous body appears quite strongly as a physical substance. If it goes beyond this boundary, it appears too strongly as a physical substance. The etheric body can no longer reach it, can no longer infiltrate it. So you have to make sure that the etheric body comes into action again, or that the physical activity in the eye is toned down. It is of course trivial, but true, to say that when something like this occurs, the entire organic activity in this part of the human organism is just too weak, partially paralyzed. It is too weak and must be stimulated. You can only stimulate it by making the exhalation of the human organism stronger than it is in the case of the person suffering from glaucoma at the time of his illness, or in the course of his illness. Therefore, if you can determine the correct moment, you will be able to self-correct the symptoms of glaucoma – but in relation to such partial illnesses the organism sometimes performs something extraordinary – by doing everything you can to organism to promote exhalation and thereby stimulate it to increase activity within the head, and you will then be able to counteract the activity within the glaucoma formation. And such a thing can be achieved by introducing calcium carbonate from bone meal into the human organism and combining it with some aerial roots of plants. This produces a preparation that does indeed regulate respiratory activity in the way it is needed in this case.

So I mean it like this: If we take calcium carbonate from bone earth and introduce it into the human organism, we get a correspondingly strong stimulation to exhale. But in order for the organism itself to become involved, we have to add some kind of impulse to this carbonic acid lime, so that it does not run sluggishly, so to speak, without the organism. These impulses are present in the roots that come from some trees or plants that climb rocks, roots that live outside in the air, and where what otherwise thrives in the ground as roots is carried out into the air. This changes the roots so that their impulses actually become more similar to respiratory activity, and this makes it possible to get the respiratory activity within oneself. One then feels it. Otherwise, the respiratory activity is stimulated quite involuntarily by the carbonate of lime. But if you mix the calcium carbonate with the sap of such aerial roots, then you get the urge to breathe in that way, and from that urge to breathe in that way, the strengthening of the whole human organization arises, which you need to balance what has been snatched from you in the formation of glaucoma.

It is precisely from such a case that one sees how it is necessary to look at the whole person everywhere. But the physical body is never the whole body. The physical body is always only a part; the physical body is liver, is stomach and so on, and the individual parts are connected with each other. The etheric body is already relatively strong for the whole person. And in a very grand sense, the whole human being is the astral body. It is just that this astral body is very strangely constituted. One might say that what is the astral body of a person up to the diaphragm – roughly speaking, locally confined – is quite different from what is the astral body below the diaphragm. What the astral body there does towards the head, towards the nervous-sense organization, is in its work, in its polarity, completely opposed to what is done in the metabolic-limb system. And consider the metabolism altogether, which essentially proceeds under the influence of the astral body. What we usually call metabolism is actually an activity of the human organism in which only the activity matters. In the metabolism, it is actually only a matter of absorbing and excreting substances. One might say that food as such, in substance, is basically not what interests the metabolism, but rather the overcoming of the outer substantial form of the food and the metamorphosis, not what the organism needs. But excretion begins right there in the metabolism itself. It actually goes from absorption directly into excretion. Only some of it is secreted. And this penetrates into the nerve-sense organization. The nerve-sense organization is of extraordinary importance in terms of substance, because the nerve substance is the metabolic substance taken to its logical conclusion.

As grotesque as this may seem, the reality is that the intestinal contents are, after all, nerve substance that has been left behind halfway through. The nerve substance, especially of the head, is the intestinal contents that have been processed to the end, the intestinal contents that have been transformed by the human organism, especially by the ego organization. The intestinal contents stop halfway and are excreted halfway. The contents of the nerve substance are driven to their very end and must then be processed by the organism as completely 'used up'. So the astral organism in the actual metabolism performs a completely different activity than the astral organism in the central nervous system. They are truly polar opposites. That is, one stops halfway, the other is carried to completion, and in between lies a zero point. It is actually the case that a complete polarity takes place. If you were to draw the etheric body, you would still draw it as an egg-shaped form, but you can no longer draw the astral body as an egg-shaped form. You have to draw it as two parts, above and below, which are actually quite different from each other in the way they work. And without understanding this, one can actually understand neither the healthy nor the sick human being. One must be clear that there is a completely different activity within the metabolism than within the nervous activity, within the nervous system. And only from this insight does the possibility arise to have a corresponding effect on the human organism. If, for example, you give a person preparations obtained from the flowers of plants, say, as essential oils, then you do not bring them from the lower part of the astral organism into the upper part, and they can only be used to bring about certain processes in the lower part, in the actual metabolic tract. The moment you use anything derived from the root of the plant, it expresses itself through from the lower to the upper tract of the astral body, and you have it in it because it in turn reacts from the head back to the organism. You have it in the whole organism.

Because you must understand that the ordinary view of the composition of the human organism is actually a terribly amateurish one. No, one would imagine that if, say, in some part of the human organism, after a certain period of life, new substance has appeared, that it has come through the process of ordinary metabolism, that is, the old substance has been shed, and through the process of ordinary metabolism the new substance has appeared. At least, that is how we imagine it. I do not believe that anyone who has studied medicine in any way today imagines it differently, as that substances in the human body, which are summarily different after a certain period of life, have come there by way of the usual metabolism, have been exchanged, other than through the metabolism.

But that is not the case. If you find a different substance in any part of the human organism after a certain period of life, it has never been excreted by the ordinary metabolism. The ordinary metabolism provides only the nervous system, only the internal structure of the nervous system, only the building blocks of the nervous system. Through the activity of the nerve-sense system, in connection with breathing, substances are then absorbed from the cosmic environment in an extraordinarily finely distributed state, which are incorporated into the organism by the nerve-sense organization and substantially replace what is lost. For the losses are much slower than one thinks. So the human body is never built up from food. Food only maintains the activity that is needed to organize the nervous system. The building, the substantial building, does not happen at all through nutrition, that is only chimerical, but it actually happens from the cosmos. So when you cut a nail that grows back, the substance that grows back is not from the food, which in turn has nothing else to do than to rebuild the nervous system, but it is the one that grows back, which actually replaces the organic substance in the human being substantially, absorbed from the cosmos.

This, of course, presents a very different picture of the composition of the human being than if one believes that the human being is a kind of tube, with food entering at one end, being exchanged in the meantime, and what is unusable being secreted. But the human being is not this tube. What happens in a tubular form takes place entirely within the human organism itself. That by which man is rebuilt after a certain period of life comes into the human organism through the senses with breathing and even with fine absorptions from the outside world through the senses. In this respect, the ears are extraordinarily important organs of absorption, as are the entire sensory organs that are spread over the body. So if you look at the human being properly, you will have to say from the outset that metabolism is the inner work of the human organism. The rhythmic organism and the nerve-sense organism are also involved in the construction of the human being.

Now, we will take it from there tomorrow and gradually answer the other questions that have been raised. Please tell me if you would like another session, since we only have so few hours. I think we will get to the individual problems that have been raised. If anyone still has problems, I would ask them to tell me tomorrow.

My dear Friends,

In our last lecture we were going into certain matters of principle which I will now try to explain more fully. For if we start from the experiences we can gain in the realm of light, it will also help us observe and understand other natural phenomena which we shall presently be studying. I will therefore begin today with these more theoretical reflections and put off the experimental part until tomorrow. We must determine still more exactly the method of our procedure. It is the task of Science to discern and truly to set forth the facts in the phenomena of Nature. Problems of method which this task involves can best be illustrated in the realm of Light.

Men began studying the phenomena of light in rather recent times, historically speaking. Nay, the whole way of thinking about the phenomena of Physics, presented in the schools today, reaches hardly any farther back than the 16th century. The way men thought of such phenomena before the 16th century was radically different. Today at school we get so saturated with the present way of thought that if you have been through this kind of schooling it is extremely difficult for you to find your way back to the pure facts. You must first cultivate the habit of feeling the pure facts as such; please do not take my words in a too trivial meaning. You have to learn to sense the facts, and this takes time and trouble.

I will now take my start from a particular instance wherein we may compare the way of thought prevailing in the schools today with that which can be gained by following the facts straightforwardly. Suppose this were a plate of glass, seen in cross-section (Figure VIa). Through it you look at a luminous object. As I am drawing it diagrammatically, let me represent the latter simply by a light circle. Cast your mind back to what you learned in your school days. What did they teach you of the phenomenon you see when you observe the luminous object,—with your eye, say, here—looking through the glass? You were no doubt told that rays of light proceed from the luminous object. (We are imagining the eye to be looking in this particular direction,—see the Figure). Rays, you were told, proceed from the shining object. In the direction of the “ray” I am now drawing, the light was said to penetrate from a more tenuous into a denser medium. Simply by looking through the glass and comparing what you see with what you saw before the plate of glass was there, you do indeed perceive the thing displaced. It appears at a different place than without the glass. Now this is said to be due to the light being “refracted”. This is how they are wont to put it:—When the light passes from a more tenuous into a denser medium, to find the direction in which the light will be refracted, you must draw the so-called “normal at the point of incidence”. If the light went on its way without being hindered by a denser medium, it would go on in this direction. But, they now say, the light is “refracted”—in this case, towards the normal, i.e. towards the perpendicular to the glass surface at the point of incidence. Now it goes out again,—out of the glass. (All this is said, you will remember, in tracing how the “ray of light” is seen through the denser medium.) Here then again, at the point of exit from the glass, you will have to erect the normal. If the light went straight on it would go thus: but at this second surface it is again refracted—this time, away from the normal—refracted just enough to make it go on parallel to its original direction. And now the eye, looking as it is from here, is said to produce the final direction of the ray of light and thus to project the luminous object so much the higher up. This then is what we are asked to assume, if we be looking through such a plate of glass. Here, to begin with, the light impinges on the plate, then it is twice refracted—once towards the normal, a second time away from the normal. Then, inasmuch as the eye has the inner faculty to do so (.... or is it to the soul, or to some demon that you ascribe this faculty ....) the light is somehow projected out into space. It is projected moreover to a position different from where it would appear if we were not seeing it through a refracting medium;—so they describe the process.

The following should be observed to begin with, in this connection. Say we are looking at anything at all through the same denser medium, and we now try to discriminate, however delicately, between the darker and lighter portions of what we see. Not only the lighter parts, the darker too will appear shifted upward. The entire complex we are looking at is found to be displaced. Please take this well into account. Here is a darker part bordering on a lighter. The dark is shifted upward, and since one end of it is lighter we see this shifted too. Placing before us any such complex, consisting of a darker and a lighter part, we must admit the lighter part is displaced simply as the upper boundary of the darker. Instead, they speak in such a way as to abstract the one light patch from all the rest that is there. Mostly they speak as though the light patch alone were suffering displacement. Surely this is wrong. For even if I fix my gaze on this one patch of light, it is not true that it alone is shifted upward. The part below it, which I am treating as if it were just nothing when I describe it thus, is shifted upward too. In point of fact, what is displaced in these optical phenomena can never be thus abstractly confined. If therefore I repeat Newton's experiment—I let into the room a cone of light which then gets diverted by the prism—it simply is not true that the cone of light is diverted all alone. Whatever the cone of light is bordering on—above it and below—is diverted too. I really ought never to speak of rays of light or anything of that kind, but only of luminous pictures or spaces-of-light being diverted. In a particular instance I may perhaps want to refer to some isolated light, but even then I still ought not to speak of it in such a way as to build my whole theory of the phenomenon upon it. I still ought to speak in such a way as to refer at the same time to all that borders on the light. Only if we think in this way can we begin to feel what is really going on when the phenomena of colour comes into being before our eyes. Otherwise our very habit of thought begets the impression that in some way the colours spring from the light alone. For from the very outset we have it settled in our mind that the one and only reality we are dealing with is the light. Yet, what we have before us in reality is never simply light as such; it is always something light, bordered on one side or other by darkness. And if the lighter part—the space it occupies—is shifted, the darker part is shifted too. But now, what is this “dark”? You must take the dark seriously,—take it as something real. (The errors that have crept into modern Physics since about the 16th century were only able to creep in because these things were not observed spiritually at the same time. Only the semblance, as appearing to the outer senses, was taken note of; then, to explain this outer semblance, all kinds of theoretical inventions were added to it). You certainly will not deny that when you look at light the light is sometimes more and sometimes less intense. There can be stronger light and less strong. The point is now to understand: How is this light, which may be stronger or weaker related to darkness? The ordinary physicist of today thinks there is stronger light and less strong; he will admit every degree of intensity of light, but he will only admit one darkness—darkness which is simply there when there is no light. There is, as it were, only one way of being black. Yet as untrue as it would be to say that there is only one kind of lightness, just as untrue is it to say that there is only one kind of darkness. It is as one-sided as it would be to declare: “I know four men. One of them owns £25, another £50; he therefore owns more than the other. The third of them is £25 in debt, the fourth is £50 in debt. Yet why should I take note of any difference in their case? It is precisely the same; both are in debt. I will by all means distinguish between more and less property, but not between different degrees of debt. Debt is debt and that is all there is to it.” You see the fallacy at once in this example, for you know very well that the effect of being £25 in debt is less than that of being £50 in debt. But in the case of darkness this is how people think: Of light there are different degrees; darkness is simply darkness. It is this failure to progress to a qualitative way of thinking, which very largely prevents our discovering the bridge between the soul-and-spirit on the one hand, and the bodily realm on the other. When a space is filled with light it is always filled with light of a certain intensity; so likewise, when a space is filled with darkness, it is filled with darkness of a certain intensity. We must proceed from the notion of a merely abstract space to the kind of space that is not abstract but is in some specific way positively filled with light or negatively filled with darkness. Thus we may be confronting a space that is filled with light and we shall call it “qualitatively positive”. Or we may be confronting a space that is filled with darkness and we shall judge it “qualitatively negative” with respect to the realm of light. Moreover both to the one and to the other we shall be able to ascribe a certain degree of intensity, a certain strength. Now we may ask: How does the positive filling of space differ for our perception from the negative? As to the positive, we need only remember what it is like when we awaken from sleep and are surrounded by light,—how we unite our subjective experience with the light that floods and surges all around us. We need only compare this sensation with what we feel when surrounded by darkness, and we shall find—I beg you to take note of this very precisely—we shall find that for pure feeling and sensation there is an essential difference between being given up to a light-filled space and to a darkness-filled space. We must approach these things with the help of some comparison. Truly, we may compare the feeling we have, when given up to a light-filled space, with a kind of in-drawing of the light. It is as though our soul, our inner being, were to be sucking the light in. We feel a kind of enrichment when in a light-filled space. We draw the light into ourselves. How is it then with darkness? We have precisely the opposite feeling. We feel the darkness sucking at us. It sucks us out, we have to give away,—we have to give something of ourselves to the darkness. Thus we may say: the effect of light upon us is to communicate, to give; whilst the effect of darkness is to withdraw, to suck at us and take away. So too must we distinguish between the lighter and the darker colours. The light ones have a quality of coming towards us and imparting something to us; the dark colours on the other hand have a quality of drawing on us, sucking at us, making us give of ourselves. So at long last we are led to say: Something in our outer world communicates itself to us when we are under the influence of light; something is taken from us, we are somehow sucked out, when under the influence of darkness.

There is indeed another occasion in our life, when—as I said once before during these lectures—we are somehow sucked-out as to our consciousness; namely when we fall asleep. Consciousness ceases. It is a very similar phenomenon, like a cessation of consciousness, when from the lighter colours we draw near the darker ones, the blue and violet. And if you will recall what I said a few days ago about the relation of our life of soul to mass,—how we are put to sleep by mass, how it sucks-out our consciousness,—you will feel something very like this in the absorption of our consciousness by darkness. So then you will discern the deep inner kinship between the condition space is in when filled with darkness and on the other hand the filling of space which we call matter, which is expressed in “mass”.

Thus we shall have to seek the transition from the phenomena of light to the phenomena of material existence. We have indeed paved the way, in that we first looked for the fleeting phenomena of light—phosphorescence and fluorescence—and then the firm and fast phenomena of light, the enduring colours. We cannot treat all these things separately; rather let us begin by setting out the whole complex of these facts together.

Now we shall also need to recognize the following, When we are in a light-filled space we do in a way unite with this light-filled space. Something in us swings out into the light-filled space and unites with it. But we need only reflect a little on the facts and we shall recognize an immense difference between the way we thus unite with the light-flooded spaces of our immediate environment and on the other hand the way we become united with the warmth-conditions of our environment,—for with these too, as human beings, we do somehow unite.

We do indeed share very much in the condition of our environment as regards warmth; and as we do so, here once again we feel a kind of polarity prevailing, namely the polarity of warm and cold. Yet we must needs perceive an essential difference between the way we feel ourselves within the warmth-condition of our environment and the way we feel ourselves within the light-condition of our environment. Physics, since the 16th century, has quite lost hold of this difference. The open-mindedness to distinguish how we join with our environment in the experience of light upon the one hand and warmth upon the other has been completely lost; nay, the deliberate tendency has been, somehow to blur and wipe away such differences as these. Suppose however that you face the difference, quite obviously given in point of fact, between the way we experience and share in the conditions of our environment as regards warmth and light respectively. Then in the last resort you will be bound to recognize that the distinction is: we share in the warmth-conditions of our environment with our physical body and in the light-conditions, as we said just now, with our etheric body. This in effect—this proneness to confuse what we become aware of through our ether-body and what we become aware of through our physical body—has been the bane of Physics since the 16th century. In course of time all things have thus been blurred. Our scientists have lost the faculty of stating facts straightforwardly and directly. This has been so especially since Newton's influence came to be dominant, as it still is to a great extent today. There have indeed been individuals who have attempted from time to time to draw attention to the straightforward facts simply as they present themselves. Goethe of course was doing it all through, and Kirchhoff among others tried to do it in more theoretic ways. On the whole however, scientists have lost the faculty of focusing attention purely and simply on the given facts. The fact for instance that material bodies in the neighbourhood of other material bodies will under given conditions fall towards them, has been conceived entirely in Newton's sense, being attributed from the very outset to a force proceeding from the one and affecting the other body—a “force of gravity”. Yet ponder how you will, you will never be able to include among the given facts what is understood by the term “force of gravity”. If a stone falls to the Earth the fact is simply that it draws nearer to the Earth. We see it now at one place, now at another, now at a third and so on. If you then say “The Earth attracts the stone” you in your thoughts are adding something to the given fact; you are no longer purely and simply stating the phenomenon.

