The Rudolf Steiner Archive

We have been dealing with the various force currents that shape the human organism and give it form in a manner enabling us to comprehend it. If we really learn to know these formative forces, we must perceive that they could not function otherwise, that our heart, our eyes, inevitably had to become exactly what they are. We have traced the sense image of ourselves back to those super-sensible currents that flow back and forth in different directions, from above downward, from right to left, from the back forward, and so forth. At this point someone may try to catch me out by objecting that while dealing with the currents I had failed to explain a certain significant phenomenon in the human organism, that in addition to the asymmetrical organs (heart, liver, stomach, etc.) there are those that are arranged symmetrically. You might say that my description could at a pinch be accepted if the whole organism were laid out asymmetrically, but not in connection with the symmetrical organs. This objection, however, can be cleared away, too, as follows.

We have learned that the physical and etheric bodies stream from left to right and from right to left respectively, that is, in the plane in which the human being is formed symmetrically. Spiritual science teaches us that the physical body is an ancient entity, stemming from the old Saturn, while the germs of the etheric body, the astral body, and the ego were prepared on the old Sun, the old Moon, and the Earth respectively. In its first appearance on Saturn the physical body was asymmetrical, conditioned by a current corresponding to the one active today from left to right, and the first germ of the etheric body was also asymmetrical, with a current from right to left. Thence development proceeds; the physical body is further formed on the old Sun, the old Moon, and so on. Had this not occurred, the physical body would have remained lopsided, asymmetrical. As it actually happened, however, the further development of the physical body and of the other members continued on the old Moon and on the Earth, during which something occurred that altered the whole previous development and brought about a turnabout, so to speak, a reversal of the direction. If the physical body were to be formed, not into a lopsided but into a symmetrical structure, the Saturn current running from left to right had to be opposed by one running from right to left. How was this brought about? By the separation of the old Sun from the old Moon. The Sun forces, which hitherto had worked on the physical body from within, acted henceforth from without, that is, from the opposite direction. The physical body, as it was constituted up to the time of the old Moon, was then influenced by the Sun from without.

The etheric body experienced a similar transformation. You might ask why it is that this other side of the physical body, the result of Sun forces acting from without, is not much smaller, in a sense stunted, in comparison with the first, the older portion? It is because those beings that left the Moon and passed over with the Sun could develop stronger influences from their new sphere of action, owing precisely to this separation that meant a higher development for them. They had a more difficult task than the Saturn beings, for they had to counteract what was already developed in one direction. This condition obstructed the whole process of formation, so they had to become more powerful if they were to fulfill their task. This, in turn, necessitated their acting from the Sun during the Moon period, whereby their influence was intensified. In this way these younger but more powerful currents—from right to left—balanced the weaker ones—from left to right—and the physical body became a symmetrical structure.

We will now examine more closely some important details of the effects of those force currents, remembering that the sentient body sends its forces into the human organism from the front backward, but that the emanations of the sentient soul run forward from the back. Given the existence of the physical and etheric bodies and the general background, we ask in what manner these forces proceed to build the human organism?

By being dammed up, stopped by the physical body, the backward-flowing currents of the sentient body could now bore into the human organism and build divers organs into what was already there. At the same time the sentient soul works in the organism from the back toward the front. The currents of the sentient body are dammed by the physical organism and bore their way in. In this way they are obstructed by the physical body, so they really had to bore holes, as it were.

In front (cf. sketch) we have the currents of the sentient body boring their way in. They form the sense organs. In the rear the formative forces are active that build the brain over them; this gives us the diagram of the human head seen in profile. The openings represent the eyes, ears, organs of smell, etc., and the brain is superimposed behind and above them. If spiritual science tells the truth, it is clear that the human head could not possibly appear different from the way it actually does. If a human head were ever to come into being at all it would have to look as it does. It does look that way, and that is evidence proffered by the world of outer phenomena itself.

In that connection there is another point to mention. The work of the sentient body proceeds inward, that of the sentient soul outward, or at least, it has that tendency. As a matter of fact, it is obstructed before emerging; it remains in the physical body of the brain and emerges only at those points where previously the sentient body had, so to speak, bored the holes for the sense organs in the front of the physical body. What we find, then, is that a part of our inner life flows outward as sentient soul.

The intellectual soul would not be capable of this. It is completely dammed up within, and no currents come to meet it from the opposite side. That is why human thinking takes place wholly within. Objects don't think for us; they don't show us the thoughts from without, nor bring them to us. That is the great secret of the relation of human thought to the outer world. With our sense organs we can perceive outer objects, and if these organs are healthy they do not err. The mind, on the other hand, which cannot directly contact objects, is the first inner member of the human being that can err, because its activity is completely dammed up within the brain and does not emerge. From this it follows that our thoughts about the outer world cannot be correct without an inner tendency to permit right thoughts to arise within us. What the outer world can give us is correct sense perception but not right thoughts. Thought is subject to error, and the power of right thinking is something we must have within ourselves.

For the thinker this fact alone points to an earlier, prehistoric existence of man. It is incumbent upon him to form right thoughts concerning the wisdom of the outside world, but his thoughts cannot emerge or come in contact with what he perceives. Nevertheless, that wisdom must be within him as well as without; it must permeate him just as it does what surrounds him. The two currents, therefore, belong together, though they are now separated.

At some time, however, they must have been united. That was before the human ego had begun to dam up the currents within us, at a time when it still received the wisdom of the world directly. There was a time when the currents of the mental soul were not held up but flowed out, and that was the time when man directly envisioned the wisdom of the world. What is now relegated to the brain as thinking was once in contact with the outer world, like our sense perception, so that man could look at his thoughts. That was a form of clairvoyance, though not a conscious one irradiated by the ego. Man must have passed through earlier stages in which he possessed a dim clairvoyance, and again it is the human physical organization itself that shows us that in bygone times he was differently constituted.

Something important for practical life follows from the foregoing. In all cases involving the sense world, sense perception (apart from illusions) can be taken as truth, for there the human being is in direct contact with the outer world. But concerning all that is within him, his knowledge is limited to what he acquires by thinking. Now, the separation that exists between our intellectual soul and the objects in space, and that makes it possible for our thinking about those objects to err, does not apply to the ego. When the ego streams into us it is within us, and it is natural that we should have a voice in its activity. The meeting of the intellectual soul and the ego is what produces the purest thinking, the thinking that is directed inward. This form of thinking, having itself as the object, cannot be exposed to error in the same way as can the other kind, which is occupied with outer objects and roves about in an endeavor to form judgments by observing them. The only thing they can yield is sense perception. What we must do is meet them with concepts, as though holding up their mirrored reflection to them. Thinking is herein free from error only in so far as it is attracted to the tendency to truth. Out of a right tendency to truth we must let concepts of things, thoughts about things, rise up in us.

In the first instance we can form a judgment only of such things in the outer world as are encountered by the senses. The senses themselves cannot judge what is beyond their reach; no such judgment can be arrived at from the physical plane. If the intellectual soul nevertheless does just that, unless it be guided by the inner tendency to truth, it must inevitably fall into all sorts of errors.

To clarify these conditions by an illustration, let us turn to the various doctrines of the descent of man. Here we distinguish between two kinds of ancestors. You are familiar with one of them from theosophical research, which tells us of the different forms we passed through in former periods, such as the Lemurian. That is disclosed by spiritual science. We have seen how wonderfully comprehensible everything perceived by the senses becomes when we have made this teaching our very own, and it will reveal more and more.

In contrast, we will now consider material research, the materialistic doctrine of descent, the crux of which is the so-called biogenetic law. According to this, man in his germinal states passes through all forms recalling animal stages, thereby repeating, in a sense, the various forms of the whole animal kingdom. At the time when this doctrine was rampant the conclusion was drawn that man really passed through these forms that thus appear in the germ state. In itself that is not erroneous because in prehistoric times man actually did develop through such forms. Fortunately, as we can say in view of the materialistic doctrine of the descent, the foresight of the gods kept this fact secret until such time as the opinions regarding it could be corrected by spiritual science. The development of man before he became outwardly perceptible on the physical plane could not have been observed. It was shrouded by the gods and withdrawn from observation, otherwise people would have evolved even wilder theories regarding it than they do now. The facts are there, but they are frequently misinterpreted because the senses that speak the truth cannot perceive them. In reasoning, however, the power of the intellectual soul becomes active, and this cannot reach what is imperceptible to the senses. In reality, the facts referred to prove the exact opposite of what people try to infer from them. Here we have a striking example of the way the power of judgment can plunge into a sea of errors when its approach to external matters is purely by way of the mind.

What is shown by the fact that on a certain plane man resembled a fish? Precisely that he never was a fish; indeed, that he had no use for the fish nature, that he had to expel it before entering upon his human existence, because it in no way pertained to him. This he did in turn with all the animal forms, because they were not of his nature. He could not have become a human being if he had ever appeared on earth in one of those animal forms. He had to discard these in order to become what he did. The fact that in the germ the human being resembles a fish is the very proof that never in his whole line of descent was he like a fish or any other animal form. He had to expel all these forms because they were inadequate and he therefore must never resemble them. He had to slough off these forms, eject them. They are images he never resembled. All these forms of germinal life show shapes he never bore. Thus we can find out precisely through embryology how prehistoric man never looked. He cannot be descended from something he had expelled. To infer that he passed through these forms would be the same as to imagine that the father is descended from the son. The father is not descended from the son, nor the son from himself, but the son is descended from the father.

