The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Translated by Diane Tatum, revised

Among the various instructions which the teacher gives the pupil, Imagination was the second named. This consists in man's not passing through life as happens everyday, but in the sense of Goethe's saying: “All that is transitory is but a likeness;” behind every animal and every plant something that lies behind should arise for him. In the meadow saffron, for example, he will discover a picture of the melancholy soul, in the violet a picture of calm piety, in the sunflower a picture of strong, vigorous life, of self-reliance, of ambition. When a man lives in this sense, he raises himself to imaginative knowledge. He then sees something like a cold flame ascend out of a plant, a color picture, which leads him into the astral plane. Thus the pupil is guided to see things which present to him spiritual beings from other worlds. It has already been said, however, that the pupil must strictly follow the occult teacher, for this alone can tell him what is subjective and what objective. And the occult teacher can give the pupil the necessary steadiness which is given of itself by the sense-world, as it continuously corrects errors. It is different, however, in the astral world; there one is easily subject to deceptions; there one must be supported by one who has experience. The teacher gives a series of instructions to a pupil who wishes to follow the Rosicrucian path. In the first place, he gives him precise instruction when he has begun to reach the stage of imaginative development. He tells him: strive first of all to love not merely a single animal, nor form a particular relationship with a single animal, or to experience this or that with one or another animal. Seek rather to have a living feeling for whole animal groups. Then you will receive through this an idea of what the group-soul is. The individual soul which with men is on the physical plane is with the animals on the astral plane. The animal cannot say “I” to itself here on the physical plane.

The question is often asked: “Has the animal no such soul as man?” It has such a soul, but the animal-soul is above on the astral plane. The single animal is to the animal-soul as the single organs are to the human soul. If a finger is painful, it is the soul that experiences it. All the sensations of the single organs pass to the soul. This is also the case with a group of animals. Everything that the single animal experiences is experienced in it by the group-soul. Let us take, for instance, all the various lions: the experiences of the lion all lead to a common soul. All lions have a common group-soul on the astral plane, and so have all animals their group-soul on the astral plane. If one inflicts a pain on a single lion or if it experiences enjoyment, this continues up to the astral plane, as the pain of a finger continues to the human soul. Man can raise himself to a comprehension of the group-soul if he is able to fashion a form that contains all individual lions, just as a general concept contains the individual images belonging to it.

The plants have their soul in the Rupa region of the Devachanic plane. By learning to survey a group of plants and gaining a definite relationship to their group-soul, a man learns to penetrate to plant group-souls on the Rupa plane. When the single lily, the single tulip is no longer something special for him, but when the individuals grow together for him into living, densified imaginations, which become pictures, then the pupil experiences something quite new. What matters is that this is a quite concrete picture individually formed in the imagination. Then man experiences that the plant-covering of the earth, that some meadow strewn with flowers, becomes something completely new to him, that the flowers become for him an actual manifestation of the spirit of the earth. That is the manifestation of these different plant group-souls. Just as the human tears become the expression of the inner sadness of the soul, as a man's physiognomy becomes an expression of the human soul, so the occultist learns to look on the green of the plant covering as the expression of inner processes, of the actual spiritual life of the earth. Thus certain plants become for him like the earth's tears, out of which wells forth the earth's inner grief. There pours a new imaginative content into the soul of the pupil just as someone may tremble and feel moved at the tears of a companion.

A person must go through these moods. If he endures such a mood vis-à-vis the animal world then he raises himself to the astral plane. When he immerses himself in the mood of the plant world he raises himself to the lower region of the Devachanic plane. Then he observes the flame-forms that ascend from the plants; the plant-covering of the earth is then veiled by a sum of images, the incarnations of the rays of light which set upon the plants.

One can also approach- the dead stone in this way. There is a fundamental experience in the mineral world. Let us take the mountain crystal, glittering with light. When one looks at this, one will say to oneself: In a certain way this represents physical material, so too is the stone physical material. But there is a future perspective to which the occult teacher leads the pupil. The man of today is still penetrated by instincts and desires, by passions. This saturates the physical nature, but an ideal stands before the occultist. He says to himself: Man's animal nature will gradually be refilled and purified to a stage where the human body can stand before us just as inwardly chaste and free of desire as the mineral that craves nothing, in which no wish is stirred by what comes near it. Chaste and pure is the inner material nature of the mineral. This chastity and purity is the experience that must permeate the pupil on gazing at the mineral world. These feelings vary as the mineral world shows itself in different forms and colors, but the fundamental experience which permeates the mineral kingdom is chastity.

Our earth today has a quite particular configuration and form. Let us go back in the evolution of the earth. It once had a completely different form. Let us immerse ourselves in Atlantis and still further back: we come there to ever higher temperatures, in which metals were able to flow all around as water runs along today. All the metals have become these veins in the earth because they first flowed along in streams. Just as lead is hard today and quicksilver is fluid, so lead was at one time fluid and quicksilver will one day become a solid metal. Thus the earth is changeable, but man has always participated in these various evolutions. In the ages of which we have spoken, physical man as yet was not in existence. But the etheric body and astral body were there; they could live in the higher temperatures of that time. The sheaths gradually began to form with the cooling process, enveloping man.

While something new was always being formed in man during the earth's evolution, something correspondingly new had also been formed outside in nature. The rudiments of the human eye had first arisen in the Sun evolution. First the etheric body formed itself and this again formed the human physical eye. As a piece of ice freezes out of water, so are the physical organs formed out of the finer etheric body. The physical organs were formed within man while outside the earth became solid. In every age the formation of a human organ took place parallel with the formation of a particular configuration outside in nature. While in the human being the eye was called for, in the mineral kingdom the chrysolite was formed. One can therefore think that the same forces which outside articulated the nature of the chrysolite in man formed the eye.

We cannot be satisfied in the particular case with the general saying that man is the microcosm and the world is the macrocosm; occultism has demonstrated the actual relationship between man and the world. When the physical organ for the reasoning faculties was formed in the Atlantean age, outside lead solidified; it passed from the fluid to the solid state. It is the same forces which hold sway in the solidifying of lead and in the organ of intelligence. One only understands man when one can recognize the connections between the human being and the forces of nature. There is a particular group within the socialist movement, a group that has distinguished itself by its moderation from the socialists. It is the temperate ones who have always retained a good deal of the reasoning faculties. This special group in the socialist movement consists of the printers, and this is so because printers have to do with lead. The tariff-union between workers and employer was first worked out among the printers. Lead brings about this frame of mind if it is taken in small quantities.

Another case can be cited from the experience where, in a similar way, one could observe the influence of the nature of a metal upon a man. It had become noticeable to a man how easily he discovered analogies in every possible thing. One could conclude that he had much to do with copper, and that was the case. He blew the bugle in an orchestra and therefore had to with an instrument that contains much copper.

When someday the relationship of the external lifeless world to the human organism is studied, it will be found that a relationship exists between man and the surrounding world in the most varied ways: for instance, the relationship of the senses to the precious stones. There exist certain relationships of the senses to precious stones based on the evolution of the senses. We have already found a relationship between the eye and the chrysolite. There is also a relationship between the onyx and the organ of hearing. The onyx stands in a remarkable relation to the oscillations of man's ego-life, and occultists have always recognized this. It represents, for instance, the life that goes forth from death. Thus in Goethe's “Fairy-tale,” the dead dog is changed into onyx through the old man's lamp. In this intuition of Goethe's lies the outcome of an occult knowledge. Therein lies the relationship of the onyx to the organ of hearing. An occult relationship exists further between the organ of taste and the topaz, the sense of smell and jasper, the skin-sense as man's sense of warmth and the cornelian, the productive power of imagination and the carbuncle. This was used as the symbol for a productive power of imagination, which arose in man at the same time as the carbuncle in nature.

Occult symbols are drawn deep out of real wisdom and if one only penetrates into occult symbolism one finds genuine knowledge there. He who knows the significance of a mineral finds entry to the upper region of the Devachanic plane. When one sees a precious stone and is permeated by the feeling of what the precious stone has to say to us, then one finds entry to the Arupa regions of Devachan. Thus the gaze of the student widens and more and more worlds dawn for him. He must not be satisfied with the general indication, but little by little he must find entry into the whole world.

One finds also in German literature how an instinctive intuition regarding the mineral forces is shown by poets who were miners, for example by Novalis, who had studied mining engineering. Kerning has chosen many miners as types for his occult personalities. There is also the poet, Ernst Theodor Amadeus Hoffman, that remarkable spirit who from time to time immersed himself artistically in the secrets of nature, particularly in his tale, “The Mines of Falun.” One will feel many echoes here of the occult relationships between the mineral kingdom and man, and much too that indicates how occult powers take hold in a remarkable way of artistic imagination.

The mystery-center is the essential birthplace of art. In the astral realm the mysteries were actual and living. There one had a synthesis of truth, beauty, and goodness. This was so to a high degree in the Egyptian mysteries and those in Asia, as well as in the Greek mysteries, especially the Eleusinian. The pupils there actually beheld how the spiritual powers submerged themselves in the various forms of existence. At that time there was no other science than what one thus beheld. There was no other goodness than that which arose in the soul as one gazed into the mysteries. Nor was there any other beauty than that which one beheld as the gods descended.

We live in a barbaric age, in a chaotic age, in an age devoid of style. All great epochs of art were working out of the deepest life of spirit. If one observes the images of the Greek gods one plainly sees three distinct types: first there is the Zeus type, to which Pallas Athena and Apollo also belong. In this type the Greeks characterized their own race. There was a definite modeling of the oval of the eye, the nose, the mouth. Secondly, one can observe the circle that may be called the Mercury type. There the ears are completely different, the nose is completely different, the hair is woolly and curly. And thirdly there is the Satyr type, in which we find a completely different form of the mouth, a different nose, eyes, and so on. These three types are clearly formed in the Greek sculpture. The Satyr type is to represent an ancient race, the Mercury type the race following, and the Zeus type the fifth race.

In the earlier times, the spiritual world view permeated and saturated everything. In the Middle Ages it was still a time when this came to expression in handicraft, when every door-lock was a kind of work of art. In external culture we were still met by what the soul had created. The modern age is entirely different; it has brought forward only one style, namely, the warehouse. The warehouse will be as characteristic for our time as the Gothic buildings — for instance, Cologne Cathedral — were for the Middle Ages of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. The cultural history of the future will have to reckon with the warehouse as we have to with the Gothic buildings of the Middle Ages. New life comes to its expression in these forms. The world will be filled again with a spiritual content through the diffusion of the teachings of spiritual science. Then later, when spiritual life comes to expression in external forms, we shall have a style which expresses this spiritual life. What lives in spiritual science must stamp itself later in external forms. Thus we must look on the mission of spiritual science as a cultural mission.

The second subject on which we have said occult teachers instruct their pupils is Imagination. With this, the individual does not go through life in the ordinary everyday way but in accord with Goethe s words ‘All things corruptible are but a parable’. Pupils will see something else in every animal and every plant. Thus the autumn crocus will be the image of a melancholy mind, the violet an image of being quietly in harmony with God, the sunflower an image of life bursting with energy, independence, ambition. Living in this way, pupils rise to imaginative perception. They’ll see something like a cold flame rise from a plant, a colour image that takes them to the astral plane. The pupils are thus guided to see things that are shown to them by spiritual entities from other worlds. It had to be said, however, that the pupils must strictly follow their occult teacher, who alone can tell them what is subjective and what is objective. The occult teachers are able to give their pupils the necessary security. The world of the senses gives this of its own accord by continually correcting our errors. The situation is different in the astral world. There one is easily deluded; there someone with greater experience has to be at one s side.

The teachers give their pupils who want to follow the Rosicrucian way a number of instructions. In the first place they give them a particular instruction once they have begun to reach the level of imaginative development. A teacher will then say: ‘Endeavour first of all to love not just individual animals, to develop a particular relationship to individual animals, to learn one thing or another from one animal or another, but try to develop a living inner feeling for whole groups of animals; you will then gain an idea of the nature of the group soul. The individual soul of man is on the physical plane, the individual souls of animals are on the astral plane. An animal cannot say 'I' to itself here on the physical plane.’

A question that is often asked is if animals do not have the kind of soul that human beings have. They do have such a soul, but the animal soul is up above on the astral plane. The individual animal relates to the animal soul the way individual organs relate to the soul in human beings. If your finger hurts, it is the soul which feels it. All the sensations of individual organs go to the soul. The same is the case for a group of animals. Everything an individual animal feels inwardly is felt inside it by the group soul. Let us take all the different lions, for example. The sensations felt by the lions all go to a soul they have in common. All lions have a common group soul on the astral plane. If you cause an individual lion pain, or if it feels inner gratification at something, this goes all the way to the astral plane, just as the pain in a human finger goes all the way to the human soul. Man is able to gain insight into the group soul if he is able to create a form for himself that contains all individual lions, just as a general concept contains all the individual forms belonging to it.

Plants have their soul in the rupa part of the devachan plane. By gaining an overview of group of plants and developing a particular relationship to the plant’s group soul, human beings learn to penetrate to the group souls of plants on the rupa plane. When it is no longer the individual lily, the individual tulip that is special to them, but when the individual plants merge for them in living, concentrated Imaginations that become images, human beings experience something completely new. It is important to have a very real image, individually created in one’s powers of imagination. One will then find that the earth’s plant cover, a flower-bedecked meadow, for instance, becomes something completely new and that the flowers become a genuine revelation of the earth’s spirit. That is the revelation of these different plant group souls. Just as human tears become a reflection of sadness felt in the soul, and the physiognomy comes to reflect the soul of a person, so does the occultist come to see the green of the plant cover as a reflection of inner processes, of the earth’s true life in the spirit. Some plants will then be like the earth’s tears for him, with the earth’s inner sadness welling forth. As in the case of someone who shares in the tremors and sorrow of others, so does a new, imaginative content enter into the pupil’s soul.

These are the moods a person must go through. If you go through the mood relating to the animal world, you find your way up to the astral plane. If you enter into the mood I have described for the plant world, you find your way up to the lower part of the devachan plane. You will observe the flame forms rising from the plants. The earth s plant cover will then be covered with a sum of configurations, the incarnations of light rays, that come down upon the plants.

We can also approach a dead stone h the same way. There is a basic inner feeling relating to the mineral world. Let us take a rock crystal with the light shining through it. Looking at it we can say to ourselves that in a way this is an ideal picture of the human being himself. Just as the human physical body is physical matter, so a stone, too, is physical matter. But there is a future prospect, and the occult teacher guides his pupils towards this. Today human beings are still full of drives, passions and appetites. This fills our physical nature. But the occultist has an ideal before him. He will say to himself: ‘Our animal nature is gradually cleansed and purified until a level is reached where this human body can stand before us as chaste and free from desire as the mineral which desires nothing, with no wishes stirring in it when something comes near it. The inner material nature of the mineral is chaste and pure.’ This chastity and purity is the inner feeling pupils should have on looking at the world of rocks and minerals. These inner feelings are differentiated according to the different shapes and colours in which that world shows itself, but the basic inner feeling present in the mineral world is one of chastity.

Our earth has a quite specific configuration, a quite specific form today. Let us go back to earlier stages of its evolution. It once had a completely different form. Let us go back to Atlantis and earlier. There we come to increasingly higher temperatures, with the metals running about the way water runs on earth today. All metals have turned into those veins in the earth today because they were originally running streams. Just as lead is solid today and mercury liquid, so lead was liquid once, and mercury will one day be a solid metal. The earth is thus changing, and humanity has always been part of the different evolutional stages. The physical human being did not yet exist at the times of which we have been talking. But the ether body and the astral body were there, being able to live at even higher temperatures. As the earth cooled down, the outer bodies gradually developed around the human being.

New things were developing all the time in the human being in the course of evolution, and correspondingly new things also developed in the natural world around him. The beginnings of the human eye developed at the Sun stage of the planet. The ether body developed first, and then in turn created the physical human eye. Our physical organs developed from the more subtle ether body the way a piece of ice develops in water as it freezes. Physical organs developed inside the human being, and out there the earth grew solid. The development of an organ in the human being and the development of specific configurations in the natural world outside always ran parallel. When the potential for the eye developed in man, the chrysolite evolved in the mineral world. We can thus think of the same creative powers putting together chrysolite nature in the world of nature and creating the human eye.

We cannot be satisfied with general phrases in a given case, saying that man is microcosm and the world macrocosm, for occult studies have shown the true relationship between human being and world. When the physical organ for the ability to connect thoughts developed in Atlantean times, lead solidified in the outside world; it changed from the liquid to the solid state. Thus the same powers are active in the solidification of lead and the organism of rational thinking. We will only understand the human being if we are able to see the connections between the human being and the powers of nature. There is a particular group within the socialist movement which thinks differently from the other social democrats, being extremely moderate. This group within the socialist movement are the printers. And the reason is that printers work with lead. The tariff community between workers and employers developed first among the printers. Lead taken in small quantities creates such an inner mood.

Another example taken from experience also shows how the nature of a metal influences a person. A gentleman had noticed that he found it easy to see analogies between all kinds of things. It was possible to conclude from this that he had frequent contact with copper. And that was indeed the case. He played the French horn in an orchestra, an instrument that contains a great deal of copper.

Once you study the relationship between the inanimate world outside and the human organism you find that the relationship between human beings and the world that surrounds them takes many different forms. An example is the relationship between the senses and precious stones. We have already seen the relationship between the eye and the chrysolite. In the same way a relationship exists between the organ of hearing and the onyx. This stone has a peculiar relationship to the movements of the I-life in man. Occultists have always made tins connection. The stone represents life arising from death, for instance. Thus in Goethe’s Tale, the dead dog is changed into an onyx by the old man’s lamp. Goethe had an intuition here that came from occult knowledge. The relationship between the onyx and the organ of hearing is connected with this. Occult relationships also exist between the organ of taste and topaz, the sense of smell and jasper, the skin sense as man’s sense of temperature, and carnelian, the power of productive thought and carbuncle. The latter was used as a symbol of the productive powers of thought which arose in man at the time when the carbuncle developed in the natural world.

The occult symbols come from the depths of profound and real wisdom. Wherever you consider occult symbolism, you find genuine insight. Knowing the significance of a mineral you gain access to the upper parts of the devachan plane. Seeing a precious stone and gaining a real feeling of what this precious stone can tell us, we gain access to the arupa parts of the devachan plane. The occult student s horizons thus widen, with more and more worlds opening up to him.

He must not make do with general suggestions, but must gain access to the world-whole — bit by bit.

Looking at German literature we can also see that writers who know about mining have an instinctive intuition concerning the powers of minerals. Thus Novalis had studied mining science. Körner often made miners the people with occult knowledge in his works. As to Ernst Theodor Amadeus Hoffmann, that strange individual who sometimes went deep into the secrets of nature in his art, especially in his short story The Mines at Falun, you can often sense echoes of occult relationships between the mineral world and the human being. This also shows the strange way in which great occult powers influence the artist’s imagination.

The tine birth place of art were the mysteries. They were real and alive in astral space, where you had a synthesis of truth, beauty and godliness. This was very much the case in the mysteries of ancient Egypt and those of Asia, and also the mysteries of ancient Greece, especially in Eleusis. There the pupils would truly see spiritual powers coming down into the different forms that exist on earth. There was no other knowledge at that time than knowledge which was seen in this way. There was no other godliness than the harmony with God felt in the visions gained in the mysteries. Nor was there any other beauty than the beauty seen when the gods descended.

We live in a barbaric age, a chaotic age, an age lacking in style. In all the great periods in the ails creativeness came from most profound depths of the spirit. Looking at the images of Greek gods, you see exactly three types. Firstly there is the Zeus type, with Pallas Athene and Apollo also belonging to it. The Greeks were characterizing their own race in this. It was a specific shape given to the oval of the eye, to the nose, the mouth. Secondly you see the group that may be called the Mercury type. The ears are positioned quite differently, the nose differently, and the hair is woolly and crinkly. Thirdly there is the Satyr type, where we see quite a different shape to the angles of the mouth, a different nose, eyes and so on. These three types are clearly evident in Greek sculpture. The Satyr type is meant to represent a very ancient race, the Mercury type the race that followed it, and the Zeus type the fifth race.

Spiritual views of the world were part of everything in earlier times. During the Middle Ages this still showed itself in the work of craftsmen, with every door lock something of a work of art. Outer culture still showed us something that had been created by the soul. Our modern times are very different. The present time has only produced one style, and that is the style of the mercantile store. The large store will be just as characteristic of our age as Gothic edifices such as Cologne Cathedral are of 13th and 14th century medieval times. The new life comes to expression in these forms. As the knowledge given through the science of the spirit spreads, the world will have spiritual content again. And when this life of the spirit later comes to expression in outer forms we shall have a style that reflects this life of the spirit The things that live in the science of the spirit must later come to expression in outer forms. We thus have to see the mission of spiritual science to be a cultural mission.

Everyone who has the task to heal should acquire a fundamental feeling for the surprising connections between extra-human and intra-human facts. For significant intuitions can emerge from such study, particularly in Materia Medica and therapeutics. To take an obvious example, let me remind you of such substances as Roncegno-water, or Levico water, which are as though compounded by some beneficent spirit — to speak figuratively — preparing ready for use in the world of nature so many diverse ingredients capable of acting favourably within us. We shall later on deal with these matters in greater detail, but if we bear in mind the remarkable manner in which the two forces of iron and copper blend and temper one another in the water from these spas, and the addition of arsenic, as though to make their mutual compensative operation even wider and more firmly based, we must say to ourselves: here in external nature is something just prepared for certain conditions in mankind. Of course it can happen that these substances have an extremely unfavourable effect on certain individual cases. But the general validity of the main principle is shown even in negative cases, and corroborated. It is advisable, especially at the present time, in dealing with these subjects to remember the possibility of meeting and counteracting such morbid symptoms as have not manifested themselves until our age. Do not let us forget that objective observers on all sides are recognising that peculiar conditions are beginning to affect certain regions of the earth's surface and bringing peculiar forms of disease in their wake. And do not let us forget another current development of great relevant interest; even such a disorder as grippe (influenza) has indisputably acquired strange features in its recent form; the power of rousing previously latent sicknesses to which the individual organism has a tendency, but which might otherwise remain hidden throughout life. These latent morbid trends are uncovered, as it were, when the patient is attacked by influenza.

These matters compose a bundle of questions, upon which I will base our next lectures. The most fruitful approach will be from the consideration of another remarkable circumstance, which perhaps only the spiritual scientist can fully appreciate. As you are aware, oxygen and nitrogen are mingled in our atmosphere; they are loosely mingled in a manner which cannot be exactly defined, either in the terms of physics or of chemistry. And we, as men and as earthly beings, are wholly enmeshed in the combined activities of these two elements, oxygen and nitrogen, and one can therefore assume from the outset that there is some significance in the relation of oxygen to nitrogen in our atmosphere, and in their normal ratio.

Spiritual Science shows us this significant fact: every change in the composition of the atmosphere which alters the normal proportion of oxygen to nitrogen, in either direction — is associated with disturbances in the process of human sleep. That leads us to inquire into this hidden relationship more definitely. You know that in Spiritual Science we have found it necessary to state that man consists of the following four members: the physical body, the etheric body, the astral body and the ego. You know that we have been led by the facts themselves, further, to maintain that when sleep begins ego and astral body separate, in a sense, from the other vehicles, though this separation takes place more in a dynamic sense, and return again when the individual awakes. Thus you must conclude: in the state of sleep there is a bond between the astral body and the ego, and another bond between the etheric and physical bodies; so even in the waking state, we must accept a less intimate connection between astral body and ego on the one hand and etheric body and physical body on the other, than between the ego and astral body or between the etheric and physical bodies. This looser link between the two groups, the upper human entity, ego and astral body and the lower human entity, etheric and physical bodies — is a true mirror-image of the loose admixture of oxygen and nitrogen in the external atmosphere. Both correspond in a remarkable and astounding way. The composition of the external atmosphere is of such a nature as to furnish the ratio for the connection between astral and etheric bodies, and concurrently between their partners, the physical body and the ego.

This will also naturally make us attentive as to how we have to act in regard to the composition of the air, how we must notice whether we are in a position to give men air or whether to deprive them of it. Now you are able to take a more physiological approach, and to note the working of this correspondence. Pass in review all the substances at present known to us, and active in the human organism; and you will find that (with two exceptions) all these are found in combination with other substances within the human organism: as a rule we find compounds and solutions. Two only appear in their pure state within us; these are oxygen and nitrogen. So these main components of the atmosphere play also particular parts within our human bodies. Their interactions form as it were the very core of the substances in us. Oxygen and nitrogen are linked with the functions of the human organism; and they act as the only elements operating in their pure state, and not modified or deflected by other substances combined with them in the human organic sphere. So there is not only great significance in the actual presence of external substances, traceable within the human organism; we must also follow up the manner of their occurrence, and consider whether their operation remains free, or is bound up with something else. For the peculiar thing is that within the human organism, matter acquires special affinities to other forms of matter, and specific kinship. So if we introduce a substance into the organism which already contains a certain other substance, these affinities can become apparent. Follow this up, and you will come to a quite definite revelation, which spiritual science must point out. You are aware that vegetable, animal and human organisms are alike based on proteins, on albuminous substances. You know that, in the terms of contemporary chemistry, the main ingredients of albumen are the four main natural substances, carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, hydrogen, and, in addition, sulphur, as, so to speak, a homeopathic agent in the operations of the other four.