People have grown ever more unaccustomed to state the phenomena purely, yet upon this all depends. For if we do not state the phenomena purely and simply, but proceed at once to thought-out explanations, we can find manifold explanations of one and the same phenomenon. Suppose for example you have two heavenly bodies. You may then say: These two heavenly bodies attract one another,—send some mysterious force out into space and so attract each other (Figure VIb). But you need not say this. You can also say: “Here is the one body, here is the other, and here (Figure VIc) are a lot of other, tiny bodies—particles of ether, it may be—all around and in between the two heavenly bodies. The tiny particles are bombarding the two big ones—bombarding here, there and on all sides;—the ones between, as they fly hither and thither, bombard them too. Now the total area of attack will be bigger outside than in between. In the resultant therefore, there will be less bombardment inside than outside; hence the two bodies will approach each other. They are, in fact, driven towards each other by the difference between the number of impacts they receive in the space between them and outside them.”

There have in fact been people who have explained the force of gravity simply by saying: It is a force acting at a distance and attracts the bodies towards each other. Others have said that that is nonsense; according to them it is unthinkable for any force to act at a distance. They then invite us to assume that space is filled with “ether”, and to assume this bombardment too. The masses then are, so to speak, for ever being sprayed towards each other. To add to these explanations there are no doubt many others. It is a classical example of how they fail to look at the real phenomenon but at once add their thought-out explanations.

Now what is at the bottom of it all? This tendency to add to the phenomena in thought—to add all manner of unknown agencies and fancied energies, presumed to be doing this or that—saves one the need of doing something else. Needless to say, the impacts in the theory of Figure VIc have been gratuitously added, just as the forces acting at a distance have been in the other theory. These adventitious theories, however, relieve one of the need of making one fundamental assumption, from which the people of today seem to be very much averse. For in effect, if these are two independent heavenly bodies and they approach each other, or show that it is in their nature to approach each other, we cannot but look for some underlying reason why they do so; there must be some inner reason. Now it is simpler to add in thought some unknown forces than to admit that there is also another way, namely no longer to think of the heavenly bodies as independent of each other. If for example I put my hand to my forehead, I shall not dream of saying that my forehead “attracts” my hand, but I shall say: It is an inner deed done by the underlying soul-and-spirit. My hand is not independent of my forehead; they are not really separate entities. I shall regard the phenomenon rightly only by recognising myself as a single whole. I should have no reality in mind if I were to say: There is a head, there are two arms and hands, there is a trunk, there are two legs. There would be nothing complete in that; I only have something complete in mind if I describe the whole human body as a single entity,—if I describe the different items so that they belong together. My task is not merely to describe what I see; I have to ponder the reality of what I see. The mere fact that I see a thing does not make it real.

Often I have made the following remark,—for I have had to indicate these things in other lectures too. Take a crystal cube of rock-salt. It is in some respect a totality. (Everything will be so in some respect). The crystal cube can exist by virtue of what it is within the compass of its six faces. But if you look at a rose, cut from the shrub it grew on, this rose is no totality. It cannot, like the cube of rock-salt, exist by virtue of all that is contained within it. The rose can only have existence by being of the rose-bush. The cut rose therefore, though you can see it just as you can see the cube of rock-salt, is a real abstraction; you may not call it a reality by itself.

The implications of this, my dear Friends, are far-reaching. Namely, for every phenomenon, we must examine to what extent it is a reality in itself, or a mere section of some larger whole. If you consider Sun and Moon, or Sun and Earth, each by itself, you may of course invent and add to them a force of gravity, just as you might invent a force of gravity by means of which my forehead would attract my right hand. But in considering Sun and Earth and Moon thus separately, the things you have in mind are not totalities; they are but parts and members of the whole planetary system.

This then is the essential thing; observe to what extent a thing is whole, or but a section of a whole. How many errors arise by considering to be a whole what is in fact only a partial phenomenon within a larger whole! By thus considering only the partial phenomena and then inventing energies to add to these, our scientists have saved themselves the need of contemplating the inherent life of the planetary system. The tendency has been, first to regard as wholes those things in Nature which are only parts, and by mere theories then to construe the effects which arise in fact between them. This therefore, to sum up, is the essential point: For all that meets us in Nature we have to ask: What is the whole to which this thing belongs? Or is it in itself a whole? Even then, in the last resort, we shall find that things are wholes only in certain respects. Even the crystal cube of rock-salt is a totality only in some respect; it too cannot exist save at certain temperatures and under other requisite conditions. Given some other temperature, it could no longer be. Our need is therefore to give up looking at Nature in the fragmentary way which is so prevalent in our time.

Indeed it was only by looking at Nature in this fragmentary way that Science since the 16th century conceived this strange idea of universal, inorganic, lifeless Nature. There is indeed no such thing, just as in this sense there is no such thing as your bony system without your blood. Just as your bony system could only come into being by, as it were, crystallizing out of your living organism as a whole, so too this so-called inorganic Nature cannot exist without the whole of Nature—soul and Spirit-Nature—that underlies it. Lifeless Nature is the bony system, abstracted from Nature as a whole. It is impossible to study it alone, as they began doing ever since the 16th century and as is done in Newtonian Physics to this day.

It was the trend of Newtonian Physics to make as neat as possible an extract of this so-called inorganic Nature, treating it then as something self-contained. This “inorganic Nature” only exists however in the machines which we ourselves piece together from the parts of Nature. And here we come to something radically different. What we are wont to call “inorganic” in Nature herself, is placed in the totality of Nature in quite another way. The only really inorganic things are our machines, and even these are only so insofar as they are pieced together from sundry forces of Nature by ourselves. Only the “put-togetherness” of them is inorganic. Whatever else we may call inorganic only exists by abstraction. From this abstraction however present-day Physics has arisen. This Physics is an outcome of abstraction; it thinks that what it has abstracted is the real thing, and on this assumption sets out to explain whatever comes within its purview

As against this, the only thing we can legitimately do is to form our ideas and concepts in direct connection with what is given to us from the outer world—the details of the sense-world. Now there is one realm of phenomena for which a very convenient fact is indeed given. If you strike a bell and have some light and very mobile device in the immediate neighbourhood, you will be able to demonstrate that the particles of the sounding bell are vibrating. Or with a pipe playing a note, you will be able to show that the air inside it is vibrating. For the phenomena of sound and tone therefore, you have the demonstrable movement of the particles of air or of the bell; so you will ascertain that there is a connection between the vibrations executed by a body or by the air and our perceptions of tone or sound. For this field of phenomena it is quite patent: vibrations are going on around us when we hear sounds. We can say to ourselves that unless the air in our environment is vibrating we shall not hear any sounds. There is a genuine connection—and we shall speak of it again tomorrow—between the sounds and the vibrations of the air.

Now if we want to proceed very abstractly we may argue: “We perceive sound through our organs of hearing. The vibrations of the air beat on our organ of hearing, and when they do so we perceive the sound. Now the eye too is a sense-organ and through it we perceive the colours; so we may say: here something similar must be at work. Some kind of vibration must be beating on the eye. But we soon see it cannot be the air. So then it is the ether.” By a pure play of analogies one is thus led to the idea: When the air beats upon our ear and we have the sensation of a sound, there is an inner connection between the vibrating air and our sensation; so in like manner, when the hypothetical ether with its vibrations beats upon our eye, a sensation of light is produced by means of this vibrating ether. And as to how the ether should be vibrating: this they endeavour to ascertain by means of such phenomena as we have seen in our experiments during these lectures. Thus they think out an universal ether and try to calculate what they suppose must be going on in this ethereal ocean. Their calculations relate to an unknown entity which cannot of course be perceived but can at most be assumed theoretically.

Even the very trifling experiments we have been able to make will have revealed the extreme complication of what is going on in the world of light. Till the more recent developments set in, our physicists assumed that behind—or, should we rather say, within—all thus that lives and finds expression in light and colour there is the vibrating ether, a tenuous elastic substance. And since the laws of impact and recoil of elastic bodies are not so difficult to get to know, they could compute what these vibrating little cobolds must be up to in the ether. They only had to regard them as little elastic bodies,—imagining the ether as an inherently elastic substance. So they could even devise explanations of the phenomena we have been showing,—e.g. the forming of the spectrum. The explanation is that the different kinds of ether-vibrations are dispersed by the prism; these different kinds of vibrations then appear to us as different colours. By calculation one may even explain from the elasticity of the ether the extinction of the sodium line for example, which we perceived in our experiment the day before yesterday.

In more recent times however, other phenomena have been discovered. Thus we can make a spectrum, in which we either create or extinguish the sodium line (i.e., in the latter case, we generate the black sodium line). If then in addition we bring an electro-magnet to bear upon the cylinder of light in a certain way, the electro-magnet affects the phenomenon of light. The sodium line is extinguished in its old place and for example two other lines arise, purely by the effect of the electricity with which magnetic effects are always somehow associated. Here, then, what is described as “electric forces” proves to be not without effect upon those processes which we behold as phenomena of light and behind which one had supposed the mere elastic ether to be working. Such discoveries of the effect of electricity on the phenomena of light now led to the assumption that there must be some kinship between the phenomena of light and those of magnetism and electricity.

Thus in more recent times the old theories were rather shaken. Before these mutual effects had been perceived, one could lean back and rest content. Now one was forced to admit that the two realms must have to do with each other. As a result, very many physicists now include what radiates in the form of light among the electro-magnetic effects. They think it is really electro-magnetic rays passing through space.

Now think a moment what has happened. The scientists had been assuming that they knew what underlies the phenomena of light and colour: namely, undulations in the elastic ether. Now that they learned of the interaction between light and electricity, they feel obliged to regard, what is vibrating there, as electricity raying through space. Mark well what has taken place. First it is light and colour which they desire to explain, and they attribute them to the vibrating ether. Ether-vibrations are moving through space. They think they know what light is in reality,—it is vibrations in the elastic ether. Then comes the moment when they have to say: What we regarded as vibrations of the elastic ether are really vibrations of electro-magnetic force. They know still better now, what light is, than they did before. It is electro-magnetic streams of force. Only they do not know what these are! Such is the pretty round they have been. First a hypothesis is set up: something belonging to the sense-world is explained by an unknown super-sensible, the vibrating ether. Then by and by they are driven to refer this super-sensible once more to something of the sense-world, yet at the same time to confess that they do not know what the latter is. It is a highly interesting journey that has here been made; from the hypothetical search for an unknown to the explanation of this unknown by yet another unknown.

The physicist Kirchhoff was rather shattered and more or less admitted: It will be not at all easy for Physics if these more recent phenomena really oblige us no longer to believe in the undulating ether. And when Helmholtz got to know of the phenomenon, he said: Very well, we shall have to regard light as a kind of electro-magnetic radiation. It only means that we shall now have to explain these radiations themselves as vibrations in the elastic ether. In the last resort we shall get back to these, he said.

The essence of the matter is that a genuine phenomenon of undulation—namely the vibrating of the air when we perceive sounds—was transferred by pure analogy into a realm where in point of fact the whole assumption is hypothetical.

I had to go into these matters of principle today, to give the necessary background. In quick succession we will now go through the most important aspects of those phenomena which we still want to consider. In our remaining hours I propose to discuss the phenomena of sound, and those of warmth, and of electro-magnetics; also whatever explanations may emerge from these for our main theme—the phenomena of optics.

At the end of yesterday’s lecture, I tried to speak to you about the development of memory during the early school years. If we now look at the attitude regarding this matter as shown by most contemporary educational theorists, we notice a complete lack of awareness of how certain impulses during the early years of students continue to affect their later lives and how these reappear transformed. This, at any rate, is what a true knowledge of the human being reveals to us. What often happens today is that adults reach certain conclusions when they try to understand the ways of their own physical organism and psyche. Although people may not be conscious of it, they then assume that these conclusions apply also to the varying ages and stages of childhood. This attitude, however, is very misleading, because, as I pointed out, the forces that work throughout childhood development need to be recognized and supported if our education is to be sound. We must meet the inner needs of children, which is what was meant by our example of the importance of authority in the life of young children.

Imagine a man who, in his fortieth year, experiences certain vague events of the soul. External circumstances may suddenly shed light on what has arisen in his soul, and he may recognize that what is in his mind had been accepted at the age of eight or nine simply on the authority of a beloved teacher. At such a tender age, he could only entrust it to memory, since he may not have been able to comprehend it until the maturity of forty years of age. (I say this, though not many will believe my interpretation.) Children, however, cannot always wait until they are forty before understanding what they have been told at the age of eight, and this is the reason they have an inner longing for authority. When, at the age of forty, new light suddenly flashes upon what was accepted at the age of eight, simply on authority, this event brings the experience of new inner life forces, which has a refreshing effect on the whole person. New inner strength (sorely needed in later life) is developed in such a process. People are blessed with revitalizing strength for the rest of life if they have accepted a great deal of material on authority—material that, through outer circumstances, reappears as if by magic from one’s organism. Today, many people age prematurely, in both body and soul, because they are denied access to this vivifying force. Too many years have gone by since one’s memory was systematically strengthened during the early school years through appropriate and reasonable methods, based on faith and belief in the authority of an adult.

Memory training aside, there are plenty of other opportunities to cultivate children’s faculties of comprehension, as I mentioned yesterday. But between the change of teeth and puberty, it is absolutely essential for teachers to work through thoughtful and sensible methods for developing students’ memory, because without this they will be deprived of too much in later life.

If my intention were to please my listeners, I should have to speak quite differently about many things. But I wish to convey only a true knowledge of the human being as revealed by decades of anthroposophic research. Consequently, much that I have to say will sound odd when compared with current opinions. Some of my findings will be seen as old-fashioned, while others may appear avant-garde; but this is not really the point. The only thing that matters is whether what I say can stand the test of a true knowledge of the human being.

If we examine the general picture of the human being as seen by so many today, we get the feeling that it came about only through external observation. It is like trying to understand how a clock works by looking only at its exterior. We can read the time this way, and we can tell whether a watch is made of gold or silver, but we will never become a clockmaker. Today, what people call biology, physiology, or anatomy shows us only what the human being looks like externally. Human nature becomes transparent to our understanding only when we learn to penetrate the human body, soul, and spirit. Only by including these three members in our investigations can we treat people according their true nature. If we use real insight into the human being to look at a certain question much discussed lately among educators—the question of fatigue in children—we have to say this: Experiments are being made to establish the causes of fatigue in children. The results of those investigations are then used in new teaching techniques intended to reduce stress in students. This sort of thing is done all over the world, and yet the whole question is based on the wrong premise. Real knowledge of the human being would never lead to such a question in the first place. You need only consider something pointed out here during our last few meetings. Recall the strong, repeated plea that all teaching during the younger years should appeal to the rhythmic and musical element in children, which, first and foremost, works on their breathing and blood circulation.

And now I ask, can the source of fatigue ever lie in the children’s breathing and blood circulation? Can it ever arise from the middle region of the human being, the very region to which we always give special attention and treatment during the child’s school years? Never. Don’t we all breathe continuously, during both sleep and waking life, from the moment we are born until we die, without ever feeling tired of breathing? Doesn’t our blood circulate tirelessly from birth until death? Never is its flow interrupted by fatigue; if this happened, the consequences would indeed be serious. Doesn’t this show us that teachers who work from a real art of education constantly appeal to these very organs, which are never subject to fatigue? This whole question has to be considered from quite a different angle. We must formulate it differently and ask, Where are the real sources of tiredness in a human being? We find them in the head and in the limb system. We must look at these two systems if we want to understand the nature of tiredness in children, which bears a completely different character according to whether it emanates from the head or from the limbs and metabolism.

The forces working from the head downward into the rest of the human organism deposit a very fine metabolic residue that wants to permeate the whole human body with fine salt-like deposits. This process, which also affects the breathing and blood circulation, is the cause of fatigue because of the head’s direct contact with the external world and because of its arhythmic, nonmusical relationship to the outer world. The rhythms of breathing and blood circulation, on the other hand, are so strongly connected to the human organism that they retain a state of equilibrium and obey their own laws. And, in the central system, what acts like a self-contained unit is not subject to fatigue, at least not to any significant degree. It is possible, of course, to damage the inner rhythms of both children and adults through the wrong kind of treatment. But there is one thing we can be sure of: that the rhythmic system, which is of such primary importance in any true art of education, never suffers from tiredness or fatigue.

The limbs and metabolism, like the head, do get tired. You can see this by watching a snake after it has eaten. The limb and metabolic system tires, or at least becomes a source of tiredness, affecting the whole human being. Yet this form of tiredness is totally different from that of the head. The head system causes tiredness by depositing salts through a precipitation of mineral substances in the human organism. The limb and metabolic system, on the other hand, always tends to dissolve physical substances through its creation of warmth. Here, too, despite its polar opposite effect from that of the head, the cause of tiredness is found in the relative independence of this system from the inner rhythms of the human organization. This tiredness stems from the limbs’ activities in the external world and from the metabolic response to food intake. Eating and drinking usually happen at irregular intervals, since there are very few people who adhere to a strict rhythm of eating and drinking. Therefore, although both head and metabolism share the same cause of tiredness, their effects have opposite natures.

Where does all of this lead? The whole question of fatigue in students needs to be put differently. If children tire easily, we should ask, What have we done wrong? Where did we make mistakes? We have no right to assume that our teaching methods are always correct. We will never reach human nature by testing children for the number errors they make after half an hour of writing, or if we test them after a certain period of reading for their comprehension of meaningless words inserted into a text. We reach human nature only by asking the right question, which, in the case of childhood fatigue, should try to determine whether we have overburdened a child’s head or limb system. We must find methods that do not place too much strain on either of these two systems.

It would be erroneous, however, to believe that we could achieve this simply by adjusting the schedule of lessons, since gym lessons in themselves will not balance too much head work, nor will arithmetic work directly into the metabolism, though it does so indirectly. It is impossible to achieve the right balance merely by readjusting the schedule; this can be done only through an artistic presentation of lesson materials—at least during the early school years. This, in turn, means that we must appeal (as I have indicated) above all to the rhythmic system, the one system of the human being that never tires. Thus we also involve the other two systems, the head and the metabolic- limb systems, in the activity of learning. Naturally, this needs to be done correctly.

I hope that by now you realize that certain doubts about new ideas and methods of education, which are frequently expressed by those who are biased, do not apply at all to Waldorf education, because, in every sense, it is based on a true understanding of the human being. And because they also try to shed light on the soul and spiritual nature of the human being, Waldorf methods can lay the foundations for an approach that works on the whole human being.

For example, it is important to see that the human head system bears forces that penetrate the entire human organism (most strongly during childhood and decreasing during successive ages), shaping it, forming it, and giving it strength. The thought-directing capacity of the head is something that, as human beings with all our predispositions, we bring with us into this world at birth or conception. Eventually these forces assume the task of forming the entire human being. If the head were not in direct contact with the external world, and if, as a result, the inner rhythms of the human being were not disturbed all the time, then (if I may say it in this way) what has incarnated at birth in the head would be fully satisfied with the physical human organization. Human beings would flow into their physical organization, which would claim their entire being. We would be completely absorbed by it and would be unable to make any contact with the suprasensory world. Because human beings would thus be separated from the spiritual world, their inner life would become increasingly artificial and false. And, conversely, if through the limb and metabolic system human beings were not in constant touch with the external world, they would be unable to permeate with glowing warmth all that flows down from the head. We would be unable to counteract these forces, which would work toward an increasingly artificial state of perfection.