That is one of the cases in which the mind has proved wholly incapable of thinking the facts of reality through to the end. It has exactly reversed the order of development. Certainly these pictures of the remote past are extraordinarily important, because they show us how we never looked. But that is something that can be learned even more readily in another way, namely, through realms that lie open in the sense world, that are not hidden from us. There we have all those forms—fishes and so forth—and they can be properly studied with the ordinary means of human observation. As long as men restricted themselves to observing outer objects with the senses, and did not occupy their minds with matters concealed from sense perception, they avoided arriving at false conclusions; they were rightly guided by their natural sense of truth. They would look, for instance, at a monkey and doubtless experience the queer sensation that every normal human being would have, a certain sense of embarrassment. This judgment expressed through feeling means that the monkey is really a retarded being, having remained behind in the evolution of man. This feeling is nearer the truth than is the later judgment of the erring mind because it embodies the realization that the monkey is a being that dropped out of the human current, that had to be divided off from man if the latter was to achieve his goal. The moment our fallible mind approached this fact it inverted it; instead of realizing that the monkey was eliminated from the evolutionary human current it concluded that the monkey was the starting point of human descent.

Here the error comes to light. In judging external things accessible to the senses we should never forget that they are built up from within, through the agency of spiritual currents. Suppose we are observing those parts of the human being that are accessible to perception proper, or we observe part of another person that the eye can see—his face, for example. In studying this face we must not imagine it as having been built up from without. On the contrary, we must realize the need to distinguish between two currents flowing into each other, the current of the sentient body running backward from the front, and that of the sentient soul running forward from the rear. In so far as we perceive the human countenance by means of the senses, the sense image is true. That is given us by sense perception and we will not go astray there. But now the human mind joins in, at first subconsciously, and is at once misled. It regards the human countenance as something merely fashioned from without, whereas in reality, this fashioning occurred from within, through the agency of the sentient soul. What you see is not really outer body; it is the outer image of the sentient soul.

Disabuse your mind of the notion that the human face might be outer body, and you will see that in truth, it is the image of the soul. A fundamentally false interpretation results from reasoning in a way that ignores the true nature of the countenance as being the outer image of the sentient soul acting outward. Every explanation of the human countenance based solely on physical forces is wrong. It must be explained through the soul itself, the visible through the invisible. The deeper we penetrate into theosophy the more we will see in it a great school for learning to think. The chaotic thinking that today dominates all circles, particularly science, finds no shelter in theosophy, which is therefore able to interpret life correctly.

This ability to interpret phenomena correctly will further stand us in good stead when, in the course of our investigations, we come to phenomena that lead us out of the region of individual anthroposophy into the realm of the anthroposophy that concerns the whole of mankind.

Returning once more to the sense of sound and the sense of visualization, let us ask ourselves which of these came into being first in the course of human development? Did man learn first to understand words or to perceive and understand the conceptions that came to him? This question can be answered by observing the child, who first learns to talk and only later to perceive thoughts. Speech is the premise of thought perception because the sense of sound is the premise of the sense of visualization. The child learns to talk because he can hear, can listen to something that the sense of sound perceives. Speech itself is at first mere imitation, and the child imitates long before he has any idea of visualization whatever. First the sense of sound develops, and then, by means of this, the sense of visualization. The sense of sound is the instrumentality for perceiving not only tones but also what we call sounds.

The next question is how it came about that at one time in the course of his development man achieved the ability to perceive sounds and, as a result, to acquire speech? How was he endowed with speech? If he was to learn to speak, not just to hear, it was necessary not only that an outer perception should penetrate, but that a certain current within him should flow in the same direction as that taken by the currents of the sentient soul when they press forward from the rear. It had to be something acting in the same direction. That was the way in which speech had to originate, and this faculty had to appear before the sense of visualization, before man was able to sense the conception contained in the words themselves. Men had first to learn to utter sounds and to live in the consciousness of them before they could combine conceptions with them. What at first permeated the sounds they uttered was sentience.

This development had to take place at a time when the transposition of the circulatory system had already occurred, for animals cannot speak. The ego had to be acting downward from above with the blood system in a vertical position. As yet, however, man had no sense of visualization, consequently no visualizations. It follows that he could not have acquired speech through the agency of his own ego, but rather, he received it from another ego that we can compare with the group ego of animals. In this sense speech is a gift of the gods. It was infused into the ego before the latter itself was capable of developing it. The human ego did not yet possess the organs needed to give the impulse for bringing about speech, but the group ego worked from above into the physical, etheric and astral bodies, and as it encountered an opposing current, a sort of whorl came into being at the point of contact. A straight line drawn through the center of the larynx would indicate the direction of the current employed by the speech-giving spirits, and the larynx itself represents the physical substance, the dam, that resulted from the encounter of the two currents. That accounts for the peculiar shape of the human larynx.

It was under the influence, then, of a group soul that man had to develop speech. In what manner do group souls operate on earth? In animals the current of the group soul passes through the spinal cord horizontally, and these force currents are in continual motion. The force currents running downward from above move constantly around the earth, as they did around the old Moon. They don't remain in one spot but move around the earth retaining their vertical direction of influence. If men were to learn to speak under the influence of a group soul, they could not remain in one place, they had to migrate. They had to move toward the group soul. Never could they have learned to speak if they had remained in one spot.

What direction, then, would men have to take if they were to learn to speak? We know that the etheric currents flow from right to left and the physical ones from left to right, and this is the case not only in man but on the earth as well. Now, where are the group souls that endow man with speech? Let us look at the earth in its peculiar development. Man learned to speak at a time when his outer structure was already complete. Strong currents were therefore needed because the larynx had first to be transformed from a soft substance that in no way resembled a larynx. This called for special conditions on earth. Suppose we stand facing east. There flow in us from left to right the currents connected with the formation of the physical body. This current exists outside us as well; it was present during the formation of the earth. Running from north to south are those strong currents that produce solid physical matter. From the other direction, from the south, flow the etheric currents that lack the tendency to solidify the earth. This explains the lopsidedness, the lack of symmetry on the earth. In the northern hemisphere we find the great continents, in the southern, the vast oceans; the tendency of the earth was asymmetrical.

From the south the current acts that is of the same nature as the one that runs from right to left in man, but while the current from back to front streams outward, the one from front to back originates in the sentient body and enters the sentient soul. With all this in mind we understand why the attainment of speech called for a current passing outward from within; this current had to encounter a group soul current in order that the two could be dammed up in man's own organism. Man had to move toward a current that could act upon his astral element. He could therefore go neither toward the north nor toward the south, but had to take a direction at right angles to these. It was latitudinally that man had to proceed when he was acquiring speech, that is, from east to west. At that time he inhabited ancient Lemuria, where today we have the ocean lying between Asia and Africa. Thence, in order to learn to speak, he migrated westward into old Atlantis, to meet the group soul that was to engender speech in him. There he had to develop the organism suitable for speech, and thus it was in old Atlantis that he learned to speak.

The next step was to develop the sense of visualization by means of the speech man had acquired, but in order to do this he could not continue in the same direction. He had to proceed in a way that would cause the same current to act from the opposite direction. Recall here what was said in the last lecture concerning the origin of sound and of visualization. Sound comes into being when we subconsciously convert a melody into a harmony, ignore the fundamentals themselves, and mentally hear only the harmony produced by the harmonics (overtones); visualization arises when we push back and disregard this harmony of the harmonics as well. So, if we are to develop the sense of visualization, we must destroy on the one hand what we had built up on the other. We must face about and proceed in the opposite direction. One element of speech has to be suppressed, the harmonics must be pushed back, if we are to develop visualization. The old Atlanteans had to face about and migrate eastward; by doing this they were able effectively to develop the sense of visualization. This could not have been accomplished if they had continued westward. It was the tragic fate of the American aborigines to migrate in the wrong direction. They could not hold their ground, but had to yield to those who had migrated properly and returned to them only later.

In this way a great deal becomes clear. When we know the secret of those currents that fashion man and the earth we can understand the organization of the earth, the distribution of oceans and continents, the migrations of men. Anthroposophy leads us into that life through which the outer world becomes transparent and comprehensible.

Evolution proceeds. Humanity was not destined to stop at visualizations but to achieve concepts as well, and in order to accomplish this it had to ascend from mere visualizations to the soul life proper. After the sense of visualization, the sense of concepts had to be developed, and again a new direction had to be taken. In order to gain the life of visualizations, humanity—or as much of it as comes into consideration—moved eastward, but pure concepts could be acquired only by returning in a westward direction. We could similarly present the migrations of peoples in the four post-Atlantean periods from an anthroposophical viewpoint, and you would see a wondrous interplay of spiritual forces at work upon the whole shaping of man, and of what comes to expression in forming the earth.

But this is not the end. We have dealt with the currents running downward from above, forward from the rear, etc., but in a sense we now appear to have reached a dead end. Spiritual science, however, discloses higher forces holding sway above the capacity for visualization and forming concepts, that is, the imaginative, the inspirative, and the intuitive senses. We have learned that as a rule these stream inward, but in clairvoyants, outward. All these currents must operate too, and for that purpose must develop the necessary organs. So we ask how they do this? How do they live and operate in the physical human being?