It is necessary to form an idea of how the internal function of albumen is brought about; how is protein made? Contemporary chemical science must obviously and conformably to its premises reply: — Oh well, any such substance has the configuration proper to its inherent forces. It follows that one identifies things which are actually not at all the same, or that are not similar as much as is assumed. Sometimes a certain dissimilarity is recorded, and in any case the identity is invalid. In consequence of the application of atomistic theory to the structure of albumens, vegetable albumen and animal albumen have been viewed as very much alike, and up to a certain degree at least chemically identical. But that is absolutely not the case. A closer and more exact study of our human organism recognises the fact that vegetable albumen neutralises animal and more especially human albumen; that the two are in fact polar opposites, and that each annihilates in an intimate way the effects of the other. It is strange indeed that we must admit: animal albumen is of such a nature in its functions that these functions are impaired, abolished partially or even wholly abolished, by those of vegetable albumen. And this leads us to the question: Well, what is the exact difference between what appears as albumen in the animal organism or especially in that of man, and what appears as the same substance in the organism of plants? It is in your recollection that I have had frequently to mention the important part played in relation to all extra-telluric meteorological processes by the four organic systems, bladder, kidneys, liver, lungs, and their complement, the heart. Those four organic groups are most important in determining how man is affected by the meteorological happenings in the external world. Now: What is the significance and office of these four systems.

These four organic systems are nothing less than the creators of the structure of human albumen. So we must study them, and not the atomistic and molecular forces in the albumen substance. In our inquiry “Why is albumen what it is?” we must conceive of its internal structure as the resultant of forces emanating from these four organic systems. Albumen can be called the product of this fourfold co-operation. With this we state a remarkable fact in respect of the interiorisation of external forces within man. What contemporary chemistry looks for in the actual structure of the substance in question, we look for and find in the organic systems of the human body. Therefore the characteristic structure of human albumen cannot conceivably exist in the external terrestrial sphere; it cannot remain unless it is under the influence of these four organic systems. In other conditions it is bound to change its structure.

But it is otherwise with vegetable albumen. Vegetable albumen is, so it seems, not controlled by any analogous group of organs, but it is under another influence; namely, of the four elements, oxygen, nitrogen, hydrogen, carbon, and also under that of the meteorologically omnipresent mediator between these four main elements, namely sulphur. In vegetable albumen, these four elements dispersing themselves throughout the atmosphere, perform the same office as the lungs, heart, liver and so forth, within man. External nature contains in these four substances the same formative forces as are individualised in the human organism through the four main groups. It is important to remember that in speaking of oxygen, hydrogen and so forth, we should not limit their meaning to the inherent forces and attributes recognised by modern chemistry, but that we should conceive these elements as possessing formative forces, with activities which affect one another mutually, and by which they contribute to the furnishing of the earth sphere. If we consider them separately and in detail, we must identify the external operation of oxygen with the internal operation of the kidney and urinary system. What is done in the outer world, by the formative forces of carbon, we must identify internally with the pulmonary system: not regarding the lungs however as organs of respiration, but as possessing particular formative forces. We must identify nitrogen with the liver system, hydrogen with the cardiac system (see Diagram 22). Hydrogen is indeed the heart of the outer world; and nitrogen the liver of the external world, etc.

It would be well, my friends, for humanity today, not only to let itself be persuaded to recognise these things, but to work them out for itself. For example, in recognising the association of the heart system with the formative forces of hydrogen, you will readily admit the essential importance of hydrogen circulation for the whole upper bodily sphere in man. For with the metamorphosis of hydrogen towards the upper bodily sphere, the lower and more animal region is changed into the specifically human, tending towards the developing of concepts, etc. And I have already indicated that there we shall have to deal with an extra-telluric influence to be identified with the metal lead. You will remember that lead, tin and iron have already been classified as forces possessing special affinities with the upper sphere in man. At the present time there is no great inclination to admit these interrelationships Nor will there be, as yet, much wish to go outwards from man into the external world, recognising the specific working of lead, as something associated with the fact that hydrogen is made ready by the heart, and then serves as carrier for the preparation of the apparatus of thought. Nevertheless the unconscious progress of human evolution is compelling mankind to recognise this fact. For today it is no longer possible to deny that lead plays some role in the external world, even if only from the functional standpoint; as lead has been actually found among the products of transmutation which Röntgenology has discovered; lead has been actually found as a final product formed by way of helium, not with the usual atomic weight, as a matter of fact; but still it has been identified as lead. Furthermore, as lead has been discovered, so shall we also find tin, and iron as well, iron that as the only constituent of external nature, impinges directly upon our human constitution. Surely today we need to give heed not only to the science of Röntgen rays, however wonderful as a guide and finger-post to the cosmos external to ourselves, because it speaks not only of the crude metallic ores within the earth, but of the metal forces playing upon us from the extra-telluric sphere. That must be said nowadays. For the emergence of new types of disease shows the necessity of taking these factors into account.

What interests us here is the fact that the function performed in the external world by carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, and their mediator sulphur, is being individualised in man through the four organic systems. Correct estimation of this fact will lead you deep into the core of man. Then you will no longer find it strange to bring the involuntary elements in our nature — i.e., those which seem to be under the control of the spiritual functions — into association with the whole extra-human world. For on the other hand, observe this truth also. Man is so constructed as to have, for instance a certain system of organs which we know as the kidneys. But each of the four systems has an urge to become the whole man: the kidneys have an urgent tendency to become the whole man; the heart has the same tendency, so has the liver, so have the lungs. In order to convince oneself of such facts, it is helpful to turn one's eyes — or rather one's sensitivity — to observe certain workings of extra-human realities in one's being. It is hardly possible to avoid drawing your attention to the borderline where Natural Science passes over Spiritual Science. For, indeed, if you continue your practice both in medicine and in meditation, and learn to put yourself more and more in tune with the life of meditation, feeling yourself as a meditating human being, you will gradually arrive at a concrete and real self-knowledge. Such a self-knowledge is not to be despised if it comes to such positive tasks as the cure of disease! If you attain further progress in meditation you will become aware of things in your own bodies which were originally quite beyond consciousness. You have only to become conscious of this new awareness, in order to learn what it is as yet difficult to mention and describe in public lectures or even before lay audiences, because of the tendency which then arises. I shall presently refer to one of these elements, elementary as it is. But if these matters were to be broadcast indiscriminately in wider circles today, among mankind in its present moral condition, there would at once arise the query: “Well, why are these powers not utilised?” Followed by the conclusion: “Yes, I should have to practise meditation — and I can get the same result more easily by simply incorporating this or that substance.” It is more convenient to diet or inject, than to practise meditation. By taking that course, mankind decides in a certain sense on moral ruin. But with their contemporary moral constitution, people would not hesitate — you will see the core of my argument presently — to reject meditation in favour of some external remedy, which would, we must admit, help them, on the first steps of the road, to results similar to the fruits of meditation. And it is certainly the case that such partial substitutes exist. For example, if you have practised genuine meditation for some time, and are disposed to register its effects, you will observe that you have become aware of the radiating iron forces, just as you are normally aware that you have hands with which you take hold and feet with which you walk. It is indeed the case that the awareness of the iron working comes as clearly as the normal awareness of our legs and arms, or our heads, to move and turn etc. Yes — what emerges is the consciousness of ourselves as a framework phantom of iron. The consequent danger to which I have referred is that most people would reason thus: “So far, so good: then it's possible to augment one's sensitivity to iron, the susceptibility to the iron within one's self, by means of some remedy, that will have the same effect as meditation.” Up to a certain point this is completely accurate. But there is danger in the experimentation on such lines, in order to attain what is termed clairvoyance easily. Such experiments have been made occasionally. If they are made as, in a sense, exploratory sacrifices on behalf of mankind, the case is different, but if they are made out of curiosity, they undermine the whole ethical structure of the human soul. Now Van Helmont was one of the sages who experimented widely and boldly on himself, in this direction, and discovered many things, through such experiments; and you can read these results in his writings, to this day. He differs from Paracelsus; for with the latter one feels that his understanding rose in an atavistic way from within and that he carried elements of the super-earthly world into the ordinary world. Whereas Helmont repeatedly received remarkable illuminations as a result of self administration of various substances. This is shown by the way in which he presents his subject; moreover, I believe he makes quite definite statements to this effect, in some passages. This, then, is the first possible attainment (through meditation); the internal sensitivity for the radiant force of iron, for that unique working which comes forth from the upper bodily sphere, and ramifies into all the limbs. One gets the definite conception — I say expressly the conception — that one is dealing internally with iron, that is with its function and its forces.

In attempting a graphic representation of this iron radiation, I must mention that by its very nature it is not adapted to act beyond the human organism. The feeling persists: what is radiating forth is nevertheless localised within us, and remains so. There is a counteracting force from all sides, which dams and (see Diagram 23) stores up the iron forces. It is as though the iron rayed outwards to the human periphery with positive force; and there met a negative radiance from something which hits back, advancing as it were in concentric spheres. This is what can be perceived; the one element radiating forth and the other coming to hold it up; we therefore feel that we knock against something and cannot pass beyond the bodily surface.

And gradually we realise that the negative and opposing radiance is the force of albumen. Thus the iron introduces into our organism a display of functions which are opposed by all that comes from the four organic systems to which I have already referred. These systems resist the iron rays; and the struggle goes on continually within the organism. This is as it were the first thing which becomes perceptible to the inner sight. When we begin to study the spiritual history of mankind, we can plainly see that the Hippocratic School of Medicine, and even that of Galen as well, still used conceptions which are relics of such internal observations. Galen Was no longer in a position to observe much in this way but he recorded all sorts of traditions from earlier ages, still current in his day. If we can read him aright we shall find that the archaic atavistic medical wisdom, whose decline begins with the advent of Hippocrates, still shows through much of Galen's writings, and is the source of many valuable views on the healing processes of nature contained in them.

In pursuance of these phenomena, we find we must study on the whole these two polarities throughout the organism, these radiations and that which opposes them and dams them up. There is need to keep this distinction in mind, for all that tends to form albumen, in the manner described above, is associated with the damming up action, and all of a metallic nature introduced into our bodies, has to do with the radiating forces. Certainly there are exceptions and characteristic exceptions, but they are so distinctive as to reveal other aspects of this whole amazing complex of forces, assembled from all the ends of the universe and focused in our human organism. In order to comprehend their scope it is necessary to follow up somewhat the indications already given here in outline, which you may work out in detail. Thus, I need only mention this fact: The carbon content of plants — for instance the vegetable carbon already dealt with — is lacking in an ingredient which is generally — practically always — present in animal carbon: that is a certain amount of nitrogen. This is the reason why animal and vegetable carbon react differently especially when exposed to fire. This latter feature in turn, makes animal carbon inclined to play a part in the formation of such substances as gall, mucus, and even fat. This difference in the action of vegetable and animal carbon respectively, draws our attention to the further difference in the action of metals and non-metals in general within the human organism. In other words, the action of the radiating out and the damming up substances.

This polar interaction gives the clue to many important things. We have often had occasion to mention the various periods of human life; the period of childhood lasting till the cutting of the permanent teeth; the period between second dentition and puberty, and then the period from puberty to the beginning of the twenties. These periods are linked with intimate happenings within the human organism. The first period, ending with the cutting of the permanent teeth, means, as I have had occasion to point out, a concentration of the whole organic activity on the formation and insertion of the solid scaffold into the body; this process reaches its culmination in the teeth which protrude from the solid scaffold. Now it is evident that this crystallisation of solid substance within the still largely fluid young human body must have to do with the whole building up of the human shape, especially towards its periphery.

We must attribute much of the result achieved to two substances, which receive far too little attention in their effects within the human organism: these are fluorine and magnesium. In the — so to speak — rarefied form in which they occur within us, both fluorine and magnesium play prominent parts, especially in the process of shape formation in the child, up to the change of teeth. The forming and fitting of the solid framework in the human organism takes place through continuous interaction between the forces of magnesium and fluorine respectively; in this interplay, the forces of fluorine act plastically, mould as a sculptor moulds, fill out contours and bar the way to the forces of radiation, whilst magnesium acts as a radiating force and constitutes the fibres of tissue, etc., into and along which the substance arranges itself. It is not a senseless phrase, but wholly in accord with the course of nature to say that a tooth is formed thus: It is shaped, as far as its circumference and its cement is concerned, by the activity of the plastic artist “fluorine,” and magnesium pours into it the forces which have to be shaped to a plastic form.

So it is necessary to keep even balance between the supplies of these two substances in early childhood, and if this balance and proportion are not achieved, it will always be found that the teeth become defective at an early age. As soon as the first tooth appears, the particular formation of the teeth should be noted carefully, and whether the child develops a weak enamel cover or the teeth are too small and sparsely set — we shall deal with these symptoms in detail, but at present we are approaching the subject gradually — any defects should and can then be counteracted by means of administering either magnesium or fluorine in suitable compounds.

This affords a direct glimpse into the formative process of man. Even in the earliest years of life, there is this interaction between fluorine and magnesium, that is an interaction in which the agents are of a decidedly extra-human character in the constitution of their substance — for during the first years of life, man is mainly a link inserted into the external world. So fluorine comes from the external world, to counteract the centrifugal radiance of the metal.

For the third vital epoch, a similar importance adheres to the even balance between iron and albumen, the whole formation of albumen. If there is not the requisite even balance, and there are not strong beneficial counter-agents against the effects of disproportion between iron and albumen, we have all the symptoms externally typical of anæmia. It simply does not suffice merely to note the presence of this symptom or that; decayed or misshapen teeth which have been directly caused by faulty conditions in early youth, for instance, or the blood chemistry characteristic of anæmia. We must penetrate into the secret depth of the human organism as a whole, if we would understand what exactly happens to man in sickness.

You already know, more or less, the particular metals which share in the upbuilding — the interior upbuilding — of the human organism They do not include — with one exception, namely iron — those to which I have referred as in some way the most important ones: lead, tin, copper, quicksilver, silver and gold are not directly engaged in the functioning of the human organism, but have their part in us, nevertheless. Take, for instance, that substance which contributes to the peripheral formations of the human frame; we refer to silicon, with which I have dealt already. Now the processes within us are not bounded by our skins; man is interwoven with the whole web of universal processes. Just as the substances mentioned above are of significance internally, so also the main metals enumerated here, are effective upon man although external to our organism. The part of the mediator is given to iron. Iron plays the mediating role between the sphere within the boundary of the human skin, and that outside this boundary We may therefore maintain that the whole pulmonary System — “pulmonary man,” possessing the urge to become a whole man — is strongly linked with the whole human relationship to the universal life of nature. If we regard only what becomes visible in dissecting the body, we are taking for the whole, what is only a part. The visible body is not the whole, it is that part of man which is opposed to extra-human agencies; to the operation of lead, tin, copper and so forth, which are external to our bodies. Even if we look at the human organisation only from the point of view of natural science, we must never regard man as bounded by the epidermis. We must take into account not only the workings acting from within, outwards, but also all these workings which give a general direction to his organic processes. That the latter play an important part may be realised in the light of the following facts.

You know that certain substances operate in the human organism simply through being bound up with either bases or acids; or appear, to use the technical term, neutrally in the form of salts. Thus bases and acids act as complexes of antagonistic forces, which neutralise each other in salts. But this is not all. How does this triad, acids, bases and salts, operate within the human system of organic forces? We shall find that all bases have a tendency to support such human processes as begin in the mouth and continue through digestion, i.e., from front to rear; and indeed all other processes with the same line of action. And as the basic substances have to do with this direction, so the acids are equally associated with the reverse. Only in studying the opposition of “front man” to “rear man” one understands the polar opposition of bases and acids. And saline substances stand at right angles to the two opposites, pointing vertically earthwards. All processes directed from above downwards centripetally are those into which the saline element thrusts itself. Thus we must keep these three spatial directions clearly in our minds, if we seek to determine how man enters into the triad, bases, salts and acids. Here again is an instance of the manner in which the purely external chemistry of metals is linked with the physiological, through the observation of man, for here you see clearly the directive forces. Here, too, you have the whole relationship of salt nature to the earth, as well as the direction of basic and acid substances. We can summarise the whole thus. If we imagine the earth's surface, the saline substances tend downwards towards the earth, and bases and acids tend to spin around the earth in circles. And simply by learning something of the spatial directions of the organic functions, we are in a position to intrench upon them. Here an essential curative measure is the external application of remedies, through friction, by means of ointments, and so forth. One must find out what operates in a certain direction after external application. Under certain conditions, the vigorous action of mustard plasters, or of certain metallic ointments — suitably compounded of course — is as effective for the whole organism, as is internal treatment. But — as you will deduce from what has been put before you — we must be careful to choose the right method of application. For it is not at all the same whether the plaster or ointment is applied to this or that part of the body. It is essential to choose the spot of application so as to stimulate counteraction against injurious forces. It is not always the most efficacious way merely to put the remedy directly on to the seat of the pain or irritation.

Whatever may arise in course of time from anthroposophy, in regard to the sphere of medical knowledge, it will not be found to be in any disagreement whatsoever with that which is understood to-day as the orthodox scientific study of medicine. It is easy, in looking at the question from the scientific standpoint, to be deceived about this, because from the outset it is supposed that any study which is not founded upon so-called exact proof, must be of the nature of sectarianism, and cannot therefore be taken seriously by the scientific observer.

For this reason it is necessary to remark that it is just that point of view which seeks to support medicine upon an anthroposophical basis, which is the most appreciative of, and the most sympathetic towards all that is best and greatest in modern medical achievements.

There cannot therefore be any question that the following statements are merely the polemics of dilettantism, or unprofessionalism, leveled against recognised methods of healing. The whole question turns solely upon the fact that during the last few centuries our entire world-conception has assumed a form which is limited by investigation only into those things which can be confirmed by the senses — either by means of experiment, or by direct observation — and which are then brought into relation with one another through those powers of human reasoning which rely upon the testimony of the senses alone.

This method of research was nevertheless entirely justifiable during several hundred years, because if it had been otherwise, mankind would have become immersed in a world of dreams and fantasies, would have been forced to a capricious acceptance of things, and to a barren weaving of hypotheses.

That is connected with the fact that man, as he lives in the world between birth and death, is a being who cannot truly know himself by means of his physical senses and his reason alone — because he is just as much a spiritual as a physical being.

So that when we come to speak of man in health and in disease we can do no less than ask ourselves: Is it possible to gain a knowledge of health and disease only by those methods of research which concern the physical body; purely with the assistance of the senses and the reason, or by the use of instruments which extend the faculties of the senses and enable us to carry out experiments?

We shall find that a real, unprejudiced, historical retrospect shows us that the knowledge which mankind has gained originated from something totally different from these mere sense-observations. There lies behind us an immense development of our spiritual life, no less than of our physical.

Some three thousand years ago, during the flowering of the most ancient Greek culture, there existed schools that were very different from those of to-day. The basis of these ancient schools consisted in the belief that man had first of all to develop new faculties in his soul before he could become capable of attaining to true knowledge concerning mankind.

Now it was just because, in these ancient times, the more primitive soul-faculties did not incline towards the fantastic, that it was possible to experience, in the so-called mysteries, the spiritual foundations from which all forms of learning arose.

This state of things came to an end more or less contemporaneously with the founding of our Universities — during the twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth centuries. Since that time we learn only in a rationalistic way. Rationalism leads on the one hand to keen logic, and on the other hand to pure materialism.

During the course of centuries a vast store of external knowledge has been accumulated in the domain of biology, physiology, and other branches of research which are introductory to the study of medicine; indeed an amazing mass of observations, out of which an almost immeasurable amount may yet be obtained!

But during these centuries all knowledge connected with man which could not be gained without spiritual vision, sank completely out of sight.

It has therefore become actually impossible to investigate the true nature of health and disease.

In order to emphasise this remark, I may mention that even at the present time, according to the descriptions given in my books Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and An Outline Of Occult Science, it is possible so to raise the faculties of the soul that the spiritual nature of man may be clearly distinguished from the physical, This spiritual part of man is, for the spiritual observer, just as visible as the physical part is for the man who observes with his outer senses; with this difference, however, that our ordinary senses have been and are incorporated into our bodily organism without our co-operation, whereas we must ourselves develop the organs of spiritual sight.

This can be brought about if one unfolds within oneself an earnest life of thought. Such a state of living, of resting in quietude — in thought — must, however, be carried out so as to bring about a methodical education and transformation of the soul. If one can, so to say, experiment for a time with one's own soul, allowing it to rest within an easily grasped thought, at the same time permitting neither any traces of auto-suggestion nor any diminution of consciousness to arise, and if one in this way exercises the soul as one would exercise a muscle, then the soul grows strong. Methodically, one pursues the exercises further and further; the soul grows stronger, grows powerful, and becomes capable of sight.

The first thing that it sees is that the human being actually does not consist merely of physical body, which can be investigated either with the naked eye or with a microscope, and so forth, but that he also bears an etheric body. This is not to be confused with that which, in earlier scientific times, was somewhat amateurishly described as “vital forces.” It is something that can really be perceived and observed; and if I were to distinguish qualitatively between the physical body and the etheric body, I should choose, out of all the innumerable qualitative distinctions that exist, the following: — The physical body of man is subject to the laws of gravity; it tends to be drawn earthward. The etheric body tends to be drawn towards the periphery of the universe; that is to say, outwards, in all directions. As a rule, our investigations are concerned with the relative weight of things, but that part of the human organism which possesses weight is the direct opposite of that which not only has no weight but which strives to escape from the laws of gravitation. We have in us these two opposing forces.

This is the first of our super-physical bodies. We may say, then, that we have within us first of all the physical man, whose orientation is centripetal and tends earthwards, and another man, whose orientation is centrifugal and tends to leave the earth. It will be seen that a balance must be maintained between these two configurations of the human being — between the heavy physical body, which is subject to the laws of gravity, and the other, the etheric body, which strives outwards towards the farthest limits of the universe.

The etheric body seeks, as it were, to imitate, to be an image of the whole Cosmos; but the physical body rounds it off, and keeps it within its own limits.

Therefore, by contemplating the state of balance between the physical body and the etheric body, our perception of the nature of the human being becomes real and penetrating. Once we have succeeded in recognising these outward-streaming centrifugal forces in man, we shall be able to perceive them also in the vegetable kingdom. The mineral kingdom alone appears purely physical to us. In it we can trace no centrifugal forces. Minerals are subject to the laws of gravity. But in the case of plants we recognise their outer form as being the result of the two forces. At the same time it becomes apparent to us that we cannot remain at this point in our investigations if we wish to observe anything that is higher in the scale of organic life than the plants. The plant has its etheric body; the animal, when we observe it, possesses life, and also sensation. It creates, inwardly, a world; this fact arrests our attention, and we see that we must make yet deeper researches. Hence we realise that we must develop our ordinary state of consciousness still further.

Already, as I have shown, a certain stage will have been reached when we are able to see not merely the physical body of man, but the physical body embedded within the etheric body, as though in a kind of cloud. But that is not all; the more we strengthen our souls, the more we find greater and greater reality in our thoughts, and it then becomes possible to arrive at a further stage, which consists in suppressing these strong thoughts which have been made so powerful by our own efforts.

In ordinary life if we blot out by degrees our faculties of sight, of hearing, of sensation, and of thinking — we fall asleep. That is an experiment which may easily be carried out. But if one has strengthened the soul in the manner described by the training of thought, of the whole of one's life of concept and feeling, then one can actually learn to suppress the life of the senses. One then arrives at a condition where, above all things, one is not asleep but is very much awake. Indeed, it may even be that one has to guard against losing the power to sleep, while one is striving to reach this condition. If, however, one sets to work in the way I have indicated in my books, every precaution is taken to prevent any disturbances in the ordinary life.

One succeeds then in being completely awake, though one cannot hear as one hears with the ears. The ordinary memory, too, and ordinary thinking cease. One confronts the world with a perfectly empty but perfectly waking consciousness. And then one sees the third human organism — the astral.

Animals also possess this astral organism. In man it bestows the possibility of unfolding a real inner life of experience. Now this is something which is connected neither with the innermost depths of the earth nor with the wide expanse of the universe, but rather it is connected with a state of being inwardly penetrated by forces which are “seen” as the astral body. So now we have the third member of the human organisation.

If one learns to perceive this third member in the manner indicated above, one finds that from the scientific point of view it is indescribably illuminating. One says to oneself — the child grows up and becomes the man; his vital forces are active. But he is not only growing physically, his consciousness is developing at the same time; he is unfolding within himself an image of the outer world.

Can this be the result of physical growth? Can this be accomplished by the same forces that underlie nutrition and growth?