Here we have two marked polarities. The head always wants to cut us off from the spiritual world by shaping our body in a way that prevents us from gaining the right relationship to the spiritual world. The head and all that belongs to it finished developing a long time ago, during humankind’s pre-earthly existence, and the process of materialization, issuing from the head, must always be counteracted by the activities of the human metabolism and limbs, which flow upward from below. In this way, a balance is achieved in our corporeality. And between these two poles is our central system—like a self-contained organism—our rhythmic system of respiration and blood circulation. This system is like a separate world in itself, like a microcosm. But despite its relative independence, it must be protected from the extreme influences of the head, which can affect it under certain circumstances, such as when the lungs are invaded by various foreign organic processes. We can observe this in the hardening of lungs and the new growth in the lungs of those suffering from lung diseases.

As human beings, we need this polarity between the head and the metabolism. The metabolism is always trying to dissolve the hardening processes from the head, and this situation can be utilized medically. If we recognize the interplay between what descends from the head and what ascends from the metabolism, we can cure pathological symptoms in the larynx, trachea, or lungs, for example, by treating the metabolic system, even when the source of illness lies in the head system. Especially in the case of children’s diseases, spectacular results have been achieved by treating a patient’s metabolism for the symptoms of illness that appeared in the head organization. The human being is a single organic entity and must be treated accordingly. This applies to all aspects of the human being, not just in sound methods of therapy, but especially in the field of education.

If one looks at the advances in general knowledge during the last centuries, one quickly notices how little has been achieved with regard to knowledge of the human being. This is mainly because the methods of investigation consider only the physical, external aspects. It is of utmost importance that anyone involved in the art of education be able to recognize quite realistically what happens in the body, soul, and spirit of growing children, especially between the great turning point at nine and the beginning of puberty. It is essential to be able to see how the physical, soul, and spiritual forces work on and affect one another in the children we educate.

If we observe children of nine to ten with real understanding, we find that everything entering the soul is absorbed and transmuted, so that the musculature, which is permeated by forces of growth, becomes actively involved. At that point in life, the muscles always respond to and work with the soul nature of children, especially where the more intimate forces of growth are active. The inner swelling or stretching of the muscles depends mostly on the development of a child’s soul forces. The characteristic feature between the ages of ten and twelve is that the muscles have an especially intimate relationship with respiration and blood circulation. They are attuned to the central system of breathing and blood circulation. Because Waldorf education appeals so strongly to this part of a child’s being, we indirectly promote the growth and development of the child’s muscles.

Toward the twelfth year a new condition arises. The muscles no longer remain connected as intimately with the respiration and blood circulation but incline more toward the bones and adapt to the dynamics of the skeleton. The growth forces are fully engaged in the movement of limbs while walking, jumping, and grasping—indeed, in every limb activity related to the skeleton. The muscles, previously related closely to the rhythmic system, now become oriented entirely toward the skeletal system. Thus, children adapt more strongly now to the external world than they did before the twelfth year. Formerly, the muscular system was connected more directly with a child’s inner being, and the rhythmic system, because of its relative independence, played a dominant role in muscle growth. A child moved in harmony with the muscular system, and the skeleton, embedded in the muscles, was simply carried along. Now, toward the twelfth year, the situation quickly changes; the muscles begin to serve the mechanics and dynamics of the skeletal organization.

You will have gained a deep understanding of how human nature develops once you can see and understand what happens within children before the twelfth year—how the muscles simply carry the bones along and later begin to relate directly to the skeleton and, in doing so, relate also to the external world. Such insights free us from abstract, intellectual modes of investigation, which are so prevalent today and easily creep into the field of education. These insights also move educators toward a truly human approach to children. If we allow such things to work on our soul, we will never impose the sort of treatment on a child that Marsyas had to endure. Naturally, it is possible that some are frightened away when they see how transparent the human being becomes in the light of this knowledge of man. They may feel that the human soul is being dissected, but this is not the case; the anthroposophic approach is simultaneously artistic and an act of knowing. This way of looking at the human being is an art, and it is this that is needed if we want to grasp the importance of this whole period until puberty, or (as we can now describe it) the transition from an intimate affinity between the muscular system and the system of breathing and blood circulation before the twelfth year, and the subsequent relationship between the muscles and bones from the twelfth year until puberty.

Can you see now how an incarnating human being gradually adapts to the world? In very young children, the formative forces are centered in the brain and radiate from there. Then the center of activities shifts to the muscular system, and after the age of twelve a child’s being pours itself into the skeleton, so to speak. Only then are human beings ready to enter the world fully. Incarnating human beings must first penetrate the body before establishing a relationship with the external world. First, the head forces are active. Later, these forces are poured into the muscles, then into the skeletal system, and after sexual maturity is reached, adolescents are able to enter the world. Only then can they stand properly in the world.

This gradual process of incarnation needs to be considered if if we want to find the right choice and presentation of class material, especially for this age. Unfortunately, however, today’s educators hardly have a sound knowledge of the human being.

Now I must ask you to forgive me if I present you with something that may seem completely absurd to you. Often I feel compelled to do such a thing, because I have to stand up for anthroposophic truths. Contemporary physiologists, biologists, and anatomists will see what I am going to say as pure heresy, but it nevertheless represents the facts. Imagine that the human brain functions in a similar way. The nerves go from the brain to the sensory organs, the location of sense perception, which is then conducted back to the brain. Here in the brain is the central station, a human “London.” Then, imagine there are motor nerves going from the brain to the organs of movement, where they give rise to the will impulses of movement according the thoughts of the brain, which are, in some way, also part of this will activity.

When people speak or think about the human being today, they first turn their attention to the head. Although the head itself always has the tendency to push us into what is material and would want to kill us every day if it were given free rein, it has nevertheless become the focus of attention among the general public today, and this is the unhealthy aspect of our current evaluation of the human being. It is a natural consequence of our modern scientific outlook. The general idea is this: in the head is the brain, which is a kind of absolute ruler over everything we think or do. I wonder how such a theory would have been explained before the telegraph, since this invention offered such a plausible analogy to what happens in our brain.

The theory of the human nervous system was postulated only after the use of telecommunications made that analogy possible. And so the brain was compared to a telecommunication center, stationed, say, in London (Steiner drew on the blackboard). If this is the center in London, then here would be Oxford, and Dover over there. If London is the center, then we could say, Here is a line running from Oxford to London. And here in London messages coming from Oxford are switched over to Dover. Under certain circumstances, we could very well imagine it like this. Once such a theory has been invented, one can present the facts so that they seem to confirm it. Take any book on physiology, and in it you will find descriptions of how, in different experiments, nerves are cut and how various physical reactions in the human body lead to definite logical conclusions. Unless you maintain strong reservations from the beginning—after all, these things look very plausible—everything seems to fit together beautifully. The only snag here is that it does not stand up to what a penetrating knowledge of the human being has to say about it. There, it is unacceptable.

I will ignore the fact that sensory nerves and motor nerves are anatomically indistinguishable. One may be a little thicker, but their structures are not significantly different. According to anthroposophic research, they are uniform (I can indicate this only briefly, otherwise I would have to give whole lectures on anthroposophic physiology). It is absurd to say that sensory and motor nerves are different. The elements of sensation and will are omnipresent in the human soul, so everyone is free to call these either sensory or motor nerves, but they must be recognized as a single, unified entity, since there is no essential difference. The only difference is in the direction in which they function. The optic nerve (a sensory nerve) is open to light impressions on the eye, and peripheral events affect another nerve in turn, which modern physiology calls a motor nerve. If this nerve goes from the brain to the rest of the organism, its function is to perceive events during physical movement. A correct treatment of tabes dorsalis would confirm this.

It is the function of so-called motor nerves to perceive motor impulses and occurrences during physical movement, but not to initiate such impulses. Nerves, wherever they may be, are organs for transmitting impressions. Sensory nerves transmit external impressions, and motor nerves transmit internal impressions. However, there is only one kind of nerve. Only scientific materialism could have invented an analogy between nerves and a telegraph system. Only materialistic science could believe that, apart from the nerves, which transmit sense impressions during the process of perception, there must also be other nerves, whose special function is to initiate will impulses. But this is not the way it works. Will impulses originate in the soul and spiritual domain, where they begin and work directly into the metabolic-limb system, not via any other kind of nerves. Nerves that enter the metabolism and limbs transmit only the impressions of what a person is doing in response to soul and spiritual impulses. Through them we perceive the consequences of soul-spiritual will processes in the blood circulation, in the remaining metabolism, and in the movement of the limbs. These we perceive. The so-called motor nerves do not initiate physical movement, but allow us to perceive the consequences of our will impulses.

Unless we are clear about these relationships, we will not come to a proper understanding of the human being. On the other hand, if you can see the truth of what I am saying, you will also appreciate why I have to insist on making such seemingly contradictory statements, because they are instrumental in showing us how the human soul and spirit always work on the entire human being.

Until approximately the twelfth year, the effects of what was just described are found in muscular activity, which is so intensely connected with a child’s breathing and blood circulation. From the age of twelve until puberty, these are linked more to the forces at work in the skeleton. This means that, before the twelfth year, children perceive with their so-called motor nerves more what lives in muscle activity, whereas after the twelfth year their perceptivity tends more toward the processes taking place between muscles and bones.

Now consider the fact that volition is also involved in every process of thinking. When connecting (or synthesizing) certain mental images, or when separating (or analyzing) them, we also use our will forces, and you have to look for this will element in the appropriate area of the organism, into which it works from the domain of the human soul and spirit. The will forces involved in the process of thinking are connected with the organism as just described. Consequently, when entering the twelfth year, children develop the kind of thinking that, in the will nature, takes place in the bones and the dynamics of the skeleton. At this point, an important transition is taking place from the soft muscular system to the hard bony system that, as I like to put it, places itself into the world like a system of levers. And here is where the heresy lies, the paradox I have to place before you: When we think about something belonging to external, inorganic nature, we do so primarily with our skeleton. Anyone accustomed to the currently accepted ideas of physiology will most likely laugh when someone living in Dornach maintains that we think abstractly with our bones. But this is how it works. It would be more comfortable not to say this, but it must be said, since correct knowledge of the human being is needed so much today.

Thoughts in our brain are only pictures of what actually occurs during the process of thinking. The brain is only an instrument that produces passive mental images of the real processes going on during the activity of thinking. To become conscious of our thinking, we need these mental pictures. But the images that our brain reflects for us lack the inner force inherent in pure thinking; they lack the element of will. The real nature of thinking has no more to do with the brain’s mental images than a certain gentleman’s picture on a wall has to do with the man himself. We must distinguish a picture from the actual person. Similarly, the actual processes during thinking must be distinguished from the mental images derived from them. When thinking is directed toward outer physical nature, the entire human organism is involved to a certain extent, but especially the skeleton. In the twelfth year, a child’s thinking enters the realm of the skeleton. This is the signal for us to move on to a new range of subjects, leaving behind the subjects described yesterday—the plant in relation to the earth and the animal kingdom in relation to the human being.

Our awareness of what happens in the soul and spiritual domain of children must lead to the appropriate choices and lesson plans. The way the soft muscular system plays its part in relation to respiration and blood circulation indicates that children, from the tenth to twelfth years, should be introduced to plants and animals as described. These subjects relate more directly to our inner human nature than do more distant subjects such as mineralogy, dynamics, physics, and so on. Thus, as the twelfth year approaches, teaching, which previously had a mainly pictorial character and included living plants and sentient animals, should now appeal more to an intellectual grasp of inorganic nature.

Now we reach the point when young adolescents can place themselves as earthly beings into the world of dynamics and mechanics and experience their forces. Now the possibility arises for introducing them to the basic principles of physics and chemistry, which are subject to specific natural laws, and to the mineral realm. If these subjects were taught at an earlier age, we would interfere with evolving human nature and unconsciously damage healthy development in our students.

The ability to grasp historical connections—to gain an overall view of historical developments and the underlying impulses and social implications—represents the other side of the stage where students are able to comprehend the physical and mineral aspects of life. Only toward the twelfth year are they mature enough for both of these aspects. Historical ideas and impulses, which are expressed outwardly in definite historical periods and directly affect social life and forms, are like the skeleton of history, although—seen in a purely historical context—they may also be something quite different. The flesh, or muscles, so to speak, are represented by the lives of historical personages as well as by concrete historical events. Therefore, to introduce history between the tenth and the twelfth year, we must bring it as images that engender a warmth of feeling and inwardly uplift the students’ souls. This is possible through telling the children of biographical events and by characterizing certain concrete events that form a whole. But we must not introduce the abstract ideas and impulses behind certain historical eras. Students should meet these in their twelfth year, which is when they begin to take a stand in the outer world. Here again you can see how an inner development gradually extends outward. Now students are ready to grasp how historical impulses, manifesting in outer events, affect the lives of people.

It is important to realize this, because otherwise there is the danger of approaching children from an adult point of view. When educating young people, it is too easy to draw parallels to an adult study of the sciences, beginning with simpler content in physics and chemistry and moving gradually to more difficult parts. One may think that we should teach subjects at school in a similarly graduated way. But this does not accord with the nature of children. An adult may see something as the simplest of material, such as we find in the mineral kingdom and inorganic physical world, but children can grasp this only after they have penetrated the realm of their skeletal system, moving in the outer world according to the dynamics of the skeleton as though conforming to the principles of the lever.

Many today have grown accustomed to looking at almost every aspect of life as though it should belong to the domain of natural laws. We find historians who try to interpret the social phenomena of historical impulses as if they, too, should be subservient to the laws of nature. This attitude is encouraged even in childhood, when physical and chemical laws are taught before the twelfth year and before other subjects more closely allied to human life are studied in lessons. If school subjects are introduced in the wrong order, students project their own experiences and understanding of purely physical laws into the social sphere and into their understanding of history. And since this way of seeing the world has deeply penetrated educational practice, the general public is quite willing to look for natural laws in practically every area of life, so that one may no longer suggest that historical impulses originate in the spiritual world. Again, this is reflected in the current principles of education. Children are encouraged to develop a firm belief in what they have been taught in physics and chemistry, so that later on, as adults, they will maintain this limited view in their outlook as a whole.

What I have written on the blackboard comes from America: “Nature’s proceedings in social phenomena.” This phrase has become almost a slogan as an educational principle, postulating that children should be educated so that they will see the processes of society as if they were natural laws. Children are to regard events in community life as they do natural processes.

People have come to me again and again to tell me that this phrase should read differently in English, that it should read “progress of nature” or something similar. However justified their criticism may be from the perspective of language use, what matters is that this quote has become a catchphrase for a specific principle in educational science. Whatever the correct wording is, we must realize that its message needs to be corrected, and this is what I wish to do from a worldwide point of view. Correcting the wording is not good enough, for the meaning implies that we find only natural laws working through social impulses. And this is the kind of attitude that we inculcate in our children. We must begin to experience natural laws at work in the processes of nature, and higher, spiritual laws within the social sphere. But this is not happening. We ruin our students’ future worldviews when we introduce them prematurely to subjects such as chemistry, mineralogy, physics, dynamics, and so on. As I have pointed out so many times already, we have to keep an eye on the entire milieu of our culture to know where to promote the impulses of the art of education. Forgive me if I have again raised an argument against common practice, but in my opinion it is justified.

If we approach modern science with the knowledge and insight gained by following paths outlined in How to Know Higher Worlds, we get the impression that the world described by natural science—according to mineral and physical law only—is not one in which we can live as human beings of flesh and blood. Theirs is a different world altogether. When we look, with eyes opened by imaginative knowledge, at the world described by modern natural science, and when we see how Children from the Tenth to Fourteenth Years 193 their picture of the world is meant to affect people today, we do not find human beings of flesh and blood there at all. We see only walking skeletons, little bone men and bone women. Theirs is a strange world indeed.

I once made an interesting experiment. The younger people here won’t remember a certain Swiss philosopher called Vogt—known as “Fat Vogt”—a typical thinker of recent times who in the 1850s somehow managed to knock together a rough-andready materialistic world philosophy that, like a specter, still haunts many worldviews today. I tried to imagine what would happen if real flesh-and-blood human beings were to find their way into this world of walking skeletons. Any healthy person of flesh and blood could not bear to live in such a world. But what would happen, I asked myself, if someone with at least a modicum of flesh and blood were to stray into this world of walking bones? The effects of living in a world as described by a purely materialistic view, and its intentional influences on people, would make a real person suffer the worst kinds of neurasthenia and hysteria. One could never be free of all the surrounding influences. Essentially, today’s natural science describes a world where we would all become neurasthenic and hysterical. Mercifully, the world of the natural scientist is not real or the one we live in. Very different forces, undreamed of by such people, are at work in the real world. Nevertheless, we need to extricate ourselves from this falsely uniform world of illusion, from which we receive almost everything that contributes to the general civilization of today. We must reach a true and real knowledge of the human being, and only then will we be able to educate in the right way.

Today I shall have something to add to what was stated yesterday. I am reminding you of something which most of you have already heard from me. When the human being passes through death the physical body remains behind within the earth-forces, the etheric body dissolves within the cosmic forces, and the human being finds his continuing life, his existence, throughout the realms which lie between death and a new birth. I said that we can follow up the formative forces within the human being himself which project from one life into the other.

We know that man is in essence a threefold being, with three independent members; I mean, in regard to the formative forces of the physical body, the physical organization. We have the system of the nerves and senses, which naturally is spread over the whole body, but is located primarily in the head; we have the rhythmic system, including the rhythm of the breath, circulation, and other rhythms; then we have the metabolic and limb organization, which we consider as one because man's movements are intimately and organically connected with his metabolism.

You know that each human being has a differently, an individually shaped head. If we consider the forces which shape the human head—of course you must not think of the physical substances, but of the formative forces, of that which gives to the head its physiognomy, its entire character, its phrenological expression—if we consider these forces, we find them to be those of the metabolic and limb system belonging to the previous incarnation which have now become form. Thus we have in the head the transformation of the earlier metabolic organism, and if we consider what we possess as a metabolic and limb system in this present incarnation, these formative forces are found to be undergoing a metamorphosis and shaping the head for our next incarnation. Therefore, if we understand the building of the human form we can, as it were, look back, through a corresponding development of the idea of metamorphosis, from the human head of today to the metabolic system of the previous incarnation; and we can look from the present metabolic system forward to the head formation of the next incarnation. [See: Guenther Wachsmuth, Reincarnation as a Phenomenon of Metamorphosis, Anthroposophie Press, New York, Rudolf Steiner Publishing Co., London.]