In order to answer this question we will first consider a force possessed only by the human being, not by animals: the inner soul force of memory. Animal memory is a pure figment of the scientists' imagination. Animals have no memory; they merely manifest symptoms to be explained by the same principle as those of human memory. In order to produce human memory, the main position of animals would have to be raised to the vertical, so that the ego could stream in. Since their principal position is horizontal, they can have no ego. But in certain animals the forward part of the body is in the same position as that of the human being, hence it can act intelligently, although this intelligence is not permeated by an ego.

This is the beginning of a vast region of misconceptions. When an animal manifests a capacity similar to that of memory and acts intelligently, nothing more is proved by these facts than that a being can be guided by an intelligence without being intelligent itself. Phenomena resembling memory can appear in the animal world, but not memory itself.

In memory we see something special, something quite different from what we find in mere intelligent thinking, for example, or in visualization. The essence of memory lies in the retention of a visualization we have had; it is still present after the act of perception has passed. The repetition of an action previously performed is not memory. A clock would in that case be endowed with memory, for it does today exactly what it did yesterday. If memory is to come about, the ego must seize a conception and retain it.

If the ego is to seize a conception in this way, an organ must be formed for the purpose, and this is accomplished as follows. Out of its own essence the ego must engender special currents and must pour and bore these into the various horizontal currents already active minus the ego. The ego must overcome currents. When a current appears running inward from without, the ego must be able to produce within itself a counter-current.

That the ego was originally not capable of this we learned when studying the origin of speech; then the group ego had to co-operate. But when the soul life proper commences, beyond visualization, when a higher faculty such as memory is to be developed, the ego must activate new currents independently, currents that bore into others already there. Of this process the ego is clearly aware. In developing the senses up to and including visualization, this activity of the ego is not required, but when a higher activity is to be brought about, the ego must oppose the currents already functioning. This becomes manifest through the addition of a fourth phenomenon to the three currents at right angles to each other in space. This boring in of the ego becomes perceptible in the consciousness of time, and that is why memory is linked with temporal conceptions. We do not follow time in any spatial direction, but into the past. The direction of the past is bored into the directions of space. That is what occurs in all that the ego develops out of itself. Through spiritual science we can even indicate the current that comes into play when the ego evolves memory. It runs from left to right, and when habits are developed by the ego, the currents run from left to right as well. The ego bores its way into the opposing currents, those that were formed without the ego. Here the law is exemplified that tells us that the higher activities of the soul always have currents running in the opposite direction from that of the next lower activity.

To gain inner contact with the ego, the intellectual soul had to develop up to the ego plane. Now we ascend to the consciousness soul. When this functions consciously its active current runs in the opposite direction from that of the intellectual soul, which is still able to function subconsciously. Under certain earthly conditions the following law in human evolution can be proved. Learning to read is an intelligent activity, but one that does not necessarily proceed from the consciousness soul. The idea of learning to read and write occurred to men before the consciousness soul was developed. Reading by means of the intellectual soul had its inception in the Greco-Latin epoch. Then followed the ascendancy of the consciousness soul, and the direction of the current had to be reversed. Arithmetic could only develop with the consciousness soul. The European peoples read and write from left to right, but they figure from right to left, as in adding. It will be seen from this how the currents of the intellectual soul and of the consciousness soul overlap, and we can actually understand the nature of the European peoples by pondering the matter.

But there have been other peoples with other missions. They were advance guards, so to speak, and their task was to develop, or at least prepare, the feature of the intellectual soul that the European peoples, who had postponed their cultural development, did not evolve until after the consciousness soul had become active. Those were the Semitic peoples, who write from right to left. They were the peoples who were to prepare in advance the later period of the consciousness soul.

In such considerations we find the means for comprehending all cultural phenomena on earth. We shall learn to know everything of that sort, down to the letter formations of the various languages. The reason why peoples write from top to bottom, from right to left or from left to right follows from an understanding of the underlying spiritual facts. It is the mission of spiritual science to see that light dawns in the minds of men, and that the obscure becomes clear.

When the physical body is discussed most people have a very unclear, confused idea of what it actually is. In point of fact what we have before us is not just the physical body but a combination of the physical body with higher forces. A piece of rock crystal is also physical but in its very nature this is something quite different from the human eye or heart, which are also physical. The eye and heart are parts of the physical body, but they are intermixed with man's higher members and through this, something is brought about which is completely different from other aspects of the physical. In water we find oxygen and hydrogen but they look quite different from when we see them separated. Then we are aware of their difference. In water we have before us a mixture of both. What meets us in the physical body of man is also a mixture comprised of the physical, etheric and astral bodies.

The physical human eye is similar to a camera, for, as with the camera, there appears within it a picture of the surrounding world. Only when one abstracts from the physical eye everything that is not to be found in the camera, does one discover what is the specific nature of the physical eye. So too one must abstract from the entire physical body everything that is not purely physical: only then does one have what in occultism is called the physical body. In itself it can neither live, think nor feel. There then remains a very wisely ordered, extremely complicated automaton, a purely physical apparatus. This, alone, was all there was of human existence at the Old Saturn stage. At that time the eyes were present only as little cameras. What was produced as [a] picture of the surrounding world came to the consciousness of a Deva being. In the middle of the Saturn evolution the so-called Asuras (the Archai) were sufficiently advanced to make use of the apparatus. At that time they were at the human stage. They made use of the automata and the pictures they produced. The Asuras themselves were not within the apparatus but outside and only made use of the pictures as we make use of photographic apparatus in order to take pictures of a landscape. Thus the physical body of man was at that time an architectural structure of a physical apparatus operated from outside. This is the first stage of human existence.

The second stage of development was the permeation of this physical apparatus with the etheric body. It then became a living organism. That also found expression in the configuration of the body. The automaton was built up out of a fairly firm undifferentiated mass, similar to what today is a jelly-like substance, like a soft crystal.⁴⁰ In the second Round of evolution in the Old Sun existence, the physical automaton was imbued with the etheric body. In this Round the solar plexus developed. It is so called because still today only rudiments of the organ are present. It fashions a nervous system into the physical apparatus. In the case of the plant something similar is present. That is the second stage.

But these stages are not final; evolution gradually progresses. Even today the solar plexus is an active agent in certain animals which have not developed a spinal cord. All invertebrate animals are single forms from left behind stages of what was laid down earlier. It was only on the Earth that man cast out from himself the vertebrate animals. In earlier times his organism was still somewhat similar to that of the crab at the present day. Man has progressed beyond that earlier stage whereas the crab has remained stationary. It is an astonishing fact that the whole inner formation of the crab has a certain similarity to the human brain. There is actually a similarity between the internal formation of the crab and the human brain. Like the human brain the crab too is enclosed in a hard shell. After man had developed a spine and had metamorphosed the upper vertebrae, he cast off the hard shell. The crab has not developed further. It has adapted itself to its environment by means of a hard shell that it had to have and which serves the same purpose as does the protective covering of the whole body in man.

The third stage is that in which the whole is transformed by the astral body working within it. This organic transformation is connected with the development of the heart and the circulation of the blood. The heart of the fish has remained stationary at a halfway stage.⁴¹ The development of the heart is proportionate to the degree in which there is an increase in the inner warmth of the body; this signifies nothing other than a drawing of the astral into the body.

The spinal cord with the brain is the organ of the ego. This is surrounded by the threefold protective sheath of the astral, etheric and physical bodies. After the organ of the ego (spinal cord and brain) had been prepared, the ego laid itself in the bed made ready for it, and spinal cord and brain appear as organs in the service of the ego.

The four-fold man is put together in this way. It is the Pythagorean square.

1. The spinal cord and brain are the organ of the ego.
2. The warm blood and the heart are the organ of Kama (astral body).
3. The Solar plexus is the organ of the etheric body.
4. The actual physical body is the complicated physical apparatus.

Thus has the four-fold being of man been constructed.

In occultism what we have now described is again called a spiral (Wirbel), something that builds from outside inwards and unites with what builds up from within. Physical body, etheric and astral bodies have built up the human being. Then the ego makes itself felt and this builds from within outwards. These are the four constituents of man. Here we find in the outer an imprint of the four-fold man. All further development is of such a nature that the human being, starting from this point of the ego, consciously experiences what previously he went through unconsciously.

Today, in order to realise that this is so, one must in the first place investigate what took place when our ego was being developed. In order to do this we must, as it were, take up our position under a certain organ. This is most aptly expressed in the Buddha legend. It says in the legend that Buddha remained seated under the Bodhi tree until he attained illumination in order to rise to higher stages, to Nirvana. For this Buddha had to place himself under the brain, under the organ of consciousness. That means the paths he had previously traversed unconsciously he had to traverse again consciously. Under the large brain there lies, more towards the back of the head, the small, tree shaped brain (the cerebellum). Under this brain Buddha placed himself. The cerebellum is the Bodhi tree. This shows how what is said in such profound legends is actually taken from human evolution.