When the organic forces that underlie the latter gain the upper hand, the consciousness becomes dimmed. We need, therefore, something which is connected with these forces, and which is actually opposed to them. The human being is always growing and always being nourished. But he has within his astral body, as I have described it, something which is perpetually suppressing, inhibiting the forces of growth and nutrition.

So we have in man a process of construction through the physical body in conjunction with the earth; another process of construction through the etheric body in conjunction with the Cosmos, and through the astral body a continuous destruction of the organic processes in the cell-life and the glandular life.

That is the secret of the human organism.

Now we understand why it is that man possesses a soul. If he were to grow continuously like the plant, he could not have a soul. The process of growing must first be destroyed, for it expels the soul. If we had nothing in our brain but the process of building up, and no processes of breaking down and destruction, we could not contain the soul.

Evolution does not proceed in a straight line. It must retreat in one direction; it must give way. Herein lies the secret of humanity — of the ensouled being.

If we go no further than the consideration of the organisation of the animal, we find ourselves concerned only with its three principles — the physical, etheric, and astral. But if we proceed to the observation of man, we find, when we have progressed yet further with the training of our souls, that we spiritually perceive yet another principle.

Our spiritual perception of the animal discloses that its thinking, feeling, and willing are, in a certain sense, neutral in regard to one another; they are not clearly distinct. One cannot speak of a separate thinking, a separate feeling, and a separate willing, but only of a neutral blending of these three elements. But in the case of man, his inner life depends just upon the fact that he lays hold of his intentions by quiet thought, and that he can remain with his intentions; he can either carry them out in deeds, or not carry them out. The animal obeys its impulses. Man separates thinking, feeling, and willing from one another.

How this is so, can only be understood when one has carried one's power of spiritual perception far enough to observe the fourth principle of man's organisation — the “I am I” — or the Ego.

As we have just seen, the astral body breaks down the processes of growth and nutrition; in a sense, it introduces a gradual dying into the whole organism. The Ego redeems, out of this destructive process, certain elements which are continually falling away from the combination of the physical and etheric bodies, and rebuilds them.

That is actually the secret of human nature.

If one looks at the human brain, one sees — in those lighter parts which lie more below the superficial structures, and which proceed as nerve fibres to the sense organs — a most complicated organisation which, for those who can perceive it in its reality, is in a continual state of deterioration, although so slowly does this take place that it cannot be observed by ordinary physiological means. But, out of all this destruction, that which differentiates man from the animals, namely, the peripheral brain, is built up. This is the foundation of the human organisation. With regard to man, naturally, the central brain (the continuation of the sensory nerves and their connections) is more perfect than the peripheral brain, which is, as a matter of fact, more akin to the metabolic processes than the deeper portions of the brain are.

This peripheral brain, which is peculiarly characteristic of man, is organised for these metabolic functions by the Ego-organisation — organised out of what otherwise is in a state of deterioration. ^{1The “Ego-organisation” denotes the whole of those attributes of the human being by means of which he attains his “sense of I am”. As hearing, sight, taste, etc. each have their “organs” of expression, so also has the Ego. In this case the “organ” is the entire physical body in its self-conscious contact with the outer world.} And so the activity of the Ego permeates the entire organism.

The Ego redeems certain elements out of the ruin worked by the astral body, and builds out of them that which underlies an harmonious co-ordination of thinking, feeling, and willing.

I can of course only mention these things, but I wish to point out that one can proceed with the same exactitude when making observations spiritually as one can in any branch of external experimental science and with a full sense of responsibility; so that in every case one seeks for the agreement between what is spiritually observed and what is discovered by empirical physical methods of research. It is exactly the formation of the physical brain which leads one on to apprehend the super-physical, and to attain knowledge by spiritual investigation.

Thus we have these four members of the human organisation. These, in order to maintain health, must be in quite special relation to one another.

We only get water when we mix hydrogen and oxygen in accordance with their specific gravity. In the same way there is a determinative which brings about a normal relationship — if I may say so — between the physical body, the etheric body, the astral body, and the Ego.

We not only have four, but 4x4 relative states. All these can be disturbed. An abnormal relation may arise between the etheric and the physical bodies, or between the astral and etheric, or between the Ego and one or another of these. All are deeply connected with one another and are in a special relation to one another. The moment this is disturbed, illness arises.

But this relationship is not uniform throughout the human being; it differs in the different individual organs. If we observe, for instance, a human lung, the physical, etheric, astral, and Ego constituents of this lung are not the same as those of the brain or of the liver. Thus, the entire human organisation is so complicated that the spiritual and the material are differently related in every organ. Therefore, it will be understood that, just as one studies physical anatomy and physical physiology in accordance with external symptoms, so — when one admits the existence of this spiritual investigation, and practises it — one must study with the greatest exactitude the health and disease of every separate organ. In this way one always arrives at a complete and comprehensive knowledge of the human organism. It cannot be so understood if it is observed solely from the physical standpoint. It can only be known through a knowledge of its four principles. One is only clear about any illness when one is able to say which of these four principles either predominates too strongly or is too much suppressed. It is because one is able to observe these things in a spiritual manner that one actually places a spiritual diagnosis alongside the material diagnosis. Therefore what is gained by anthroposophical methods in seeing through the fourfold constitution of man, is gained in addition to all that it is possible to observe of health and disease by ordinary methods.

And further, it is not only possible to behold man spiritually but also the whole of Nature. One is now, for the first time, in a position to find man's relation to the various kingdoms of Nature, and, in medicine, his relation to the healing properties which these kingdoms contain.

Let us take an example. There is a substance which is most widely distributed over the whole earth, and not only over the whole earth, but also, in its finest form, throughout the air. This is silicic acid. It is an enormously important constituent part of the earth. But for those who are able to see these things with higher faculties, all this silicious substance is revealed as the external manifestation of something spiritual; and an immense and almost overpowering difference is seen to exist between that which ordinary physical methods of observation disclose with regard to silicic acid, or, for example, carbonic acid gas, and that which spiritual investigation discloses.

By the latter method we see that quartz, or rock-crystal, such as we find in the mountains — in fact, all forms of silicious substance — provides a free path for something spiritual. Just as any transparent substance allows light to stream through it, so all silicious substance allows what is spiritually active in the entire world to stream through it.

But we find quite a different relationship towards the spiritual when we come to carbonic acid. Carbonic acid has this peculiarity (for there is something spiritual in every physical substance), that the spiritual that is in contact with carbonic acid becomes individualised. Carbonic acid retains the spiritual in itself with all its force. The spiritual “selects” carbonic acid as a dwelling-place. In silica it has a transcending tendency — a consuming tendency — but it inheres in carbonic acid as though it felt itself “at home” there.

Carbonic acid processes are present in the breathing and circulation of animals. The former are especially connected with the astral body. The carbonic acid processes are related to the external physical of the animal, while the astral body is that which is inwardly spiritually active. The astral is therefore the spiritual element, and the carbonic acid process is its physical counterpart and underlies the animal's expirations.

The Ego-organisation is the spiritual inner element in man of that which takes place in man as silicic acid processes. We have silicic acid in our hair, our bones, our organs of sense, in all the extremities and periphery of our bodies — in fact, everywhere where we come into contact with the outer world — and all these silicic acid processes are the external counterpart, the expression from within outwards, of the Ego-organisation.

Now it must be borne in mind that the Ego must, in a certain sense, be strong enough to manipulate, to control, the whole of this silicic acid activity. If the Ego is too weak, the silicic acid is separated out — that is a pathological condition. On the other hand, the astral body must be strong enough to control the carbonic acid process; if it cannot, carbonic acid or its waste products are separated out, and illness results.

It is possible, therefore, in observing the strength or weakness of the astral body to find the cause of an illness rooted in the spiritual. And in observing the Ego-organisation one discovers the cause of those disturbances which either bring about a morbid decomposition of the silicic acid processes in. the body, or which one must deal with therapeutically by the administration of silicic acid. What happens then is that the spiritual, which is never retained in the material substance itself, passes through it and affects the silicic acid deposited in the body. It takes the place of the Ego itself. In the administration of carbonic acid as a healing agent, it must be so prepared that the spiritual is present in it in the right manner; in using it as a remedy one must be aware that the astral body works in it.

Therefore: One can conceive of a form of therapy which does not only make use of chemical agents, but which is quite consciously administering a cure, in the knowledge that, if a certain quantity of physical substance is given, or a particular solution is prepared as a bath, or if an injection is given, at the same time something of a spiritual nature is quite definitely introduced into the human organism.

So it is perfectly possible to make a bridge from a knowledge of purely physical means of healing to a knowledge which works with spiritual means.

That was the characteristic of the medicine of ancient times; some tradition of it still lingers; it lingers even in some of the recognised cures to-day. And we have to get back to this. We can do so if, without in any way neglecting physical medicine, we add to it what we can gain in spiritual knowledge, not only of man, but of Nature also. Everything can be carried out with the same exactitude as is the case with regard to physical natural science.

Anthroposophy does not seek to correct modern medicine, but to add its own knowledge to it, because ordinary medicine makes demands upon itself only.

What I have just briefly indicated is merely the commencement of an exceedingly wide spiritual knowledge, in which, at present, people have very little faith. One can quite well understand that. But some results have already been attained in the sphere of medicine, and these can be studied in practice at Dr. Ita Wegman's Clinical Institute in Arlesheim, Switzerland. And I am convinced that if any person would investigate this advancement and enlargement of the medical field with the same goodwill with which, as a rule, they investigate physical medicine, they would find it not at all difficult to accept the idea of the spiritual in man, and the spiritual in methods of healing him.

Quite briefly, I will give two examples that illustrate what I have said. Let us suppose that by means of this kind of spiritual diagnosis (if I may use such an expression) it is seen that in a patient the etheric body is working too strongly in some particular organ. The astral body and the Ego-organisation are not in a position to control this super-activity of the etheric body, so that we are faced with an astral body that has become too weak, and possibly also with an Ego which is too weak, and the etheric body therefore predominates. The latter thereby brings about in some particular organ such a condition of the growing and nourishing processes that the whole organism cannot be properly held together, owing to the lack of control by the other two principles.

At this point, then, where the etheric body predominates, the human organism appears as though too much exposed to the centrifugal forces of the Cosmos. They are not in equipoise with the centripetal forces of the physical body. The astral body cannot control them. In such a case we are confronted on the one hand by a preponderance of the silicic acid processes, and on the other by an impotence of the Ego to control them.

This fact underlies the formation of tumours, and it is here that the way is indicated for the true understanding of the nature of carcinomatous processes (cancer). Researches into this matter have had very good results and have been carried out in practice. But one cannot understand carcinoma unless one realises that it is due to the predominance of the etheric body, which is not suppressed by a corresponding activity of the astral and the Ego,

The question then arises, what is to be done in order to strengthen the elements of the astral body and the Ego which correspond to the diseased organ, so that the superabundant energy of the etheric organisation can be reduced? This brings us to the question of the therapy of carcinoma, which shall be dealt with in due course.

Thus, through an understanding of the etheric body we are enabled gradually to become acquainted with the nature of that most terrible of all human diseases, and at the same time, by investigating the spiritual nature of the action of the remedies, we shall discover the means to combat it. This is just one example of how illnesses can be understood through the etheric body.

But supposing that it is the astral body whose forces predominate — supposing that they are so strong that they predominate practically throughout the entire organism, so that there arises a kind of universal stiffening of the whole astral body due to its excessive inner forces; what does such a state of things bring about? When the astral body is not under the control of the Ego — which is to say, when its disintegrating forces are not cancelled by the integrating forces of the Ego — then symptoms appear which are connected with a weakened Ego-organisation.

This results, primarily, in an abnormal activity of the heart. Further, another occurrence due to a weakened Ego-activity, as described above, is that the glandular functions are disturbed. Since the organisation of the Ego is not sufficiently prominent and cannot exercise enough control, in greater or less degree the peripheral glandular organs begin to secrete too actively. Swollen glands appear — goitre appears.

And we see further how, through this stiffening of the astral body, the silicic acid processes, which should have a reaction inwards, are being pressed outwards, because the Ego is not able work strongly enough in the sense-organs, where it ought to work strongly. So, for instance, the eyes become prominent; the astral body drives them outwards.

It is the task of the Ego to overcome this tendency. Our eyes are actually retained in their right place in our organism by the equipoise that should exist between the astral body and the Ego. So they become prominent because the Ego element in them is too weak to maintain the balance properly. Also, one observes in such cases a general condition of restlessness. One sees, in a word, because the Ego cannot drive back those organic processes which are worked upon by the astral body, that the activity of the whole astral body predominates. In short, the symptoms are those of exophthalmic goitre.

Knowing, therefore, that a disturbance of the balance between astral body and Ego-organisation produces exophthalmic goitre, one can apply the same principles in effecting a cure.

Hence it can be seen with what exactness one can pursue these methods as regards both pathological conditions and therapeutical agencies, when one investigates the human being in a spiritual way.

Before we pass on from the pathological to the therapeutical — and particularly in connection with the two examples mentioned — it would be well to touch upon some of the principles underlying the assimilation of various substances by the human organism.

One only recognises the entire connection that exists between so-called “Nature” and the human being when one perceives not only that the latter is a physico-psychic-spiritual being consisting of physical body, etheric body, astral body, and Ego, but also when one further perceives that the basis of all natural substances and processes is a concrete and comprehensible spiritual one. But one must first be able to penetrate into this concrete spiritual existence.

Just as, in the natural world, one must distinguish between minerals and plants, so one must distinguish quite definitely between the spiritual elements and beings that express themselves through them.

Suppose we take first the mineral kingdom.

A considerable part of our healing agents are taken from this kingdom, and therefore what can be made use of in medicine out of spiritual bases emanates from minerals to a very large extent. We find that the spiritual element is connected in such a way with minerals that it establishes a particular relation between them and the Ego-organisation. It is credible that if a mineral substance is administered, either by mouth or by injection, it works principally upon the human organism itself, and makes for either health or ill-health. But what really takes place is that the physical mineral, as such, as it is regarded and handled by the chemist or the physicist, actually does not work upon the organism, but remains as it is. The physical substance itself, when seen by spiritual observation, shows scarcely any metamorphosis when it is absorbed. On the contrary, what is spiritual in the substance works with extraordinary strength upon the Ego.

So one can say that the spirit, for instance of a rock crystal, affects the Ego. The Ego controls the human being when it contains something silicious — that is, the spiritual element of silicic acid. That is what is so remarkable.

Again, if we take the vegetable kingdom, plants do not only possess a physical form, they possess also what I have characterised as an etheric body. Suppose we administer some plant substance, either by mouth or by injection, what is in the plant works as a rule solely upon the astral body. (These things are described in a general sense; there are always exceptions, which may also be studied.)

Everything derived from the animal kingdom, in whatever way it may be manufactured — out of fluids or solids — when it is administered, works upon the etheric body. This is most particularly interesting, because in this spiritual-medical work results have been attained by using for instance, in certain cases, animal products derived from the secretions of the hypophysis cerebri. These have been used successfully on rickety children or in cases of child-deformity, and so on.

There are also other animal products that work upon the human etheric body, either strengthening it or weakening it. In short, this is their principal function.

Anything injected out of one human being into another affects only the physical body; here there is solely a working of the physical upon the physical. For example, if human blood is transfused, nothing comes into consideration save what can take place as a purely physical phenomenon by means of the blood. A remarkable example of this could be observed when, in vaccinations against smallpox, a change was made from using human lymph to using calf-lymph. It was possible to observe then how the human lymph worked only upon the physical body, and how the effect went, so to speak, a stage higher when calf-lymph was introduced, by its becoming transferred to the etheric body.

Thus it becomes possible to see, by developing spiritual powers of observation, how Nature works, as it were, in degrees, or steps, upon human beings — the mineral being made use of in a certain sense by the Ego, the plant by the astral body, the animal by the etheric body, and the human physical body by the human physical body. In the latter case there is no longer anything spiritual to be described. Indeed, even as regards the animal kingdom, we can no longer speak of the “spiritual” in the animal product, but only of the “etheric.”

It is only through all these various connections that one can gain a true conception of how man — in both health and disease — is really immersed in the whole natural order. But one attains also to an inner perception of a still further continuation of the workings of nature in the human organism.

One may now ask, what is to be one's attitude towards cancer! We have seen how the etheric body is able to develop over-strong forces from itself in some particular organ. The centrifugal forces — that is, the forces that tend outwards into the Cosmos — become too powerful; the astral body and the Ego are too weak to counteract them. Spiritual knowledge now comes to one's aid. One can now try either to make the astral body stronger, in which case one administers something from the plant kingdom, or one must restrain the etheric body, and in that case one makes use of the animal kingdom.

Spiritual investigation has led to the adoption of the former course — that which relates to the astral body. In order to cure cancer, the forces of the astral body must be made stronger. And it may now be admitted that the remedy has really been discovered in the plant kingdom.

We have been accused of dilettantism and so forth, because we make use of a parasitic plant — the mistletoe (which has been used in medicine mainly for epilepsy and similar conditions) — and because we prepare it in a very special manner, in order to discover the way which will lead to the healing of cancer.

If you have observed trees which bear a remarkable outgrowth upon the trunk, resembling swellings, especially if you have seen them in section, you will notice that the whole tendency of growth, which usually has a vertical direction, has at these places a deflection at right angles, becoming therefore horizontal. It presses outwards as though another trunk were beginning to grow; and you find something that is as though drawn out of the tree itself — something parasitic. More closely studied, one discovers that any tree which has such an outgrowth is somewhere or other suppressed, restrained, in its physical development. Sufficient physical material has not been available everywhere, in order to keep pace with the growth forces of the etheric body. The physical body remains behind. The etheric body, which otherwise strives centrifugally to project the physical substance out into the Cosmos, is, as it were, left alone in this portion of the tree. Too little physical substance passes through it, or, rather, matter that has too little physical force. The result is, that the etheric body takes a downward direction to the lower part of the tree, which is connected with stronger physical forces.

Now let us imagine that this does not happen, but, instead, the mistletoe appears; and now there occurs through this plant, which has also its own etheric body, what otherwise takes place through the etheric body of the tree.

From this there results a very special relationship between the mistletoe and the tree. The tree, which is rooted directly in the earth, makes use of the forces which it absorbs from the earth. The mistletoe, growing on the tree, uses what the tree gives it; the tree is, in a sense, the earth for the mistletoe. The mistletoe, therefore, brings about artificially that which, when it is not present, results in the “swellings” which are due to a hypertrophy of the tree's etheric organisation. The mistletoe takes away what the tree only gives up when it has too little physical substance, so that its etheric element is excessive. The excess of the etheric passes out of the tree into the mistletoe.

When the mistletoe is prepared in such a way that this superabundant etheric quality which it has taken from the tree is administered to a person under certain conditions, by injection (and, since we are observing all these facts in a spiritual manner), we gain the following information: that the mistletoe, as an external substance, absorbs what is manifest in the human body as the rampant etheric forces in cancer. [i.e. it becomes a vehicle for the excessive etheric forces. —TRANS.] Through the fact that it represses the physical substance, it strengthens the working of the astral body, which causes the tumour, or cancer, to disintegrate and break up. [The astral body being the destructive principle. —TRANS.]

Therefore we actually introduce the etheric substance of the tree into the human being by means of the mistletoe, and the etheric substance of the tree, carried over by means of the mistletoe, works as a fortifier of the human astral body.

That is one method which can only be known to us when we gain an insight into the way in which the etheric body of the plant acts upon the astral body of the human being — an insight into the fact that the spiritual element in the plant, which in this case is drawn out of it by the parasitic growth, works upon the human astral body.

Thus it can be seen how concretely what I have said may be verified — namely, that it is a question of not merely administering remedies in the manner of the chemist — in the sense in which the chemist speaks and thinks of remedies — but it is a question of administering the spiritual, the super-physical, which the various substances contain.

I have also referred above to the fact that in exophthalmic goitre (Graves' disease) the astral body becomes stiffer, and that the Ego-organisation is unable to deal with this condition. The symptoms are as I have described. This is a case in which it is necessary to strengthen the forces of the Ego. We must consider for a moment something which plays quite an unimportant part in our ordinary associations with the external world; but it is just such apparently unimportant substances which, as regards their spiritual element, have the greatest effect upon the spiritual in the human being. For example, one finds

that oxide of copper has the greatest imaginable effect upon the Ego-organisation of man; it really strengthens it. So, if one gives oxide of copper to a person suffering from Graves' disease, the effect is that one creates a strong Ego-organisation that dominates the stiffened astral body; the oxide of copper comes, as it were, to the rescue of the Ego, and the correct balance is thus restored.

I have quoted these two examples especially in order to show how every product in all the expanse of Nature may be studied, and the question asked: “How does this or that product work upon the physical body of man? how does it work upon the etheric body? and how upon the astral body and the Ego-organisation?”

It all rests, therefore, upon our penetration into the profound secrets of Nature. This search into Nature's secrets — into the mysteries of Nature — is the only possible way to combine the observation of human disease with the observation of the healing agencies. If I know how, let us say, a magnet will affect iron filings, then I know what is taking place. Similarly, if I know in what respect oxide of copper is “spiritual,” and on the other hand what is lacking in the human being when he has the symptoms of exophthalmic goitre, that is to permeate what is called medicine with spiritual knowledge.

One can look back upon the evolution of humanity, that is to say upon the evolution of the spirit of humanity which has given birth to the various civilisations, and which brought forth knowledge also and science; and if, in such a retrospect, one looks into a past so remote that it is only possible to reach it by means of the spiritual vision which I have described, one comes upon centres of knowledge quite unlike our present-day schools, wherein men were led to penetrate into a knowledge of Nature and of humanity, after their souls were first prepared in such a way that they could perceive the spiritual in all the external world.

These centres of knowledge, which we have become accustomed to speak of as the “mysteries,” were not just merely “schools,” but fundamentally they were representative of certain things which are regarded quite separately from one another in the life of to-day. They were centres of religion and of art, as well as of knowledge concerning all the various departments of human culture.

They were so organised that those who were set apart as teachers did not instruct their pupils by means of mere abstract concepts, but by means of pictures — of imagery. These pictures, by reason of their inner characteristics, represented the living relationships and connections between all things in the world. Therefore this imagery was able to produce its effects through ceremonial, as we should call it to-day. In its further development this imagery became permeated with beauty. Religious ceremony became artistic. And later, when what had been gained — not from arbitrary fantasies, but from out of these images or pictures, which had been extracted from out of the world-secrets themselves — was expressed in ideas, it became, at that time, science. The same pictures when presented in such a way that they called forth an essential quality of the human will that could be expressed as goodness — that was religion. And again, presented so that they ravished and exalted the senses, touched the emotions, and lifted the soul to the contemplation of beauty — that was art.

The centres of art were indissolubly linked with the centres of religion and of science. There was no one-sided appreciation of anything through the human reason alone, or through sense-perception alone, or through external physical experiment alone, but the whole human being was involved — body, soul, and spirit.

There was penetration into the profoundest nature of all things — to those depths where reality revealed itself; on the one hand stimulating to goodness, on the other hand to the true expression of ideas. To follow this path, which leads to truth, to beauty, and to goodness, was spoken of, and is still spoken of, as the way of initiation — to the knowledge of the “beginnings” of things. For men were aware that they indeed lived in these beginnings when they conjured them forth in religious ceremonial, in the revelations of beauty, and in the rightly created world of ideas; and so called this attitude which they bore towards the things of the world, “initiation-knowledge” — the knowledge of the beginnings from out of which alone man is able to grasp the true nature of things, and so use them according to his will.

So men sought for an initiation-science which could penetrate into the mysteries of the world — to the “beginnings.”

A time had to. come in the course of human development when this initiation-science withdrew; for it became necessary for men to direct their spiritual energies inwards in order to attain to greater self-consciousness. Initiation-science became as though dreamlike — instinctive. It was not at that time a matter of developing human freedom, for such a development towards freedom has only come about because mankind has been for a time driven away from the beginnings; he has lost the initiation-vision, and turning away from the beginnings, contemplates what is related more to the endings of things — to the external revelations of the senses, and to all that, through the senses, may be discovered by experiment concerning the ultimate, concerning the endings.

The time has now come when, having achieved an immeasurably extensive science of the superficial — if I may call it so — which can have only quite an external connection with art or religion, we must once again seek an initiation-science; but we must seek it with the consciousness which we have evolved in ourselves by means of exact science; a consciousness which, in respect of the new form of initiation-knowledge, will function no less perfectly than it does in connection with the exact sciences.

A bridge will then be built between that world-conception which links the human soul with its origins by means of inwardly conceived ideas, and the practical manipulation of the realities contained in those ideas.

In the ancient mysteries, initiation-knowledge was especially bound up with all that was connected with the healing of humanity. There was a real art of healing. For indeed, the mystery-healing was an art, in that it aroused in man the perception that the process of healing was at the same time a sacrificial process.

In order to satisfy the inner needs of the human soul, there must once again be a closer bond between healing and our philosophical conception of the world. And it is this which a knowledge of the needs of the age seeks to find in the Anthroposophical Movement.