This conception, which in our spiritual science and in the spiritual science of all ages plays a certain role, these truths concerning repeated earth lives remain by no means without substantiation, for whoever understands the human organism can read them directly from it. But the present trend of natural science is as far removed as possible from embarking upon the sort of investigation which would be necessary in this case. Of course one cannot escape, through the study of anatomy and physiology alone, the foolish conclusion that the liver and lungs may be investigated by the same method. One lays the liver beside the lungs upon the dissecting table and regards them as organs of equal value, since both consist of cells, and so on. In such a way one can obtain no knowledge of these things, and two organic systems which are as different from one another as the lungs and liver cannot be studied by an external comparison of their cellular configuration, as they must be according to present ideas.

If we really wish to discover the pertinent details, methods must be employed through which a conception of these things may be gained. If the methods which I have described in Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and Its Attainment are sufficiently developed, then the human power of cognition is greatly strengthened. I am repeating here certain statements that I have already explained in lectures given last autumn in the Goetheanum building: Our ordinary cognition is strengthened, through which we look out with our senses at our environment, and through which we also examine our inner life, where we meet primarily our thinking, feeling, and willing. And if we broaden our knowledge to the degree possible through these exercises which have been often described, then our view of the outer world changes, and in such a way that as a first result we realize the absolute folly of speaking of atoms in the manner of present world-conceptions. What is behind sense perception, behind its qualities, behind yellow and red, behind C sharp, g, and so forth, is not vibration but spiritual essentiality. The outer world becomes ever more spiritual the further we press forward in cognition, so that we really cease to take seriously all those constructions derived from chemical or other ideas. All atomism is thoroughly driven from our minds when we broaden our knowledge of the outer world. Behind the phenomena of the senses there is a spiritual world.

If, on the other hand, through such an enlarged vision we look more deeply into our inner life there arises—not that confused mysticism which forms a justifiable transition, pointed out and explained yesterday—but there arises instead, when inner cognition is developed, a psychic knowledge of the organs. We learn really to recognize our inner organization. While our outer perception is more and more spiritualized, our inner perception is, first of all, more and more materialized. Working in this inner direction, not the nebulous mystic but the real spiritual researcher will become acquainted with each single organ. He learns to know the differentiated human organism. We attain to the spiritual world in no other manner than by this detour through the observation of our own inner materiality. Unless we learn to know lungs, liver, and so forth, we do not gain on this detour through our inner being any kind of spiritual enthusiasm which, freed of the confusion of mysticism, works towards a concrete knowledge of the inner organs.

At all events, we gain a more exact knowledge of the configuration of the soul. To begin with, we learn to give up the preconceived idea that our psychic constitution is merely an adjunct of the sensory and nervous system. Only the world of representations is correlated to the nervous system, the world of feeling not at all. The world of feeling is connected directly with the rhythmic organization; and the world of will is adjusted to the metabolic and limb system. If I will something, a corresponding activity is induced in my metabolic and limb system, the nervous system being there only in order that concepts may be formed in regard to what takes place in the will. There are no nerves of will, as I have often stated; the division of nerves into sensory nerves and nerves of will is absurd. The nerves are all of one kind, and the so-called nerves of will exist for no other purpose than the inner observation of the processes of will. They too are sensory nerves.

If we study this thoroughly we come at last to consider the human organism in its entirety. Take the lung organism, the liver organism, and so forth. Looking at them within, you reach a point when you survey, as it were, the surface of the several organs, naturally by means of spiritual sight. What exactly is this surface of the organs? It is nothing less than a reflecting apparatus for the soul life. Our perceptions, and also what we elaborate in thought are reflected upon the surface of all our inner organs; and this reflection makes known our recollections, our memory during life. Thus, after we have perceived and digested something in thought, it is mirrored upon the surface of our heart, liver, spleen, and so forth, and what is thus thrown back constitutes our memories. And with a not very extensive training you may notice how certain thoughts shine back in memory from the whole organism. Very different organs take part in this. If it is a question of remembering, let us say, very abstract conceptions, then the lung surface participates strongly. If it is a question of thoughts colored by feeling, of thoughts which have a nuance of feeling, then the surface of the liver is concerned. Thus we can describe very well, and in detail, how the various organs take part in this reflection which makes its appearance as recollection, as the power of memory.

When we concentrate upon the whole soul nature we must not say: In the nervous system alone we have the organic correlate of the soul life, for the entire human organism is the correlated organization for the life of the soul.

In this connection much knowledge, once present as instinct, has simply been lost sight of. It still exists in certain words, but people no longer realize how wisdom is preserved in words. For example, if anyone in the time of the ancient Greeks had a tendency to depression when forming his recollections, they called it hypochondria, meaning a process of cartilage-formation or ossification of the abdomen where, as a result of this rigidity, reflection was brought about in such a way as to make memory a source of depression. The entire organism is involved in these things. That is something which must be kept in our minds.

When speaking of the power of memory, I drew attention to the surface of the organs. In a certain sense everything experienced strikes the surfaces, is reflected, and that leads to recollections. But something enters the organism at the same time. In ordinary life this is transmuted, undergoes a metamorphosis, so that the organ produces a secretion. The organs having this function are mostly glandular. They have an inner secretion, which during life is changed into force. But not everything is thus transformed into organic metabolism, etc. Certain organs take up instead something which becomes latent within them, and constitutes an inner force; for example, all thoughts connected mainly with our perception of the outer world through which we form images of outer objects. The forces developed in these thoughts are, in a certain manner, stored up within the lungs.

You know that the inside of the lungs comes into activity through the metabolism, the movement of the limbs, and these forces are so transmuted that during the life between birth and death our lungs are somewhat of a reservoir of forces which are continually influenced by the metabolic-and-limb system. We find that at the time of death such forces have been stored up. The physical matter naturally falls away, but these forces are not wasted. They accompany us through death, and throughout the entire life between death and a new birth. And when we enter a new incarnation these forces which were in the lungs form our head outwardly, stamp upon it its physiognomy. That which the phrenologist, the craniologist study in the outer form of the skull would be found forecast within the lungs during the previous incarnation.

You see how definitely, from life to life, the transmutation of forces may be followed up. When this is done reincarnation will no longer be an abstract truth alone, but will be studied concretely, as one can study physical things. And spiritual science becomes valuable only when in this way we penetrate into concrete facts. If we speak only in generalities of repeated earth lives, and so forth, then these are mere words. They have meaning only if we can enter upon the single concrete facts.

If that which has been stored in the lungs is not controlled in the right way it is squeezed out, as I said yesterday, much in the same way as a sponge is squeezed out, and then, from that which should form the head only in the next incarnation, there arise mainly abnormal phenomena which are usually called coercive thoughts, or described by some other term as illusions. It is an interesting chapter of a higher physiology to study in lung cases the strange notions which arise in the patient in the advanced stages of the disease. This is connected with what I have just explained to you, with the abnormal pressing out of thoughts.

You will see undoubtedly that the thoughts which are pressed out under these conditions are coercive because they already contain the formative forces. The thoughts which we ought normally to have in consciousness should be pictures only, they must not contain a formative force, and should not coerce us. Throughout the long period between death and rebirth these thoughts do coerce us; then they are causative, formative. During earth life they must not overwhelm us; they should use their power only during the transition from one life to another. This is the point to be considered.

If you now study the liver in the manner I have just explained in regard to the lungs, you will discover that there are concentrated in the same way within the liver all the forces which in the next incarnation determine the inner disposition of the brain. Again by a detour through the metabolic organism of the present life, the forces of the liver pass over, this time not into the shape of the head, but into the inner disposition of the brain. Whether or not someone is to be an acute thinker in the next incarnation depends upon how he behaves in the present one, in order that thus, upon the detour through the metabolism there may arise within the liver definite powers. But if these are ejected during the present incarnation they lead to hallucinations or to powerful visions.

You see now concretely what I pointed out yesterday more theoretically: that these things arise, having been squeezed out of the organs, then force their way into consciousness. Out of the general hallucinatory life, which should extend from the end of one incarnation into the next, they assert themselves within a single incarnation and, in this way, make their abnormal appearance.

If you study in the same manner all that is connected with the kidneys and excretory system you will discover that they concentrate within themselves the forces which, in the following incarnation, influence the head organization preferably in the field of affective emotions. The kidneys, the organs of excretion, bring forth in preparation for the next incarnation essentially that which has to do with the temperamental tendencies in the broadest sense, but by a detour through the head organization.

If these forces are squeezed out during the present incarnation they display all the nervous symptoms connected with over-excitement of the human being, inner excitement specifically, hypochondriacal symptoms, depression, in short all the conditions connected particularly with this aspect of the metabolism.

In reality everything remembered with a strong ingredient of feeling or passion is also connected with what is reflected from the kidneys. If we consider lung or liver reflections we find them to be more often memory ideas, the memories proper. If we turn to the kidney system we see what sort of lasting habits we have in this incarnation; and within the kidney system are being prepared already the temperamental tendencies in the broadest sense which, by a detour through the head organization, are intended for our next incarnation.

Let us study the heart with the same idea. For spiritual-scientific research, the heart is an extraordinarily interesting organ. You know that our trivial science is inclined to treat knowledge of the heart rather lightly. It looks upon the heart as a pump which pumps the blood through the body. Nothing more absurd can be believed, for the heart has nothing to do with pumping the blood. The blood is set in motion by the full agility of the astral body and ego, and the heart's movement is only the reflex of these activities. The movement of the blood is autonomous, and the heart only brings to expression the movement caused by these forces. The heart is in fact only the organ that manifests the movement of the blood, the heart itself having no activity in relation to this blood movement. The present natural scientists become very angry if you speak of this. Many years ago, I think in 1904 or 1905, on a journey to Stockholm I explained this to a scientist, a medical man, and he was furious about the idea that the heart should not be regarded as a pump, that the blood comes into movement through its own vitality, that the heart is simply inserted in the general blood movement, participates with its beat, and so on.

Well, something is reflected from the surface of the heart which is not a matter of memory or of habit. The life processes become spiritualized when they reach the outer surface of the heart. For what is thrown back from the heart are the pangs of conscience. That is to be taken simply, entirely as the physical aspect. The pangs of conscience which radiate into our consciousness are that ingredient in our experiences which is reflected from the heart. Spiritual cognition of the heart teaches us this.

But if we look into its interior we see gathered there forces which again stem from the entire metabolic and limb organism, and because everything connected with the heart forces is spiritualized that is also spiritualized within it which has to do with our outer life and deeds. And however strange and paradoxical it may sound to anyone clever in the modern sense, the fact remains that what is thus prepared within the heart are the karmic propensities, the tendencies of our karma. It is revoltingly foolish to speak of the heart as a mere pumping mechanism, for the heart is the organ which, through mediation of the limb and metabolic system, carries what we understand as karma into the next incarnation.

You see, if we learn to know this organization we learn to differentiate and recognize its connection with the complete life extending beyond birth and death. We look then into the whole structure of the human being. We cannot speak of the head in relation to metamorphoses, for the head is simply cast off, its forces having completed their activity in the present incarnation. That which, however, exists in these four main systems, in lung, kidney, liver, and heart, after making a detour through the metabolic and limb system, passes over forming our head with all its predispositions and tendencies in the next incarnation. We must seek within the organs of our body the forces which will carry over into the next incarnation what we are now experiencing.

The human metabolism is by no means a mere simmering and seething of chemicals in a retort which modern physiology describes. You need only to take a step in walking and a certain metabolic effect is produced. The metabolism then taking place is not simply the chemical process which may be examined by means of physiology and chemistry, but bears within it at the same time a nuance of morality. And this moral nuance is in fact stored up in the heart and carried over as karmic force into the next incarnation. To study the human being in his entirety means to find in him the forces which reach over beyond earth life. Our head itself is a sphere, and this form is modified only because the rest of the organism is attached to it. Our head is formed out of the cosmos. When we go through death we must, with the spiritual and soul organization which remains to us, adapt ourselves to the whole cosmos. The whole cosmos then receives us. Up to the middle of the period between two incarnations—I have called it in one of my Mystery Dramas the Midnight of Existence—up to this time, if I may so express myself, we continue to spread out into our environment and what thus goes out from us into the surrounding world gives the astral and etheric configuration for the next incarnation.

All this, coming in essence from the cosmos, is determined by the mother. Through the father and impregnation comes that which is formed in the physical body and in the ego. This ego, as it is then, after the Midnight Hour of Being, passes over into an entirely different world. It goes over into the world from which it can then follow the path through the paternal nature. This is an extremely important process. The period up to the Midnight Hour and the period from the Midnight Hour on—both between death and rebirth—are really very different from each other. In my Vienna lecture cycle in 1914 I pictured these experiences in their inner aspect.¹ If we look at them more from the outside, we must say: The ego is more cosmic in the first half, up to the Midnight Hour, and prepares within the cosmos that which then enters the next incarnation indirectly through the mother. From the Midnight Hour of Existence on up to the next birth, the ego passes over into what the old Mysteries called the netherworld; and on the detour through this netherworld it passes through impregnation. There the two poles of humanity meet as it were, through mother and father, from the upper world and from the netherworld.

What I am now saying was an intrinsic portion of the Egyptian Mysteries which came out of the old instinctive knowledge, at least so far as is known to me. The Egyptian Mysteries led particularly to knowledge of what they then called the upper and the lower gods, the upper and the underworld of gods; and it may be said that in the act of impregnation a polar equilibrium of the upper and the underworld of gods is brought about. The ego between death and rebirth goes first through the upper and then through the lower world. In olden times there was not the strange nuance which many connect today with upper and netherworld. People of today nearly always look upon the upper as the good and the netherworld as the bad. This nuance was not originally connected with these worlds; they were simply the two polarities which had to participate in the general world creation. Humanity in the direct experience of the upper world, viewed it more as the world of light, the netherworld more as the world of gravity. Gravity and light were the two polarities when expressed exoterically, and thus you see that such things may be described concretely.

In regard to the other organs I have told you that the overflowing of organic forces may become hallucinatory life, especially that which is squeezed from the liver system. But if the heart squeezes out its contents it is really the collected forces, ejected and brought into consciousness, which call forth in the next incarnation that strange urge to live out one's karma. If we observe how karma works, it may be said that a figurative description from the human side might represent it as a kind of hunger and its assuagement.

That must be understood as follows: Let us proceed first from the standpoint of ordinary life. Let us take a striking case: A woman meets a man and begins to love him. As that is usually regarded, it is somewhat as though you were to cut out a small piece from the Sistine Madonna, for example, a little finger from the Jesus boy and gaze at it. You have a piece of the Sistine Madonna, but you do not see anything. Neither do you see anything if you merely consider the fact that a woman meets a man and begins to love him. The matter is not like that. You must trace it backwards. Before the woman met the man she had been in other places in the world; before that she had been somewhere else, and still earlier somewhere else again. You can find all sorts of reasons why the woman went from one place to another. There is sense in it and, although it is naturally hidden in the subconscious, there is a connection throughout, and we can, by going back into childhood, follow the way. The woman in question—and this is directed at no one in particular—follows the path from the beginning which culminates in the event under discussion. The human being at birth hungers to do what he does, and he does not give up until he satisfies this hunger. The pressing forward to a karmic event is the result of such an indescript spiritual feeling of hunger. One is driven to it, as it were, by the whole self. The human being has forces within him which lead to later events, in spite of the freedom which nevertheless exists, but acts in a different field. Well, the forces which manifest in this way as hunger, leading to karmic satisfaction, are concentrated in the heart; and when they are pressed out prematurely and enter the consciousness during the present incarnation, they may create pictures which produce a stimulus, and then frenzy results.

Frenzy is nothing but the outburst in this incarnation of a karmic force intended for the subsequent incarnation. Think how differently we must accustom ourselves to look upon world events, having understood these connections. People put questions such as: Why did God create frenzy? Frenzy has plenty of good reasons for existence, but everything working in this world may appear at the wrong time, and the displaced manifestation, due in this case to Luciferic forces—everything premature in the world is brought about by Luciferic forces—this precipitate appearance of karmic forces intended for a later incarnation produces frenzy.

You see, what is to be carried over and continued in later incarnations may really be studied in the abnormalities of the present life. You may easily imagine what an important difference exists between what remains in our heart throughout our entire incarnation, and the condition it will be in after it has gone through the long development between death and rebirth, to appear then in a new life in the outer behavior of a human being.

However, if you look into your own hearts you can see pretty clearly, though of course only in latency, not in a finished picture, what you will do in your next life. We need not confine ourselves to the general statement: what will take effect karmically in the next life is prepared in this one, but we can point directly to the receptacle in which the karma of subsequent incarnations is stored. These are the things which must be concretely regarded if we wish to practice genuine spiritual science.

You may imagine what enormous importance these things will attain when they are studied and made a part of the general education. What does present medicine know of the possibility of a liver or heart disease when it does not recognize the most important fact of all, that is, the actual purpose of these organs! And it does not know that. It does not even discover a correct connection between excitement hallucinations and the kidney system, nor of the quiet hallucinations, those which simply appear and are present as I have just explained, and are, so to say, liver hallucinations. Hallucinations which appear as though crawling on a human being so that the victim wants to brush them off come from the kidney system. These are the excitement hallucinations which have to do with the emotions and temperament. From such symptoms a much more exact diagnosis can be made than by the means in ordinary use today. And diagnoses based upon purely external evidence are very uncertain in comparison with what they would be were these things studied with the above-mentioned symptoms in mind.

Now all these things are connected with the outer world. The lungs, as an inner organ or organic system, contain the compressed coercive thoughts with all that we receive and concentrate in that organ through perception of outer objects. The liver has an entirely different relation to the outer world. Because the lungs preserve the thought material they are quite differently shaped. They are more closely connected with the earth element. The liver, which conceals in particular the quietly appearing hallucinations, is connected with the element of water; and the kidney system, paradoxical as it sounds, belongs to the element of air. One thinks naturally that this ought to be the case with the lungs, but the lungs as organs are connected with the earth element, though not with it alone. On the other hand, the kidney system—as an organ -—belongs to the element of air, and the heart system to that of warmth, being entirely formed out of that element. Hence, this element which is the spiritual one is also the one which takes up the predisposition of our karma into the delicate warmth structures of the warmth organism.

Since the human being as a whole stands in a relation with the outer world, you can readily realize that the lungs have a particular relation to the outer world in connection with the earth element, and the liver in regard to the watery element. If you examine the earthly qualities of plants you will find in them the remedies for diseases which originate in the lungs. (This is of course to be considered in its broadest implications.) If you take what circulates in the plant, its circulation of juices, you will have the remedy for all disturbances connected with the liver. Thus a study of the reciprocal relation of the organs with the outer world offers in fact the foundation for a rational therapy.