Everything that is now known only by means of anatomy was at that time known in quite another way. The occult investigator made his researches with the help of the Kundalini light. The pupil was prepared for this in the following way. He came to a Master. If the latter found him trustworthy he received as instruction, not actually a teaching—today it has become different, today man must find his way by means of intellect and concepts—but the Master spoke somewhat as follows: ‘Every day for about six weeks you must spend several hours in meditation and give yourself up to some sentence of eternal value, completely sinking yourself into it.’ At present man cannot do this because life in modern civilisation makes too many demands on him. At that time the pupil meditated six to ten hours daily. He cannot do this nowadays without withdrawing from the whole life around him. At that time however the pupil required hardly any time for external needs. He found his nourishment in outer nature. He therefore made use of his time for meditation, perhaps uninterruptedly for ten hours. By this means he very soon progressed so far that he brought his body, which at that time was less dense, into such a condition that the Kundalini light was awakened within him. This is for the inner being what sunlight is for the outer world. Actually we do not see external objects, but reflected sunlight. The moment when, with the help of the Kundalini light, we can illuminate the soul, it becomes as visible as an object shone upon by the sun. So for the yoga pupil the whole inner body gradually became illuminated. All ancient anatomies were seen from within, through inner illumination. Thus the (Indian) monks, who clothed their experiences in legends, spoke of what they had perceived through the Kundalini light.

Now we must ask ourselves how the different parts of the human body are worked upon. In regard to what belongs to the brain and spinal cord, man first works consciously on the physical plane through the human ego [Gap in the text ...] He has at present no influence on anything else. He has for instance no influence on the circulation of the blood. Such things are developed by degrees. Here other beings co-operate, Deva beings, so that all creatures having a blood circulation are dependent on Deva forces for its regulation. The astral body is permeated and worked upon by different Deva forces. The lowest work on the astral body. Higher forces work on the etheric body and still higher Devas on the physical body, the most perfected body possessed by man. The astral body is strikingly less perfect than the physical body. The physical heart is indeed very clever; the stupid one is the astral body, that directs into the heart all kinds of heart poisons. The most perfect part of man is the physical body, less perfect is the etheric body and still less perfect is the astral body. What is only in its beginnings, the ‘baby’ in man, is the ego Organisation. This is the four-fold man, which contains the ego as the temple contains the statue of a god.

The whole development of human culture is nothing other than the working of the ego into the astral body, the education of the astral body. Man enters into life filled with desires, impulses and passions. In so far as he masters these impulses, desires and passions, he is working his ego into the astral body. When the Sixth Root-race, the Sixth Epoch, has reached its conclusion, the ego will have completely worked into the astral body. Until then the astral body will continue to be dependent on the support of the Deva forces. As long as the ego has not permeated the entire astral body, so long must the Deva forces support the work.

The second stage of development, which follows that of the cultural, is the development of the esoteric pupil. He works the ego into the etheric body. Through this the Deva forces are gradually released by the work of his own ego. Then he also gradually begins to see into himself.

We can now ask: what is the significance of the astral body, for what purpose does man have an astral body? It is to give him the possibility, by way of his desires, to do what otherwise he would not have done, and to betake himself to the physical plane. For before man can acquire objective knowledge on the physical plane he must direct to it his wishes and desires. Without these he would have been unable to develop an objective observation of the world or a sense of duty and morality. Only after a gradual transformation of his desires can these be changed into duties and ideals. Man can only pursue this path by means of the driving, organising power of the astral body.

The etheric body is the bearer of thoughts. What is thought within man, is etheric outside, just as what is desire within him, is astral outside. But it is only when pure thinking begins that etheric substance is radiated into the astral impulses. As long as thinking is not yet pure thinking we have astral substance surrounding the etheric form. So thought-forms, as they are called, are made out of a kernel of etheric substance surrounded by astral substance. Along the paths of the nerves stream the so-called abstract thoughts, which however are in reality the most concrete, for they are etheric forces. As soon as man even begins to think, he is already working the ego into his etheric body. When a man dies it becomes clear that the physical body has nothing to do with the ego. Every connection between the physical body and the ego is broken off after death. Previously this connection took place indirectly through the other bodies. When these are no longer there the corpse has no further relation to the ego. Then the outer Deva forces receive it and it is again absorbed into the physical environment. The word ‘verwesen’ (decay) does not mean only a passing away, but a return to the ‘Wesen’ (being) out of which the body came forth. This is what may be said in respect of the physical body. The Dutch word ‘Lichaam’ does not mean ‘Leichnam’ (corpse) but the physical body which has to be carried about.

The etheric body is to a great extent in a similar situation to the physical body. It is taken up in the same way by the Devas and then again dissolved into general circulation. But there remains from the etheric body what the human being himself has worked into it and this does not dissolve. It is this which later, at the time of reincarnation, forms a central point, around which what is to be added is crystallised. This small part of the etheric body remains present in the case of everyone. In the same way there remains from the astral body as much as the human being has worked into it. Only during the last third of the Sixth Root-Race will the entire astral body be retained by all people of normal development.

Thus development begins by man's working consciously on his astral body. The task of the Chela, the occult pupil, consists further in the transformation of his etheric body. The stage of chelahood is completed when after death the entire etheric body remains intact. The sojourn in Devachan is necessary in order to make possible a renewal of the forces of the etheric body. The small portion of the etheric body which to begin with man carries into Devachan can grow into the complete etheric body, because the necessary conditions are created there.

This makes comprehensible the varying length of the sojourn in Devachan. When the human being stands at the beginning of his development and has transformed but very little of his etheric body he can only remain in Devachan for quite a short time. The part of the etheric body that is lacking must be replaced for him by the external Devas. When he develops further he sojourns for a progressively longer time in Devachan; thus the time that he spends there increases in proportion to his own development. People, however, who are more advanced sometimes reincarnate earlier for other reasons, for instance, because they are needed in the world.

When the Chela dies, the entire etheric body is present. Thus at this stage the Chela can renounce Devachan because the etheric body has been completely worked through. Then, after quite a short time, re-birth takes place. He waits at first in the astral world, as in a place of transition, until he receives a definite mission from his Master. Then he can again take possession of his etheric body in order to reincarnate once more.

Until this stage is reached a duality is necessary for evolution, i.e. that which man is unable to develop inwardly for himself is built into him from outside. Help must be brought to him from without. Thus in Devachan the etheric body is once more made complete by external Deva powers. The Physical Plane and Devachan are polar opposites. Between them lies Kamaloka, a place of transition, a transitional stage, an intermediary condition that causes the human being to be connected with what he has worked into his astral body. The astral body leads man on to the Physical Plane, where he directs his attention outwards. Here desires are cultivated by contact with external things. When a person dies his craving for outer objects does not immediately cease, although he no longer has organs bringing him into connection with them. The desire remains but the organs are lacking. In Kamaloka he must break himself from this longing for the outer-world. Kamaloka does not actually belong to normal development; it is only a stage where habits must be relinquished. It is because man can no longer satisfy his wishes, because he no longer has organs for the physical world, that Kamaloka comes about.

When someone commits suicide he has identified his ego with the physical body. For this reason the longing for the physical body is all the more intense. It seems to him that he is like a hollow tree, like someone who has lost his ego. He then has a continual thirst for himself.

When a man is put to death by violence he is in a similar situation. In the case of someone who meets a violent death he continues seeking for his physical body until the time when he would otherwise have died. This seeking can bring about harmful reactions. In such a case it can happen that a man who meets his end by violence is filled with a terrible rage against those who have caused his death. Then in the murdered man the blow is changed into a counter blow. Thus from the astral world, the souls of Russians executed for political reasons fought against their own countrymen on the side of the Japanese. This happened in the Russo-Japanese war; it is however not a general rule.

• 40. In Marie Steiner's notes: ‘formed out of an undifferentiated gelatinous mass like a mineral protoplasm’.
• 41. Fish have a heart with two compartments consisting of atrium and ventricle.

I said yesterday that we would study the human being regarding his connection with his super-sensible nature in order to direct our attention today from this viewpoint to pathological and therapeutic phenomena. Yesterday we described the physical body in such a way that we concluded that a truly physical activity in the human being is present only in the head. If we study the physical body properly, then we will naturally have to ascend to where we can also study the etheric body properly and concretely. For if one looks deeply into the human being, one finds that an isolated activity of the physical body is present only in the head. In the rest of the members of the human organism, there rs a more undifferentiated interaction of the physical body with the higher, with the super-sensible members of man's being.

The super-sensible members are able to function as such in the head through thinking, feeling, and willing, because they first leave their imprints—that is, the etheric, astral, and ego imprints. These are present as imprints, as pictures, you could say, of the super-sensible members. The physical body alone has as yet no imprint in the head; it only creates one for itself during a lifetime. Hence its effect in the head is purely physical. In the other members within human nature there is no purely physical activity.

Now some of you did not understand when I said yesterday, “The ego creates an imprint.” This statement can be understood properly only if not interpreted too physically, in the ordinary sense. Certainly the imprint created by the ego when it alone remains free—as in the metabolic-limb man—cannot be investigated by comparing it to a plaster cast. The imprint created by the ego is a very mobile one. You can study it better when you walk than when you stand still. The imprint created by the ego is an imprint in a system of forces manifested in walking and in holding oneself erect. The physical imprint of the ego is in all this. You therefore should not look for the ego's imprint in something that can be compared with a fixed image; rather we have to do here with an imprint in a system of forces.