The Anthroposophical Movement, whose headquarters are in Dornach, Switzerland, does not interpose anything arbitrary into life; neither does it stand for any sort of abstract mysticism. It desires rather to enter in a wholly practical way into every sphere of human activity. It seeks to attain with complete self-consciousness what was striven for in ancient times instinctively.

Even though we are only making a beginning, at any rate we are creating the possibility of a return to what, in the ancient mysteries, was a natural, a self-evident thing — medicine existing in closest communion with spiritual vision.

Whatever may arise in course of time from anthroposophy, in regard to the sphere of medical knowledge, it will not be found to be in any disagreement whatsoever with that which is understood to-day as the orthodox scientific study of medicine. It is easy, in looking at the question from the scientific standpoint, to be deceived about this, because from the outset it is supposed that any study which is not founded upon so-called exact proof, must be of the nature of sectarianism, and cannot therefore be taken seriously by the scientific observer.

For this reason it is necessary to remark that it is just that point of view which seeks to support medicine upon an anthroposophical basis, which is the most appreciative of, and the most sympathetic towards all that is best and greatest in modern medical achievements.

There cannot therefore be any question that the following statements are merely the polemics of dilettantism, or unprofessionalism, leveled against recognised methods of healing. The whole question turns solely upon the fact that during the last few centuries our entire world-conception has assumed a form which is limited by investigation only into those things which can be confirmed by the senses — either by means of experiment, or by direct observation — and which are then brought into relation with one another through those powers of human reasoning which rely upon the testimony of the senses alone.

This method of research was nevertheless entirely justifiable during several hundred years, because if it had been otherwise, mankind would have become immersed in a world of dreams and fantasies, would have been forced to a capricious acceptance of things, and to a barren weaving of hypotheses.

That is connected with the fact that man, as he lives in the world between birth and death, is a being who cannot truly know himself by means of his physical senses and his reason alone — because he is just as much a spiritual as a physical being.

So that when we come to speak of man in health and in disease we can do no less than ask ourselves: Is it possible to gain a knowledge of health and disease only by those methods of research which concern the physical body; purely with the assistance of the senses and the reason, or by the use of instruments which extend the faculties of the senses and enable us to carry out experiments?

We shall find that a real, unprejudiced, historical retrospect shows us that the knowledge which mankind has gained originated from something totally different from these mere sense-observations. There lies behind us an immense development of our spiritual life, no less than of our physical.

Some three thousand years ago, during the flowering of the most ancient Greek culture, there existed schools that were very different from those of to-day. The basis of these ancient schools consisted in the belief that man had first of all to develop new faculties in his soul before he could become capable of attaining to true knowledge concerning mankind.

Now it was just because, in these ancient times, the more primitive soul-faculties did not incline towards the fantastic, that it was possible to experience, in the so-called mysteries, the spiritual foundations from which all forms of learning arose.

This state of things came to an end more or less contemporaneously with the founding of our Universities — during the twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth centuries. Since that time we learn only in a rationalistic way. Rationalism leads on the one hand to keen logic, and on the other hand to pure materialism.

During the course of centuries a vast store of external knowledge has been accumulated in the domain of biology, physiology, and other branches of research which are introductory to the study of medicine; indeed an amazing mass of observations, out of which an almost immeasurable amount may yet be obtained!

But during these centuries all knowledge connected with man which could not be gained without spiritual vision, sank completely out of sight.

It has therefore become actually impossible to investigate the true nature of health and disease.

In order to emphasise this remark, I may mention that even at the present time, according to the descriptions given in my books Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and An Outline Of Occult Science, it is possible so to raise the faculties of the soul that the spiritual nature of man may be clearly distinguished from the physical, This spiritual part of man is, for the spiritual observer, just as visible as the physical part is for the man who observes with his outer senses; with this difference, however, that our ordinary senses have been and are incorporated into our bodily organism without our co-operation, whereas we must ourselves develop the organs of spiritual sight.

This can be brought about if one unfolds within oneself an earnest life of thought. Such a state of living, of resting in quietude — in thought — must, however, be carried out so as to bring about a methodical education and transformation of the soul. If one can, so to say, experiment for a time with one's own soul, allowing it to rest within an easily grasped thought, at the same time permitting neither any traces of auto-suggestion nor any diminution of consciousness to arise, and if one in this way exercises the soul as one would exercise a muscle, then the soul grows strong. Methodically, one pursues the exercises further and further; the soul grows stronger, grows powerful, and becomes capable of sight.

The first thing that it sees is that the human being actually does not consist merely of physical body, which can be investigated either with the naked eye or with a microscope, and so forth, but that he also bears an etheric body. This is not to be confused with that which, in earlier scientific times, was somewhat amateurishly described as “vital forces.” It is something that can really be perceived and observed; and if I were to distinguish qualitatively between the physical body and the etheric body, I should choose, out of all the innumerable qualitative distinctions that exist, the following: — The physical body of man is subject to the laws of gravity; it tends to be drawn earthward. The etheric body tends to be drawn towards the periphery of the universe; that is to say, outwards, in all directions. As a rule, our investigations are concerned with the relative weight of things, but that part of the human organism which possesses weight is the direct opposite of that which not only has no weight but which strives to escape from the laws of gravitation. We have in us these two opposing forces.

This is the first of our super-physical bodies. We may say, then, that we have within us first of all the physical man, whose orientation is centripetal and tends earthwards, and another man, whose orientation is centrifugal and tends to leave the earth. It will be seen that a balance must be maintained between these two configurations of the human being — between the heavy physical body, which is subject to the laws of gravity, and the other, the etheric body, which strives outwards towards the farthest limits of the universe.

The etheric body seeks, as it were, to imitate, to be an image of the whole Cosmos; but the physical body rounds it off, and keeps it within its own limits.

Therefore, by contemplating the state of balance between the physical body and the etheric body, our perception of the nature of the human being becomes real and penetrating. Once we have succeeded in recognising these outward-streaming centrifugal forces in man, we shall be able to perceive them also in the vegetable kingdom. The mineral kingdom alone appears purely physical to us. In it we can trace no centrifugal forces. Minerals are subject to the laws of gravity. But in the case of plants we recognise their outer form as being the result of the two forces. At the same time it becomes apparent to us that we cannot remain at this point in our investigations if we wish to observe anything that is higher in the scale of organic life than the plants. The plant has its etheric body; the animal, when we observe it, possesses life, and also sensation. It creates, inwardly, a world; this fact arrests our attention, and we see that we must make yet deeper researches. Hence we realise that we must develop our ordinary state of consciousness still further.

Already, as I have shown, a certain stage will have been reached when we are able to see not merely the physical body of man, but the physical body embedded within the etheric body, as though in a kind of cloud. But that is not all; the more we strengthen our souls, the more we find greater and greater reality in our thoughts, and it then becomes possible to arrive at a further stage, which consists in suppressing these strong thoughts which have been made so powerful by our own efforts.

In ordinary life if we blot out by degrees our faculties of sight, of hearing, of sensation, and of thinking — we fall asleep. That is an experiment which may easily be carried out. But if one has strengthened the soul in the manner described by the training of thought, of the whole of one's life of concept and feeling, then one can actually learn to suppress the life of the senses. One then arrives at a condition where, above all things, one is not asleep but is very much awake. Indeed, it may even be that one has to guard against losing the power to sleep, while one is striving to reach this condition. If, however, one sets to work in the way I have indicated in my books, every precaution is taken to prevent any disturbances in the ordinary life.

One succeeds then in being completely awake, though one cannot hear as one hears with the ears. The ordinary memory, too, and ordinary thinking cease. One confronts the world with a perfectly empty but perfectly waking consciousness. And then one sees the third human organism — the astral.

Animals also possess this astral organism. In man it bestows the possibility of unfolding a real inner life of experience. Now this is something which is connected neither with the innermost depths of the earth nor with the wide expanse of the universe, but rather it is connected with a state of being inwardly penetrated by forces which are “seen” as the astral body. So now we have the third member of the human organisation.

If one learns to perceive this third member in the manner indicated above, one finds that from the scientific point of view it is indescribably illuminating. One says to oneself — the child grows up and becomes the man; his vital forces are active. But he is not only growing physically, his consciousness is developing at the same time; he is unfolding within himself an image of the outer world.

Can this be the result of physical growth? Can this be accomplished by the same forces that underlie nutrition and growth?

When the organic forces that underlie the latter gain the upper hand, the consciousness becomes dimmed. We need, therefore, something which is connected with these forces, and which is actually opposed to them. The human being is always growing and always being nourished. But he has within his astral body, as I have described it, something which is perpetually suppressing, inhibiting the forces of growth and nutrition.

So we have in man a process of construction through the physical body in conjunction with the earth; another process of construction through the etheric body in conjunction with the Cosmos, and through the astral body a continuous destruction of the organic processes in the cell-life and the glandular life.

That is the secret of the human organism.

Now we understand why it is that man possesses a soul. If he were to grow continuously like the plant, he could not have a soul. The process of growing must first be destroyed, for it expels the soul. If we had nothing in our brain but the process of building up, and no processes of breaking down and destruction, we could not contain the soul.

Evolution does not proceed in a straight line. It must retreat in one direction; it must give way. Herein lies the secret of humanity — of the ensouled being.

If we go no further than the consideration of the organisation of the animal, we find ourselves concerned only with its three principles — the physical, etheric, and astral. But if we proceed to the observation of man, we find, when we have progressed yet further with the training of our souls, that we spiritually perceive yet another principle.

Our spiritual perception of the animal discloses that its thinking, feeling, and willing are, in a certain sense, neutral in regard to one another; they are not clearly distinct. One cannot speak of a separate thinking, a separate feeling, and a separate willing, but only of a neutral blending of these three elements. But in the case of man, his inner life depends just upon the fact that he lays hold of his intentions by quiet thought, and that he can remain with his intentions; he can either carry them out in deeds, or not carry them out. The animal obeys its impulses. Man separates thinking, feeling, and willing from one another.

How this is so, can only be understood when one has carried one's power of spiritual perception far enough to observe the fourth principle of man's organisation — the “I am I” — or the Ego.

As we have just seen, the astral body breaks down the processes of growth and nutrition; in a sense, it introduces a gradual dying into the whole organism. The Ego redeems, out of this destructive process, certain elements which are continually falling away from the combination of the physical and etheric bodies, and rebuilds them.

That is actually the secret of human nature.

If one looks at the human brain, one sees — in those lighter parts which lie more below the superficial structures, and which proceed as nerve fibres to the sense organs — a most complicated organisation which, for those who can perceive it in its reality, is in a continual state of deterioration, although so slowly does this take place that it cannot be observed by ordinary physiological means. But, out of all this destruction, that which differentiates man from the animals, namely, the peripheral brain, is built up. This is the foundation of the human organisation. With regard to man, naturally, the central brain (the continuation of the sensory nerves and their connections) is more perfect than the peripheral brain, which is, as a matter of fact, more akin to the metabolic processes than the deeper portions of the brain are.

This peripheral brain, which is peculiarly characteristic of man, is organised for these metabolic functions by the Ego-organisation — organised out of what otherwise is in a state of deterioration. ^{1The “Ego-organisation” denotes the whole of those attributes of the human being by means of which he attains his “sense of I am”. As hearing, sight, taste, etc. each have their “organs” of expression, so also has the Ego. In this case the “organ” is the entire physical body in its self-conscious contact with the outer world.} And so the activity of the Ego permeates the entire organism.

The Ego redeems certain elements out of the ruin worked by the astral body, and builds out of them that which underlies an harmonious co-ordination of thinking, feeling, and willing.

I can of course only mention these things, but I wish to point out that one can proceed with the same exactitude when making observations spiritually as one can in any branch of external experimental science and with a full sense of responsibility; so that in every case one seeks for the agreement between what is spiritually observed and what is discovered by empirical physical methods of research. It is exactly the formation of the physical brain which leads one on to apprehend the super-physical, and to attain knowledge by spiritual investigation.

Thus we have these four members of the human organisation. These, in order to maintain health, must be in quite special relation to one another.

We only get water when we mix hydrogen and oxygen in accordance with their specific gravity. In the same way there is a determinative which brings about a normal relationship — if I may say so — between the physical body, the etheric body, the astral body, and the Ego.

We not only have four, but 4x4 relative states. All these can be disturbed. An abnormal relation may arise between the etheric and the physical bodies, or between the astral and etheric, or between the Ego and one or another of these. All are deeply connected with one another and are in a special relation to one another. The moment this is disturbed, illness arises.

But this relationship is not uniform throughout the human being; it differs in the different individual organs. If we observe, for instance, a human lung, the physical, etheric, astral, and Ego constituents of this lung are not the same as those of the brain or of the liver. Thus, the entire human organisation is so complicated that the spiritual and the material are differently related in every organ. Therefore, it will be understood that, just as one studies physical anatomy and physical physiology in accordance with external symptoms, so — when one admits the existence of this spiritual investigation, and practises it — one must study with the greatest exactitude the health and disease of every separate organ. In this way one always arrives at a complete and comprehensive knowledge of the human organism. It cannot be so understood if it is observed solely from the physical standpoint. It can only be known through a knowledge of its four principles. One is only clear about any illness when one is able to say which of these four principles either predominates too strongly or is too much suppressed. It is because one is able to observe these things in a spiritual manner that one actually places a spiritual diagnosis alongside the material diagnosis. Therefore what is gained by anthroposophical methods in seeing through the fourfold constitution of man, is gained in addition to all that it is possible to observe of health and disease by ordinary methods.

And further, it is not only possible to behold man spiritually but also the whole of Nature. One is now, for the first time, in a position to find man's relation to the various kingdoms of Nature, and, in medicine, his relation to the healing properties which these kingdoms contain.

Let us take an example. There is a substance which is most widely distributed over the whole earth, and not only over the whole earth, but also, in its finest form, throughout the air. This is silicic acid. It is an enormously important constituent part of the earth. But for those who are able to see these things with higher faculties, all this silicious substance is revealed as the external manifestation of something spiritual; and an immense and almost overpowering difference is seen to exist between that which ordinary physical methods of observation disclose with regard to silicic acid, or, for example, carbonic acid gas, and that which spiritual investigation discloses.

By the latter method we see that quartz, or rock-crystal, such as we find in the mountains — in fact, all forms of silicious substance — provides a free path for something spiritual. Just as any transparent substance allows light to stream through it, so all silicious substance allows what is spiritually active in the entire world to stream through it.

But we find quite a different relationship towards the spiritual when we come to carbonic acid. Carbonic acid has this peculiarity (for there is something spiritual in every physical substance), that the spiritual that is in contact with carbonic acid becomes individualised. Carbonic acid retains the spiritual in itself with all its force. The spiritual “selects” carbonic acid as a dwelling-place. In silica it has a transcending tendency — a consuming tendency — but it inheres in carbonic acid as though it felt itself “at home” there.

Carbonic acid processes are present in the breathing and circulation of animals. The former are especially connected with the astral body. The carbonic acid processes are related to the external physical of the animal, while the astral body is that which is inwardly spiritually active. The astral is therefore the spiritual element, and the carbonic acid process is its physical counterpart and underlies the animal's expirations.

The Ego-organisation is the spiritual inner element in man of that which takes place in man as silicic acid processes. We have silicic acid in our hair, our bones, our organs of sense, in all the extremities and periphery of our bodies — in fact, everywhere where we come into contact with the outer world — and all these silicic acid processes are the external counterpart, the expression from within outwards, of the Ego-organisation.

Now it must be borne in mind that the Ego must, in a certain sense, be strong enough to manipulate, to control, the whole of this silicic acid activity. If the Ego is too weak, the silicic acid is separated out — that is a pathological condition. On the other hand, the astral body must be strong enough to control the carbonic acid process; if it cannot, carbonic acid or its waste products are separated out, and illness results.

It is possible, therefore, in observing the strength or weakness of the astral body to find the cause of an illness rooted in the spiritual. And in observing the Ego-organisation one discovers the cause of those disturbances which either bring about a morbid decomposition of the silicic acid processes in. the body, or which one must deal with therapeutically by the administration of silicic acid. What happens then is that the spiritual, which is never retained in the material substance itself, passes through it and affects the silicic acid deposited in the body. It takes the place of the Ego itself. In the administration of carbonic acid as a healing agent, it must be so prepared that the spiritual is present in it in the right manner; in using it as a remedy one must be aware that the astral body works in it.

Therefore: One can conceive of a form of therapy which does not only make use of chemical agents, but which is quite consciously administering a cure, in the knowledge that, if a certain quantity of physical substance is given, or a particular solution is prepared as a bath, or if an injection is given, at the same time something of a spiritual nature is quite definitely introduced into the human organism.

So it is perfectly possible to make a bridge from a knowledge of purely physical means of healing to a knowledge which works with spiritual means.

That was the characteristic of the medicine of ancient times; some tradition of it still lingers; it lingers even in some of the recognised cures to-day. And we have to get back to this. We can do so if, without in any way neglecting physical medicine, we add to it what we can gain in spiritual knowledge, not only of man, but of Nature also. Everything can be carried out with the same exactitude as is the case with regard to physical natural science.

Anthroposophy does not seek to correct modern medicine, but to add its own knowledge to it, because ordinary medicine makes demands upon itself only.

What I have just briefly indicated is merely the commencement of an exceedingly wide spiritual knowledge, in which, at present, people have very little faith. One can quite well understand that. But some results have already been attained in the sphere of medicine, and these can be studied in practice at Dr. Ita Wegman's Clinical Institute in Arlesheim, Switzerland. And I am convinced that if any person would investigate this advancement and enlargement of the medical field with the same goodwill with which, as a rule, they investigate physical medicine, they would find it not at all difficult to accept the idea of the spiritual in man, and the spiritual in methods of healing him.

Quite briefly, I will give two examples that illustrate what I have said. Let us suppose that by means of this kind of spiritual diagnosis (if I may use such an expression) it is seen that in a patient the etheric body is working too strongly in some particular organ. The astral body and the Ego-organisation are not in a position to control this super-activity of the etheric body, so that we are faced with an astral body that has become too weak, and possibly also with an Ego which is too weak, and the etheric body therefore predominates. The latter thereby brings about in some particular organ such a condition of the growing and nourishing processes that the whole organism cannot be properly held together, owing to the lack of control by the other two principles.

At this point, then, where the etheric body predominates, the human organism appears as though too much exposed to the centrifugal forces of the Cosmos. They are not in equipoise with the centripetal forces of the physical body. The astral body cannot control them. In such a case we are confronted on the one hand by a preponderance of the silicic acid processes, and on the other by an impotence of the Ego to control them.

This fact underlies the formation of tumours, and it is here that the way is indicated for the true understanding of the nature of carcinomatous processes (cancer). Researches into this matter have had very good results and have been carried out in practice. But one cannot understand carcinoma unless one realises that it is due to the predominance of the etheric body, which is not suppressed by a corresponding activity of the astral and the Ego,

The question then arises, what is to be done in order to strengthen the elements of the astral body and the Ego which correspond to the diseased organ, so that the superabundant energy of the etheric organisation can be reduced? This brings us to the question of the therapy of carcinoma, which shall be dealt with in due course.

Thus, through an understanding of the etheric body we are enabled gradually to become acquainted with the nature of that most terrible of all human diseases, and at the same time, by investigating the spiritual nature of the action of the remedies, we shall discover the means to combat it. This is just one example of how illnesses can be understood through the etheric body.

But supposing that it is the astral body whose forces predominate — supposing that they are so strong that they predominate practically throughout the entire organism, so that there arises a kind of universal stiffening of the whole astral body due to its excessive inner forces; what does such a state of things bring about? When the astral body is not under the control of the Ego — which is to say, when its disintegrating forces are not cancelled by the integrating forces of the Ego — then symptoms appear which are connected with a weakened Ego-organisation.

This results, primarily, in an abnormal activity of the heart. Further, another occurrence due to a weakened Ego-activity, as described above, is that the glandular functions are disturbed. Since the organisation of the Ego is not sufficiently prominent and cannot exercise enough control, in greater or less degree the peripheral glandular organs begin to secrete too actively. Swollen glands appear — goitre appears.

And we see further how, through this stiffening of the astral body, the silicic acid processes, which should have a reaction inwards, are being pressed outwards, because the Ego is not able work strongly enough in the sense-organs, where it ought to work strongly. So, for instance, the eyes become prominent; the astral body drives them outwards.

It is the task of the Ego to overcome this tendency. Our eyes are actually retained in their right place in our organism by the equipoise that should exist between the astral body and the Ego. So they become prominent because the Ego element in them is too weak to maintain the balance properly. Also, one observes in such cases a general condition of restlessness. One sees, in a word, because the Ego cannot drive back those organic processes which are worked upon by the astral body, that the activity of the whole astral body predominates. In short, the symptoms are those of exophthalmic goitre.

Knowing, therefore, that a disturbance of the balance between astral body and Ego-organisation produces exophthalmic goitre, one can apply the same principles in effecting a cure.

Hence it can be seen with what exactness one can pursue these methods as regards both pathological conditions and therapeutical agencies, when one investigates the human being in a spiritual way.

Before we pass on from the pathological to the therapeutical — and particularly in connection with the two examples mentioned — it would be well to touch upon some of the principles underlying the assimilation of various substances by the human organism.

One only recognises the entire connection that exists between so-called “Nature” and the human being when one perceives not only that the latter is a physico-psychic-spiritual being consisting of physical body, etheric body, astral body, and Ego, but also when one further perceives that the basis of all natural substances and processes is a concrete and comprehensible spiritual one. But one must first be able to penetrate into this concrete spiritual existence.

Just as, in the natural world, one must distinguish between minerals and plants, so one must distinguish quite definitely between the spiritual elements and beings that express themselves through them.

Suppose we take first the mineral kingdom.

A considerable part of our healing agents are taken from this kingdom, and therefore what can be made use of in medicine out of spiritual bases emanates from minerals to a very large extent. We find that the spiritual element is connected in such a way with minerals that it establishes a particular relation between them and the Ego-organisation. It is credible that if a mineral substance is administered, either by mouth or by injection, it works principally upon the human organism itself, and makes for either health or ill-health. But what really takes place is that the physical mineral, as such, as it is regarded and handled by the chemist or the physicist, actually does not work upon the organism, but remains as it is. The physical substance itself, when seen by spiritual observation, shows scarcely any metamorphosis when it is absorbed. On the contrary, what is spiritual in the substance works with extraordinary strength upon the Ego.

So one can say that the spirit, for instance of a rock crystal, affects the Ego. The Ego controls the human being when it contains something silicious — that is, the spiritual element of silicic acid. That is what is so remarkable.

Again, if we take the vegetable kingdom, plants do not only possess a physical form, they possess also what I have characterised as an etheric body. Suppose we administer some plant substance, either by mouth or by injection, what is in the plant works as a rule solely upon the astral body. (These things are described in a general sense; there are always exceptions, which may also be studied.)

Everything derived from the animal kingdom, in whatever way it may be manufactured — out of fluids or solids — when it is administered, works upon the etheric body. This is most particularly interesting, because in this spiritual-medical work results have been attained by using for instance, in certain cases, animal products derived from the secretions of the hypophysis cerebri. These have been used successfully on rickety children or in cases of child-deformity, and so on.

There are also other animal products that work upon the human etheric body, either strengthening it or weakening it. In short, this is their principal function.

Anything injected out of one human being into another affects only the physical body; here there is solely a working of the physical upon the physical. For example, if human blood is transfused, nothing comes into consideration save what can take place as a purely physical phenomenon by means of the blood. A remarkable example of this could be observed when, in vaccinations against smallpox, a change was made from using human lymph to using calf-lymph. It was possible to observe then how the human lymph worked only upon the physical body, and how the effect went, so to speak, a stage higher when calf-lymph was introduced, by its becoming transferred to the etheric body.

Thus it becomes possible to see, by developing spiritual powers of observation, how Nature works, as it were, in degrees, or steps, upon human beings — the mineral being made use of in a certain sense by the Ego, the plant by the astral body, the animal by the etheric body, and the human physical body by the human physical body. In the latter case there is no longer anything spiritual to be described. Indeed, even as regards the animal kingdom, we can no longer speak of the “spiritual” in the animal product, but only of the “etheric.”

It is only through all these various connections that one can gain a true conception of how man — in both health and disease — is really immersed in the whole natural order. But one attains also to an inner perception of a still further continuation of the workings of nature in the human organism.

One may now ask, what is to be one's attitude towards cancer! We have seen how the etheric body is able to develop over-strong forces from itself in some particular organ. The centrifugal forces — that is, the forces that tend outwards into the Cosmos — become too powerful; the astral body and the Ego are too weak to counteract them. Spiritual knowledge now comes to one's aid. One can now try either to make the astral body stronger, in which case one administers something from the plant kingdom, or one must restrain the etheric body, and in that case one makes use of the animal kingdom.

Spiritual investigation has led to the adoption of the former course — that which relates to the astral body. In order to cure cancer, the forces of the astral body must be made stronger. And it may now be admitted that the remedy has really been discovered in the plant kingdom.

We have been accused of dilettantism and so forth, because we make use of a parasitic plant — the mistletoe (which has been used in medicine mainly for epilepsy and similar conditions) — and because we prepare it in a very special manner, in order to discover the way which will lead to the healing of cancer.