Our present therapy is a jumble of empiric notes. One can reach a really rational therapy only by studying in this way the reciprocal relations between the domain of the human organs and the outer world. Of course the voluptuous longing for subjective mysticism must then be overcome. If the aim is to reach no farther than the well-known “little divine flame” of Meister Eckhardt, and so on; if only the outpouring of inner delight is the aim, and the beholding of beautiful images without penetrating this element to the definite configuration of the inner organs, then important therapeutic knowledge cannot be acquired. For this knowledge is gained upon the path of genuine mysticism which advances to the concrete reality of the inner human organism.

We learn, by the detour through this inner knowledge, to discern the passage through the incarnations. In just the same way, when we regard the outer world, in penetrating this carpet of the sense impressions, we attain to the spiritual. We rise into the world of the spiritual hierarchies, which we did not reach through the detour of inner mysticism. The hierarchies are found through a more profound contemplation of the outer world. Upon this path there follow results which may be first expressed by analogies; yet they are not mere analogies, for there exist deeper connections and relations.

We breathe, do we not? And I recently reckoned for you the number of inhalations during twenty-four hours. If we count eighteen breaths to the minute we have in an hour 60 x 18, and in twenty-four hours 25920 inhalations in a day and night.

Let us take another rhythm in the human being, the rhythm of day and night. When you awake in the morning you draw into your physical and etheric bodies the astral body and ego. This is also breathing. In the morning you inhale the astral body and ego, and when you fall asleep at night you exhale them again; thus one complete breath in 24 hours, in one day. That is 365 such breaths in a year. And take the average age of a human being, 72 years, and you have approximately the same result. If I had not started with 72, but somewhat lower, I should have reached the same figure. That is to say, if you take the entire earthly life of a human being, and count each single day, each falling asleep and awakening, as one breath, you have then in an entire life as many inhalations and exhalations of the astral body and ego as you have in and out breathings in 24 hours. You make in the course of your life as many in and out breathings of the astral body and ego as you make daily in your in and out breathing of air. These rhythms correspond absolutely, and show us how man is fitted into the cosmos. The life of one day from sunrise to sunset, as a single circuit, corresponds with an inner sunrise and sunset that lasts from birth to death.

You see the human being becomes a part of the whole world organism; and I should like to close these considerations by pointing out to you an idea, asking you to think about it rather thoroughly, and to make it a subject of meditation. Science today postulates a cosmic process, and within this cosmic process the earth once arose. In the end the earth, when the entropy is fulfilled, will be consumed in cosmic heat. If today we form for ourselves a concept such as the Copernican, or any modification of it, then we take into consideration only the forces which formed the earth out of the primeval nebula, and human life really becomes a sort of fifth wheel on the wagon; for the geologist and the astronomer do not consider mankind. It does not occur to them to seek in any sense within mankind itself the cause of a future world organism. The human being is everywhere present in this cosmic process, but he is the fifth wheel on the wagon. The world process takes its course, but he has nothing to do with it. Consider it in this way: the world process comes to an end, ceases, is dispersed in space. It stops, and the causes of what ensues are always within the human being himself, inside his skin; there they find their continuation.

The inception of what is now the world lies far back within man of primeval ages. It is thus in reality. The books of ancient wisdom tell us this in their own language, and the saying of Christ-Jesus points to these things: Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away. All that constitutes the material world is dissolved, but that which issues from the spirit and soul and is expressed in words survives the destruction of the earth and lives on into the future. The causes of the future exist within us, and need not be investigated by geologists. We should seek them among the inner forces of our organism which pass over into our next earth-life first, but then continue into other metamorphoses. Hence when you search for the future of the world you must look within man. Everything external perishes utterly.

The nineteenth century erected a barrier against this knowledge, and this barrier is called: the law of the conservation of energy. This law carries forward the forces of man's environment; but all these will dissolve and disappear. Only that which arises within humanity itself can create the future. The law of the conservation of energy is the most false imaginable. In reality its result is simply to make mankind a fifth wheel in the creative process of the cosmos. Not the statement of the law of the conservation of energy is correct, but that other saying: Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away. These two are in diametrical contrast; and it is simply thoughtlessness when today certain members of this or that positive denomination wish to be believers in the Bible and, at the same time, adherents of the theories of modern physics. This is sheer dishonesty which claims today to be something culturally creative. This dishonesty must be driven from the field of creative culture—which it actually opposes—if we are to emerge from these forces of decline into ascending powers.

• 1. Rudolf Steiner, Inner Nature of Man, Vienna, Easter 1914, six lectures.

The first 12 chapters in the gospel of John

In modern theology, clear distinction is made between the first three gospels and the gospel of John. The first three are called the synoptic gospels, whilst the latter is often said to be a composition for teaching purposes and of no historical value. What matters is, however, that everything said relating to the Christ in the gospels is a profound symbol which at the same time is an important historical fact. In reality the first three gospels differ from the gospel of John because they were written by disciples who were less profoundly initiated, whereas the gospel of John was written by the most deeply initiated disciple.

The gospel of John actually makes no direct mention of John, only referring to him as the disciple whom Jesus loved. This is a key word for the one who was most deeply initiated. To indicate that some disciples were the most intimate initiates it would be said that the master loved them.

The disciple who wrote down the gospel of John first of all described something he had himself experienced. Chapters 1 to 12 are experiences in the astral world, chapter 13 and those that follow experiences at the devachanic level. This is highly significant and characteristic of the whole of it. John described experiences on the astral level because he took the view that it is only possible to understand what Christ Jesus accomplished on this earth if one considers it in the light of the spirit. The things the master did and said could only be understood if one put oneself in a higher state of consciousness. Inner development can enable human beings to gain true vision in the astral world. This is only achieved by doing specific meditations. The individual must close himself off from the outside world. He must let eternal truths arise in his soul. A new world then opens up all around him.

What Christ Jesus did on earth could only be properly judged by going into a higher world. Things experienced with Jesus in the physical world only became clear if seen in astral terms. To gain living experience of what Christ Jesus had done, one had to use suitable Christian meditation to enter into a state where the soul gained understanding of the Christ.

John said so first of all in his introduction. This is a meditative prayer from the beginning to ‘and the darknesses did not comprehend it.’ When the soul gains living experience of what lies in those words, the powers arise that enable us to grasp the content of chapters 1 to 12. ‘In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was a god.’ This ancient truth was presented in visible form in all the ancient mysteries, above all those with an Egyptian bias.

Words sound in air-filled space, otherwise we would not hear them. The figures of the words we speak are in that space. If the air could be suddenly made to go rigid as I speak the waves that buzz around in the air would fall down as rigid solid bodies. A mystery teacher would tell his pupil: ‘Just as a human being speaks, wresting his inner life away and passing it into the air, so the cosmic soul also spoke, but into much more subtle matter, into Akasha matter, and this would then become solid.’ Everything around us is condensed word of god. And so, the mystery teacher said, the world all around us is frozen word of God, a frozen logos. ‘In the beginning was the word and the word was with God.’ It was still within itself, it was itself a god. Then it filled space and froze. This logos is now present in everything. Everywhere around us we have the crystals of the logos. But as life evolved, the logos arose from its state of slumber, as it were. In man it became the light of insight. When we gain insight, God, who has originally descended into the world, comes to us out of this world. One must enter wholly into this, penetrating so deeply into the world that one realizes: The logos lives in the world.

Originally there was the creation of the physical human being. The spiritual human being entered into this physical human being. Then light shone into the darkness. But the darknesses did not at first comprehend it. When a human being develops further, there comes to him the content of astral truth vision. He then sees clearly what Christ Jesus was, and what his teaching signified: that the time was ripe in those days to bring forth a reverse Adam. Man had descended into his body, and with this came birth and death. Light then entered into the darkness.

There was need to help humanity to understand again that life is the victor in the struggle with death. John the Baptist thus came as a forerunner. The Baptist made it known that a new kingdom would take all that was old and still wholly in the sign of the original creation by divine powers. Until then it was said that the god would destroy those who went against his laws. The new kingdom was one, however, which man would find in himself through living experience of the god. The idea of the old covenant had been that humanity had to obey God's commandment. The new covenant was that human beings should follow the god in them of their own free will. This is the love of goodness. It was prophetically foretold; it had to increase. The Christ as the representative of the new covenant had to increase; John, being only his forerunner, had to decrease.

Two major elements came together at this point. John saw this in his vision where everything appeared in form of images. At the same time the actual Baptist and his historical mission appeared to his inner eye. The whole mission of Christianity now presented himself to him. He described this in the first chapter.

Let us go back to very early times, at least 2000 years before Christ. Wise individuals had advanced so far that they were initiated into the mysteries. One symbol used was the offering of the water. The mystery priest used water as a symbol. It is a law that man shuts himself off from the higher world of the spirit if he takes alcohol. Someone wishing to enter the worlds of spirit in a living way must not drink wine, not even the wine of the offering.

The marriage in Cana characterizes the Mission of Christianity. The ancient mystery priests had the most sublime teachings, given out of profound understanding in the spirit. But one thing that was lacking in pagan culture was the conquest of the physical world. Their tools were still extremely primitive, the whole of outer civilization was primitive. People had not yet gained a relationship to the things that had to happen directly down here on earth. They had to learn to control the earth and this meant they had to be limited to the physical. They had to grow strong and hallow the lower human being.

This culture was prepared for by great teachers who spoke of the significance of the physical level. Egyptian art was great in its spiritual concepts but not in the form it took at the physical level. The whole of Greek art consisted in bringing the human being down to the physical level. Roman law also brought humanity down to the physical level. The cult of Dionysus was connected with all this. The representative of wine was actually shown as a god. The story of the marriage in Cana shows the introduction of wine into human evolution in sublime fashion. The true purpose was to show that water is greater than wine. It was transformed into wine because humanity had to be taken down to the physical level.

Today we have come down to the physical level in every respect. If there is no moral development to go hand in hand with civilization at the physical level, physical achievements are destructive. Moral development will enable humanity to generate energies that will be very different from those that are now to be found at the physical level. Keely⁴⁴ set his engine in motion with vibrations created in his own organism. Such vibrations depend on a person's moral nature. This is the first hint of a dawn for a technology of the future. We will have engines in future that are only set going by energies coming from people who have moral qualities. Immoral people will not be able to set them going. Purely mechanical mechanism must be transformed into moral mechanism.

The approach used in the science of the spirit is preparing the way for this ascent. Christianity first had to guide humanity down. Now it must guide them upwards again. Wine must be transformed into water again.

John was able to see beyond physical reality. The deed accomplished by the Lord, his mission, thus appeared to John the disciple in the image of the marriage at Cana in Galilee. This is how one should read the first 12 chapters of the gospel of John. It does not say that Mary asked him but the mother of Jesus. This is a mystic term. In mysticism, ‘mother’ always refers to something that needs to be inseminated when the human being ascends to a higher level. Jesus had to take the whole of human consciousness, such as it had been until then, to a higher level. The consciousness of all humanity needed him to take it a step forward. This is why Jesus was able to say: ‘Woman, what have I to do with you?’ He would not have said this to his mother.

On the third day, a marriage took place. This means that John lay in the sleep of initiation for three days. There the vision of the marriage in Cana in Galilee occurred. In a sleep lasting three days he went through the events that took place in the world of the spirit. On the third day he experienced the vision of the marriage in Cana. All that follows are events he saw in his astral vision.

In the third chapter we have the talk with Nicodemus. In his astral vision it would always be the Lord himself who appeared to John. In the talk with Nicodemus we hear what was to happen to John. The Lord put things very clearly. Nicodemus did not at first understand him. It is John himself who needed to understand; it was explained to him in the vision that it was a matter of killing off the lower human being, with the higher human being coming alive. He gradually understood who Jesus actually was; that the powers of the world's origin, the father of the world, were alive in him. This is why we then have the words Jesus said about the father. The occult powers Jesus possessed appeared to John as an astral reflection of the actual events. John was thus learning the most profound truths through the Lord himself.

In the fourth chapter we have the meeting with the woman of Samaria. The Lord said to her: ‘You have had five husbands and the one you have now is not your husband’ She was to be raised to the higher self. For this, she had to go through the lower bodies. Those were the old husbands. She now had to be connected with the higher self. That was the new husband. In the story of the man who was born blind it became evident that it was his karma to be unable to see.

The first events described in John's gospel are astral experiences. Surely it is natural that John himself was not present, seeing that he perceived it all in image consciousness? John is not mentioned in the first 12 chapters. He was not yet the disciple, experiencing all these things in the astral level.

He then slept the initiation sleep. He was to rise to a higher degree. This happened as he lived through the experiences of the three days and on into the fourth day. The initiation took 3 ½ days. Then he saw his own initiation, his own resurrection. This was the raising of Lazarus.⁴⁵ Lazarus wrote the gospel of John. Martha and Mary were the states of consciousness in his soul, one divine, the other turned to life on earth. The description of the Lazarus miracle is the description of a higher level of initiation. The 12^th chapter prepares for the actual recognition of the Jesus personality. John himself then says: ‘Now I know him, who has raised me from the dead.’

John's higher development begins with the 13^th chapter. Every word in the gospel of John can be understood if we take it as John's living experience. He then became conscious in his I, and this was no longer an image consciousness. He consciously became the disciple whom the Lord loved.

• 44. Keely, John Worrel (182–1898), American engineer. Rudolf Steiner spoke of him on several occasions, e.g. in Ursprung und Ziel des Menschen. Grundbegriffe der Geisteswissenschaft (GA 53), Berlin, 30 March 1905; The Temple Legend (GA 93). Berlin, 2 Jan. 1906. Tr. J. Wood. London: Rudolf Steiner Press 1985; Steiner R. Cosmic Being and Egohood (in GA 169), lecture given in Berlin on 20 June 1916. Typescript translation C 43 at Rudolf Steiner House Library, London; Polarities in the Evolution of Mankind (GA 197), Stuttgart, 8 Nov. 1920. Tr. not named. London: Rudolf Steiner Press 1987. Considerable detail, but confusing, may be found in in Blavatsky, HP, The Secret Doctrine vol. 1.
• 45. John 11: 1-45. See also Steiner R. Christianity as Mystical Fact and The Mysteries of Antiquity (GA 8). Tr. H. Collison, rev. C. Davy, A. Bittleston. Bristol: RudoIfSteinerPress 1992.

When Knebel read the fragment "On Nature" in the 32nd edition of the Tiefurt Journal at the beginning of 1783, he wrote in his diary: "Goethe's fragment on nature made a deep impression on me. It is masterly and great. It encourages me in love." Like the other contributions to the journal, the essay was published without the author's name. Knebel was only able to attribute the ideas set down in it to Goethe. Other readers of the journal would probably have thought the same. Goethe himself opposed this opinion. He wrote to Knebel: "The essay in the Tiefurt Journal, which you mention, is not mine, and I have so far made a secret of who it is by. I cannot deny that the author has dealt with me and has often spoken to me about these matters... He has given me much pleasure himself and has a certain lightness and softness which I could perhaps not have given him." And Frau von Stein wrote to Knebel on March 28, 1783: "Goethe is not the author, as you believe, of the thousandfold picture of views of nature; it is by Tobler; sometimes it is not charitable to me, but it is rich!" If these passages from the letter had not existed, it would seem almost impossible today to raise the questions: "Is Goethe the author of this essay?" or "To what extent do the thoughts expressed in it belong to him?". If we are to say in a few words what has so far forced the conviction of Goethe's authorship on every connoisseur of Goethe's scientific development, it is the fact that the latter must necessarily have passed through the stage recorded in the essay in his progress towards his later views of nature. When Ernst Haeckel wanted to place a particularly characteristic work by Goethe at the head of his "Natural History of Creation" to prove that he was one of the first prophets of a unified (monistic) view of nature, he chose the essay "Nature". However, this is nothing other than what Goethe himself considered to be the right thing to say at a very old age, when the essay, which had long since disappeared from his memory, was presented to him. In 1828, he received it from the estate of Duchess Anna Amalia. He had no hesitation in describing the ideas expressed in it as his own, even though he could not actually remember writing it. In an explanatory note to the fragment, which he wrote in 1823, we read: "I do not actually remember writing these reflections, but they certainly correspond to the ideas my mind was forming at the time." And further above: "It is written by a well-known hand, which I used to use in my business in the eighties." This hand is that of Seidel, who also wrote the other Goethe contributions to the Tiefurt Journal. These historical testimonies also include a leaf that is in the Goethe Archive among Goethe's scientific manuscripts and is probably a note by Chancellor von Müller. (Written in pencil at the top in the margin in Eckermann's hand: Probably refers to the essay: Die Natur, in G. Werke 1890, vol. 40, We lift out the following passages from it: May 25, 1828. " The above essay, no doubt by Goethe, probably intended for the Tiefurter Journal, marked by Einsiedeln as No. 3 and thus dating from about the first eighties, but written before the metamorphosis of plants, as Goethe himself told me, was communicated to me by him on May 24, 1828. As he will have it printed, I have found no hesitation in copying it for the time being." ... May 30, 1828: "After a conversation, Goethe did not fully admit to it with complete conviction; and it also seemed to me that it was indeed his thoughts, but not written down by himself, but per traducem. The manuscript is Seidel's, the subsequent rent officer, and since he was privy to Goethe's ideas and had a tendency towards such thoughts, it is probable that those thoughts were written down by him collectively as coming from Goethe's mouth." The view that Seidel had a real share in the authorship will probably not be upheld by anyone; the quite unique harmony between the thoughts of the essay and the form in which they are expressed speaks against this. These are not transformed thoughts, they are thoughts that must have been conceived entirely as they are. In almost no sentence can one imagine that the content could be formulated more precisely or more beautifully. If the essay was not dictated by Goethe, but written by someone else after an oral communication, then it could only have been written by someone who was at such an educational level that he was able to grasp Goethe from all sides and write down his thoughts almost verbatim from memory in their artistically perfect form. Now the G. Chr. Chr. Tobler, mentioned by Frau von Stein, does indeed seem to have been such a man; Frau Herder wrote of him to Müller: "He was greatly honored and loved in this circle (of Goethe and the princely persons) and elevated as the most philosophical, most learned, most beloved man; in short, they spoke of him as a man of a higher kind." And J. G. Müller wrote in his diary when he met Tobler with Passavant in Münden in April 1781: "Tobler is entirely of Greek blood, his only ambition is to become more and more human, full of health and virility like a young tree; whom he loves, he loves completely. He does not have enough of the simple light sentences of Christianity. He is soon a Christian, soon a Greek..." Tobler only spent the summer of 1781 in Weimar. He stayed with Knebel, and Goethe spent a lot of time with him. In a letter from Goethe to Lavater dated June 22, 1781, the former says that he "grew very fond" of Tobler, and the diary contains the remark under August 2: "With Tobler about history on the occasion of Borromeo." This is evidence that intimate conversations about general views may have taken place between Goethe and Tobler, and that the latter may have put down on paper a version of Goethe's work that coincides with the fragment "Nature".