This is ultimately true also in the human head, but there the system of forces is a different one. I pointed out yesterday that the ego imprints itself in the warmth conditions of the head. It does this in accordance with the way the head is differentiated and permeated by warmth in its various organs. This imprint of the ego is also an imprint in a system of forces, only, in this case, in a system of warmth forces. Thus the ego creates its imprints in the most varied ways. Where it remains free from the cooperation of other activities in the human organism, it creates a pure imprint, you could even say a mechanical imprint of forces. Thus in relation to the metabolic-limb man, the ego creates an imprint in a system of balancing and dynamic forces. One must bear this in mind, for the human being is really a different being depending on whether he is standing, walking, or even swimming.

Unfortunately, not nearly enough attention is paid to this. There is a great deal that, from the viewpoint of spiritual science, receives too little attention. It is usually modern science's evasions regarding these matters that show us very plainly where it encounters facts it cannot interpret. Just to offer an example, I will present an issue that will be addressed in the course of our lectures. I have looked into a bit of the relevant literature regarding this point, and almost everywhere it is stated that the amount of nitrogen inhaled does not differ appreciably from the amount exhaled. You can find this assertion almost everywhere, but numerical data demonstrate that actually more nitrogen is exhaled than inhaled. Materialism can make nothing of this difference and therefore ignores it. It wipes it out with a single gesture. Such things often occur in modern scientific efforts. As I said, today I will simply pose this issue, and return to it later.

Now I wish to deal with man's etheric body. It is, of course, quite natural that this etheric body is not studied in its differentiations by a merely physical science. However, if you have the conviction that this etheric body exists, you will have to ask, “What would it be like if one studied the physical body in such a way that the stomach, heart, liver, etc., were all regarded as merging into one another?” Yet this is how the etheric body is regarded when it is presented as a generality, as a slightly differentiated misty cloud. It must really be studied, and we will see today that a conception to which we were introduced in the last course from a different viewpoint is essential for this study. Today, however, we will speak of this from a more spiritual scientific viewpoint.

If we study the ether in general (of which the human etheric body is a part, being a specially differentiated portion of it), we find that it is not undifferentiated but that it arises out of four kinds of ether: warmth ether, light ether, chemical ether, and life ether. Light ether is a term that is formed, of course, from the standpoint of one who sees. For those who see, the aspect of this ether that is connected with light is its pre-eminent effect, but there are other effects that we leave out of account because the majority of human beings can see. If the majority of humanity were blind, this ether would naturally be given a different name, because other aspects of it would manifest more strongly to the blind.

The chemical ether works chiefly in the so-called chemical part of the spectrum, and when we speak of the chemical ether, we must not think of the forces working in chemical syntheses but of forces that are their polar opposite inwardly. The etheric forces are always diametrically opposed to the forces working in physical substances. Thus when a chemical synthesis takes place, the etheric forces work analytically. Analytic forces are present everywhere within the synthetic forces. And when we conduct a chemical analysis, a spiritual scientist must consider the matter in this way. Let us say we are breaking down a substance chemically (I will sketch this for you). The etheric body remains behind, denser than before, for the etheric forces are working synthetically, just as when the soul-spiritual aspect remains behind when a person dies. One who conducts a chemical analysis with his spiritual eye perceives a spectre of the chemical substance that remains behind in a thickened, more condensed form after the substances have separated. I mention this only to point out to you that when you consider the forces of chemical ether, you do not merely have to do with chemical forces, the synthetic and analytic forces, but always with their polar opposition.

Finally there is the life ether, a special kind of ether that is really the life-giving element in all organic beings.

Life ether
Chemical ether

Light ether
Warmth ether

This ether is an entity present everywhere in the universe and not, of course, directly accessible as such to physical perception. In this respect scientists have become more honest today than formerly, because they see that one cannot build up theories about ether from merely physical observations. They have since come to say, on the basis of relativity, that there is no ether, that the world must be explained without ether. This means that they became honest, and agreed with Einstein that the ether cannot be reached by physical observations, but they also assumed that this is impossible through other methods of study. Because ether has been lost to perception, they have simply tossed it out.

We must understand that when something super-sensible has made an imprint in the physical, sense-perceptible world, what appears there as imprint becomes permeable to the super-sensible element concerned. Thus you see the ether, the universal ether, creates its imprint in the watery element of the human head. This watery content of the brain must not be regarded as undifferentiated water, because inwardly it is just as thoroughly organized as solid bodies are. To regard the human in the same way as we draw him is really a most peculiar way of studying the human being. If we draw him with the liver and stomach, this drawing reveals only a silhouette of what is woven into the fluid and gaseous elements as solid element; we are actually drawing only what is in there as little granules and that is not quite ten percent of the whole human body. In reality, of course, the human being is just as much a water-, air- and warmth-organization, if we are studying him physically. The water—and by this I mean the fluid element—is just as organized in the human being as the solid. But we never draw this aspect when we make anatomical or physiological sketches. This watery content of the human being is, as substance, in a constant state of dissolution and renewal. It can be grasped in its form, so to speak, only in a moment, but it does nevertheless have a form.

In this watery part of the human head we find the imprint of the etheric. Thus, if I draw it schematically, I have to represent the physical activity that is specially developed at the back of the head like this (see drawing, light hatching). Of course, this element streams through the whole organism. The remaining portion would represent what is watery (yellow). This is thoroughly oranized so that it is an imprint of the etheric nature.

The imprint is always permeable in this way. The eye is permeable to light because, studied in its essential nature, it is a creation of the light in Goethe's sense. That the eye was born from the light is not only a picture but a deep wisdom. Indeed, we can study embryologically how the eyes are organized within from outside, and it is because they are organized by the light that they are permeable to it. It is due to its watery organization that the human head is, in its entirety, permeable to the etheric, because it is an imprint from out of the ether.

Thus we can say that here the etheric can pass through the head (see drawing, red arrow) without being stopped or disturbed in its passage in any way and can penetrate into the rest of the human
organism.

This can certainly be observed by the methods of spiritual science, but we must modify it a little. That is to say, this part of the human head is permeable only to warmth and light ether. Thus only the warmth ether and the light ether can work on the human head from outside. The warmth ether acts on the human head not through direct radiation of heat but because we are in a region with a particular climate. We cannot determine the effect of the warmth ether on the human head by asking whether a person sweats or not. Its effect depends on whether an individual lives in the equatorial zone, the temperate zone, or the frigid zone. The connection between the warmth ether and the human head thus goes much deeper than the outer connections due merely to exposure to outside warmth radiations.

The influence of the light ether on the human organism must be regarded in a similar way, in so far as we confine ourselves to physiology (considered from the psychological viewpoint it would be different, but we won't go into that now). The influence of the light ether, however, is much more penetrating than that of mere light, so that its effect penetrates through the etheric imprint in the human head and organizes the entire human being.

As I have said, then, the organization of the human head is permeable only to warmth and light ether. This is only approximately true, however. The human head is somewhat permeable to chemical ether and life ether also, but we can ignore that here because the result is nevertheless that both ethers are repelled by the human head organization. They are repelled; but as a result, they permeate the human organism. Simply because the human being lives on the earth as a human being, he is is inwardly filled with life and chemical ether.

The effect of the warmth and light ethers radiates in from all sides (see drawing, downward arrows). The effect of the chemical and life ethers radiates up through the metabolic-limb system toward the instreaming warmth and light ethers (upward arrows). Just as man's head is scrupulously organized so that as far as possible only traces of the chemical and life ethers are allowed to enter, so the metabolic-limb organism sucks in the life ether and chemical ether from the earth element.

These two kinds of ethers meet in the human being, and he is organized in such a way that his organization is a regulated process of keeping them apart: on the one hand life ether and chemical ether, streaming from below upward, and on the other hand warmth ether and light ether, streaming from above downward.

It is an aspect of the human organism that light and warmth ether may not enter organically into the lower organization except by streaming in from above. In the same way the other element may stream in only from below. Thus light and warmth ether must stream in from outside, life and chemical ether from below. These two streams are brought into cooperation in the human being by means of his organization, and their cooperation must be absolutely maintained if he is to remain in a normal condition.

We can reach an understanding of this cooperation if we try to observe clearly undernourished individuals. If we study such individuals carefully, we receive an impression, an imaginative impression. We can easily rise to this once our attention has been drawn, ever so slightly, to the fact that there is such a thing as imaginative knowledge. Nothing calls forth imaginations so easily as the contemplation of pathological conditions in human beings.

On looking at an undernourished individual, we see that his metabolic organization—and therefore what takes place in metabolism—binds the ether. It does not release the ether. Let us say you are observing the stomach or liver of an undernourished person. You will find that they retain the life and chemical ethers; they bind them rather than releasing them. Thus there is a deficient upward current of life and chemical ether in the undernourished individual. Hence the light and warmth ethers press down from above, and, in consequence, the organism takes on a character similar to that previously produced by the light and warmth ether in the head. These transform the entire organism, causing it to resemble the head organization too strongly. The human being becomes almost entirely head through being undernourished. He metamorphoses into a head man, and this is what is especially significant in the study of undernourishment.