If you have observed trees which bear a remarkable outgrowth upon the trunk, resembling swellings, especially if you have seen them in section, you will notice that the whole tendency of growth, which usually has a vertical direction, has at these places a deflection at right angles, becoming therefore horizontal. It presses outwards as though another trunk were beginning to grow; and you find something that is as though drawn out of the tree itself — something parasitic. More closely studied, one discovers that any tree which has such an outgrowth is somewhere or other suppressed, restrained, in its physical development. Sufficient physical material has not been available everywhere, in order to keep pace with the growth forces of the etheric body. The physical body remains behind. The etheric body, which otherwise strives centrifugally to project the physical substance out into the Cosmos, is, as it were, left alone in this portion of the tree. Too little physical substance passes through it, or, rather, matter that has too little physical force. The result is, that the etheric body takes a downward direction to the lower part of the tree, which is connected with stronger physical forces.

Now let us imagine that this does not happen, but, instead, the mistletoe appears; and now there occurs through this plant, which has also its own etheric body, what otherwise takes place through the etheric body of the tree.

From this there results a very special relationship between the mistletoe and the tree. The tree, which is rooted directly in the earth, makes use of the forces which it absorbs from the earth. The mistletoe, growing on the tree, uses what the tree gives it; the tree is, in a sense, the earth for the mistletoe. The mistletoe, therefore, brings about artificially that which, when it is not present, results in the “swellings” which are due to a hypertrophy of the tree's etheric organisation. The mistletoe takes away what the tree only gives up when it has too little physical substance, so that its etheric element is excessive. The excess of the etheric passes out of the tree into the mistletoe.

When the mistletoe is prepared in such a way that this superabundant etheric quality which it has taken from the tree is administered to a person under certain conditions, by injection (and, since we are observing all these facts in a spiritual manner), we gain the following information: that the mistletoe, as an external substance, absorbs what is manifest in the human body as the rampant etheric forces in cancer. [i.e. it becomes a vehicle for the excessive etheric forces. —TRANS.] Through the fact that it represses the physical substance, it strengthens the working of the astral body, which causes the tumour, or cancer, to disintegrate and break up. [The astral body being the destructive principle. —TRANS.]

Therefore we actually introduce the etheric substance of the tree into the human being by means of the mistletoe, and the etheric substance of the tree, carried over by means of the mistletoe, works as a fortifier of the human astral body.

That is one method which can only be known to us when we gain an insight into the way in which the etheric body of the plant acts upon the astral body of the human being — an insight into the fact that the spiritual element in the plant, which in this case is drawn out of it by the parasitic growth, works upon the human astral body.

Thus it can be seen how concretely what I have said may be verified — namely, that it is a question of not merely administering remedies in the manner of the chemist — in the sense in which the chemist speaks and thinks of remedies — but it is a question of administering the spiritual, the super-physical, which the various substances contain.

I have also referred above to the fact that in exophthalmic goitre (Graves' disease) the astral body becomes stiffer, and that the Ego-organisation is unable to deal with this condition. The symptoms are as I have described. This is a case in which it is necessary to strengthen the forces of the Ego. We must consider for a moment something which plays quite an unimportant part in our ordinary associations with the external world; but it is just such apparently unimportant substances which, as regards their spiritual element, have the greatest effect upon the spiritual in the human being. For example, one finds

that oxide of copper has the greatest imaginable effect upon the Ego-organisation of man; it really strengthens it. So, if one gives oxide of copper to a person suffering from Graves' disease, the effect is that one creates a strong Ego-organisation that dominates the stiffened astral body; the oxide of copper comes, as it were, to the rescue of the Ego, and the correct balance is thus restored.

I have quoted these two examples especially in order to show how every product in all the expanse of Nature may be studied, and the question asked: “How does this or that product work upon the physical body of man? how does it work upon the etheric body? and how upon the astral body and the Ego-organisation?”

It all rests, therefore, upon our penetration into the profound secrets of Nature. This search into Nature's secrets — into the mysteries of Nature — is the only possible way to combine the observation of human disease with the observation of the healing agencies. If I know how, let us say, a magnet will affect iron filings, then I know what is taking place. Similarly, if I know in what respect oxide of copper is “spiritual,” and on the other hand what is lacking in the human being when he has the symptoms of exophthalmic goitre, that is to permeate what is called medicine with spiritual knowledge.

One can look back upon the evolution of humanity, that is to say upon the evolution of the spirit of humanity which has given birth to the various civilisations, and which brought forth knowledge also and science; and if, in such a retrospect, one looks into a past so remote that it is only possible to reach it by means of the spiritual vision which I have described, one comes upon centres of knowledge quite unlike our present-day schools, wherein men were led to penetrate into a knowledge of Nature and of humanity, after their souls were first prepared in such a way that they could perceive the spiritual in all the external world.

These centres of knowledge, which we have become accustomed to speak of as the “mysteries,” were not just merely “schools,” but fundamentally they were representative of certain things which are regarded quite separately from one another in the life of to-day. They were centres of religion and of art, as well as of knowledge concerning all the various departments of human culture.

They were so organised that those who were set apart as teachers did not instruct their pupils by means of mere abstract concepts, but by means of pictures — of imagery. These pictures, by reason of their inner characteristics, represented the living relationships and connections between all things in the world. Therefore this imagery was able to produce its effects through ceremonial, as we should call it to-day. In its further development this imagery became permeated with beauty. Religious ceremony became artistic. And later, when what had been gained — not from arbitrary fantasies, but from out of these images or pictures, which had been extracted from out of the world-secrets themselves — was expressed in ideas, it became, at that time, science. The same pictures when presented in such a way that they called forth an essential quality of the human will that could be expressed as goodness — that was religion. And again, presented so that they ravished and exalted the senses, touched the emotions, and lifted the soul to the contemplation of beauty — that was art.

The centres of art were indissolubly linked with the centres of religion and of science. There was no one-sided appreciation of anything through the human reason alone, or through sense-perception alone, or through external physical experiment alone, but the whole human being was involved — body, soul, and spirit.

There was penetration into the profoundest nature of all things — to those depths where reality revealed itself; on the one hand stimulating to goodness, on the other hand to the true expression of ideas. To follow this path, which leads to truth, to beauty, and to goodness, was spoken of, and is still spoken of, as the way of initiation — to the knowledge of the “beginnings” of things. For men were aware that they indeed lived in these beginnings when they conjured them forth in religious ceremonial, in the revelations of beauty, and in the rightly created world of ideas; and so called this attitude which they bore towards the things of the world, “initiation-knowledge” — the knowledge of the beginnings from out of which alone man is able to grasp the true nature of things, and so use them according to his will.

So men sought for an initiation-science which could penetrate into the mysteries of the world — to the “beginnings.”

A time had to. come in the course of human development when this initiation-science withdrew; for it became necessary for men to direct their spiritual energies inwards in order to attain to greater self-consciousness. Initiation-science became as though dreamlike — instinctive. It was not at that time a matter of developing human freedom, for such a development towards freedom has only come about because mankind has been for a time driven away from the beginnings; he has lost the initiation-vision, and turning away from the beginnings, contemplates what is related more to the endings of things — to the external revelations of the senses, and to all that, through the senses, may be discovered by experiment concerning the ultimate, concerning the endings.

The time has now come when, having achieved an immeasurably extensive science of the superficial — if I may call it so — which can have only quite an external connection with art or religion, we must once again seek an initiation-science; but we must seek it with the consciousness which we have evolved in ourselves by means of exact science; a consciousness which, in respect of the new form of initiation-knowledge, will function no less perfectly than it does in connection with the exact sciences.

A bridge will then be built between that world-conception which links the human soul with its origins by means of inwardly conceived ideas, and the practical manipulation of the realities contained in those ideas.

In the ancient mysteries, initiation-knowledge was especially bound up with all that was connected with the healing of humanity. There was a real art of healing. For indeed, the mystery-healing was an art, in that it aroused in man the perception that the process of healing was at the same time a sacrificial process.

In order to satisfy the inner needs of the human soul, there must once again be a closer bond between healing and our philosophical conception of the world. And it is this which a knowledge of the needs of the age seeks to find in the Anthroposophical Movement.

The Anthroposophical Movement, whose headquarters are in Dornach, Switzerland, does not interpose anything arbitrary into life; neither does it stand for any sort of abstract mysticism. It desires rather to enter in a wholly practical way into every sphere of human activity. It seeks to attain with complete self-consciousness what was striven for in ancient times instinctively.

Even though we are only making a beginning, at any rate we are creating the possibility of a return to what, in the ancient mysteries, was a natural, a self-evident thing — medicine existing in closest communion with spiritual vision.

Today's lecture will be an assortment of various topics I would like to add to what I have already said to you, including reference to our remedies. I would like to begin by saying that processes related to the mineral element that affect the human being can be interpreted similarly to the way done yesterday regarding the plant world. However, the insights we must gain here are more complicated, because as soon as we move on to the mineral world we are no longer dealing with definite, self-contained entities encountering each other, as was the case with plants and the human being; instead we are dealing with a realm in which one object passes directly into the other, so that it is difficult to make distinctions.

In the preparation of remedies — to this you must pay particular attention in our remedies — it is not merely a question of using some substance or other; the process in which the substance lives must be captured in another process. Thus when the effect of some remedy is known to you, it is often a matter of taking the effect you evoke on one side and damming it in from the other. You can see this clearly, for example, with the remedy we prepare from lead and treat in a certain way with honey (you will find this process described in detail elsewhere). You can see how the effect of lead must be held in check in one direction by the effect of the honey. Lead exerts a very strong influence on the formative process proceeding from the ego in the human being. We have spoken of the fact that in the head formation of the human being — or, said better, in the head formation proceeding from the human being — there lies a physical influence, but also an etheric imprint, an astral imprint, and an ego imprint. We said that the ego essentially imprints itself into the system of movement. The effect of lead works especially strongly on this imprint of the ego and takes place in conjunction with the astral imprint.

In the effect of lead we have a force of nature that is extraordinarily well-hidden, and for occult observation it is of exceptionally deep significance to experience this effect of lead. The effects of lead are extraordinarily important for the human being before he prepares to descend into physical life. This is when the effects of lead must be taken into account. Indeed, lead acts not only in the ways we know, but it has effects that are the polar opposite as well.

These polar effects radiate in from the cosmos, whereas those known to us radiate into the cosmos from the earth. This could be represented schematically like this. If this is the surface of the earth, the lead activities known to us radiate outward from the earth (see figure 1, arrows); the polar opposite effects stream in from all sides. They have no center from which they radiate, for they are not central forces but forces operating from the periphery (red). These peripheral forces are especially concerned with the formation of the soul-spiritual in the human being, and their domain must essentially be left when the human being prepares to descend into the earthly sphere. Hence in the earthly sphere lead is induced to unfold its opposite forces, and these are the poisonous ones. Everything connected spatially with the soul-spiritual in the human being, that is everything that can be spoken about in relation to space, is poison in the human organism.

This is a universal mystery to which one cannot pay too much attention. The meaning of the concept of poisoning must be sought here. We have to do with a strong stimulation, a powerful excitation of these ego-imprinting forces in human nature. Everything that arises in lead poisoning tends to destroy the form of the human being in so far as he is an ego. It dehumanizes him. In fact, all the symptoms of lead poisoning terminate in an individual gradually passing into nothingness corporeally. These symptoms include failure of the voice, stupor, and syncope, and attest to the fundamental destruction of the inborn formative force in the human being. Of course a person dies before this point is reached. The human formation is being destroyed from the upper human being, which is the polar opposite of the lower human being. What in greater quantities acts destructively in the upper human being acts in small quantities — in dilutions — constructively in the lower human being.

At this point I would like to interject something. I believe the never-ending conflict between homeopathy and allopathy will not be set right until one is able to enter into a study of man's constitution as given by spiritual science. On the one hand, the rich treasure of experience does not — or at least, should not — allow us to doubt the principle of homeopathy; on the other hand, people who are not in the habit of judging purely by experience but are swayed by all sorts of prejudices and opinions about the human organism cannot easily understand that what can make a person ill in larger doses in smaller doses makes him well. The homeopath is always more of a phenomenalist than the allopathic physician, who is always swayed in his therapeutic rationale by all sorts of prejudices. The facts are not fully revealed by this simpler statement, however. They are discovered only when we say: what makes a person ill when working in large quantities in the lower system will make him well when working in small quantities if its effect can proceed from the upper system and vice versa. This restatement of the homeopathic rule is the means to set right the conflict between homeopathy and allopathy.

Let us return now to the attempt of preparing a remedy from lead and honey. You can see how lead, greatly diluted and acting from below up, works against the destructive force acting on the human form. This is part of lead's effect. However, if one tries to build up this ego-shaping force, one transfers the activity of the ego into the physical organism and, while making the patient healthy bodily, one renders him psychically weak regarding everything that should work from below upward, that should work even organically. This weakening can go so far that one may, on the one hand, restore the individual to his human form, as it were, having been led by certain processes of disease to use the effect of lead because the formative processes are lacking. On the other hand, one may easily undermine the forces proceeding from the ego and astral body — especially those from the ego — when one causes the individual to develop his formative forces again. You could say that one brings about a cure for what the individual has not acquired, or has acquired only incompletely on entering life, but one weakens him regarding what he ought to do organically for himself during life. The effect of the honey when added to the remedy, however, opposes this weakening, that is, it strengthens the forces radiating from the ego. You see, in arriving at such a remedy, it is essentially a question of gaining insight into what is really taking place in the human being.

If we wish to understand the effects of the mineral element in the human being, however, we must look at the general effect of the mineral in the earth. It is necessary first to become acquainted with the significance of salts in the evolution of the earth. The significance of the salts in earthly evolution is that the earth actually produces them. In salt processes we find what the earth brings into being. In developing salts, the earth builds itself up. And when we turn from the salts to the acids — looking, for example, at the acid's element present in the watery earth regions, we have the earthly process corresponding to, though the polar opposite of, the inner digestive process in the human being, that is, the digestive process beyond the stomach.

We need to study all these processes taking place in earthly development, inasmuch as they represent a relation between acids and salts. When we consider the process that develops from bases through acids to salts, which can be observed outwardly today in chemistry, we see that, regarded in this way, the process leading from base to acid to salt coincides with the earth-forming process.

This process is essentially a negative electrical process. To put it more exactly: this process, expressed in its external, spatial aspect — i.e., as a process working its way out of the spiritual into the physical — can be represented schematically as follows. We have here an effect proceeding from the bases through the acids to the salts; it is indicated only in its direction here (see figure 2, red arrows), but it is actually a process of deposition expressed schematically. Now, when we express this process in reverse, passing from the salts through acids to bases, we must always remove these lines of deposition. They would act in a compressing way, and the opposite radiations appear, which radiate out (see figure 2 on right, arrows). Then we have to do with a positive electrical process. If you look at this sketch, I believe you will hardly doubt that it has been drawn by nature herself. Just look once at the anodes and cathodes and you will find this picture sketched by nature herself.

Now, if we approach the metallic process, that is, if we approach the metals themselves, we find in the metals that element by which the earth “unbecomes” (“ent-wird”) most, if I may use this expression, though it has long disappeared from the German language, despite the fact that it corresponds to reality: werden — entwerden — to become — to unbecome. With metals we find the tendency for the earth to disintegrate, to shatter in pieces, rather than the tendency to preserve or consolidate themselves in the earthly kingdom. They actually represent the “unbecoming” or passing away of the earth, and as a result they develop hidden radiating events, concealed even to external observation. You have this radiating effect everywhere. It is very important to observe this wherever we approach the metallic element with our interpretations of nature in an attempt to derive remedies.

It is especially interesting to study individual metals from this viewpoint. Such a study leads us to the viewpoint represented outwardly by this table of the mineral remedies we consider valuable. To arrive at these things it is necessary to gather everything yielded by such a correct interpretation of observations. They will be reliable, because we have prepared only those remedies that have their basis in a comprehensive interpretation of observations. Here we can elaborate on this interpretation, for I am really not concerned with simply repeating this list to you. Any additions that have to be made can be given in a written exposition. At some point this will have to be done. I am less concerned with repeating this list than with guiding your thoughts in the direction that could lead to such a list in the first place.

Let us now study the metals — I would prefer to say: the metallic nature — from this viewpoint. There we find what I have just described as a radiation, and it is present in the most varied forms. It can exist in the emanating form of radiation, destroying the earthly and passing into cosmic space. This is especially the case with the lead-activity. Through this lead-activity the human being has implanted into his organism those forces that would like to disperse him into the world. This dispersing into the world is an aspect of lead-activity, so that we can best regard this effect as a radiating one. Such radiating effects appear in a different way in other metals, for example, magnesium. This can be seen clearly and is the basis for the role magnesium plays in the teeth. Through the human organism this must be brought to the point of a metallic activity. This actually happens, but the radiation must then be able to metamorphose itself again. And when this radiation has metamorphosed, it becomes what I would like to call simply “direction.” The radiation is now only “direction,” what happens, however, is an oscillation, a pendular movement to and from this direction.

We must study such effects in the healthy and sick person. In the healthy person, these radiating effects are present in the radiations of the sense organs, as remnants, you could say, of the life before birth, of prenatal existence. These are always present. What radiates from the sense organs consists basically of after-effects of lead, in which lead itself is no longer present. These radiations occur throughout the entire organism wherever there is sense activity. Nerve activity, that is, the functional activity going on in the nerves, has its basis essentially on a weakening of the sense activity in this direction. This activity is therefore based on a weaker radiation. You can see from this why I said in my book, Riddles of the Soul (Von Seelenrätseln), that it is difficult to describe the actual nerve-sense activity, because I would first have had to introduce everything I have now presented to you.

In this oscillatory process, this pendular movement, in which the radiation is only considered in regard to its direction, we have to do with what functionally underlies all breathing in the human organism, in fact all rhythmic activity. Rhythmic activity is based on setting up such pendular movements, on setting up a movement more consolidated in itself than the movement of radiations. Among the metals or metallic nature, tin, for example, has such a movement. The beneficial effect of tin in fairly high potencies on everything that bears upon the rhythmic system is based on this fact.

This radiating, pendular movement can be modified further, however, and this third modification is of great significance. This third modification maintains its direction and also its pendular motion only latently. On the other hand, it consists of spheres continually forming and dissolving in the direction of the radiation. What has an effect on the metabolism in the human being depends on these forces, and among metals it is iron that develops especially these forces. Hence the iron in the blood works against the effect of metabolism as a third metamorphosis of the radiating activity.

When we are dealing with the first metamorphosis, the effect is especially on everything that organically concerns the ego; when dealing with the second metamorphosis, the effect is organically on everything that concerns the astral body; and with regard to the third metamorphosis, the effect is organically on everything related to the etheric body (see figure 3).

Now let us go further. What develops there as the continuous “radiation of spheres” — if I may call it so — must be continually received because it acts, in a sense, from the upper human being toward the lower. It only goes as far as the etheric. Now it must also be received by the physical by means of a force acting polarically, for something that envelops the spheres from outside must come to meet such a sphere-formation. The sphere must be taken hold of and enveloped (see figure 4).

It can be that the sphere-formation and this enveloping action are approximately balanced. This is naturally the case in a normal person, where everything that works downward from the upper human being is counterbalanced by the effect of the lower human being on the upper. This adjustment takes place especially in the damming-up activity of the heart. When this balance is disturbed, however, the metal that can bring equilibrium is gold, au rum. This restores the balance between this enveloping process and what lies in the middle. One will have to use gold when disturbances of the circulation and breathing occur that do not appear as results of something else; that is, when the causes are not to be found in the rest of the organism, gold will be applied. If, on the other hand, you notice that the causes proceed from a region other than the boundary between the lower and upper human being, you will be led to say, “There are not enough of these enveloping material processes coming from the individual to meet the more etheric-spiritual processes taking place here.” And if the activity you find here lies more toward the inside, in the digestive processes beyond the intestinal wall, you will assist this enveloping process by applying copper.

This leads us to the ways of using copper, which is included among our remedies. It is generally used in connection with a form of malnutrition manifesting outwardly in disturbances of the circulation that are consequences of the malnutrition. If we are dealing with circulatory disturbances that cannot be regarded as results of malnutrition, then we give gold; if circulatory disturbances are connected with malnutrition, we use copper.

Now, there must be counterprocesses also for the other processes of radiation, material counterprocesses to the etheric-spiritual processes. Consider the process that we must now regard as an inner process, which brings about this pendular movement, this oscillation. When it becomes abnormal, when it grows too strong, it can be observed in everything constituting the digestion, in working through the absorbed food by the intestines, and, coming more to the outside, all that is situated on this side. This therefore includes what occurs in sexuality, for example. The sexual processes are radiations from the human being that run their course in this way (see figure 3) like the staff of Mercury. This played a part in establishing the ancient so-called symbols. If what is active here is not to degenerate, it must be opposed by material, formative forces holding it in check and preventing this degeneration. These formative forces are essentially to be found in mercury. We are here pointing to a realm in which it is extremely important to bring together what I said in the last course with what a more inner study now teaches us. If you bring these two things together you will have the whole process before you. This is now something that plays entirely into the astral, arising through such pendular, radiating movements and through the corresponding counter-images. It now passes over entirely into the astral (see figure 3).

We may also be concerned with the actual radiation process that is present in the human organism in the most manifold ways. On the one hand, we find this process in everything that radiates out through the skin, in everything that has this directional radiation in it. We find this process in everything that causes urination, in everything that has an evacuating action in the human being. Just as in the gastrula stage of embryonic development the outside is drawn inward, so in this radiation we have to do with something that acts toward the outside through the skin but that also takes on the opposite direction and works in the processes causing urination and bowel evacuation. Usually we find the polar process expressing itself in an opposite direction, but here we have something that is, in a sense, reversed and yet similar. You see, one must not try to treat things in the world schematically. Errors always arise when we start from theories. It is impossible to start from a theory and not succumb to error. Thus if someone says to himself, “Polarity is at work in the world,” and then proceeds to construct a scheme or formula for polarity, saying that polarity must act in this or that way, he will be able to coordinate certain series of facts but he will have to abandon his formula in the face of other phenomena, where things are different. If only we could gain insight into this terrible tyranny exerted by theorizing in science!

Of course, one must be willing to make theories, for otherwise it would be impossible to coordinate any realm of phenomena. At the same time, however, one must be willing to drop one's theory in the right place and penetrate further to the point where this theory has no more value. Natural science must also pay heed to this. If one wishes to work on the theory of evolution in an outer sense, one must keep to the outer theory, modifying it where necessary. If one wishes to understand the human being from within, one must keep to what anthroposophy has to offer. But neither an anthroposophical nor an anthropological theory can be applied in any other way than by leaving it behind at the right point and passing into the other domain. With what we call anthroposophy, of course, we enter the soul-spiritual domain and return again to outer, sense-perceptible phenomena. You can observe how, in my early writings, I followed this path as a matter of course, and how in my more recent writings I am now trying to embrace the other domain as well. Only fools find devious contradictions in this and so construct their idiotic attacks. Then German journals, run by people who are incapable of judgment, publish idiotic attacks as a serious discussion on anthroposophy.

The point is that we must take into account this process that can be described as a radiation, as I have just done. Then we have to work against this, and we can do so by appealing to the opposite radiation, one active in silver, for example. In this connection we must realize that silver must be applied as an ointment if it is to have an effect on the kind of radiation that expresses itself through the skin; however, it must be injected in some form if it is to deal with the other activity that follows the direction of evacuation in some way. Here you have what I might call a “guideline” for the particular way in which to handle such matters. Basically, just as much depends on the way such things are handled as on the quality of the remedy.

This study has led us to the remedies, and I would like to conclude it with some comments in reply to questions that have been posed. If I have not been able to complete our program this time, I must ask you to excuse this due to the shortness of time. If you pay attention to my method of answering questions, however, I believe you will see from it that I have tried to shape the lectures of the last few days so as to lead to the answers to these questions. To demonstrate this, I will select a characteristic question that someone has posed. It was asked about the widespread popular notion that women during menstruation have a kind of withering effect on flowers nearby, particularly if they touch them. This notion has its basis in reality, though it has not been observed often enough and is therefore frequently overlooked. All you need to do is to take the view of the human being that we have developed here, and you will find the inner cause of this phenomenon. Just consider that what works in the flower and the formation of the blossom strives upward from the earth; in the human being, what corresponds to this blossoming force works from above downward. This is certainly a cosmological-organic polarity. You need only picture that this normal process striving upward in the blossoms of plants is the opposite of the human process working from above downward (see figure 5). There must be a balance, and this is present in the normal human being.

Now picture the forces from above downward intensified, which is what manifests during menstruation. Then you have an intensification of forces in the human being that work against the blossoming forces of plants. So you see how an understanding of the connection of these facts enables you, if you proceed in this way, to understand this remarkable relationship that finds expression in popular views surviving from ancient, instinctive perceptions.