Tobler, however, could have played no other role than that of a reporter who adhered as closely as possible to the wording of what he had heard, and there are important internal reasons for this, which emerge from a consideration of the relationship of the essay in question to Goethe's later works on natural science. He himself says in the explanatory remark already quoted above: "I would like to call the level of insight at that time a comparative, which is urged to express its direction against a superlative that has not yet been reached. One sees the tendency to a kind of pantheism, in that an inscrutable, unconditional, humoristic, self-contradictory being is conceived as the basis of world phenomena, and may well be regarded as a game that is bitterly serious.

The fulfillment that it lacks, however, is the view of the two great driving wheels of nature: the concept of polarity and of increase, the former belonging to matter insofar as we think of it materially, the latter to it insofar as we think of it spiritually."

Goethe's scientific development presents itself to closer scrutiny as a progressive shaping of the maxims expressed in the essay "Nature". These propositions set out the general requirements according to which thinking must proceed in the exploration of particular areas of nature. All natural events correspond to these principles. Goethe later tries to find out how this happens in detail in various areas. The essay in question is a kind of life program that underlies all of Goethe's thinking about nature.

Wherever we start looking at Goethe's research, this is confirmed. In geology, Goethe, independently of other researchers, establishes the principle that the same laws that currently determine the formations taking place on the earth's surface were also valid in past epochs and that they have never suffered a violent interruption through exceptional upheavals and so on. This principle points back to the passage in the fragment: "It (nature) is forever creating new forms; what is there has never been, what was there will not come again - everything is new and yet always the same." "Even the most unnatural is nature. If you can't see it everywhere, you can't see it properly anywhere."

Almost like the plant from the seed, the doctrine of metamorphosis has developed from the following sentences in the fragment: "There is an eternal life, becoming and movement in it, and yet it does not move on. It transforms itself eternally, and there is not a moment of stasis in it." "It seems to have designed everything for individuality and does not care about individuals." "It has few driving forces, but they are never worn out, always effective, always manifold." In the first sentence the beginning of the idea of the transformation of the individual organs of a living being and the progressive development of the same is already made quite clear. One need only compare the following passage from "Metamorphosis" (1790) for proof: "If we look at all forms, especially the organic ones, we find that nowhere is there anything existing, nowhere is there anything at rest or closed off, but rather that everything fluctuates in constant motion." The above sentence on "individuality" is the germ of the idea of the type, which we encounter in Goethe's osteological works. In the "Lectures on the Type" (1796), Goethe says: "We have thus gained the right to assert without fear that all perfect organic natures, among which we see fish, amphibians, birds, mammals and, at the top of the latter, man, are all formed according to one archetype, which only in its very constant parts moves more or less back and forth and is still being formed and reshaped daily through reproduction." But this means nothing other than: nature creates individuals, but all individuality is based on the type; this is what ultimately matters and not the individuals. Indeed, the way in which nature proceeds to create a particular form out of the general form of the type is also indicated in the fragment. This way consists in the fact that one organ or one group of organs is particularly strongly developed, and the other parts of the type have to take a back seat, because nature has only a certain budget for each living being, which it must not exceed. Depending on the development of one or the other part of the type, one or the other form of living being is created. In the essay on the dispute between Geoffroy de Saint Hilaire and Cuvier in the French Academy, Goethe summarizes this rule in the words: "...that domestic nature prescribes for itself a budget, a budget in whose individual chapters it reserves to itself the most complete arbitrariness, but in the main sum remains completely true to itself, in that, if too much has been spent on one side, it deducts it from the other and places itself in the same position in the most decisive way." The fragment contains exactly the same concept: "If it (nature) gives one (a need) more, it is a new source of pleasure; but it soon comes into balance." The following are also two parallel lines of thought. Fragment: "She (nature) is the only artist, from the simplest material to the greatest contrasts"; and in the osteological lectures: "If we consider the various parts of the most perfect animals, which we call mammals, according to that type which has only been established in the most general way, we find that the circle of formation of nature is indeed limited, but that because of the quantity of parts and because of the multiple modifiability, the changes of form become possible to infinity." Even the core point of the theory of metamorphosis, that the infinite diversity of organic beings is based on a single primordial organism, can be found in the idea alluded to in the "Fragment": "Each of its (nature's) works has its own essence, each of its phenomena the most isolated concept, and yet everything is one."

No less remarkable is the fact that the point of view from which Goethe later viewed the deformities of organisms is already taken up in our essay. According to this assumption, the deviation from the normal form of a natural being is not a deviation from the general laws of nature, but only a mode of operation of these laws under special conditions. "Nature forms normally when it gives the rule to innumerable details, determines and conditions them; but the phenomena are abnormal when the details prevail and stand out in an arbitrary, even seemingly random way. But because the two are closely related and both the regulated and the irregular are animated by one spirit, there arises a fluctuation between the normal and the abnormal, because formation and transformation always alternate, so that the abnormal seems to become normal and the normal abnormal." This is the thought from the fragment in a more mature form (the essay to which the sentence belongs was written with regard to Jäger's work "Über die Mißbildung der Gewächse", which appeared in 1814): "Auch das Unnatürlichste ist Natur."

If we disregard Goethe's principles relating specifically to the realm of inorganic nature, we find Goethe's entire thought structure already prefigured in the fragment "Nature". In the general, abstract way in which these ideas are presented here, they appear like the proclamation of a new world view. They can only be ascribed to a spirit that wanted to find its own, new ways of explaining phenomena. The fulfillment of this proclamation is Goethe's special works on scientific subjects. Only here do those general propositions acquire their full value, their real meaning. In fact, we only fully understand them when we see them realized in Goethe's theory of metamorphosis, in his osteological studies and in his geological observations. If we had these latter without the general theoretical principles, we would have to supplement them ourselves. We would have to ask ourselves: how did Goethe conceive of nature as a whole in order to be able to form his own ideas about the plant and animal world? The answer to this question, however, can be given with nothing better and more satisfying than with the contents of the fragment "Nature". Goethe says in the "History of the Theory of Colors": "How anyone thinks about a certain case can only be fully understood when one knows how he thinks at all." We will only fully know what Goethe thought about an individual case in nature when we have learned from the fragment under discussion what views he had about nature in general.

This relationship seems more important than the question of whether the person who wrote the essay provided a direct dictation or a more or less literal report from memory.

[ 1 ] When I observe how a billiard ball that is struck communicates its motion to another, I remain thereby completely without influence on the course of this observed occurrence. The direction of motion and the velocity of the second ball are determined by the direction and velocity of the first. As long as I act merely as observer, I can say something about the motion of the second ball only when the motion has occurred. The matter is different when I begin to reflect on the content of my observation. My reflection has the purpose of forming concepts about the occurrence. I bring the concept of an elastic ball into connection with certain other concepts of mechanics, and take into consideration the particular circumstances which prevail in the present case. I seek, that is, to add to the occurrence that runs its course without my participation a second occurrence that takes place in the conceptual sphere. The latter is dependent upon me. This shows itself through the fact that I can content myself with the observation and forgo any seeking for concepts, if I have no need of them. But if this need is present, then I will rest content only when I have brought the concepts ball, elasticity, motion, impact, velocity, etc. into a certain interconnection, to which the observed occurrence stands in a definite relationship. As certain as it is, now, that the occurrence takes place independently of me, it is just as certain that the conceptual process cannot occur without my participation.

[ 2 ] Whether this activity of mine really issues from my own independent being, or whether the modern physiologists are right who say that we cannot think as we want, but rather must think as determined by the thoughts and thought connections now present in our consciousness [cf. Ziehen, Guidelines of Physiological Psychology],¹ is a question that will be the subject of a later discussion. For the moment we merely want to establish the fact that, for the objects and occurrences given us without our participation, we feel ourselves constantly compelled to seek concepts and conceptual connections that stand in a certain relationship to what is given. Whether the activity is in truth our activity, or whether we perform it according to an unalterable necessity, this question we will leave aside for the moment. That this activity appears to us at first as our own is without question. We know full well that along with objects, their concepts are not given us at the same time. That I myself am the active one may rest on an illusion; to immediate observation in any case the matter presents itself that way. The question is now: What do we gain through the fact that we find a conceptual counterpart to an occurrence?

[ 3 ] There is for me a far-reaching difference between the way that the parts of an occurrence interact with each other before and after the discovery of the corresponding concepts. Mere observation can follow the parts of a given occurrence in progress; their connection, however, before recourse is taken to concepts, remains dark. I see the first billiard ball move toward the second in a certain direction and with a definite velocity; what will happen after the resulting impact, this I must wait for, and then again I also can only follow it with my eyes. Let us suppose that, at the moment of impact, this I must wait for, and then again I also can only follow it with my eyes. Let us suppose that, at the moment of impact, someone covered the field on which the occurrence that takes place; then I—as mere observer—am without knowledge of what happens afterwards. It is different if, for the constellation of relationships, I have found the corresponding concepts before the covering takes place. In this case I can say what will happen, even if the possibility of observation ceases. An occurrence or object that is merely observed does not of itself reveal anything about its connection with other occurrences or objects. This connection becomes visible only when observation joins itself with thinking.

[ 4 ] Observation and thinking are the two starting points for all the spiritual striving of man, insofar as he is conscious of such a striving. The workings of common sense and the most intricate scientific research rest on these two basic pillars of our spirit. The philosophers have started from various ultimate polarities: idea and reality, subject and object, phenomenon and thing-in-itself, “I” and not-“I,” idea and will, concept and matter, force and substance, conscious and unconscious. It is easily shown, however, that the polarity of observation and thinking must precede all these others as the most important for the human being.

[ 5 ] Whatever principle we may ever set up: we must show that it was somewhere observed by us, or express it in the form of a clear thought which can also be thought by everyone else. Every philosopher who begins to speak about his ultimate principles must make use of the conceptual form, and thereby of thinking. By doing so he admits indirectly that he already presupposes thinking as part of his activity. Whether thinking or something else is the main element of world evolution, about this nothing yet is determined here. But that the philosopher, without thinking, can gain no knowledge of world evolution, this is clear from the start. In the coming into being of world phenomena, thinking may play a secondary role; but in the coming into being of a view about them, a main role certainly does belong to thinking.

[ 6 ] Now with respect to observation, it lies in the nature of our organization that we need it. Our thinking about a horse and the object “horse” are two things which for us appear separately. And this object is accessible to us only through observation. As little as we are able, by mere staring at a horse, to make a concept of it for ourselves, just as little are we capable, by mere thinking, to bring forth a corresponding object.

[ 7 ] In sequence of time, observation comes in fact before thinking. For even thinking we must learn to know first through observation. It was essentially the description of an observation when we gave an account at the beginning of this chapter of how thinking is kindled by an occurrence but goes beyond what is thus given before our thinking participation. It is through observation that we first become aware of everything that enters the circle of our experiences. The content of sensations, of perceptions, of contemplations, our feelings, acts of will, dream and fantasy images, mental pictures, concepts and ideas, all illusions and hallucinations, re given to us trough observation.

[ 8 ] But as object of observation, thinking differs essentially from all other things. The observation of a table or of a tree occurs for me as soon as these objects arise on the horizon of my experiences. My thinking about these objects, however, I do not observe at the same time. I observe the table, I carry out my thinking about the table, but I do not observe my thinking at the same moment. I must first transfer myself to a standpoint outside of my own activity, if I want, besides the table, to observe also my thinking about the table. Whereas the observing of objects and occurrences, and the thinking about them, are the entirely commonplace state of affairs with which my going life is filled, the observation of thinking is a kind of exceptional state. This fact must be properly considered when it is a matter of determining the relationship of thinking to all other contents of observation. One must be clear about the fact that in the observation of thinking one is applying to it a way of doing things which constitutes the normal condition for the consideration of all other world content, but which, in the course of this normal state of affairs, does not take place with respect to thinking itself.

[ 9 ] Someone could make the objection that what I have observed here about thinking also hold good for feeling and for our other spiritual activities. When we, for example, have the feeling of pleasure, this is kindled also by an object, and I observe in fact this object, but not the feeling of pleasure. This objection rests however upon an error. Pleasure stands by no means in the same relationship to its object as does the concept which thinking forms. I am conscious in the most definite way that the concept of a thing is formed through my activity, whereas pleasure is produced in me through an object in the same way as, for example, the change which a falling stone effects in an object upon which it falls. For observation, pleasure is a given in exactly the same way as the occurrence causing it. The same is not true of the concept. I can ask why a particular occurrence produces in me the feeling of pleasure. But I can by now means ask why an occurrence produces in me a particular sum of concepts. That would simply make no sense. In my reflecting on an occurrence it is not at all a question of an effect upon me. I can experience nothing about myself through the fact that I know the appropriate concepts for the observed change which a stone, thrown against the windowpane, causes in the latter. But I very much do experience something about my personality when I know the feeling which a particular occurrence awakens in me. When I say with respect to an observed object that this is a rose, I do not thereby say the slightest thing about myself; when, however, I saw of the same thing that it gives me a feeling of pleasure, I have characterized thereby not only the rose, but also myself in my relationship to the rose.

[ 10 ] To regard thinking and feeling as alike in their relationship to observation is therefore out of the question. The same could also easily be demonstrated for the other activities of the human spirit. They belong, in contrast to thinking, in a category with other observed objects and occurrences. It belongs precisely to the characteristic nature of thinking that it is an activity which is directed solely upon the observed object and not upon the thinking personality. This manifests itself already in the way that we bring our thoughts about a thing to expression, in contrast to our feelings or acts of will. When I see an object and know it to be a table, I will not usually say that I am thinking about a table, but rather that this is a table. But I will certainly say that I am pleased with the table. In the first case it does not occur to me at all to express the fact that I enter into relationship with the table; in the second case, however, it is precisely a question of this relationship. With the statement that I am thinking about a table, I enter already into the exceptional state characterized above, in which something is made into an object of observation that always accompanies and is contained within our spiritual activity, but not as an observed object.

[ 11 ] That is the characteristic nature of thinking, that the thinker forgets his thinking while exercising it. It is not thinking that occupies him, but rather the object of thinking that he is observing.

[ 12 ] The first observation that we can make about thinking is therefore this: that it is the unobserved element of our ordinary spiritual life.

[ 13 ] The reason why we do not observe thinking in our everyday spiritual life is none other than that it depends upon our own activity. What I do not myself bring forth comes as something objective into my field of observation. I see myself before it as before something that has occurred without me; it comes to me; I have to receive it as the prerequisite for my thinking process. While I am reflecting on the object, I am occupied with it; my gaze is turned to it. This occupation is in fact thinking contemplation. My attention is directed now upon my activity, but rather upon the object of this activity. In other words: while I am thinking, I do not look at my thinking, which I myself bring forth, but rather at the object of my thinking, which I do not bring forth.

[ 14 ] I am, as a matter of fact, in the same position when I let the exceptional state arise and reflect on my thinking itself. I can never observe my present thinking; but rather I can only afterward make the experiences, which I have had about my thinking process, into the object of thinking. I would have to split myself into two personalities, into one who thinks, and into the other one who looks on during this thinking itself, if I wanted to observe my present thinking. This I cannot do. I can only carry this out in two separate acts. The thinking that is to be observed is never the one active at the moment, but rather another one. Whether for this purpose I make my observations in connection with my own earlier thinking, or whether I follow the thought process of another person, or finally whether, as in the above case of the motion of billiard balls, I set up an imaginary thought process, does not matter.

[ 15 ] Two things are incompatible with each other: active bringing forth and contemplative standing apart. This is recognized already in the first book of Moses. In the first six-world days God lets the world come forth, and only when it is there is the possibility present of looking upon it. “And God saw everything that He had made and behold, it was very good.” So it is also with our thinking. It must first be there if we want to observe it.

[ 16 ] The reason it is impossible for us to observe thinking in its present course at given moment is the same that allows us to know it more directly and more intimately than any other process of the world. Just because we bring it forth ourselves, we know the characteristics of its course, the way the happening to be considered takes place. What, in the other spheres of observation, can be found only in an indirect way—the factually corresponding connection, namely, and the interrelationship of the single objects—this we know in the case of thinking in a completely direct way. Why for my observation thunder follows lightning, I do not know at once; why my thinking joins the concept thunder with that of lightning, this I know directly out of the contents of the two concepts. Naturally the point is not at all whether I have the right concepts of lightning and thunder. The connection of those that I have is clear to me, and is so, in fact, through the concepts themselves.

[ 17 ] This transparent clarity with respect to our thinking process is entirely independent of our knowledge about the physiological basis of thinking. I am speaking here about thinking insofar as it presents itself to the observation of our spiritual activity.* How one material occurrence of my brain causes or influences another while I am carrying out a thought operation, does not come thereby at all into consideration. What I observe about thinking is not what occurrence in my brain joins the concept of lightning with that of thunder, but rather, what motivates me to bring the two concepts into a definite relationship. My observation shows that for my thought connections nothing is present for me by which to guide myself except the content of my thoughts; I do not guide myself by the material occurrences in my brain. For a less materialistic age than ours this observation would of course be altogether superfluous. In the present day, however, where there are people who believe that when we know what matter is we will also know how matter thinks, it must indeed by said that one may speak of thinking without heading right away into a collision with brain physiology. It is difficult for many people today to grasp the concept of thinking in its purity. Whoever raises as an objection to the picture of thinking painted here the statement of Cabanis that “The brain secrets thoughts as the liver does bile, the salivary glands saliva, etc.,” simply does not know what I am talking about. He tries to find thinking through a mere process of observation in the same way as we proceed with other objects from the content of the world. He cannot find it in this way, however, because just there it eludes our normal observation as I have shown. A person who cannot overcome materialism lacks the ability to call forth the characterized exceptional state which brings to his consciousness what remains unconscious to all other spiritual activity.² With someone who does not have the good will to take this standpoint, one could as little speak about thinking as with a blind person about color. Still he should not believe that we regard physiological processes as thinking. He does not explain thinking, because he simply does not see it at all.

[ 18 ] For everyone, however, who has the ability to observe thinking—and with good will every normally developed human being has it—this observation is the most important one he can possibly make. For he observes something that he himself brings forth; he does not see himself confronting an object at first foreign to him, but rather sees himself confronting his own activity. He knows how what he is observing comes about. He sees into its relationship and interconnections. A firm point has been won from which one can seek, with well-founded hope, the explanation of the rest of world phenomena.