Let us now study a person suffering from the opposite condition. We only encounter these conditions under special circumstances, and one must be able to observe them in the right way. You will naturally ask, “What is the opposite of undernourishment?” For the spiritual investigator, the opposite of undernourishment is in one case what is called softening of the brain. Just as undernourishment is due to the human being becoming permeated by what should properly be only in the head, by what should remain only in the upper organism, so, in softening of the brain, the head is permeated by forces that should only be in the abdomen, by something that does not belong in the brain but only in the abdomen, exercising its organizing activity only there. What the organism receives in the process of digestion is worked through too quickly, so that it is not sufficiently restrained before it passes through the gate by which it enters the head. Moreover, because too much is poured into the head, too much is eaten. We can also study these processes in their later stages. This is what is significant, to be able to make a mental picture of the consequences in those realms about which we are now speaking.

What happens when these processes, which are quite normal in origin—processes like eating, digesting, working through the food in the abdomen, passing it on to the head, etc.—continue beyond the limit normally set by man's organization. In the undernourished person, because of the irregularity arising below, and in the over-nourished person, because of the irregularity above, there results an abnormal cooperation between the two kinds of ether. The ethers do not cooperate as they are supposed to in the human organism. And we get the following results when the ether acting from outside cooperates in the wrong way with the ether streaming upward from within. Every ether that works from outside and does not stop at the right place but permeates the human more strongly than it should is poison for the organism; it has a poisonous effect. Thus we can say that if the ether is not held up at the right place, it is poisonous for the human organization. It must encounter the ether streaming up from within in the right way.

Again, if we look at the other kind of ether that works from within, we find that its excessive action has an overall softening effect on the human being. While in the opposite case the poisonous effect makes the human being etherically rigid, this other effect makes him dissolve. Too much life is poured out over him, and too much of the chemical pole. He cannot subsist, and he grows soft. These are two polar effects: the poisonous effect and the softening effect.

If you regard the human being in this way, you are led to ask, “What is a human being really?” In so far as he is physical, he is an organic being who keeps apart, in the proper way, the two kinds of ether and lets them cooperate in the right way. The entire human organization is constituted so as to allow the two kinds of ether to cooperate in the right way.

We are now able to understand better my statement that the human being is thoroughly organized. Indeed, it is obvious that he is inwardly differentiated—which is to say, organized—with respect to water, to air, and to warmth. He is also differentiated with regard to the ethers, but this differentiation is a fluctuating one. It is a continual occurrence, a continual interplay between light and warmth ethers on the one hand, pressing centripetally from above downward, and life and chemical ethers on the other hand, pressing centrifugally from below upward. By this means the etheric configuration of the human being is formed. It is actually a transformation of the vortex formed by the mutual impact of these two kinds of ether. The shape that you encounter must be understood then, as a cooperation between these two kinds of ether.

In order to form mental pictures of the human being in health and illness, it is quite important to begin from the less noticeable processes such as under- and over-nourishment. I am referring to organic over-nourishment, because a person does not become over-nourished merely because he stuffs himself daily. An individual who has an unusually good digestion requires much less in order to be over-nourished than if he had ruined his digestive process and were unable to work through things. Thus we must try to proceed from what is presented to us when we can observe these incipient processes that are still entirely in the range of normal.

Indeed, it must also be said that if we were not able to become ill, we could not be human beings. The state of illness is only a continuation beyond the appropriate degree of processes that we need, that we must certainly have in us. In the state of health, the processes leading to illness and the healing processes are properly balanced. We are endangered not only when the processes tending to illness assert themselves, but also when the healing processes overstep the mark. Hence, in initiating a healing process, we must be careful not to proceed too intensely or we may overshoot the mark. We may drive out the illness, but it may, on reaching its null-point, swing over in the other direction.

This strikes us especially strongly when we encounter the therapeutic perceptions in more ancient human civilizations that were still instinctive. I believe that anyone who occupies himself with this theme will conclude that in ancient civilizations there was a wonderful therapeutic perception derived from human instincts. This perception was not yet able to be penetrated with consciousness, but it existed nevertheless. One can still encounter it in an impressive, but decadent stage in primitive peoples today.

It is not so long ago that a sensation concerning such issues could be made by the somewhat dilettantish rummaging about of individuals who, in the domains of their specialty, were actually exceptionally learned. A battle broke out between the Jena scholars and the Berlin scholars over Pithecanthropos erectos. The well-known Virchow took exception to Haeckel, claiming that Pithecanthropos, who was discovered by Dubois, showed clear signs of healing processes, processes of bone healing, that to modern physicians could suggest that the process had been introduced artificially. This was one of Virchow's main contentions, and he concluded from this that Pithecanthropos erectos was healed by a physician, and that therefore there must already have been physicians at that time. Since Virchow was part of the university that had introduced external methods of healing, he now concluded that the Pithecanthropos could not be the connecting link to a time when the human being was not there yet; he must actually have been a human being. (It could also be that a real doctor could have cured an ape, but that possibility was not taken into consideration.) The other side was just rummaging around in the issue with similar dilettantism, expressing only a general feeling, and they said that with animals a natural form of healing also appears without the intervention of man, one that appears to be the same as the healing found in the Pithecanthropos. I only wish to indicate by this what unclear concepts prevail today. A great deal was written about this issue in the early 1890's, so that we can see from such a scholarly battle how such things can appear today.

We can see that already in the instinctive conceptions of a primitive humanity we find what could be called an instinctive therapy. And this instinctive therapy called forth a most significant principle: that the art of healing should not be communicated to irresponsible people, because in doing so one would at the same time necessarily communicate the art of making someone ill. This was an underlying principle of primeval medicine, which maintained strong moral restraints, and it is one of the principles that indicates why things are kept shrouded in a kind of mystery in learned circles.

The point is that the processes producing illness are only further stages of those that must be present in the healthy human being. If we could not become ill, we could neither think nor feel. Everything that lives in the soul in feeling and thinking is organically a system of forces that produces illness when it exceeds its proper measure. The other important thing to bear in mind is that an actual physical process occurs only in one part of the human head. This physical process that takes place in the human head is a necessary concomitant of human ego-experience. If this process is disturbed, that is, if a vital process overpowers this purely physical process in the human being, the ego is weakened in consciousness in a certain way. And all circumstances when a person gets outside of himself, e.g., becomes feeble-minded, or something similar, is partly due to, and must be recognized from, what takes place in the human being as purely physical process in the head. Of course, other organic causes may be present in addition.

This purely physical process, which originates in the human head and radiates from there through the whole organism, overcomes the organism at the moment of death. This moment is always present, at least in the human head, proceeding from the head as center. It is inhibited, however, by the vitalizing process from the rest of the organism. In fact, the human being bears these death-bringing forces continually within himself and he could not be an ego without them. The human being as a physical being on earth could only hope to be immortal if he were to renounce his ego-consciousness. I may mention that certain very delicate powers of observation are required to verify this statement outwardly. Nevertheless, it will be very fruitful if dissertations can be written about the rejuvenating treatments that rely for their influence on working against the soul-spiritual constitution of the human being. Of course nothing should be said against such rejuvenating treatments; they may be regarded satisfactorily as the human being's longing to extend his later life by a few years, though the cost may be that in exchange he becomes a bit feebleminded.

However, these processes that really exist are simply overlooked—like the excess of exhaled nitrogen compared with what is inhaled, for example. These things must be fully taken into account in order to study the processes of illness and healing adequately. The more one enters into these finer elements of the human organization, the more one comes to know the processes that manifest as processes of illness but that are nothing other than a cruder form of these more delicate processes. As I said, this is merely a transformation of these more delicate processes into cruder ones. It must be added, however, that the ego opposes for as long as possible what works in the human being as physical process, what permeates him as physical process. The ego is bound to this work of opposition, to this reacting effect. The ego works against this as long as this physical process does not become too strong. This physical process is the process of dying always going on in the human organism and that finally manifests as death. When this physical process hypertrophies so that it can no longer be controlled by the ego, the ego must separate from the physical body. Then, of course, something else may occur, which is that an excessive physical activity emerges somewhere in the body, dragging the other aspect with it into an earlier stage of life. Thus we can say that the human ego is intimately related to death.

Ego = Death

You can study the ego best by studying death—not, however, in that general and nebulous way in which people conceive of death, as happens with so many things. People conceive of death today as one might picture the destruction of a machine. They conceive of death simply as something coming to an end; they do not picture the real process. Therefore they conceive of the death of a human being as the destruction of a machine. We must arrive at concrete facts. Death is not the cessation of life, but for the human being it is as I have explained it here. For animals, death is something totally different. People who regard death in animals the same as in humans are like the people who, finding that a razor blade and a knife are both knives, begin to cut their meat with a razor blade, because after all a knife is a knife. With these people, death is death. But death is a totally different matter in human beings, as I have shown. With animals, not having to take into account an ego but only an astral body, death is something totally different, arising from an effect in the astral body that is constituted totally differently.

Illness is when the death-bringing forces are weakened, are, in a sense, suppressed in the normal organism. Just as death is connected with the ego, so illness is incorporated into the astral body of the human being.

Astral body = Illness

What has to do with the processes of illness is located in the astral body. What the astral body commits is impressed into the etheric body, and hence illness appears in its imprint in the etheric body, though it is not the etheric body that has to do directly with illness. I have just described to you the imprint of the irregular inter penetration and interworking of the two kinds of ethers. Nevertheless, such irregular action is itself merely an effect of the astral body stamping itself into the etheric body. When the etheric body is perceived more closely, one is led to the astral body. Let us carry this further.

Next we have that which works against disease as its polar opposite—namely, health.