Here is another question: “What can one do for a type of asthma that starts with cramp state and includes among its symptoms a surplus of blood below and a deficiency of blood above?” How do we treat this form of asthma? What is going on in such a case? In such a case, the nerve-sense process has slipped down into the breathing process. This is nothing other than an excessive activity within the breathing process, and clearly this excessive activity is due to the slipping down of the nerve-sense process. You must work against this polarically; you must approach from the other side. You must oppose what has entered from outer nature with forces that have the opposite direction. You call forth such forces when you introduce the acid process through the skin, that is, by giving carbonic acid baths or other acidic baths. These will be especially beneficial in asthmatic diseases of this type. If you keep in mind the other things I have spoken about, you will be led to use many other remedies as well.

Now, a question has been asked about milk injection in cases of excessive mucous discharge. This procedure has indeed caused tremendous astonishment and satisfaction in clinics. From what I have presented in these lectures about milk secretion you will readily see that in a large number of cases this treatment is connected with what I said. You need only recall what we said about the secretion of milk: that it is also a sense-process, but one that has slipped down deeper. I have already described the abnormalities that arise there. Now, directive forces remain, of course, in the secreted product. This is a process in which what has taken place within the organism continues. If you now inject a patient with milk, you can obviously work against a process that depends on fairly similar things. This is a case in which empirical chance has in fact worked in an extraordinarily ingenious way, for this treatment has only been discovered by chance, that is, by experimenting. It is generally of the greatest importance to look into the metamorphosis of a process. If a person cannot gain insight into how processes are metamorphosed, he will be unable to judge the simplest things correctly.

A question has surfaced about the causes of colds, of all those things designated by the somewhat diffuse concept of a “cold.” Here also a sense activity is displaced, pushed down into the breathing activity, but now in a different way from before. The secretions that arise are only reactions to this. This is something that takes place in the organism more toward the surface, something that continually takes place within the organism through the interaction of the nerve-sense activity and the metabolic activity. This is going on inside continually. You should not be surprised that these things are treated by the simplest methods, with poultices and the like, in which a kind of nerve-sense activity is inserted where otherwise it is not present. All poultices and so on push a nerve-sense activity into the organism, an activity that is half-conscious and otherwise would not be there.

I have also been asked how muscle forces are related to bone forces. Their relationship is such that the effects that have come to rest or are dying in bone forces are in full movement in muscle forces. Bones are simply transformed muscles, not in the genetic sense, but from the point of view of the idea. For this reason it is really absurd to look for a genetic connection between bones and muscles, or even between cartilage and bone. Many people have correctly drawn attention to the difficulty of finding a genetic connection here. Bunge, for instance, has pointed to this difficulty in finding a genetic connection between cartilage and bone, but he has not, of course, pointed to the source of this difficulty. It is due to the fact that there is a metamorphosis here. Just picture, however, the time when the whole muscle formation has not yet passed into the organic-visible sphere (see figure 6, red). This is also the case with cartilage formation, only much less so. Picture the time when the muscle and bone formation are still undifferentiated (see figure 6, light). When differentiation proceeds into this state of undifferentiation, these processes are subject at the same time to polarity, and it is naturally extraordinarily difficult to detect this metamorphosis. You can detect an outer, genetic metamorphosis only if, in the differentiation of one tissue from another, polarity does not have an essential effect during the transformation, but the original direction is maintained. When polarity immediately exerts influence on differentiation, quite another structure will naturally result, and this will no longer resemble the first.

We will address some of the other questions in the next lecture. There is however a question which I beg you to recognize as typical for questions which lead to a realm where confusion sets in strongly and where one ought to avoid drawing analogies. The question is whether one could construct something like a spectrum of taste, going from sweet through bitter, sour, chalky, to salty, and then also perhaps a spectrum of smell. There is so little objectivity regarding taste and smell, in fact, that it is especially useless to try to find analogies. Such things are of minor significance in practical application. On leaving the domain of the eye and ear and passing into the domain of taste and smell, we come into a totally different realm. In visual perceptions one has to do with revelations entirely from the etheric world, whereas in the processes of smell and taste one has to do with something involved very powerfully in material processes, in effects of substances, in metabolic processes. Thus in passing over to these sense activities, one can keep to the more robust processes that come to expression in metabolism.

Another question has been posed that deals with a significant principle: “Can a human being, without taking anything, produce out of himself bromine, morphine, iodine, quinine, arsenic, and other remedies?” This is a question that leads to very deep foundations of man's whole organization. One cannot produce the substances, but one can produce the processes. It can be said emphatically that one is, of course, quite unable to produce the substance ‘lead’ in oneself. However it is quite possible to produce the lead process in oneself from out of the etheric and then to let it radiate into the physical body. Here it may be asked whether it is not possible then to dilute a substance homeopathically to such a degree that by this process I try to work into the etheric body, calling forth this process of ‘self-metallization,’ of ‘self-radiation,’ that corresponds to a process of metallic radiation? In a certain sense this is absolutely possible, but it is a matter of advancing to the process of radiation that proceeds from the metallic element.

If you remain stuck in the allopathic way of thinking, you cannot approach these things, of course. You must think of them as follows: The radiating forces of magnesium are present in the process of tooth formation. These are forces that have a significance for the whole human organism, for the teeth are pushed out of the whole human being. You may use magnesium salt, any magnesium salt — magnesium sulphate, let us say — applying it in such a way that you put aside all allopathic approaches and prepare an especially strong dilution. Here we are led to the necessity of using quite high dilutions. You now have a twofold effect: you have first the effect of magnesium that basically stops where the teeth are. In the normal person the magnesium forces do not extend beyond this region. You must intensify them so that they extend their effect further, irradiating the whole human being. One can achieve this especially well by using the salt, magnesium sulphate, for this furthers the magnesium radiation even into the head forces. You allow it to radiate back from there. In fact, this process that proceeds from the etheric — remaining in the etheric by this homeopathizing process — is called forth where one has only the forces but not the substance, where one has proceeded from a totally different substance. You know, of course, that magnesium sulfate has been used empirically here, but one will only be able to use it rationally if this connection is borne in mind. It will then be noticed that one can depend on the sulfate only halfway; one must also depend on the magnesium for the other half, so that anyone who believes another sulfate would do as well will be making a mistake. This is the sort of thing that results if one proceeds from considerations that are supported only by the methods of the outer sense world and a combining intellect.

I would now like to point out briefly that all these matters that have been presented to you must be studied in the following way: In order to get behind the effects that must be observed, one must first select single features; then, however, one must see them again as a whole. With these lectures in particular, I am requiring you to exert yourselves to see things in their interrelationships. And now I would like to suggest how you might do this. I have been asked, for example, about exophthmalic goiter, Graves' disease. You may turn to what I explained in the first lecture on curative eurythmy, where I pointed out that the thyroid gland is a brain that has not attained completion. If you recall this and notice how the forces that act abnormally in Graves' disease tend toward the thyroid gland and, in doing so, produce all the other symptoms associated with Graves' disease, you will find how to work against it by measures that oppose this overly strong tendency of the human being to become a “head.” Here we are led to what is to occupy the next lecture. We are led to see that such conditions can really be opposed beneficially by significant movements, especially by significant movements associated with consonants. And you will achieve results in the initial stage of Graves' disease if you thoroughly apply what we have just spoken about in the curative eurythmy lecture. You see, in connecting all these things you must also look in that direction. We will not bring these studies to a close with these lectures but will continue with them another time. There is still one lecture remaining, however.

Our knowledge of the effects of therapeutic substances is based upon the understanding of the development of forces in the world outside man. For, in order to bring about a healing process, we must bring into the organism substances which will distribute themselves in it in such a way that the disease process gradually transforms itself to a normal one. It is the essential nature of a disease process that something is going on within the organism which does not integrate itself into its total activities. Such a disease process has this in common with a similar process in outer nature.

We may say: If there arises within the organism a process similar to one of external nature, illness ensues. Such a process may take hold of the physical or the etheric organism. Either the astral body or the ego will then have to complete a task they do not normally fulfil. In a period of life when they should be unfolding in free activity of soul, they must revert to an earlier stage — even in many cases as far back as the embryonic period — and then have to assist in creating physical and etheric formations which should already have passed into the domain of the physical and etheric organism, for in the earliest periods of human life these formations are in fact provided for by the astral body and ego-organization; only afterwards are they taken over by the unaided physical and etheric bodies. The whole development of the human organism is based upon this principle; originally the entire form and configuration of the physical and etheric body proceed from the activity of the astral body and ego-organization; then, with increasing age, the astral and ego-activities within the physical and etheric organization go on their own accord. But if they fail to do so, the astral body and ego-organization will have to intervene at a later stage of their development in a way for which they are no longer properly adapted.

Let us assume that we have to do with lower abdominal disorders. The physical and etheric organizations are failing to carry out, in the corresponding parts of the human body, the activities which were transmitted to them at a former age of life. The astral and ego-activities must intervene. Because of this they are weakened for other functions in the organism. They are no longer present where they ought to be — for instance, in the formation of the nerves that go into the muscles. Paralytic symptoms arise as a result, in certain parts of the body.

It will then be necessary to bring into the body substances which can relieve the astral and ego-organization of the activity that does not belong to them. We find that the processes which work in the formation of powerful etheric oils in the plant organism, notably in the formation of the flower, are able to fulfil this purpose. The same applied to certain substances containing phosphorus. But we must see to it that the phosphorus is so mixed with other substances as to unfold its action in the intestinal tract and not in the metabolism that lies beyond.

If it is a case of inflammatory conditions in the skin, here too the astral body and ego-organization are unfolding an abnormal activity. They are then withdrawn from the influences which they ought to bring to bear on organs situated more internally. They reduce the sensitivity of internal organs. These again, owing to their lessened sensitivity, will cease to carry out their proper functions. In this way abnormal conditions may arise, for instance in the action of the liver, and the digestion may be incorrectly influenced. If we now introduce silicic acid into the organism, the activities which the astral and ego-organism have been devoting to the skin are relieved. The normal inward activity of this organism is set free again and a healing process is thus initiated.

Again, we may be confronted by disease conditions manifesting themselves in palpitations; in such a case, an irregular action of the astral organism is influencing the circulation of the blood. This astral activity is then weakened for the processes in the brain. Epileptiform conditions arise, since the weakened astral activity in the head organism involves an undue tension and exertion of the etheric activities of that region. We can introduce into the system the gumlike substance obtainable from Levisticum (lovage) — as a decoction, or preferably in the slightly modified form of a preparation — then the activity of the astral body, wrongly absorbed by the circulation, is set free, and the strengthening of the brain organization occurs.

In all these cases the real direction of the disease activities must be determined by an appropriate diagnosis. Take the last mentioned case. It may be in fact that the disturbance in the interplay of the etheric and astral bodies proceeds originally from the circulation. The brain symptoms are then a consequence. We can proceed with a cure along the lines described above.

But the opposite may also be the case. The original cause of irregularity may arise between the astral and etheric activities in the brain system. Then the irregular circulation and abnormal cardiac activity will be the consequence. In such a case we shall have to introduce sulphates, for example, into the metabolic process. These work on the etheric organization of the brain in such a way as to call forth in it a strong force of attraction to the astral body. The effect can be observed as the consequent improvement in initiative of thought, in the will-sphere, and in the patient's general state of composure and control. It will then probably be necessary to supplement this treatment by the use, for instance, of a copper salt, so as to assist the astral forces in gaining their renewed influence upon the circulatory system.

We shall observe that the organism as a whole returns to its regular activity when the excessive action of the astral and ego-organism in some part of the body, conditioned by the physical and the etheric, is replaced by an activity which has been externally induced. The organism has the tendency to balance-out its own deficiencies. Hence it will restore itself if an existing irregularity can for a time be regulated artificially by combating the abnormal process, which was internally induced and must be made to cease, with a similar process brought about externally.

I am delighted to see you again after such a long time — the branch members and those of you who have joined the meetings in the course of the year. Let us hope that the winter which lies ahead will take our work and our spiritual movement some way forward again, and that we'll gain a little more depth in finding our way to the world of the spirit and living in it

We have not seen one another for a long time but in a way this period is like all those other times when we were not together in outer terms. For the members of this branch are deeply and most eminently concerned to see this spiritual movement spread in the world as well as letting it enter into their own hearts. All our seeking in theosophy would be just a refined form of egoism if we were not also interested in having other people in this world hear of the movement and take an interest in it, just as we ourselves love being part of it.

The speaker has been able to talk to wider audiences and all kinds of different people in recent times, and it is good to know that people from all levels of society and of all classes have a longing for the world of the spirit, something which is also evident in the fact that the theosophical movement exists.

Perhaps we may just make a brief review of those wider audiences as we start our winter studies. The tour I was able to undertake to make the theosophical movement more widely known took me to Leipzig, Stuttgart, Baden-Baden, Alsace, Switzerland and Bavaria. I was able to speak in Leipzig, Stuttgart, Baden-Baden, Colmar, Strasbourg, Freiburg im Breisgau, Heidelberg, Basel, Bern, St. Gallen, Regensburg, Nurnberg and Weimar. In some places I gave lecture courses. The course in Leipzig consisted of fourteen lectures, the one in Stuttgart took more than a fortnight, during which time people interested in the theosophical movement had to meet daily. Such courses are probably the most effective way of helping the theosophical movement gain deeper entry into our time. It is not so easy to spread the theosophical movement with sufficient intensity if one can only give one or two lectures and arouse initial interest But when people are given an introduction to life in the spirit for a whole two weeks, they can begin to realize that a new world can open up for them.

There are, of course, infinitely many obstacles that prevent people from getting closer to the science of the spirit and from living with it One does have to go more deeply into the approach we have come to call theosophy, for only then will hearts and minds begin to get an idea, a feeling, that this higher world is something very real. Initially everything they hear is taken to be not only incomprehensible but also pure fantasy. People do not find it easy to let go of the accepted view that the things we speak of in theosophy are mere dreams and fantasies and to realize now that our spiritual movement is concerned with something that in a most profound sense is the very basis of the real world. Many think that people who talk of these things are remote from the realities of life. However one gradually comes to see the point of view that can be gained, and realize that this is something down-to- earth, not living in cloud-cuckoo-land, but is at deeper levels, giving us strength, insight and truth. It enables us to find genuine ways of achieving the great tasks humanity has been given in this world. It is prejudice to say that theosophy is inimical to life, that it denies life. One hears people say: ‘Theosophy presents the world in a very nice light, offering great ideals, but it deflects people from life itself, from the true enjoyment of and pleasure in life.’ It has even been said that theosophists may have nice things to tell, but that these are not wholesome.

This kind of prejudice will probably take longest to disappear. It will always be possible to find people who understand the things presented in theosophical literature and lectures. It will be harder for them to find their way out of the kind of inner responses and feelings that are part of their upbringing and acquired prejudices. Inner responses and feelings are harder to overcome than are thoughts that need to be discarded. You may even hear someone say: ‘Yes, of course, we want to devote ourselves to theosophy, but we also don't want to spoil things for people who want to make the most of life.’ They'll say that we must remember that young people should enjoy life. It is a question, of course, of what we take pleasure in, and the issue must really go deeper. For it is possible to look for better and more noble objects of pleasure and to work with these to take life to a nobler level. We can give life a new content and there is no need to spoil young people's pleasure in life, for we shall give them new kinds of pleasure and enjoyment. People often find it hard to understand that one may find the things others consider entertaining rather uninteresting — going to the cinema, and spending one's time talking about things that have nothing to do with the reality of life. Perhaps a day will come when we speak of today's popular amusements as of a cloud-cuckoo-land.

It probably does not happen very often that someone envies someone else the inability to enjoy things, but it does happen. We have a small theosophical group in one particular city. One of our theosophists, who takes a tremendous interest in the science of the spirit and has also adopted a certain theosophical life style, is living with someone else who is also interested in the science of the spirit but cannot yet give up his predilection for roast suckling pig, that is, he really loves to eat roast suckling pig. Sitting there eating his suckling pig he then gets pangs of conscience because he is still much given to this enjoyment. And he thinks the other individual is lucky because he no longer has a taste for suckling pig. The point is that the other individual has developed different needs. And the day may well come when people who are no longer looking for common amusements will be considered true examples, and people will look to them for the good.

Much deeper down lie the prejudices that come from learning and intelligence and prove an obstacle to humanity's progress. You can find an article in a journal about national epidemics. A well-known academic who works in the field of psychiatry and deals with issues that lie between psychology and psychiatry, writes about mass epidemics. He refers to a phenomenon that existed for 200 years, to the end of the Middle Ages, with excessive asceticism widely practised as a ritual, with people throwing themselves to the ground, scourging and torturing themselves, their fantasies going to extremes and leading to strange excesses. This may be seen as a disease. The psychiatrist calls it hysteria of epidemic proportions. He goes on to say that hysterics of that type are often open to suggestions that cannot be evaluated by thinking. When a person sees someone else who has hurt his arm, he'll feel compassion and do what he can to help. We need not go into the things that go on in normal people's minds. But there are others who feel the pain in their own arm, abnormally so, when someone gets hurt. This is due to suggestion. It can reach such levels that the individual is completely out of control, his inner life lacking all order and given up to all impressions coming from outside.

When a materialistic soul expert speaks of such a phenomenon affecting whole populations, he is referring to public suggestion coming from particular groups — in medieval times from the monasteries — and becoming widespread. A kind of ‘disease of the age’ develops. People are not inclined to ask what they should think about such a thing when it comes up. They are wholly caught up in the suggestion. Such an expert will speak of the matter in all seriousness, but he foils to notice one thing, which is that an independent person who is capable of insight into himself will be able to recognize and clearly distinguish another kind of epidemic among the masses. This has reached many social groups today, even highly educated people. It consists in people living under the influence of specific suggestions, both positive and negative. If you speak of the truths to be found in the science of the spirit to such people, the truths will act as a negative suggestion on them. Such people cannot understand them; they will find them intolerable. Many materialistic prejudices that are widespread today act as positive suggestions. What do you find in medical, theological and law faculties? Suggestion that influences specific social groups and goes so far that one is perfectly justified in calling them a kind of disease, just like the kind of mass epidemic of which I spoke.

A well-known biologist has written something rather strange in a widely-read journal. It is strange — perhaps not so much for someone who only reads a bit here and a bit there, but for someone who studies the whole it is something he finds in 95% of the whole academic world. He will find that in future it will be possible to speak of a kind of academic madness, academic feeble-mindedness just as we now speak of hysteria. In the essay it says: ‘If a rolling billiard ball strikes another and makes it move, I cannot imagine that nothing passes from the one to the other.’ The scientist calls the peculiar spectre which emerges from the first billiard ball, creeping into the second one and setting it in motion under the influence of the first ball, the materia movens. He thinks he is enormously clever but is in fact only under the influence of materialistic suggestion, which affects him just as mass hysteria influenced people in the 16th century. Now just think how the suggestions to which a person is subject are apt to live around him. Their number is infinite. If they occur in large numbers — and it is possible to list a great many of them — they may be brought together in a picture that would be a disease picture of modern academic knowledge like that of dementia precox, which we keep hearing so much about.

There you see the unfreedom of those who are governed by suggestion. A little bit has changed since the Middle Ages. Only a theosophist is able to realize this. In medieval times people would speak of possession when something spoke out of a human being which was not that person himself. Today people laugh at the idea of possession and speak of an illness instead. This kind of possession, which existed in medieval times, has grown a little less today. It only shows itself in particular circles today. Another kind of possession, real and genuine possession, is however widespread today. The medieval kind of possession was astral by nature, today it is mental. The spirits to be found in academics today, spirits that possess them, are on the mental, the devachanic plane. In the world which is considered to be the only real world they come to expression as thoughts and are therefore also said to exist as thoughts. Just as the world of human feelings, inner responses, passions, drives and desires is not merely something arising from existence in a body, but is something independent, true and real in its own right, so the world of thoughts, too, is a distinct entity. It is just that the thoughts which human beings have are not real. These human thoughts are but shadow images of the real thoughts, just as human passions and feelings are only shadow images of something completely different We have often spoken about the way these things are connected. We know that things we are able to observe in human beings through the physical senses are indeed the physical body, which is only part of the whole human being. We know that muscles and nerves, bones and blood are only part of the whole human being. These things, which we call the parts, the elements, of the human body, are part of the physical world. In the same way, however, human feelings and thoughts belong to another world, the astral world.

This is where modern logic takes the strangest leaps. People do not realize at all today that their own thinking, their own logic, should really tell them how impossible the conclusions are which they are drawing all the time, and that they are including things in their trains of thought that are obvious suggestions. It is terribly easy and it only needs some very commonplace ideas for an audience to accept what one is saying if for five minutes one presents them with an inevitable sequence of conclusions. They fail to realize that the debris of old life and of old ways of seeing things covers it all. That is the way it is with 'inevitable conclusions'.

Someone who was born blind and might be among us would be quite right in thinking we were indulging in fantasies when speaking of light and colour. This has never been a truth to him. He'll object that things can only be known by touch. He need not believe what we tell him, but he would nevertheless be wrong. What matters here is not that he is wrong but that he does not have the organ to perceive light and colour. The moment he is given that organ a new world will exist around him. True theosophy will never assume another world; it will merely approach it in a different way. The higher worlds of the theosophists are here around us, just as the world of colours is around the blind person. Someone born blind whose condition is operable may regain the use of his physical eye. We are saying no more than this in theosophy when we say that it is possible to develop the inner eyes. Just as it has been possible to achieve the physical eye, made with such art, so it is also possible to create organs out of the passions, instincts and feelings that live in us, organs of perception that will truly open up new worlds around the human being. It is thus possible to help human beings to achieve and develop this, so that they will be able to look into these other worlds just as they otherwise do into the physical world. This is the astral world of which we speak in theosophy. Within the outside world it is as real as is the world of colour within the world given by the sense of touch.

Someone who knows nothing of these worlds should not raise objections to them. It should be a general principle for everyone that we may only speak of things that we know something about and should never make statements about things about which we know nothing. All opinions about the science of the spirit based on the idea that those worlds must remain unknown to us are therefore a logical monstrosity that does no good at all. No one should ever say: ‘Any world I do not know about does not exist for me.’

So much to characterize the prejudices we meet. These are the suggestions made in today's academic world. And many, many people are subject to these suggestions. A lecture based on the science of the spirit is heard once, after which people continue to hear hundreds and thousands of things said to be highly significant, but they always involve elements that come not from materialistic science but from the materialistic interpretation of science.

It is hard to combat these suggestions with good sense, and this is something only someone able to see more deeply into the intellectual life of today is able to know. Popular science, busy as it is, has an extremely harmful effect because it is presented with an air of authoritative infallibility which can only be shown in its true light at some future date. People today have no idea how much they are subject to suggestion presented with an authoritative air. Take what I am saying merely as a characterization and consider how odd it is that nations struggle to rid themselves of one authority yet at the same time fall prey to new ones.

In the past, people would fall for suggestion, with their I given up to something that was active in them, but someone able to look into the higher worlds would see real entities. Human thoughts relate to certain spirits in the ‘devachanic’ world the way shadows do to the actual objects. The thought images you have are shadows cast by spirits in the devachanic or mental world. The thought that lives in you is but such a shadow image, all by itself. Someone with vision, someone who has developed his higher sense organs, will see it in connection with a spirit. If you see a shadow cast on a wall you can only understand it if you relate it to the object which cast it. It is the same with your thoughts. Without anything to relate them to, your thoughts are shadows. They relate to spirits that are as real in a higher world as this hand of mine is here. Just as my hand casts a shadow on the wall, so do the higher spirits cast their shadows in this our world. And these shadows are your thoughts.

The human being, as we see him before us, is really the scene of events that take place beyond the physical world. As a physical entity, man is in the first place complete in himself, and as such he lives in a physical world that is complete in itself. To understand the human being as a physical entity we have to remain in the physical world. To investigate and understand blood as a physical substance, for instance, you have to remain in the physical world. To understand the nature of feelings, inner responses and passions, you will either have to use empty phrases or relate these things to spirits that are behind the physical world, to a world that relates to this one as the world of colour does to the world of touch. Also you have to use a similar approach to understanding the world of thought.

So you see that man has a share in the higher worlds, that the astral body extends into those worlds, and that the devachanic world for its part casts a kind of shadow into this world. Someone who knows nothing of those higher worlds is subject to them like a slave, powerless against powers that control the chains. Just as the physical person can only be free if able to develop the will to face another person in freedom, so can the astral nature of man only be free if it recognizes its connection with the whole astral world. For as long as people live only in their ordinary inner feelings, their astral nature has them on leading strings, as it were. They are always possessed by it. They come free when they recognize it. Just as we perceive and know the physical world around us, so we must face those spirits, spiritual eye to spiritual eye, and know who we are dealing with. It is the same for the world of human thoughts. This is the way to real freedom, seeing through the world around us. To gain the right measure of understanding we have to consider what lies behind the physical aspect. A beginning has to be made and you need to study these things; the world must study these things.