[ 19 ] The feeling of having such a firm point caused the founder of modern philosophy, Descartes, to base all human knowing upon the statement, I think, therefore I am. All other things, everything else that happens is there without me; I do not know whether as truth, whether as illusion and dream. There is only one thing I know with altogether unqualified certainty, for I myself bring it to its certain existence: my thinking. Though it may have still another source of its existence, though it may come from God or from somewhere else; that it is there in that sense in which I myself bring it forth, of this I am certain. Descartes had at first no justification for imputing another meaning to his statement. He could only maintain that, within the content of the world I grasp myself in my thinking as within an activity most inherently my own. What the attached therefore I am is supposed to mean has been much disputed. It can mean something, however, on one condition only. The simplest statement I can make about a thing is that it is, that it exists. How then this existence is to be more closely determined cannot be stated right away with respect to anything that comes onto the horizon of my experiences. One must first examine every object in its relationship to others, in order to be able to determine in which sense it can be spoken of as something existing. An occurrence one experiences may be a sum of perceptions, but also a dream, a hallucination, and so on. In short, I cannot say in which sense it exists. This I cannot conclude from the occurrence itself, but rather I will learn this when I look at the occurrence in relation to other things. There again, however, I can know no more than how it stands in relation to these things. My searching first comes onto firm ground when I find an object from which I can derive the sense of its existence out of it itself. This I am myself, however, in that I think, for I give to my existence the definite, self-sustaining content of thinking activity. Now I can take my start from there and ask whether the other things exist in the same or in a different sense.

[ 20 ] When one makes thinking the object of observation, one adds to the rest of the observed content of the world something that otherwise eludes one's attention; one does not change, however, the way in which the human being conducts himself, also with respect to the other things. One adds to the number of objects of observation, but not to the method of observation. While we are observing the other things, there is mingling with world happening³ (to which I now reckon on observation as well)—a process that is overlooked. There is something present, different form all other happening, that is not taken into account. When I look at my thinking, however, there is no such element present that has not been taken into account. For, what is hovering now in the background is itself again only thinking. The observed object is qualitatively the same as the activity that directs itself upon it. And that is again a unique characteristic of thinking. When we make it an object to be looked at, we do not find ourselves compelled to do this with the help of something qualitatively different, but rather we can remain within the same element.

[ 21 ] When I weave into my thinking an object given without my participation, I go beyond my observation, and the question becomes: What gives me the right to do this? Why do I not simply let the object affect me? In what way is it possible that my thinking has a relation to the object? Those are the questions which each person must ask himself who reflects upon his own thought processes. They fall away when one reflects upon thinking itself. We add to thinking nothing foreign to it, and therefore do not also have to justify any such addition to ourselves.

[ 22 ] Schelling says that to know nature means to create nature.—Whoever takes literally these words of this bold philosopher will certainly have to renounce all knowledge of nature forever. For nature is already there once, and in order to create it a second time one must know the principles by which it has arisen. For a nature that one wanted first to create, one would have to detect, from the nature already existing, the conditions of its existence. This detecting, that would have to precede the creating, would however be knowing nature, and would indeed still be knowing nature in the case where, after the detecting is completed, the creating did not take place at all. Only a nature not yet present could one create before knowing it.

[ 23 ] What is impossible with respect to nature, namely, creating before knowing, we do accomplish with respect to thinking. If we wanted to wait with thinking until we knew it, we would never come to it. We must resolutely proceed with thinking, in order afterward, by means of observation of what we ourselves have done, to come to knowledge of it. We ourselves first create an object for thinking to observe. The existence of all other objects has been provided without our participation.

[ 24 ] Someone could easily oppose my statement that we must think before we can look at thinking, with another, and consider it equally valid, namely, that we cannot wait with digesting either until we have observed the occurrence of digestion. That would be similar to the objection which Pascal made to Descartes when he declared that one could also say, “I take a walk, therefore I am.” Certainly I must also resolutely digest before I have studied the physiological process of digestion. But that could only be compared with looking at thinking if I did not afterward want to look, in thinking, at the digestion, but rather wanted to eat and digest it. And it is in fact not without reason that while digestion cannot become the object of digestion, thinking can very well become the object of thinking.

[ 25 ] It is therefore beyond any doubt that in thinking we grasp world happening by one tip where we must be present if something is to come about. And that is after all exactly the point. That is exactly the reason why things confront me as such a riddle: because I am so uninvolved in their coming about. I simply find them before me; with thinking, however, I know how it is done. Thus there is no starting point for looking at all world happening[s] more primal than thinking.

[ 26 ] I would like still to mention a widespread error prevailing with respect to thinking. It consists in the statement that thinking, as it is in itself, is nowhere given us. The thinking which joins the observations we make of our experiences and interweaves them with a web of concepts, is said to be not at all the same as that thinking which we afterwards lift out of the objects of observation again and make the object of our study. What we first weave unconsciously into the things is said to be something entirely different from what we then extricate from them again with consciousness.

[ 27 ] Whoever draws these conclusions does not grasp the fact that it is not possible at all for him to escape thinking in this way. I absolutely cannot get outside of thinking if I want to look at thinking. If one makes a distinction between thinking as it is prior to my consciousness of it, and the thinking of which I am afterwards conscious, one should not then forget, in doing so, that this distinction is entirely superficial and has absolutely nothing to do with the matter itself. I do not in any way make a thing into a different one through the fact that I look at it in thinking. I can imagine that a being with sense organs of a completely different sort and with an intelligence that functions differently would have an entirely different mental picture of a horse than I do, but I cannot imagine to myself that my own thinking becomes a different one through the fact that I observe it. I myself observe what I myself carry out. How my thinking looks to an intelligence other than my own is not the question now; the question here is how it looks to me. In any case, however, the picture of my thinking within another intelligence cannot be truer than my own picture. Only if I were not myself the thinking being, but rather were to approach the thinking as an activity of a being foreign to me, could I saw that my picture of the thinking arises in a particular way, but that I could not know how the thinking of the being in itself is.

[ 28 ] But so far there is not the slightest motivation for me to look upon my own thinking from another standpoint. I consider, indeed, all the rest of the world with the help of thinking. How should I make an exception to this in the case of my thinking?

[ 29 ] With this I consider it to be well enough justified that I take my start from thinking in my consideration of the world. When Archimedes had discovered the lever, he believed that, with its help, he could lift the whole cosmos from its hinges, if he could only find a point upon which to rest his instrument. He needed something that is supported through itself, not through something else. In thinking we have a principle that exists in and through itself. Let us start here in our attempt to comprehend the world. Thinking we can grasp through thinking itself. The question is only whether through it we can also apprehend something else as well.

[ 30 ] I have spoken until now about thinking without taking any account of its bearer, human consciousness. Most philosophers of the present day will object that, before there can be a thinking, there must be a consciousness. Therefore consciousness and not thinking should be the starting point. There would be no thinking without consciousness. I must reply to this that if I want to clarify what the relationship is between thinking and consciousness, I must think about it. I thereby presuppose thinking. Now one can certainly respond to this that if the philosopher wants to understand consciousness, he then makes use of thinking; to this extent he does presuppose it; in the usual course of life, however, thinking arises within consciousness and thereby presupposed it. If this answer were given to the world creator, who wanted to create thinking, it would without a doubt be justified. One cannot of course let thinking arise without having brought about consciousness beforehand. For the philosopher, however, it is not a matter of creating the world, but of understanding it. He must therefore seek the starting point not for creating, but rather for understanding the world. I find it altogether strange when someone reproaches the philosopher for concerning himself before all else with the correctness of his principles, rather than working immediately with the objects he wants to understand. The world creator had to know above all how he could find a bearer for thinking; the philosopher, however, must seek a sure basis from which he can understand what is already there. What good does it do us to start with consciousness and to subject it to our thinking contemplation, if we know nothing beforehand about the possibility of gaining insight into things through thinking contemplation?

[ 31 ] We must first of all look at thinking in a completely neutral way, without any relationship to a thinking subject or conceived object. For in subject and object we already have concepts that are formed through thinking. It is undeniable that, before other things can be understood, thinking must be understood. Whoever does deny this, overlooks the fact that he, as human being, is not a first member of creation but its last member. One cannot, therefore, in order to explain the world through concepts, start with what are in time the first elements of existence, but rather with what is most immediately and intimately given us. We cannot transfer ourselves with one bound to the beginning of the world in order to begin our investigations there; we must rather start form the present moment and see if we can ascend from the later to the earlier. As long as geology spoke of imagined revolutions in order to explain the present state of the earth, it was groping in the dark. Only when it took as its starting point the investigation of processes which are presently still at work on the earth and drew conclusions about the past from these, did it gain firm ground. As long as philosophy assumes all kinds of principles, such as atoms, motion, matter, will, or the unconscious, it will hover in the air. Only when the philosopher regards the absolute last as his first, can he reach his goal. This absolute last, however, to which world evolution has come is thinking.

[ 32 ] There are people who say that we cannot, however, really determine with certainty whether our thinking is in itself correct or not. That to this extent, therefore, the starting point remains in any case a dubious one. That makes exactly as much sense as it would to harbor a doubt as to whether a tree is in itself correct or not. Thinking is a fact; and to speak of the correctness or incorrectness of a fact makes no sense. At most I can have doubts about whether thinking is put to a correct use, just as I can doubt whether a particular tree will provide wood appropriate for use in a certain tool. To show to what extent my use of thinking with respect to the world is a correct or incorrect one is precisely the task of this book. I can understand it if someone harbors doubt that something can be determined about the world through thinking; but it is incomprehensible to me how someone can doubt the correctness of thinking in itself.

Addendum to the Revised Edition of 1918

[ 33 ] In the preceding considerations the momentous difference between thinking and all other soul activities is pointed to as a fact that reveals itself to a really unprejudiced observation. Whoever does not strive for this unprejudiced observation will be tempted to raise objections against these considerations like the following: When I think about a rose this still expresses only a relationship of my “I” to the rose, just as when I feel the beauty of the rose. There exists in exactly the same way a relationship between “I” and object in thinking as there is for example in feeling or perceiving. Whoever makes this objection does not take into consideration that only in the activity of thinking does the “I” know itself to be of one being with what is active, right into every ramification of the activity. With no other soul activity is this absolutely the case. When, for example, a pleasure is felt, a more sensitive observation can very well distinguish to what extent the “I” knows itself as one with something active, and to what extent something passive is present in the “I” in such a way that the pleasure merely happens to the “I.” And it is also like this with the other soul activities. One should only not confuse “having thought pictures” with working through thoughts in thinking. Thought pictures can arise in the soul in a dream-like way, like vague intimations. This is not thinking.—To be sure, someone could say now that if thinking is meant in this way, then will is present in thinking, and one has then to do not merely with thinking, but also with the will in thinking. This, however, would only justify us in saying that real thinking must always be willed. But this has nothing to do with the characterization of thinking made in this book. The nature of thinking may in fact necessitate that thinking be willed; the point is that nothing is willed which, as it is taking place, does not appear before the ‘I” as totally its own surveyable activity. One must even say in fact, because of the nature of thinking presented here, that thinking appears to the observer as willed, through and through. Whoever makes an effort really to see into everything that comes into consideration for an evaluation of thinking, cannot but perceive that the characteristic spoken of here does apply to this soul activity.

[ 34 ] A personality valued very highly as a thinker by the author of this book has raised the objection that thinking cannot be spoken of in the way it is done here, because what one believes oneself to be observing as active thinking is only a semblance. In actuality one is observing only the result of an unconscious activity that underlies thinking. Only because this unconscious activity is in fact not observed, does the illusion arise that the observed thinking exists in and through itself, in the same way that one believes one sees a motion when a line of single electric sparks is set off in quick succession. This objection is also based upon an inexact view of the actual situation. Whoever makes it does not take into account that it is the “I” itself that, standing within thinking, observes its own activity. The “I” would have to stand outside of thinking if it could be fooled as in the case of the quick succession of the light of electric sparks. One could go still further and say that whatever makes such an analogy is deluding himself mightily, like someone, for example, who truly wanted to maintain of a light in motion, that it is newly lit, by unknown hand, at every point where it appears,—No, whoever wants to see in thinking something other than that which is brought forth within the “I” itself as a surveyable activity, such a person would have to first blind himself to the plain facts observable before him, in order then to be able to base thinking upon a hypothetical activity. Whoever does not blind himself in this way must recognize that everything which he “thinks onto” thinking in this way leads him out of the being of thinking. Unprejudiced observation shows that nothing can be attributed to the being of thinking that is not found within thinking itself. One cannot come to something that causes thinking, if one leaves the realm of thinking.

• 1. Leitfaden der physiologischen Psychologie
• 2. geistigen Tätigkeit
• 3. Weltgeschehen

[ 1 ] Goethe's world view attained its highest level of maturity when there arose for him the view of the two great driving wheels of nature: the significance of the concepts of polarity and of enhancement (Steigerung). (See the essay, “Commentary to the Essay Nature.”) Polarity is characteristic of the phenomena of nature insofar as we think of them as material. It consists of the fact that everything material manifests itself in two opposite states, as the magnet does in a north and a south pole. These states of matter either lie open to view or they slumber in what is material and are able to be wakened by suitable means within it. Enhancement belongs to the phenomena insofar as we think them to be spiritual. It can be observed in processes of nature that fall under the idea of development. At the various levels of development these processes show more or less distinctly in their outer manifestation the idea that underlies them. In the fruit, the idea of the plant, the law of vegetation, is only indistinctly manifest. The idea which the spirit recognizes and the perception are not similar to one another. “In the blossoms the law of vegetation comes into its highest manifestation, and the rose would again be but the pinnacle of the manifestation.” What Goethe calls enhancement consists of the bringing forth of the spiritual out of the material by creative nature. That nature is engaged “in an ever-striving ascent” means that it seeks to create forms which, in ascending order, increasingly represent the ideas of things even in outer manifestation. Goethe is of the view that “nature has no secret that it does not somewhere place naked before the eyes of the attentive observer.” Nature can bring forth phenomena from which there can be read directly the ideas applicable to a large area of related processes. It is those phenomena in which enhancement has reached its goal, in which the idea becomes immediate truth. The creative spirit of nature comes to the surface of things here; that which, in coarsely material phenomena, can only be grasped by thinking, that which can only be seen with spiritual eyes, becomes, in enhanced phenomena, visible to the physical eye. Everything sense-perceptible is here also spiritual, and everything spiritual is sense-perceptible. Goethe thinks of the whole of nature as permeated by spirit. Its forms are different through the fact that the spirit in them becomes also more or less outwardly visible. Goethe knows no dead, spiritless matter. Those things appear to be so in which the spirit of nature gives an outer form which is not similar to its ideal being. Because one spirit works both in nature and in man's inner life, man can lift himself to participation in the productions of nature. “... from the tile that falls from the roof, to the radiant lightning of the spirit which arises in you and which you communicate,” everything in the universe is for Goethe an effect, a manifestation of one creative spirit. “All the workings we take note of in experience, no matter what their nature, are interconnected in the most consistent way, pass over into one another; they undulate from the first ones to the last.” “A tile works loose from the roof: we ordinarily say this happens by chance; the tile, after all, certainly strikes the shoulders of a passerby mechanically; only, not altogether mechanically: it follows the laws of gravity and thus works physically. Ruptured bodily organs cease functioning; at that moment the fluids work chemically, the qualities of the elements emerge. But, the interrupted organic life reasserts itself just as quickly and seeks to re-establish itself; meanwhile the human entity is more or less unconscious and psychically disorganized. The person, regaining consciousness, feels himself ethically wounded to the depths; he laments his interrupted activity, no matter of what kind it might be, for no one wants to endure this patiently. Religiously, on the other hand, he can easily attribute this case to a higher destiny and regard it as saving him from far greater harm, as leading him to a higher good. This suffices for the sufferer; but the convalescent rises to his feet highly gifted, trusts God and himself and feels himself saved, really takes up also what happens by chance, turns it to, his advantage, in order to begin an eternally fresh life's cycle.” All things working in the world appear to Goethe as modifications of the spirit, and a person who immerses himself in them and observes them, from the level of chance happenings up to that of genius, lives through the metamorphosis of the spirit, from the form in which this spirit presents itself in an outer manifestation not resembling itself, up to the form in which the spirit appears in its own most archetypal form. In the sense of the Goethean world view all creative forces work in a unified way. They are a totality manifesting in successive levels of related manifoldnesses. But Goethe was never inclined to picture the unity of the world to himself as uniform. Adherents of the idea of unity often fall into the mistake of extending what can be observed in one region of phenomena out over all of nature. The mechanistic world view, for example, is in this situation. It has a particularly good eye and understanding for what can be explained mechanically. Therefore only the mechanical seems to it to be in accordance with nature. It seeks to trace even the phenomena of organic nature back to a mechanical lawfulness. A living thing is for it only a complicated form of the working together of mechanical processes. Goethe found such a world view expressed in a particularly repellent form in Holbach's Systeme de la Nature, which came into his hands in Strassburg. One matter supposedly exists from all eternity and has moved for all eternity, and now, with this motion, supposedly brings forth right and left and on all sides, without more ado, the infinite phenomena of existence. “We would indeed have been satisfied with this, if the author had really built up the world before our eyes out of his moving matter. But he might know as little about nature as we do, for as soon as he has staked up a few general concepts, he leaves nature at once, in order to transform what appears as something higher than nature or as a higher nature in nature, into a nature that is material, heavy, moving, to be sure, but still without direction or shape, and he believes that he has gained a great deal by this” (Poetry and Truth, second book). Goethe would have expressed himself in a similar way if he could have heard Du Bois-Reymond's statement (Limits to Knowing Nature, page 13): “Knowledge of nature ... is a tracing of the changes in the corporeal world back to the movements of atoms which are caused by their central forces, independent of time, or it is a dissolving of all the processes of nature into the mechanics of the atoms.” Goethe thought the different kinds of nature workings to be related to each other and as passing over into one another; but he never wanted to trace them back to one single kind. He was not striving for one abstract principle to which all the phenomena of nature should be traced, but rather he strove for observation of the characteristic way in which creative nature manifested its general lawfulness in particular forms within every single one of its realms. He did not want to force one thought form upon the whole of nature's phenomena, but rather, by living into the different thought forms, he wanted to keep his spirit as lively and pliable as nature itself is. When the feeling of the great unity of all nature's working was powerful in him, then he was a pantheist. “I for myself, with all the manifold tendencies of my nature, cannot get enough from one way of thinking; as poet and artist I am a polytheist, as natural scientist a pantheist, and am one just as positively as the other. If I need a God for my personality as a moral person, that is also already provided for” (to Jacobi, January 6, 1813). As artist, Goethe turned to those phenomena of nature in which the idea is present to direct perception. The single thing appeared here directly as divine; the world as a multiplicity of divine individualities. As natural scientist Goethe had to follow the forces of nature also into phenomena whose idea does not become visible in its individual existence. As poet he could be at peace with himself about the multiplicity of the divine; as natural scientist he had to seek the ideas of nature, which worked in a unified way. “The law, that comes into manifestation in the greatest freedom, in accordance with its most archetypal conditions, brings forth what is objectively beautiful, which, to be sure, must find worthy subjects by whom it can be grasped.” This objectively beautiful within the individual creature is what Goethe as artist wants to behold; but as natural scientist he wants “to know the laws according to which universal nature wants to act.” Polytheism is the way of thinking which sees and reveres something spiritual in the single thing; pantheism is the other way, which grasps the spirit of the whole. Both ways of thinking can exist side by side; the one or the other comes into play according to whether one's gaze is directed upon nature's wholeness, which is life and sequence out of a center, or upon those individuals in which nature unites in one form what it as a rule spreads out over a whole realm. Such forms arise when, for example, the creative forces of nature, after “thousandfold plants,” make yet one more, in which “all the others are contained,” or “after thousandfold animals make one being which contains them all: man.”