Etheric body = Health

We will not stop to define health now, but you can even see by analogy that health is related to the etheric body as illness is to the astral body and death to the ego. This becomes ever clearer and clearer on spiritual investigation. To heal, to restore health, means to be able to create in the etheric body counterreactions to the processes that produce illness and that proceed from the astral body. One must work from the etheric body in order to paralyze the forces of the astral body, which are the processes producing illness.

Then there is a fourth factor. This is, in a certain way, the polar opposite of death. I must point out first that we can perceive death entering the human being concretely when his whole inner organization has become so physical that no nutritive process, no really effective nutritive process, can be introduced anymore. This is death from old age. Death from old age is actually the inability of the organism to absorb substance. Usually this phenomenon cannot be fully observed because ordinarily the human being dies of other causes before it sets in, rather than of this bodily demise in its pure form. But it is really a failure of nutrition. Thus the polar opposite of death is nutrition, and we can relate the nutrition in the human being to the physical body.

Physical body = Nutrition

These things work back again: the process of nutrition taking place in the physical body works back again on the etheric body and as a result also has something to do with the healing processes. This action on the etheric body then works back as a reaction on what proceeds from the astral body.

What I have just described can be observed in life directly, but we can verify it from the other side. If we take what is known to us already from spiritual science, we have to draw a line here:

Ego = Death
Astral body = Illness

Etheric body = Health
Physical body = Nutrition

for the separation in sleep of the ego and astral body from the physical and etheric bodies is only complete for the head and breathing organizations. The ego and astral body remain in the metabolic and circulatory man. It is not quite accurate to say that the ego and astral body depart. It is expressed correctly only if one says that in sleep the ego and astral body leave the physical and etheric bodies of the head organization, but penetrate them even more in the metabolic and circulatory organizations. I have often referred to this before. It is in fact a transposition. This phenomenon is parallel to the alternation of day and night on the earth. For the entire earth does not pass through day and then night at the same time. Rather, day and night transpose themselves according to the conditions. It is just the same with human sleeping and waking. In the waking state the physical and etheric bodies of the head and respiratory organism are intimately bound to the ego and astral body, and in sleep the physical and etheric bodies of the metabolic and circulatory organizations are much more intimately bound to ego and astral body than in waking. This is a transposition, an actual rhythmic process that takes place in sleeping and waking.

It can be said that in sleep, at least in man's upper organization, the astral body and the ego depart. Observation may reveal, however, that the astral body and ego are grasping the head and breathing organisms too firmly. They seize hold too strongly, the stral body doing so because of its illness-producing forces. Then one may have to work on the person so that this astral body is driven out of the head and breathing organizations again, separating them in a certain way so that the normal relationship returns. We can observe this happening when we administer very small quantities of phosphorus and sulfur. Small doses of phosphorus and sulfur have the effect of throwing out the astral body, which has stablished itself too strongly in the physical and etheric bodies. Sulfur works more on the astral body, phosphorus more on the ego. The ego, however, because it organizes the astral body throughout, actually acts in concert with it. Here you can see directly what happens to the human being when a pathological condition appears that is characterized outwardly by an additional symptom—too strong a tendency to sleep. Thus if one has to deal with an illness-complex including, among other symptoms, a tendency to fall into states of dulled consciousness, one must work with phosphorus and sulfur in the way I have described.

The other condition may also arise, in which the seat of the trouble is in the metabolic and circulatory organisms. This consists of the astral body and ego acting too little on the physical body. Then one has to say to these members, “Please, gentlemen, get moving a bit more. You need to become more active in this person.” In such a case you will have to use preparations of arsenic that are not too strongly diluted. They help the astral body enter into the physical organism.

I am now pointing you to a way in which we are forced to acquire a concrete perception of the human being. If the astral body is too active inwardly, having too strong an effect on the physical body, we must use sulfur and phosphorus; if its effect is too weak, having become too lazy and thus allowing the etheric body to prevail since there are insufficient forces of resistance against what works from below, then we must resort to arsenic as a remedy. The effect of arsenic and that of phosphorus and sulfur are polar opposites. One may now be in a position to realize that it is not sufficient merely to regulate one pole or the other, because an irregularity in one part of the human being immediately induces a counterreaction, and this continues as an irregularity of an opposite kind in another part. An irregularity in the upper part of the human being will manifest very soon in his lower part. This harmony of two irregularities is one of the most fascinating studies of clinical observation. It is an irregular interplay in which the two activities do not work together: when the lower force is too strong the upper is too weak, and when the upper is too weak it calls forth too strong an activity below. These things are not only polar opposites in regard to position and direction but also, of course, in regard to intensity. This interplay is most complicated in the human being. When this is understood, we come to realize the necessity to restore the balance between the two by the use of the forces at man's disposal. One can assist these forces by the effect of antimony. I believe antimony is almost entirely neglected today by ordinary medicine, but it acts in a way that was known in earlier times. This is no longer quite intelligible to people today. The very strong effects of antimony are essentially transferred directly into the inner aspect of the human being. There they produce a kind of balancing point.

It is extraordinarily interesting to observe the opposite effects in the human being of phosphorus, arsenic, and antimony. What in the outer world comes to a certain state of rest in a substance manifests its true nature when it unfolds its activity in the human being. Only then can one see what is still living in it. Regarding it from outside, one sees only what has condensed out of a process of becoming. Looking at arsenic outwardly, one really sees the end of a process in the outer world whose beginning is seen within the human being. Therefore one never really knows something as substance when it is observed in the outer world without knowing at the same time what it does within the human organism.

There is a chemistry, but there is also an “anti-chemistry.” Chemistry itself is like looking at a being that has a front and a back merely from one side, from behind. If a being has two sides, we must look at the front too: only by considering both aspects together do we gain an impression of the entire being. If we have only deduced what lives in a substance by looking at it from behind, then we must approach it also from in front, from the point of view of its effect in the human organism.

One must study “anti-chemistry” as well as chemistry. Only when these two work together will a knowledge emerge of what underlies all substances.

[ 1 ] Pain, which may occur somewhere in the organism, is experienced in the astral body and the ego. Both of these—the astral body and the ego, each in its own way are appropriately engaged within the physical and etheric body while man is in the waking state. When sleep takes place, the physical and etheric body carry out the organic activities alone. The astral body and ego are separated from them.

[ 2 ] In sleep the organism returns to the activities which belong to the starting point of its development, namely, to the embryonic periods and early infancy. In waking life those processes predominate which take place at its conclusion—in aging and dying.

[ 3 ] At the starting point of man's development the activity of the etheric body predominates over that of the astral; then, gradually in the course of life, the activity of the latter grows more intense while that of the etheric body retreats. Nor does the etheric body regain, even in sleep, the intensity it had at the beginning of life. It preserves the degree of intensity it has developed in relation to the astral in the course of life.

[ 4] In every age of life, to every organ of the human body a certain intensity of etheric activity is properly assigned and corresponds moreover to a certain intensity of the astral. It depends upon these relationships whether or not the astral body can properly engage itself with the etheric. If through a lowering of etheric activity it is unable to do so, pain ensues, if on the other hand the etheric body becomes active beyond its normal measure, the mutual penetration of astral and etheric activities becomes unusually intense. Pleasure and comfort ensue. We must however bear in mind that pleasure enhanced beyond a certain point passes over into pain, likewise pain into pleasure. If this were not borne in mind what is here said might seem in contradiction with some former explanations.

[ 5 ] An organ becomes ill when its proper etheric activity cannot unfold. Take, for instance, that metabolic action which is continued, from the actual digestive process, into the organism as a whole. If the products of metabolism are transmitted everywhere without residue into the activity and substantial formation of the organism, it is a sign that the etheric body is working appropriately. If, on the other hand, substances are deposited along the paths of metabolism without entering into the general action of the organism, it shows that the etheric body is impaired in its activity. The physical processes normally stimulated by the astral body, processes which serve the organism only when confined to their own sphere, exceed their proper limits and infringe on the etheric sphere of action. Thus processes arise, the existence of which is due to the predominance of the astral body. They are processes which have their proper place when the aging and disintegration of the body sets in.

[ 6 ] The point now is to bring about a proper harmony between the etheric and the astral activity. The etheric body must be strengthened, the astral weakened. This can be done by bringing the physical substances, which the etheric body has to assimilate, into a condition wherein they lend themselves more readily to its influences than they do in the disease. Likewise the ego-organization must be supplied with added strength; for the astral body, with the animal orientation of its activity, is held more in check when the ego-organization is made stronger in its human organizing power.

[ 7 ] The way to penetrate these matters with clear knowledge will be found when we observe the kind of effects which a particular substance unfolds along the paths of metabolism. Take sulphur for example. It is contained in protein. It is indeed fundamental to the whole process which takes place in the absorption of protein food. It passes from the foreign etheric nature, through the inorganic state into the etheric activity of the human organism itself. It is found in the fibrous tissues of the organs, in the brain, in the nails and hair. Thus it finds its way along the paths of metabolism out to the periphery of the organism. In all these ways, sulphur proves to be a substance which plays an essential part in the reception of proteins into the domain of the human etheric body.