There is some justification for the following objection, which is also raised by many people: What good it is to us to hear someone tell us of worlds which we ourselves are unable to see? You see, it is the first step towards being able to see into those worlds oneself. Why is it the first step? Because the physical world appears in a somewhat different light to someone who has gained insight than it does to materialistic minds. A comparison may show the different standpoint a theosophist should gain in relation to the physical world. We may take our example from ordinary writing. Someone unable to read may look at it and so may someone who is able to read. They both see the same thing; there is no difference in what they actually see. The person who is unable to read will say: I see lines going down and up, longer and shorter lines. He'll be able to describe them. Someone who is able to read however will find that the lines have meaning. He'll not describe the shape of the letters but find meaning in them.

That is how it is with the whole world when it is seen from the spiritual scientific point of view. Compared to this, take our modern conventional science. Here the world is described in the way someone who has not learned to read describes the letters. For the other person all things in the world become letters; they gain significance and he learns to read them. When someone unable to read describes the shapes of the letters, this cannot be said to be wrong. Many people say our ideas are divorced from reality when we say that the word or the world also holds a specific meaning. You cannot say anything against this objection; it is the everyday view of things. But there is another way of looking at things where every flower becomes a letter, every plant species a word, and the world a great book.

The world holds something within it that goes beyond its physical aspects. The signs for this have no lips, however, and therefore meaning has to be given to them. A completely new world opens up in the devachan for someone able to read the writing of the plants. You can also think of every animal in the world as a letter, and you will gradually be able to decipher these letters. If you understand what comes to expression in animal lives you will relate to them as someone able to read and not as someone who merely describes the letters, which is the way of modern conventional science. Learning to recognize the word that lies in the animal you are able to see another, completely different world behind the physical world — the astral world. Learning to see the plant world as letters you gain the ability to see into the mental world. This is not something divorced from reality. Quite the contrary, it is something firmly based on reality that teaches us to see the abundant meaning of life.

It truly is the case that we only perceive the true significance of spiritual insight into the world if we compare it with reading. What would be the point if I were to draw something on the board here and describe it if there was no meaning to it? It gains meaning in that we perceive its significance. And that is how it is with the world. We gradually come to realize why the world exists, what it can mean to human beings and what human beings themselves are within the world.

Telling you all this, I did not mean to present something new. Those of you who have heard about theosophy on several occasions will know it all. I have been telling it to you to give you a means of rebutting the statement that theosophy is unscientific, to arm you against objections reputed to be logical. Only someone using a shortsighted logic has objections to raise against the science of the spirit. A logic that explores every nook and cranny will show that no objection can be raised but that it is absolutely sensible. It has to be understood therefore that people who base themselves on a scientific point of view in their attacks on theosophy are doing so not for logical reasons but on the basis of suggestion. When you are free of such suggestion and know that thoughts are but the shadows cast by devachanic spirits, and if you then hear a professor who is under the influence of the mental world say that a billiard ball is moved by materia movens, which transfers to a second billiard ball — you can see behind the scenes and see that he is influenced by other spirits.

The earth is atremble, in a way. It presents us with major tasks. Questions arise from the serious challenges of our time. It will not be possible to solve the social question, which has already caused so much bloodshed, with the suggestions people are making at present. The political parties seeking to solve the social question are also under the influence of such suggestions. Someone able to see behind the physical aspects sees the demon who stands behind many a party supporter. It can never be otherwise than it was in the case of Robert Owen, a noble and caring person with good knowledge of social conditions in England. He wanted to create an example of an economy where he asked good and bad workers to join him in establishing a social community. He based himself on the understandable prejudice that people are essentially good and one only needed to put them in a situation where they had a chance to earn a proper living. In such a situation, he believed, they would be able to have the kind of life they desired. But this philanthropist finally had to admit that it was not possible to start with practical measures in one’s efforts for social progress but that one had to teach people first, addressing their understanding.

Someone able to see into the world of the spirit perceives what lies behind the physical plane. He will see how people live together, some in the greatest misery, poor and oppressed by labour and need, and others indulging in superabundance, enjoying all kinds of things. If one does not go beyond the physical plane it will be easy to imagine how the situation can be changed. This is what most people do when they feel they are called to be reformers today. They do not find themselves in the same situation as someone who was born blind and after a successful operation suddenly sees the world around him to be full of colour. For then they would see all kinds of different spirits behind everything physical. When they try to bring their well-meant plans for reform to realization but tike no heed of the spirits behind it all, the situation will be much worse fifty years later than it has ever been. All the social ideals of today would go grotesquely against the astral world unless this astral world of human passions, desires and wishes were to change as well. General misery, a terrible ferment in the world, a dreadful struggle for existence would then take the place of today's struggle which is terrible enough as it is.

You need only look a little bit into the world of the spirit and you can see the situation. Human beings are not just bodies to be provided with food; human beings are also spirits, and they are in touch with other spirits. The task of those able to see the occult world is to make them aware of being comrades, members, of higher worlds. Imagine a human being, and a few beetles crawling around on this human being. The beetles can have no idea that this human being, this spiritual entity, is something different from themselves. They will describe the shape, e.g. of the nose. That is how human beings describe the heavens, Mars, the Sun, Mercury and the other stars. A modern astronomer is just like a beetle which has no idea that the nose belongs to a soul when he describes Mercury, Mars, the Sun. He describes them just the way he sees them, like a beetle crawling around in the cosmos. We shall only know how to describe the reality of things when we realize that the stars have souls, that spirit is present everywhere, that the whole universe is ensouled. That and nothing else is the aim with the science of the spirit. It is as logical as that. Prejudices, being sheer suggestion, make it difficult to make people aware of what this spiritual
view of the world is really about.

The aim of this introductory lecture has been to show the resistance met by people who think in terms of the science of the spirit and who in the eyes of the world represent this science. Each of you may find yourself in a position where you have to show firmness in the face of views presented to you from the outside. It is part of the work in our groups to help members to stand firm. They should be sufficiently sure inwardly that in spite of everything they come up against in the world they have a living inner certainty of the world of the spirit and are thus armed against any objection that may be raised. It is not the amount of theosophical knowledge we have but our inner awareness, inner life and inner certainty that matter. Many people who represent other approaches want to enter into discussion with us, wanting to offer wisdom which theosophy already has. They keep saying things which a theosophist has long since left behind. He will characterize but not criticize. He will not make propaganda in the usual sense, for that cannot be our task. People must come of their own free will if they are to join our ranks. To make propaganda and agitate is not the theosophists' task. It therefore also is not for them to refute others. One seeks to characterize the standpoint of spiritual science itself. The other person has to enter into the spirit of it. Agitation — if a public lecture may be said to be such — consists in telling people: theosophy has this and that to offer. Anyone destined to come to it will come to it. A theosophist does not have to offer views and opinions. He speaks of realities in a higher world, and realities, facts, are beyond dispute. A theosophist presenting the spiritual scientific point of view will stop himself from presenting his own opinions. As theosophists we speak of ancient wisdom that has always been known to wise people. You'll never have two people having different opinions once they have entered the higher realm. At most it may be the case that one of them has not penetrated far enough. This is the kind of attitude a theosophist can develop. Me should not impose himself on others, but he should be sure in his heart and sure of himself in presenting theosophy to the world. Someone who knows will also be able to find words for the knowledge he has in him.

This, then, is the way the theosophical approach, and other approaches which are in opposition to it, should be characterized and not criticized. If we develop this attitude more and more, we'll have the best possible means of being active theosophists in the world. We shall understand the world around us more and more and investigate it in the spirit. That is the theosophical way of doing things.

In conclusion one more example, one of those that will shock people when it is referred to in public. These things are simply true and can be found with the means of our spiritual research. I would like to describe a phenomenon of our time to you, and you'll see how we come to understand the world around us if we really penetrate the things which the science of the spirit has to offer. Please do not take my words amiss, for one will have to get used to the fact that there are things of which we do not yet have the least idea. Who would have thought fifty years ago that there is a substance where it just needs a tiny granule to damage our health? Fifty years ago no one knew anything about it. There are things that have an effect before people know about them and understand them. This substance is called radium. In this case, people did not yet have the physical instruments to understand it. When it comes to things of the spirit, people lack the spiritual instruments.

There are members of the socialist movement who are extraordinarily radical and would really like to hit out and destroy everything. Other members are to some extent conservative in their views. You find all kinds of different trends among them. One group within the socialist movement is a closed group with a remarkably homogeneous, like-minded view and the same way of doing things. They have been the least radical people. Basically this is the trade, the occupational group, which gave rise to the socialist union movement — the printers. They were the first to develop a more formal set of rules within the social movement. Rates of pay were agreed on for the relationship between workers and employers. It has even gone so far that a newspaper is produced for the printing trade the editor of which is not a socialist at all. having been thrown out of the socialist party. This shows how moderate the group is.

Now it is possible to ask if we can investigate the spiritual causes of these things just as we can physically investigate the actions of radium. Yes, we can. Do not be too surprised at the answer given in the science of the spirit to the question as to why there is such a group within the socialist movement. It is due to the action of lead on the human soul. All things in the world around us, be they small or large, are the physical bodies of spiritual principles. Gold, silver, copper, everything that lives around us is body for a spiritual principle. Lead, too, is the visible body of a particular spirit. And anyone working with lead is dealing with the metal not just in its chemical sense but also in its spiritual nature. Lead not only affects the lungs; it also has quite a specific effect on the rest of the human being. So there you have the source of the unusual views held in this occupational group.

Now something else — something that happened to me just a few days ago. Someone I know well came to me who cannot explain why he is able to find analogies and see connections in his scientific work with a facility that is unusual even among academics. Such an ability is due to a highly mobile mental body. I thought I’d find out how this phenomenon comes about. After a time I was able to tell the man that he probably had a lot to do with copper. This proved to be true, for he plays the French horn. The small amount of copper in it had such an effect on him.

Now just think. Without knowing it, people are subject to all kinds of influences. I spoke of suggestion earlier. We now see the influence of the whole world of the spirit that is around the human being. And what is theosophy? It is a way of penetrating into the world of the spirit and its laws. And what does this mean? It means freedom, for only insight will give freedom. When we know something we can relate to it in the right way. Gaining insight in the spirit is therefore the greatest process of liberation we can ever possibly have. True development and progress lie in the things the science of the spirit can teach us. People will only come to the search for truth in the spirit when they want to be free. However, today they will not gain knowledge of the spirit, and we can see that it is impossible for them to do so, if they want to be free not only of social prejudices but also of everything else, including things they do not yet have the power of mind to understand. People who still depend on fashion and so on, will not be greatly inclined to consider the influence of the metals that exist around them But a beginning must be made, a small beginning for something that is large, very large. What I wanted to do today was to take just a bit of a look at something in which the science of the spirit can hope to be a beginning.

I'd like to add something to what I said last Saturday. I can answer the two questions I have been given for today the next time. We have been speaking of poisons and their actions on human beings, and have learned from those poisons that for genuine knowledge we must rise to the supersensible aspect, to the spiritual aspects of the human being.

Today I'd like to complete the picture and add something to the discussion of elements that have such powerful poisonous effects. This concerns the work done by a more or less healthy body in nutrition. I have spoken on nutrition on a number of occasions, but let us speak again of some aspects relating to nutrition, taking into account what was said the last time.

To feed himself, man mainly takes in three or four kinds of foods. The first is protein, which you can get to know most easily by looking at a hen's egg. Protein is produced in plants as well as in animal and human bodies. Both human and animal bodies need not only the powers they have in them to produce protein, for every living body actually produces protein; they also need the protein which a plant produces quite independently. And the human body also takes in animal protein. Some scientists have suffered severe embarrassment very recently concerning this very protein. Twenty years ago it was still taught everywhere that people had to consume at least 120 grams of protein a day to stay healthy. The whole of nutrition was therefore geared to it that dishes were recommended which people should eat in order to have the right amount of protein; 120 grams were thought to be necessary.

Today scientists have completely abandoned that idea. They know that people do not serve their health by eating so much protein but actually serve their ill-health, with the greater part of the protein going putrid in the human intestinal organism. Consuming 120 grams of protein a day, therefore, the human organism constantly has something like rotting eggs in its gut, that pollutes the intestinal contents most dreadfully, sweating out poisons which then enter into the organism, into the body. This not only produces something in the body that later on in life causes hardening of the arteries, as it is called — most of this comes from eating too much protein —but also making people highly susceptible to infection with all kinds of infectious diseases. People are less at risk of catching infectious diseases— they must, of course, have the necessary amount — the less excess protein they consume. Anyone taking at lot of protein will more easily catch infectious diseases — diphtheria, smallpox — than someone who does not take in so much protein.

It is strange indeed that scientists are now saying people do not need 120 grams of protein but only 20 to 50 grams. This, they say, is the amount people really need every day. So quickly have scientists changed their views in two decades. So you see how much store you may set by anything said to have been scientifically established. For if it should happen that you need to find out about the subject and you take a 20-year-old encyclopaedia, you will read in the relevant chapter that you should have 120 grams of protein. If you consulted a later edition you would read: 20 to 50 grams, and that it will make you ill to take more. So you see how it is, basically, with scientific truths. You are informed what you should consider to be true or false, depending on the edition of the encyclopaedia you consult.

All this shows that this simply is not the way to get a clear picture about things that involve the spiritual dimension. And it gives us reason, if we really think about it, to enter into the spiritual aspects if we want to understand what happens when people consume protein. But this is the food that absolutely must still be processed in the intestines, in the lower body, and the lower body itself must have the power to digest this protein. You know that protein, especially fresh egg white, is semi-fluid. All protein is semi-fluid. Anything semi-fluid is accessible to the human ether body. The human ether body cannot do anything with solid matter, only with fluid matter. Human beings must therefore take all the food they consume in fluid form.

You will say that when people take salt, sugar, or the like, they are solid. Yes, but they are immediately dissolved. That is why we have saliva. The solid matter of which the actual physical body is made must never come into the human body from the outside world. From this you may learn: you have solid matter in you. You know that. Your bones are solid. But it is like this: the solid bones are created out of the fluid element in the human body; no solid from the outside world can ever enter into the human body. The human body must let all its solid parts arise out of the fluid sphere. You are thus able to say: we have solid matter in us and this is our physical body, but the physical body is wholly and entirely created out of the fluid sphere, and for the fluid sphere we have the ether body, a subtle body that cannot be seen but is present everywhere in the human being.

Protein must also be completely converted by the ether body, and this happens in the lower body. The higher aspects of the human being are also active there, as I have told you, but the protein must be processed in the ether body. The fluid sphere thus exists for the human ether body. And by merely knowing that protein has to be converted in the lower human body, you are able to realize that protein cannot have the hardest task in the human being, for it does not have to act up into the chest, it does not have to work up into the human head. You can see from this that protein cannot be a food of prime importance. We may say that people cannot possibly eat too little protein, for it is processed immediately in the lower body; it does not have to do much work. Protein is processed in the lower body. Even if people have a diet that is very low in protein, all the protein is processed immediately.

We can see, therefore, that human beings are perfectly able to manage with little protein. Scientists will now admit this, but years ago children in particular were fed excessive amounts of protein. And you know we see those children who in the 1870s and 1880s were given too much protein going about with hardening of the arteries, or they have already died of hardening of the arteries. The harmfulness of something does not show immediately, it only shows itself much later.

The second kind of foods are the fats. The fats we eat will of course also reach the lower body. But fats pass through the intestines and act most strongly on the middle human body, on the chest. For the middle body, the chest region, for proper nutrition of the heart, chest, and so on, it is therefore absolutely necessary to take in fatty substances.

We see from this that human beings above all need fatty substances in the chest region because that is the region where we breathe. What does this mean? It means that carbon, which we have in us, combines with oxygen. When carbon combines with oxygen we need to supply heat. What the fats do, when they themselves combine with oxygen, is to produce heat. Fats therefore contribute a great deal specifically to what is needed in the chest region.

Now we may say that proteins have a tendency to putrefy if they are not processed in the body, in the lower body. To have proteins in us that cannot be properly digested actually means that we have something like rotten eggs in our gut. I think you know the stink of rotten eggs, gentlemen, and the situation is that when people take too much protein they sweat out this stink of rotten eggs into their internal organism. They fill themselves with this stink of rotten eggs. If you leave eggs for some time they become rotten eggs, and they stink like rotten eggs. And the part that has not been digested in the body will of course also produce a stink in the body; the other part, which is digested, will not produce a stink but enter cleanly into the body. And that is the work of the ether body. The ether body exists to overcome and remove the rotten stink that develops. The way it is in the human body is that the ether body fights and overcomes the rotting process. The rotting process is overcome by the ether body in the human being. When a human being no longer has an ether body after death, he begins to rot away. So there you have it right in front of your nose, we might say, that a human being does not rot away while he is alive; as soon as he no longer lives, he rots. Why is that so? Because the ether body has gone when a person is dead. The ether body is therefore the part of the human being that prevents rotting. We therefore have a continuous battle going on inside us against rotting away, and it is the ether body which fights that battle in us.

I think, gentlemen, you only need to think this through and you'll see very clearly, just from the evidence of your eyes, that there must be an ether body, that in fact there has to be an ether body everywhere. For proteins are produced everywhere on earth, and they rot. The earth would have to stink to high heaven if the ether did not keep driving this rotting principle away. Both inside and outside the human organism, the ether fights against proteins going rotten all the time. This is something we must certainly consider.

When we come to the fats, we have to say that fats do not rot but go rancid—you all know this, if you have ever left fats somewhere outside; even butter will go rancid. Fats thus have the property of going rancid. Now if you have left butter to stand, you will not be able to say if it is rancid or good fresh butter unless you have developed an eye for it. But when you taste it on your tongue you will know right away that it is rancid. This has something to do with awareness, therefore, with sensation. Rotting has to do with our sense of smell, with something you can smell outside. It is different, of course, if you have rotten eggs or the scent of roses, but in either case you smell it. Not so the going rancid. Going rancid is something where we only put a name to it because of something more inward, our sense of taste.

This immediately shows that it has a lot more to do with an inner response than in the case of eggs going rotten. The middle human body, the chest body, has to do with everything that is an inner response coming to awareness; and spiritually it is the astral body. As you know, in the chest we have something that functions on an airy principle. We breathe in air. We transform air. The air has its rightful place in the chest. In the remaining part of the human body gases and types of air should only be produced sparingly. If too much gas is produced in the gut, pathological flatulence develops, and that is not healthy. The middle human body exists for the generation of gases. And the higher supersensible spiritual aspect which intervenes here —it intervenes in things that are gaseous by nature —is the human astral body. This fights the going rancid of fats in itself. Just as the ether body combats the rotting of proteins, so does the astral body combat the going rancid of fats. People would continually have rancid eructations from their own fats, they would taste rancid to themselves inwardly, if their astral bodies did not constantly fight this process of going rancid. We thus have this astral body inside us to prevent fats going rancid.

You see, gentlemen, this is truly marvellous, for you can see from this that things go very differently in the ordinary physical world outside than they do inside us. Out there in the physical world fats inevitably go rancid. Human beings are blessed in that they do not go rancid, or only if they develop an internal disease. The matter is, therefore, that in health human beings have their astral body so that they cannot go rancid. They only go rancid if they eat too much fat, so that the astral body is unable to cope, or if something or other causes too much fat to be produced; cannibals know more about this than we do. Inwardly, however, human beings do perceive it if they go rancid. We may say that if someone grows very rancid, which means that his astral body is not sufficiently active, he continually has an unpleasant taste in his mouth. This unpleasant taste in turn affects the stomach. And in this roundabout way people get diseases of the stomach and intestines from the rancid fat in them.

If you notice that a person is inwardly going rancid, then arsenic is a good medicine for fats he has inside him which are not digested. Arsenic prevents one getting fat; it strengthens the astral body. The result is that a person is then able to combat the process of going rancid. These things are extraordinarily important. When a person shows himself to have an inner tendency of being unable to overcome his rotting protein with the help of the ether body, some copper compound or other usually proves highly effective as a medicine. Copper is thus effective when abdominal diseases, intestinal diseases are caused directly by protein. But when you find that something comes to awareness in the mouth, in the taste, it will not help to give copper; in that case it has to be arsenic, because you must first of all strengthen the astral body. It will not do to say simply that diseases of one kind or another are in a particular part of the human being. You have to know where they come from, if they come from rotting protein in the gut or fats that have gone rancid and affect the intestines and the stomach via the taste in one's mouth.

You see, therefore, gentlemen, that inside us we have the opposite of what these substances show themselves to be on the outside. We have an astral body that combats the going rancid of fats, while the ordinary physical and material world simply makes fats go rancid.

A third food people eat are the substances known as carbohydrates. Carbohydrates are found particularly in potatoes, for instance, in lentils and beans, and of course in all cereal grains. The carbohydrates are in there. Very many of them also contain actual sugar, which we always take as a food, or the sugar is directly produced from those carbohydrates because we transform the substances we take in when we eat potatoes, for instance. Potatoes contain much starch. This sticky starch is converted to dextrin inside us and then into sugar. If you eat potatoes you are therefore really taking sugar, for the potato starch paste is converted to sugar in the human body. As you know, grapes are particularly rich in sugar, hence also the alcohol. Everything alcohol is to man is, apart from being alcohol, really due to its sugar content, for sugar is produced particularly from alcohol in the human organism.

The first kind of food thus was protein, the second kind fats and the third starch, sugar. We have seen that protein is digested in certain quantities, without going putrid, by the ether body. Fats are digested, without going rancid, by the astral body. Now to starch and sugar. Looking at the ether body we have to say it is mainly active in the lower body. The astral body is mainly active in the chest region. Now we come to something else. You all know —I won't say from personal experience, but from seeing people who are not like you — the effects of alcohol, and you know that alcohol causes a peculiar condition in people, first of all drunkenness, but we'll leave that aside for the moment. But as you know, the next day—we have spoken of this before — one has a thick head, a hangover, as it is called. What does such a heavy head or hangover signify?

Well, gentlemen, you can see even the term 'thick head' refers to the human head. And if you have heard people— different from yourselves, of course — talk about the bit of a hangover they had the day before, you will hear them complain above all of their skulls. The skull aches, and if it did not ache it felt as if it would drop off their shoulders, and so on. What is really going on?

The function of the head is to combat what starch and sugar want. What do starch and sugar want? You only have to consider wine. As you know, the wine, the grapes, are harvested when autumn comes. They are pressed and the matter then ferments. When fermentation is complete, people drink the wine. By becoming wine through fermentation, wine has overcome the fermentation. But if you put wine into your stomach, something develops from it that becomes part of the food again. The alcohol is literally converted back. Now starch and sugar are substances that want to ferment. Starch and sugar mainly want to ferment in the human organism. If you drink alcohol, the alcohol drives away the powers in the head that prevent the fermentation of sugar and starch in the human being. Let us take a good look at this. Let us say you had potatoes on 22 January, you had some beans and you drank alcohol with them. Right then. If you had not taken alcohol your head would have remained sober. Potatoes and beans contain starch and the sugar that comes from starch. The head would have the power to prevent fermentation of the starch and sugar in the proper way. If you bring in alcohol, the head loses the ability to prevent the fermentation of the starch and sugar you have in you from the potatoes, and then the potatoes and beans, and other things, too, cereal grains, for example, begin to ferment inside you.

Instead of being prevented, fermentation occurs in the person. It occurs because of the inability of the head that has developed because of the alcohol, so that the person comes to be full of fermentative powers. In central Germany, in Thuringia, people have a strange popular expression. When someone talks nonsense people in Thuringia say: 'He ferments.' It is not something people say in this area, but those who have been to Germany will no doubt have heard it in central Germany. And when someone is talking nonsense all the time, people in central Germany, in Thuringia, call him 'an old wretch in ferment'. The situation is that in central Germany, people connect fermentation with confusion in the head, with fooling around. That is an excellent popular instinct. They know that when someone talks a lot of nonsense he is in ferment in his head. And if someone has been drinking and got a thick head, he does not talk nonsense, for he tends to be quiet, but the nonsense is inside him, it rumbles in him. The process which develops to prevent the fermentation of starch and sugar is therefore the opposite of the tangible effect of alcohol. We may say, therefore, that there is something in the human head that continually works in the direction of preventing the fermentation of everything the person has in him by way of starch and sugar.

No one will deny that the I, the actual human I, has its main seat in the head, just as the ether body has its seat in the lower part and the astral body in the middle part of the human body. The situation is that this actual I has to do with warmth qualities, just as the physical body has to do with solids, the ether body with fluids and the astral body with gases. The situation is that with everything that relates to his actual I, the human being makes warmth move. This can be seen in detail if we study the human body. The actual I is also connected with the blood, and the blood therefore produces warmth. But the actual I, of which human beings have conscious awareness, is also connected with glandular secretion, for instance. Because of this, glandular secretion is connected with temperature conditions. With its supersensible powers the actual I also uses the powers of the head to prevent fermentation. We are thus able to say: the ether body combats the rotting of proteins, the astral body combats fats going rancid, and the I combats the fermentation of sugar and starch.