[ 2 ] Goethe once made the remark: “Whoever has learned to understand them (my writings) and my nature in general will have to admit after all that he has won a certain inner freedom” (Conversations with Chancellor F. von Mueller, January 5, 1831). With this he was pointing to the working power which comes into play in all human striving to know. As long as man stops short at perceiving the antitheses around him and at regarding their laws as principles implanted in them by which they are governed, he has the feeling that they confront him a! unknown powers, which work upon him and impose upon hill the thoughts of their laws. He feels himself to be unfree with respect to the things; he experiences the lawfulness of nature as rigid necessity into which he must fit himself. Only when man becomes aware that the forces of nature are nothing other than forms of the same spirit which also works in himself does the insight arise in him that he does partake of freedom. The lawfulness of nature is experienced as compelling only as long as one regards it as an alien power. Living into its being, one experiences it as a power which one also exercises in one's own inner life; one experiences oneself as a productive element working along with the becoming and being of things. One is on intimate terms with any power that has to do with becoming. One has taken up into one's own doing what one otherwise experiences only as outer incentive. This is the process of liberation which is effected by the act of knowledge, in the sense of the Goethean world view. Goethe clearly perceived the ideas of nature's working as he encountered them in Italian works of art. He had a clear experience also of the liberating effect whiM the possession of these ideas has upon man. A result of this experience is his description of that kind of knowledge which he characterizes as that of encompassing individuals. “The encompassing ones, whom one in a prouder sense could call the creative ones, conduct themselves productively in the highest sense; insofar, namely, as they take their start from ideas, they express already the unity of the whole, and afterward it is in a certain way up to nature to fit in with this idea.” But Goethe never got to the point of having a direct view of the act of liberation itself. Only that person can have this view who in his knowing is attentive to himself. Goethe, to be sure, practiced the highest kind of knowledge; but he did not observe this kind of knowledge in himself. He admits to himself, after all:

“How did you get so very far?
They say you have done it all wonderfully well!”
My child! In this I have been smart;
I never have thought about thinking at all.

[ 3 ] But just as the creative nature forces, “after thousandfold plants,” make still one more in which “all the others are contained,” so do they also, after thousandfold ideas, bring forth still one more in which the whole world of ideas is contained. And man grasps this idea when, to his perception of the other things and processes he adds that of thinking as well. Just because Goethe's thinking was continuously filled with the objects of perception, because his thinking was a perceiving, his perceiving a thinking, he could not come to the point of making thinking itself into an object of thinking. One attains the idea of freedom, however, only by looking at thinking. Goethe did not make the distinction between thinking about thinking and looking at thinking. Otherwise he would have attained the insight that one, precisely in the sense of his world view, could very well reject thinking about thinking, but that one could nevertheless come to a beholding of the thought world. Man is uninvolved in the coming about of everything else he sees. The ideas of what he sees arise in him. But these ideas would not be there if there were not present in him the productive power to bring them to manifestation. Even though ideas are the conten1 of what works within the things, they come into manifest existence through human activity. Man can therefore know the intrinsic nature of the world of ideas only if he looks at his activity. With everything else he sees he penetrates only into the idea at work in it; the thing, in which the idea works, remains as perception outside of his spirit. When he looks at the idea, what is working and what is brought forth are both entirely contained within his inner life. He has the entire process totally present if his inner life. What he sees no longer appears as brought ford by the idea; for what he sees is itself now idea. To see something bringing forth itself is, however, to see freedom. In observing his thinking man sees into world happening. Here he does no have to search after an idea of this happening, for this happening is the idea itself. What one otherwise experiences as the unity of what is looked at and the ideas is here the experiencing of the spirituality of the world of ideas become visible. The person who beholds this self-sustaining activity feels freedom. Goethe in fact experienced this feeling, but did not express it in its highest form. In his looking at nature he exercised a free activity, but this activity never became an object of perception for him. He never saw behind the scenes of human knowing and therefore never took up into his consciousness the idea of world happening in its most archetypal form, in its highest metamorphosis. As soon as a person attains a view of this metamorphosis, he then conducts himself with sureness in the realm of things. In the center of his personality he has won the true starting point for all consideration of the world. He will no longer search for unknown foundations, for the causes lying outside him, of things; he knows that the highest experience of which he is capable consists of self-contemplation of his own being. Whoever is completely permeated with the feelings which this experience calls forth will gain the truest relationships to things. A person for whom this is not the case will seek the highest form of existence elsewhere, and, since he cannot find it within experience, will suppose it to be in an unknown region of reality. Uncertainty will enter into his considerations of things; in answering the questions which nature poses him, he will continually call upon something he cannot investigate. Because, through his life in the world of ideas, Goethe had a feeling of the firm center within his personality, he succeeded, within certain limits, in arriving at sure concepts in his contemplation of nature. But because he lacked a direct view of his innermost experiences, he groped about uncertainly outside these limits. For this reason he says that man is not born “to solve the problems of the world but in fact to seek where the problem begins, and then to keep oneself within the limits of what is understandable.” He says, “Kant has unquestionably been of most use in his drawing of the limits to which the human spirit is capable of penetrating, and through the fact that he J unsolvable problems lie.” If a view of man's highest experience! had given him certainty in his contemplation of things, then he would have been able to do more along his path than “through regulated experience, to attain a kind of qualified trustworthiness.” Instead of proceeding straight ahead through his experiences in the consciousness that the true has significance only insofar as it is demanded by human nature, he still arrives at the conviction that a “higher influence helps those who are steadfast, active, understanding, disciplined and disciplining, humane, devout” and that “the moral world order” manifests itself most beautifully where it “comes indirectly to the aid of the good person, of the courageously suffering person.”

[ 4 ] Because Goethe did not know the innermost human' experience, it was not possible for him to attain the ultimate thoughts about the moral world order which necessarily belong to his view of nature. The ideas of the things are the content of what works and creates within the things. Man experiences moral ideas directly in the form of ideas. Whoever is able to experience how, in his beholding of the world of ideas, the ideal element itself becomes content, fills itself with itself, is also in a position to experience the production of the moral within human nature. Whoever knows the ideas of nature only in their relation to the world we behold will also want to relate moral concepts to something external to them. He will seek for these concepts a reality similar to that which is present for concepts won from experience. But whoever is able to view ideas in their most essential being will become aware, with moral ideas, that nothing external corresponds to them, that they are directly produced as ideas in spiritual experience. It is clear to him that neither a divine will, working only outwardly, nor a moral world order of a like sort are at work to produce these ideas. For there is in them nothing to be seen of any relation to such powers! Everything they express is also contained within their spiritually experienced pure idea-form. Only through their own content do they work upon man as moral powers. No categorical imperative stands behind them with a whip and forces man to follow them. Man feels that he himself has brought them forth and loves them the way one loves one's child. Love is the motive of his action. The spiritual pleasure in one's own creation is the source of the moral.

[ 5 ] There are people who are unable to produce any moral ideas. They take up into themselves the moral ideas of other people through tradition, and if they have no ability to behold ideas as such, they do not recognize the origin, experienceable in the spirit, of the moral. They seek it in a supra-human will outside themselves. Or they believe that there exists, outside the spirit world which man experiences, an objective moral world order from which the moral ideas stem. The speech organ of that world order is often sought in the conscience of man. As with certain things in the rest of his world view, Goethe is also uncertain in his thoughts about the origin of the moral. Here also his feeling for what is in accord with ideas brings forth statements which are in accord with the demands of his nature. “Duty: where one loves what one commands oneself to do.” Only a person who sees the foundations of the moral purely in the content of moral ideas should say: “Lessing, who resentfully felt many a limitation, has one of his characters say, ‘No one has to have to.’ A witty jovial man said, ‘Whoever wants to has to.’ A third, admittedly a cultivated person, added, ‘Whoever has insight, also wants to.’ And in this way it was believed that the whole circle of knowing, wanting, and having to had been closed. But in the average case, man's knowledge, no matter what kind it is, determines what he does or doesn't do; for this reason there is also nothing worse than to see ignorance in action.” The following statement shows that in Goethe a feeling for the true nature of the moral held sway, but did not rise into clear view: “In order to perfect itself the will must, in its moral life, give itself over to conscience which does not err ... Conscience needs no ancestor; with conscience everything is given; it has to do only with one's own inner world.” To state that conscience needs no ancestor can only mean that man does not originally find within himself any moral content; he gives this content to himself. Other statements stand in contrast to these, setting the origin of the moral into a region outside man: “Man, no matter how much the earth attracts him with its thousand upon thousand manifestations, nevertheless lifts up his gaze longingly toward heaven ... because he feels deeply and clearly within himself that he is a citizen of that spiritual realm which we are not able to deny nor give up our belief.” “We leave to God, as the all-determining and all-liberating Being, what is totally insoluble.”

[ 6 ] Goethe lacks the organ for the contemplation of man's innermost nature, for self-perception. “I hereby confess that from the beginning the great and significant sounding task, Know thou thyself, has always seemed suspect to me, as a ruse of secretly united priests who wanted to confuse man with unattainable demands and to seduce him away from activity in the outer world into an inner false contemplation. Man knows himself only insofar as he knows the world which he becomes aware of only within himself and himself only within it. Every new object which we really look at opens up a new organ within us.” Exactly the reverse of this is true: man knows the world only insofar as he knows himself. For in his inner life there reveals itself in its most archetypal form what is present to view in outer things only in reflection, in example, symbol. What man otherwise can only speak of as something unfathomable, undiscoverable, divine, comes into view in its true form in self-perception. Because in self-perception he sees what is ideal in its direct form, he gains the strength and ability to seek out and recognize this ideal element also in all outer phenomena, in the whole of nature. Someone who has experienced the moment of self-perception no longer thinks in terms of seeking some “hidden” God behind phenomena: he grasps the divine in its different metamorphoses in nature. Goethe remarked, with respect to Schelling: “I would see him more often if I did not still hope for poetic moments; philosophy destroys poetry for me, and does so for the good reason that it drives me to the object because I can never remain purely speculative but must seek right away a perception for every principle and therefore flee right away out into nature.” He was in fact not able to find the highest perception, the perception of the world of ideas itself. This perception cannot destroy poetry, for it only frees one's spirit from all supposition that there might be an unknown, unfathomable something in nature. But for this reason it makes him capable of giving himself over entirely, without preconceptions, to things; for it gives him the conviction that everything can be drawn from nature that the spirit can ever want from it.

[ 7 ] But this highest perception liberates man's spirit also from all one-sided feeling of dependency. He feels himself, through having this view, to be sovereign in the realm of the moral world order. He knows that the driving power which brings forth everything works in his inner life as within his own will, and that the highest decisions about morality lie within himself. For these highest decisions flow out of the world of moral ideas, in whose production the soul of man is present. Even though a person may feel himself restricted in part, may also be dependent upon a thousand things, on the whole he sets himself his moral goal and his moral direction. What is at work in all other things comes to manifestation in the human being as idea; what is at work in him is the idea which he himself brings forth. In every single human individuality a process occurs that plays itself out in the whole of nature: the creation of something actual out of the idea. And the human being himself is the creator. For upon the foundation of his personality there lives the idea which gives a content to itself. Going beyond Goethe one must broaden his principle that nature is “great enough in the wealth of its creation to make, after thousandfold plants, one in which all the others are contained, and to make, after thousandfold animals, one being that contains them all: man.” Nature is so great in its creation that it repeats in every human individual the process by which it brings forth freely out of the idea all creatures, repeats it through the fact that moral actions spring from the ideal foundation of the personality. Whatever a person also feels to be an objective reason for his action is only a transcribing and at the same time a mistaking of his own being. The human being realizes himself in his moral actions. Max Stirner has expressed this knowledge in lapidary words in his book, The Single Individual and What Is His Own. “It lies in my power to be my own person, and this is so when I know myself as a single individual. Within the single individual even someone who is his own person returns to the creative nothingness out of which he is born. Every higher being over me, be it God or man, weakens the feeling of my singleness and pales only before the sun of this consciousness. If I base my affairs upon myself, the single individual, then they rest upon their own transitory mortal creator, who devours himself, and I can say that I have based my affairs upon nothing.” But at the same time one can tell this Stirnerian spirit what Faust told Mephistopheles: “In your nothingness I hope to find my all,” for there dwells in my inner life in an individual form the working power by which nature creates the universe. As long as a person has not beheld this working power within himself, he will appear with respect to it the way Faust did with respect to the earth spirit. This working power will always call out to him the words, “You resemble the spirit that you can grasp, not me!” Only the beholding of one's deepest inner life conjures up this spirit, who says of itself:

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,
(Priest's translation)

[ 8 ] I have tried to present in my Philosophy of Spiritual Activity how knowledge of the fact that man in his doing is based upon himself comes from the most inward experience, from the beholding of his own being. In 1844 Stirner defended the view that man, if he truly understands himself, can see only in himself the basis for his activity. With Stirner, however, this knowledge does not arise from a beholding of his innermost experience but rather from the feeling of freedom and independence from all world powers that require coercion. Stirner stops short at demanding freedom; he is led in this area to put the bluntest possible emphasis upon the human nature which is based upon itself. I am trying to describe the life in freedom on a broader basis, by showing what man sees when he looks into the foundation of his soul. Goethe did not go as far as to behold freedom, because he had an antipathy for self-knowledge. If that had not been the case, then knowledge of man as a free personality founded upon himself would have had to be the peak of his world view. The germ of this knowledge is to be found everywhere in his works; [ 9 ] it is at the same time the germ of his view of nature. In his actual nature studies Goethe never speaks of unexplorable foundations, of hidden driving Powers of phenomena. He contents himself with observing the phenomena in their sequence and of explaining them with the help of those elements which, during observation, reveal themselves to the senses and to the spirit. In this vein he writes to Jacobi on May 5, 1786 that he has the courage “to devote his whole life to the contemplation of the things which he can hope to reach” and of whose being “he can hope to form an adequate idea,” without bothering himself in the least about how far he will get and about what is cut out for him. A person who believes he can draw near to the divine in the individual objects of nature no longer needs to form a particular mental picture for himself of a God that exists outside of and beside the things. It is only when Goethe leaves the realm of nature that his feeling for the being of things no longer holds up. Then his lack of human self-knowledge leads him to make assertions which are reconcilable neither with his inborn way of thinking nor with the direction of his nature studies. Someone who is inclined to cite these assertions might assume that Goethe believed in an anthropomorphic God and in the individual continuation of that life-form of the soul which is bound up with the conditions of the physical bodily organization. Such a belief stands in contradiction to Goethe's nature studies. They could never have taken the direction they did if in them Goethe had allowed himself to be determined by this belief. It lies totally in the spirit of his nature studies to think the being of the human soul such that, after laying aside the body, it lives in a supersensible form of existence. This form of existence requires that the soul, because of different life requirements, also take on a different kind of consciousness from the one it has through the physical body. In this way the Goethean teaching of metamorphosis leads also to the view of metamorphoses of soul life. But this Goethean idea of immortality can be regarded correctly only if one knows that Goethe had not been able to be led by his world view to an unmetamorphosed continuation of that spiritual life which is determined by the physical body. Because Goethe, in the sense indicated here, did not attempt to view his life of thought, he was also not moved in his further life's course to develop particularly this idea of immortality which would be the continuation of his thoughts on metamorphosis. This idea, however, would in truth be what would follow from his world view with respect to this region of knowledge. Whatever expression he gave to a personal feeling about the view of life of this or that contemporary, or out of any other motivation, without his thinking thereby of the connection to the world view won through his nature studies, may not be brought forward as characteristic of Goethe's idea of immortality.

[ 10 ] For the evaluation of a Goethean statement within the total picture of his world view there also comes into consideration the fact that his mood of soul in his different stages of life gives particular nuances to such statements. He was fully conscious of these changes in the form of expression of his ideas. When Foerster expressed the view that the solution to the Faust problem is to be found in the words, “A good man is in his dim impulse well aware of his right path,” Goethe responded, “That would be rationalism. Faust ends up as an old man, and in old age we become mystics.” And in his prose aphorisms we read, “A certain philosophy answers to each age of man. The child appears as realist; for he finds himself as convinced of the existence of pears and apples as of his own. The youth, assailed by inner passions, must take notice of himself, feel his way forward; he is transformed into an idealist. On the other hand the grown man has every reason to become a skeptic; he does well to doubt whether the means he has chosen for his purpose are indeed the right ones. Before acting and in acting he has every reason to keep his intellect mobile, so that afterward he does not have to feel badly about a wrong choice. The old man, however, will always adhere to mysticism; he sees that so much seems to depend upon chance; what is unreasonable succeeds; what is reasonable goes amiss; fortune and misfortune turn unexpectedly into the same thing; it is so, it was so, and old age attains peace in what is, what was, and will be.”

[ 11 ] I am focusing in this book upon the world view of Goethe out of which his insights into the life of nature have grown and which was the driving force in him from his discovery of the intermaxillary bone in man up to the completion of his studies on color. And I believe I have shown that this world view corresponds more perfectly to the total personality of Goethe than does any compilation of statements in which one would have to take into account how such thoughts are colored by the mood of his youthful period or by that of his old age. I believe that Goethe in his studies of nature, although not guided by a clear self-knowledge in accord with ideas, was guided by a right feeling and did observe a free way of working which flowed from a true relationship between human nature and the outer world. Goethe is himself clear about the fact that there is something incomplete about his way of thinking: “I was aware of having great and noble purposes but could never understand the determining factors under which I worked; I was well aware of what I lacked, and likewise of what I had too much of; therefore I did not cease to develop myself, outwardly and from within. And still it was as before. I pursued every purpose with earnestness, force, and faithfulness; in doing so I often succeeded in completely overcoming stubborn conditions but also often foundered because I could not learn to give in and to go around. And so my life went by this way, in doing and enjoying, in suffering and resisting, in the love, contentment, hatred, and disapproval of others. Find yourself mirrored here whoever's destiny was the same.”