This is also the reason why I had to tell you on one occasion that eating too many potatoes is bad for the head. Excessive potato consumption affects the human being as follows. You see, a potato contains little protein, which basically makes it a good human food. And if people eat moderate amounts of potatoes together with other things, the potato is a good food, having little protein. But it contains an extraordinary amount of starch which has to be converted to sugar in the human being, first into dextrin and then into sugar. I told you on that earlier occasion that the head has to do a terrible lot of work when people eat too many potatoes, obviously, for the head has to prevent fermentation. People who eat too many potatoes and have to make a terrible effort in their heads to cope with potato fermentation therefore tend to be weak in the head. It is mainly the middle parts of the brain that grow weak, leaving only the front parts which make little effort to prevent potato fermentation. It is actually due to the fact that potatoes have come to be widely eaten in recent times that materialism has developed, for this is produced in the front part of the brain.

It is really peculiar. People think materialism is a matter of logic. To some extent materialism is nothing but the consequence of eating potatoes! Now I think you'll agree people do not really like it if they have to live mainly on potatoes, but they do like materialism. So they are really caught up in a contradiction. To be a proper materialist, one should really advise everyone to eat potatoes, for that would surely be the best way of being convinced of materialism. But it is something that does not happen with most people. However, if the materialistic monists, the Monist Association, wanted to be really effective in their fight, they should really make sure that other foods are as far as possible replaced with potatoes. Then the Monist Association would be terribly successful. It would not be quick, but over some decades the Monist Association would be most effective if it were to influence the eating of potatoes. Though the people they would seek to influence with their potato diet would also give them something to think about; and so they would not be all that successful.

One thing you can see from this is that the science of the spirit we work with here recognizes the true nature of materialism. Materialism does not know anything about the world of matter; the science of the spirit recognizes the potato in particular as the real creator of materialism. It is dreadfully malicious, the potato, crafty, sly to an excessive degree. For you see, people can only eat the tubers of potatoes, not even the eyes on a potato — they are harmful — and they certainly cannot eat the flowers, for the potato is a member of the deadly nightshade family and the flowers are poisonous. But what is poison? As I told you the last time, large amounts of a poison kill, small amounts, in fine distribution, are medicinal. Potato as such contains much sticky starch, it consists almost entirely of sticky starch. It would be quite unable to live, because the sticky starch would be terribly harmful to it. But it attracts poison from the world at the same time, and destroys the harmful effect that is inside itself. This is why I say it is crafty and sly. It has its poison which removes the effect that would be harmful to it. But the poison in potatoes is particularly harmful to humans; it does not give this ability to them but only the matter which it renders harmless in itself by using the poison. This really is something we may refer to by saying that the potato is a sly, crafty thing. And people must clearly understand that if they eat too many potatoes their midbrain will wither away and it is even possible that their senses also suffer from eating too many potatoes.

If someone eats too many potatoes as a child or a young person, his midbrain will become extraordinarily weak. But the midbrain is the source of the most important sense organs. In the midbrain lie four rounded eminences called colliculi, the thalamus, and so on, and excessive potato consumption even weakens one's eyesight, for this has its origins in the midbrain. Some eye conditions in old age are due to the person having been brought up eating too many potatoes as a child. A person then gets weak eyes, weak eyesight. It really is true that people in Europe suffered much less from weak eyesight in earlier times than they do now. And this is because apart from other things that influence the eyes (but less strongly, because they do not act from inside, electric light and so on) excessive potato consumption in particular is very harmful to the eyes, affecting our vision and even the ability to taste — even the ability to taste! You see, the consequence is as follows. Let us assume someone eats too many potatoes even as a child. Later in life you will very7 often find that such a person never knows when he has had enough, because his sense of taste has been ruined by potato consumption, while someone who has not eaten too many potatoes will know instinctively when he has had enough. This instinct, which is largely connected with the midbrain, is thus ruined by excessive potato consumption. This is something that has emerged particularly clearly in recent times.

From everything I have said you will see that people must take particular care to be strong enough to overcome firstly the rotting of proteins, secondly the getting rancid of fats, thirdly the fermentation of starch and sugar.

As I told you the last time, people cannot be complete anti-alcoholics — for if they do not take any alcohol at all, alcohol is produced inside them. This alcohol stays in the lower body; it does not go up to the head, for the head must be free from alcohol, otherwise it will be unable, as bearer of the I, to have proper control of the fermentation in the body. You see, you can now have an idea of the way in which human beings relate to their natural environment. Looking at rotting protein everywhere — animals rot away, plants rot away —you have to say: ether is also present everywhere, and this gradually balances it out again. Looking at fats, which are also found in plants, which are found everywhere, you have to say: these fats would gradually make it impossible for all living creatures to continue to live, both animals and humans, if the astral body were not present to combat the process of going rancid. The human being thus fights everything that exists in nature outside. And when the human being dies the ether body, astral body and I go away. They leave the physical body. The human being then moves on into the world of the spirit. What happens then? Well, gentlemen, you know what happens. The dead body immediately begins to rot, to go rancid and at the same time to ferment, though the rotting is more apparent to the eye and to the nose, for we only rarely go about with our noses blocked up. The rotting process is thus easily smelt. But to go and lie across a grave somewhere and taste if the fat of the dead body has gone rancid —that is something we do not normally do, and therefore people usually do not know about it. And the fermentation that takes place is not studied at all. So it truly is the case that because the I goes away the human body begins to ferment, because the astral body goes away the human body goes rancid, and because the ether body goes away the human body starts to rot. This is something human beings always have in them, but for as long as they live on earth they are always fighting it. Any48 one who denies that the ether body, the astral body and the I are present in the body as real spiritual entities simply has to be asked: What do you imagine? Why does the human being not rot away? Why does he not ferment? Why does he not go rancid? This would have to happen to the body if it were just a physical body.

What do our scientists do? They wait until a human being has died before they examine him. For they know precious little of the living human being compared to what they know of the anatomy of the dead body, when the human being has died. Everything you are able to learn from them really only relates to the dead body. Scientists always wait for the dead body. They are thus quite unable to know anything about the real human being, who is alive, for they do not consider him. And this is the great problem, that all the knowledge of our modern science —this really is only so since the seventeenth century—basically comes only from the dead body. But the dead body is no longer the human being, for we have to ask ourselves: what brings it about that the dead body which human beings have also when they are alive does not behave like the dead body, rotting, fermenting and going rancid? It is exactly when we take a real look at the living human being that we discover these supersensible aspects of human nature. And we then also find that the I is active mainly in the head, that the astral body is active mainly in the chest, and that the ether body is active mainly in the lower body. And scientists do not know anything about the lower body, for they believe the processes in there are the same as those in outside nature. But that is not so.

Well, gentlemen, it is interesting to study things by not shutting oneself away in one's study but going out among living people. You know there are spas where you get a smell of rotten eggs, in Marienbad for instance, because the water contains hydrogen sulphide. Yes, really, people who like fine foods and are also fussy about smells have to go to such spas. And why do they go? Why do they sometimes spend several summer months in places where it smells as if there were rotten eggs everywhere? You see, it is like this. These people really have eaten too much protein and now come to the spa. They are covered with skin and the whole business is inside, and so they do not smell like that. But if we were able to smell it, they would smell horribly of rotten eggs inside. So all the people who inwardly smell of rotten eggs come to the spas where you get a smell of rotten eggs. And what happens? Well, you see, in one case the rotten egg smell is inside, and in the other it is outside. In the one case, where it is inside, the nose does not notice it; in the other case, where it is outside, the nose does notice. Head and belly are opposites. The rotten egg smell produced in the belly is combated when it comes from the head side, through the sense of smell. And the inner smell of rotten eggs is fought in spas that smell of rotten eggs.

This is very noticeable for anyone who is inclined to make such observations. It so happens that when I was a boy I had to go to such a spa. Every second day I had to go to a spring called Marienquelle. There you also get a smell of rotten eggs. While this is rather unpleasant outwardly, there being such a terrible smell, you suddenly begin to feel rather good in your belly. So if one is not sick, and does not have the rotten egg smell in one's belly, a feeling of greater vitality comes up. Anyone who is not driven away by the smell can experience this. Someone who holds his nose will of course not experience the contrast, will not have this springtime effect in the belly that comes if one really gives oneself up to the rotten egg smell. And rotten egg smell is an extraordinarily good medicine, for example, even if artificially produced. It will give the body the power to make atrophying muscles grow strong and firm again. People are not keen on such treatments, but in one respect they are extraordinarily useful. For you see, if the rotten egg smell comes to us from outside, spring comes inside, in the belly. And in spring everything grows and sprouts, and people can gain new strength when spring comes inside, in their bellies.

This then is what happens with people who ruin their digestion by eating too much during the winter. You see, when someone does not ruin his digestion by eating too much in winter, he shares in the spring that comes in the outside world. The lower body in particular participates in the spring very strongly. But if you want to really enjoy spring in the world of nature outside, you should as far as possible avoid such things as goose liver pate and so on. If you have eaten a lot of goose liver pate then the environment in your belly will always be the way it is below the surface of the soil in winter, not above ground but below ground. It is warm there, for it is where pits are dug to store potatoes through the winter. But it all goes rotten in the human being because the warmth is stored in the belly; spring does not come in the human being. And then he must find an artificial spring in the smell of rotten eggs. This is the contrast between I and ether body. I and ether body must be in balance in the human being. You can see from this that if one really studies things in the world of nature, going to a spa that has the smell of rotten eggs with open senses, the sensation of spring in one's belly teaches one that inwardly the opposite process takes effect as proteins begin to rot.

I wanted to add to what I said the last time. You know I told you that when someone has taken certain poisons he has to take liquid egg-white protein as an antidote. Things that are healthy become poisons if they are not treated properly in the body, if too much of them gets into the body. Protein can therefore drive away poison in the human being, but protein is itself poisonous if it rots in the body, if too much of it gets into the body. That is how close nutrition and poisoning are to one another. You have no doubt heard that excess food can become poison. A great many diseases are nutritional diseases, that is, people failed to consider that only certain amounts of some substances should be taken if the body is to cope with them.

I'll ask them to tell you when the next talk will be, because I won't be here on Saturday. I'll be in Bern then.

My dear friends,

Before we continue the observations of yesterday which we have nearly brought to a conclusion, let us carry out a few experiments to give support to what we are going to say. First we will make a cylinder of light by allowing a beam to pass through this opening, and into this cylinder we will bring a sphere which is so prepared that the light passes into it, but cannot pass through. What happens we will indicate by this thermometer (see drawing Fig. 1). You will note that this cylinder of energy, let us say, passing into the sphere reveals its effect by causing the mercury column to sink. Thus we are dealing with what we have formerly brought about by expansion. And indeed, in this case we have to assume also that heat passes into the sphere, causes an expansion and this expansion makes itself evident by a depression of the column of mercury. If we placed a prism in the path of the light we would get a spectrum. We do not form a spectrum in this experiment, but we catch the light — gather it up and obtain as a result of this gathering up of what is in the bundle of light, a very market expansion. You can see the definite depression of the mercury. Now we will place in the path of the energy cylinder, an alum solution, and see what happens under the influence of this solution. You will see after a while that the mercury will come to exactly the same level in the right and left hand tubes. This shows that originally heat passed through, but under the influence of the alum solution the heat is shut off, not more goes through. The apparatus then comes only under the influence of the heat generally present in the space around it and the mercury readjusts itself to equilibrium in the two tubes. The heat is stopped as soon as I put the alum solution in the path of the energy cylinder. That is to say, from this cylinder which yields for me both light and heat, I separate out the heat and permit the light to pass through. Let us keep this firmly in mind. Something still rays through. But we see that we can so treat the light-heat mercury that the light passes on and the heat is separated by means of the alum solution.

This is one thing we must keep in mind simply as a phenomenon. There is another phenomenon to be brought to our attention before we proceed with our considerations. When we study the nature of heat we can do so by warming a body at one particular spot. We then notice that the body gets warm not only at the spot where we are applying the heat, but that one portion shares its heat with the next portion, then this with the next, etc. and that finally the heat is spread over the entire body (Fig. 2). And this is not all.

If we simply bring another body in contact with the warm body, the second body will become warmer than it formerly was. In modern physics this is ordinarily stated by saying that heat is spread by conduction. We speak of the conduction of heat. The heat is conducted from one portion of a body to another portion, and it is also conducted from one body to another in contact with the first. A very superficial observation will show you that the conduction of heat varies with different materials. If you grasp a metallic rod in your fingers by one end and hold the other end in a flame, you will soon have to drop it, since the heat travels rapidly from one end of rod to the other. Metals, it is said, are good conductors of heat. On the other hand, if you hold a wooden stick in the flame in the same way, you will not have to drop it quickly on account of the conduction of heat. Wood is a poor conductor of heat. Thus we may speak of good and poor conductors of heat. Now this can be cleared up by another experiment. And this experiment we are unfortunately unable to make today. It has again been impossible to get ice in the form we need it. At a more favorable time the experiment can be made with a lens made of ice as we would make a lens of glass. Then from a source of heat, a flame, this ice lens can be used to concentrate the heat rays just as light rays can be concentrated (to use the ordinary terminology.) A thermometer can then be used to demonstrate the concentration by the ice lens of the heat passing through it. (See Fig. 4).

Now you can see from this experiment that it is a question here of something very different from conduction even though there is a transmission of the heat, otherwise the ice lens could not remain an ice lens. What we have to consider is that the heat spreads in two ways. In one form, the bodies through which it spreads are profoundly influenced, and in the other form it is a matter of indifference what stands in the path. In this latter case we are dealing with the propagation of the real being of heat, with the spreading of heat itself. If we wish to speak accurately we must ask what is spreading, then we apply heat and see a body getting warmer gradually piece by piece, we must ask the question: is it not perhaps a very confused statement of the matter when we say that the heat itself spreads from particle to particle through the body, since we are able to determine nothing about the process except the gradual heating of the body?

You see, I must emphasize to you that we have to make for ourselves very accurate ideas and concepts. Suppose, instead of simply perceiving the heat in the metal rod, you had a large rod, heated it here, and placed on it a row of urchins. As it became warm the urchins would cry out, the first one, then the second, then the third, etc. One after another they would cry out. But it would never occur to you to say that what you heard from the first urchin was conducted to the second, the third, the fourth, etc. When the physicist applies heat at one spot, however, and then perceives it further down the rod, he says: the heat is simply conducted. He is really observing how the body reacts, one part after another, to give him the sensation of warmth, just as the urchins give a yell when they experience the heat. You cannot, however, say that the yells are transmitted.

Now we will perform also an experiment to show how the different metals we have here in the form of rods behave in respect to what we call the conduction, and about which we are striving to get valid ideas. We have hot water in this vessel (Fig. 3). By placing the ends of the rods in the water, they are warmed. Now we will see how this experiment comes out. One rod after another will get warm, and we will have a kind of graduated scale before us. We will be able to see the gradual spreading of the effect of the heat in the different substances. (The rods consisted of copper, nickel, lead, tin, zinc, iron.) The iodide of mercury on the rods (used to indicate rise in temperature) becomes red in the following order: copper, nickel, zinc, tin, iron and lead. The lead is, therefore, among these metals, the poorest conductor of heat, as it is said.

This experiment is shown to you in order to help form the general view of the subject that I have so often spoken to you about. Gradually we will rise to an understanding of what the heat entity is in its reality.

Now, from our remarks of yesterday we have seen that when we turn our attention to he realm of corporeality, we can in a certain way, set limits to the realm of the solids by following what it is essentially that takes on form. We have the fluids as an intermediate stage and then we go over to the gaseous realm. In the gaseous we have a kind of intermediate state, exactly as we would expect, namely the heat condition. We have seen why we can place it as we do in the series. Then we come, as I have said, into an X region in which we have to assume materialization and dematerialization, pass then to a Y and a Z. This is all similar to the manner in which we find in the light spectrum the transition from green through blue to violet and then apparently on to infinity. Yesterday we convinced ourselves that we have to continue below the solid realm into a U region. Thus we think of the world of corporeality as arranged in an order analogous to the arrangement in the spectrum. This is exactly what we do when we pursue our thinking in contact with reality.

Now let us further extend the ideas of yesterday. In the case of the spectrum we conceive of what disappears at the violet end and at the red end in the straight line spectrum as bent into a circle. In exactly the same way we can, in this different realm of states of aggregation, imagine that the two ends of the series do not disappear into infinity. Instead, what apparently goes off into the indefinite on the one side and what goes off into indefiniteness on the other may be considered as bending back (Fig. 1) and then we have before us a circle, or at least a line whose two ends meet.

The question now arises, what is to be found at the point of juncture? When we observe the usual spectrum, we can in that case find something at this point. In Goethe's sense you know that the spectrum considered as a whole with all its colors included shows as its middle color on one side green, when we make a bright spectrum. On the other side peach blossom which is also a middle color when we make a dark spectrum. Thus we have green, blue, violet extending to peach blossom. By closing the circle we note that at the point where it closes, there is the peach blossom color.

If we then construct a similar circle in our thinking about the realm states of aggregation, what do we find at the point of juncture? This brings us to an enormously important consideration. What must we place in the spectrum of states of aggregation which will correspond to the peach blossom of the color spectrum? The idea that arises naturally from the facts here may perhaps be easier for you to grasp if I lead you to it as follows: What do we have in reality which disappears as it were in two opposite directions — just as in the color spectrum the tones shade off on the one side into the region beyond the violet and on the other side into the region beyond the red? Ask yourselves what it is. It is nothing more or less than the whole of nature. The whole of nature is included in it. For you cannot in the whole of nature find anything not included in the form categories we have mentioned. Nature disappears from us on the one hand when we go through corporeality into heat and beyond. She disappears from us on the other when we follow form through the solid realm into the sub-solid where we saw the polarization figures as the effect of form on form. The tourmaline crystals show us now a bright field, now a dark one. By the mutual effect of one form on another there appear alternately dark and light fields.

It is essential for us to determine what we should place here when we follow nature in one direction until we meet what streams from the other side. What stands there? Man as such stands there. The human being is inserted at that point. Man, taking up what comes from both sides is placed at that point. And how does he take up what comes from the two sides? (Fig. 2) He has form. He is also formed within. When we examine his form among other formed bodies we are obliged to give him this attribute. Thus, the forces that give from elsewhere are within man. And now we must ask ourselves, are these forces to be found in the sphere of consciousness? No, they are not in the human consciousness. Think of the matter a moment. You cannot get a real understanding of the human form from what you can see in either yourselves or other men. You cannot experience it immediately in consciousness. We have a corporeality, but this form is not given in our immediate consciousness. What do we have in our immediate consciousness in the place of form?

Now, my friends, that can be experienced only when one gradually and in an unbiased manner learns to observe the physical development of man. When the human being first enters physical existence, he must be related very plastically to his formative forces. That is, he must do a great deal of body building. The nearer we approach the condition of childhood, the greater the body building, and as we take on years there is a withdrawal of the body building forces. In proportion as the body building forces withdraw, conscious reasoning comes into play. The more the formative forces withdraw the more reasoning advances. We can create ideas in regard to form in proportion as we lose the ability to create form in ourselves. This considered in a matter of fact way, is simply an obvious truth. But now you see, we can say that we experience formative forces — forces that create form outside the body can be experienced. And how do we experience them? In this way, that they become ideas within us. Now we are at the point where we can bring the formative forces to the human being. These forces are not something that can be dreamed about. Answers to the questions that nature puts to us cannot be drawn from speculation or philosophizing, but must be got from reality. And in reality we see that the formative forces show themselves where, as it were, form dissolves into ideas, where it becomes ideas. In our ideas we experience what escapes us as a force while our bodies are building.

When we place human nature before us in thought, we can state the matter as follows: man experiences as ideas the forces welling up from below. What does he experience coming down from above? What comes into consciousness from the realms of gas and heat? Here again when you look at human nature in an unprejudiced way, you have to ask yourselves: how does the will relate itself to the phenomena of heat?

You need only consider the matter physiologically to see that we go through a certain interaction with the heat being of outer nature in order to function in our will nature. Indeed heat must appear if willing is to become a reality. We have to consider will related to heat. Just as the formative forces of outer objects are related to ideas, so we have to consider what is spread abroad as heat as related to that which we find active in our wills. Heat may be thus looked upon as will, or we may say that we experience the being of heat in our will.

How can we define form what it approaches us from within-out? We see it, in this form, in any given solid body. We know that if conditions are such that this form can be seized upon by our life processes, ideas will arise. These ideas are not within the outer object. It is somewhat as if I observed the spirit separated from the body in death. When I see form in outer nature, what brings about the form is not there in the object. It is in truth not there. Just as the spirit is not within the corpse but has been in it, so is that which determines form not within the object. If I therefore turn my eyes in an unprejudiced way towards outer nature I have to say: Something works in the process of form building in objects, but in the corpse this something “has been active,” while in the object its activity is becoming. We will see that what is there active lives in our ideas.

If I experience heat in nature, then I experience what works in a certain way as my will. In the thinking and willing man we have what meets us in outer nature as form and heat respectively.

But now there are all possible intermediate stages between will and thought. A mere intellectual self-examination will soon show you that you never think without exercising the will. Exercise of the will is difficult for modern man especially. The human being is more prone to will unconsciously the course of his thoughts, he does not like to send will impulses into the realm of thought.

Entirely will-free thought content is really never present just as will not oriented by thought is likewise not present. Thus when we speak of thought and will, of ideas and will, we are dealing with extreme conditions, with what from one side builds itself as thought and from the other side builds itself as will. We can therefore say that in experiencing will permeated by thinking and thinking permeated by will, we experience truly and essentially the outer forms of nature and the outer heat being of nature. There is only one possibility for us here and that is to seek in man for essential being of what meets us in outer nature.

And now pursue these thoughts further. When you follow further the condition of corporeality on the one hand you can say that you proceed along a line into the indeterminate. The opposite must be the case here. And how can we state this? How must it be within man? We must indeed, find again here what goes off into infinity. Instead of it going off into infinity, so that we can no longer follow it, we must picture to ourselves that it moves out of space. What wells up in man from the states of aggregation we must think of as going out of space. That is, the forces that are in heat must so manifest themselves in man that they move out of space. Likewise, the forces that produce form, pass out of space when they enter man.

In other words, in man we have a point where that which appears spatially in the outer world as form and heat, leaves space. Where the impossibility arises, that that which becomes non-spatial can still be held mathematically.

I think we can see here in a very enlightening way how an observation of nature in accordance with facts obliges us to leave space when we approach man, provided we properly place him in the being of nature. We have to go to infinity above and below (the scale of that states of aggregation.) When we enter the being of man, we leave the realm of space. We cannot find a symbol which expresses spatially how the facts of nature meet us in the being of man. Nature properly conceived, shows us that when we think of her in relation to man, we must leave her. Unless we do, when we consider the content of nature in relation to man, we simply do not come to the human being.

But what does this mean mathematically? Suppose you set down the lineal series among which you are following states of aggregation to infinity. The words one after another may be considered as positive. Then what works into the nature of man must be set down as negative. If you consider this series as positive, the effects in the human being have to be made negative. What is meant by positive and negative will be cleared up I think by a lecture to be given by one of our members during the next few days. We have to conceive, however, of what comes before our eyes plainly here in this way that the essential nature of heat, insofar as this belongs to the outer world, must be made negative when we follow it into the human being, and likewise the essentiality of form becomes negative when we follow it into man. Actually then, what lives in man as ideas is related to outside form as negative numbers are to positive numbers and vice versa. Let us say, as credits and debits. What are debits on the one hand are credits on the other and vice versa. What is form in the outside world lives in man in a negative sense. If we say “there in the outside world is some sort of a body of a material nature,” we have to add: “if I think about its form the matter must be negative, in a sense, in my thinking.” How is matter characterized by me as a human being? It is characterized by its pressure effects. If I go from the pressure manifestation of matter to my ideas about form, then the negative of pressure, or suction, must come into the picture. That is, we cannot conceive of man's ideas as material in their nature if we consider materiality as symbolized by pressure. We must think of them as the opposite. We must think of something active in man which is related to matter as the negative is to the positive. We must consider this as symbolized by suction if we think of matter as symbolized by pressure. If we go beyond matter we come to nothing, to empty space. But if we go further still, we come to less-than-nothing, to that which sucks up matter. We go from pressure to suction. Then we have that which manifests in us as thinking.

And when on the other hand you observe the effects of heat, again you go over to the negative when it manifests in us. It moves out of space. It is, if I may extend the picture, sucked up by us. In us it appears as negative. This is how it manifests. Debits remain debits, although they are credits elsewhere. Even though our making external heat negative when it works within us results in reducing it to nothing, that does not alter the matter. Let me ask you again to note: we are obliged by force of the facts to conceive of man not entirely as a material entity, but we must think of something in man which not only is not matter, but is so related to matter as suction is to pressure. Human nature properly conceived must be thought of as containing that which continually sucks up and destroys matter.

Modern physics, you see, has not developed at all this idea of negative matter, related to external matter as a suction is to a pressure. That is unfortunate for modern physics. What we must learn is that the instant we approach an effect manifest in man himself all our formulae must be given another character. Will phenomena have to be given negative values in contrast to heat phenomena; and thought phenomena have to be given negative values as contrasted to the forces concerned in giving form.