[ 8 ] Now the question arises, does sulphur also play a part in the transition from the domain of etheric action to that of astral, and has it anything to do with the ego-organization? It does not combine appreciably with inorganic substances introduced into the organism so as to form salts or acids. Such a combination would provide the basis for a reception of the sulphur processes into the astral body and ego-organization. We see, therefore, that sulphur does not penetrate into these regions. It unfolds its activity in the realm of the physical and etheric body. This is also shown by the fact that an increased supply of sulphur to the organism gives rise to feelings of giddiness, reduction of consciousness. Sleep, too, i.e. the condition of the body when the astral and ego-organization are not working as soul being, grows more intense when the supply of sulphur is increased.

[ 9 ] From all this we can see that sulphur, introduced as a medicament, will make the physical activities of the organism more inclined to submit to the active intervention of the etheric than in the diseased condition.

[ 10 ] With phosphorus the case is different. It is present in the human organism as phosphoric acid and phosphoric salts, in albumens in the fibrous tissues, in the brain and in the bones. Its tendency is towards the inorganic substances, the importance of which is in the realm of the ego-organization. It stimulates the conscious activity of man. Thereby it also conditions sleep, though by an opposite process to sulphur, namely, by previous stimulation of conscious activity, while sulphur favours sleep by enhancing the unconscious activities of the physical and etheric. Phosphorus is present as calcium phosphate in the bones, i.e. in those organs which are subject to the ego-organization, not where it works from within in processes of growth, regulation of metabolism, and the like, but where it uses the outer mechanism of the system for the movements of the body.

[ 11 ] As a medicament, therefore, phosphorus will be effective when the diseased condition is a hypertrophy of the astral domain over the ego-organization and the latter needs to be strengthened in order to repress the astral.

[ 12 ] Consider rickets. The disease is due, as was explained before, to a hypertrophy of etheric-astral activity, it leads to a defective action of the ego-astral activity, it leads to a defective action of the ego-organization. If it is treated first with sulphur in the proper way, the etheric activity is strengthened in relation to the astral, and if after this has been done, a phosphorus treatment is made to follow, the healing effect which has been prepared in the etheric organization is led over to that of the “ego”; and the rickets is confronted from two sides. (We are aware that the efficacy of the treatment of rickets with phosphorus is disputed; but none of the cures hitherto attempted have anything to do with the method described here.)

We have been speaking of the connection between etheric body, physical body, astral body and ego organisation, and of different ways in which this connection may manifest in the so-called abnormal child. We explained yesterday how the etheric body can be abnormally formed as a result of its not being in right correspondence with the thought-system of the World Ether, and we went on to show how this can lead to irregularities in many different directions. If you can grasp this, then the conviction may also be brought home to you in the course of these lectures that while the mood of soul with which you approach your task as educators is the same for all, you will yet have to find the method of treatment for almost every single child individually. But you must first have some knowledge—and it is important to realise that the whole of modern psychiatry can have no true knowledge of so-called illnesses of the soul. When once we learn to recognise these illnesses for what they really are, then we can go on to consider methods of treatment in detail. It is, therefore, a matter of less importance for you to receive advice of particular measures to be adopted. What is of far greater importance is that you should come to see how in this domain too, sound pathological knowledge, sound diagnosis, lead of themselves into therapy.

Now, as you know, many cases of so-called mental disease are of such a nature that, for reasons which you will understand as you follow these lectures, they cannot be healed—or at any rate could be healed only under conditions extremely difficult to provide. And this would still be true if one were able to call in the help of Spiritual Science. For, in order to treat these illnesses, we would need, in the first place, to have our own sanatoria; and even then the healing of adult patients would still be attended with extraordinary difficulty. I am thinking here of illnesses of a particular kind, and especially of those cases that have important bearing on our work with children. On the other hand, you will come to see that help can most decidedly be given in such forms of illness in childhood, by a right educational treatment; and we shall find that in an illness which is one of the most difficult of all to treat in adults, namely epilepsy—if a patient is brought to us in early childhood and we are able to acquire a correct perception of how it stands with the illness, then there is good ground for anticipating very considerable improvement; indeed the illness may in some cases be got rid of altogether. When once we understand how to make the transition from what underlies the illness to what ought to be done, we shall find our way, in any particular case, to the right measures. But it is essential first of all to know what underlies the illness, to know how it has come about.

Modern psychiatry cannot help us here, for the reason that the men of our time have no notion that there is such a thing as a real ego organisation or a real astral body. The existence even of the etheric body is still widely denied—although science is in fact pressing forward today from the physical to recognition and knowledge of the organic and etheric. I will not stress names but when some people advance theories like those of Driesch¹ they show that they have no knowledge of the ether body because they are afraid of it. But the very thing that is of first importance for us to know, when we set out to understand these illnesses, simply cannot be known, if we know nothing of the astral body and of the ego organisation. For we have to proceed with our investigation in the following way.

Take, first, the connection between physical body and etheric body. This connection is maintained throughout life, from conception, from the embryonic state, right until death; for it continues also through all the periods of sleep. On the other hand, the connection of these two with astral body and ego organisation is broken every time we fall asleep. Now it is essential for us to have a correct picture of how it is with ego organisation and astral body in the waking state, when they are within the physical and etheric bodies. An accurate perception of the particular way in which astral body and ego are membered into the physical and etheric bodies is indispensable if we are to be able to think intelligently about those who are suffering from so-called mental disease. It is commonly believed even among Anthroposophists—not that Anthroposophy, which is very precise in its statements, gives occasion for such a belief, but because it is so easy to cling to old and accustomed habits of thought—it is, I say, commonly believed that when the human being wakes up, his astral body and ego organisation go straight over into his physical body and etheric body, combining with them in very much the same way as hydrogen and oxygen combine in water. It is not like that. Seen clairvoyantly, it is like this² If we have here the physical body, and here the etheric body, then, at the time of awaking, the astral body does certainly come in, the ego organisation also comes in; yes, they come in, and one can perceive how astral body and ego organisation, entering in, proceed to lay hold of the physical and the ether body. But this is not all. For here we meet with a fact of human life that is of great importance.

Take first the ego organisation. When, at the moment of awaking, the ego organisation returns, it does not lay hold merely of the etheric body and physical body; within these, it lays hold of the external world, of the forces of the external world. What does this mean? Imagine we have here the force of gravity. It works in this direction. When we are awake, we stand up in the direction of the force of gravity.³ Picture to yourself gravity simply as a force working in this direction—the direction of the forces of weight. Now there are two ways of looking at the matter. Let us be quite clear about these two ways. The first is as follows. The ego, we could say, lays hold of the physical body (for the moment, we will leave the etheric body out of the picture), and the physical body adapts itself to gravity. We place ourselves, do we not, into the forces of gravity when we walk; we have to find our equilibrium, and so on. This is one possible way of looking at what happens: on awaking we lay hold of the physical body with our ego, and the physical body being heavy, being subject to the gravity of the earth, we are now subject with our physical body to the gravity of the earth, we are connected—indirectly, through the physical body—with the physical force of gravity. Seen from this point of view, it is something like what happens when I take up a book: the weight of the book connects me indirectly with the force of gravity. That, then, is one possible picture of the situation. It is however false, it is incorrect. Let us now consider the other. Here we have to see what takes place, in the following way. The ego slips into the physical body, lays hold of the physical body—slips in so far that it makes the physical body light. Through the ego's gliding into it, the physical body loses its weight. And so when I, as an awake human being, stand upright, then for my consciousness—for my ego, for my ego organisation which has also its physical expression in the warmth organism—gravity is overcome. There is no question here of the ego entering into indirect connection with gravity. The ego, the I, enters into direct connection, places itself as ego right into gravity, shutting the physical body completely out of the process. And that is how the matter really stands. When you walk, you place yourself, with your ego organisation, right into the actual gravity of the earth; and you do not do this via the physical body, you yourself enter into direct connection with the earthly.

It is the same with the etheric body. The etheric body too is inserted into forces. Take one of these forces. I have often drawn attention to the fact that we human beings, as we go about on the earth, are subject to a strong force of buoyancy. We have a brain which weighs, on the average, 1,500 grammes. If the whole weight of the brain were to press on its base, the delicate blood vessels of the latter would be crushed at once. The brain does not do this, but swims in the cerebral fluid and becomes thereby subject to a force of buoyancy. It loses as much of its weight as the weight of the fluid displaced. The fluid displaced weighs about 20 grammes less than the brain itself; therefore, the brain presses on its base with a weight only of 20 grammes. So we have a heavy brain that is however not borne down with its weight, but has buoyancy. In this buoyancy we live. Our ether body lives in the buoyancy. But when we with our ego organisation slip into our ether body, then our ego is within the buoyancy, not merely indirectly, but directly. We are in the buoyancy with our ego. Our human organisation stands, in fact, in connection with all the forces of the earth, with the whole physical world, and not indirectly, but directly.

Let us follow this out in more detail. Our ego organisation is connected, firstly, with gravity—that is, with the element of “earth”. For there is no such thing as what the physicists call matter. In reality there are only forces and the forces—as, for example, gravity (there are other forces too, of course; magnetic and electric forces are all alike in this, that the ego organisation is in direct connection with each one of them and, in the normal human being, is so during the whole of waking life. All that we include under the term “earth” is, really, these forces. Then the ego organisation stands in direct connection also with all that is comprised under the term “water” and is in a state of equilibrium; and it is moreover directly connected also with all that is of the nature of “air”, with all that is gaseous. You know how in physics one has to learn, in addition to ordinary mechanics, a hydro-mechanics and also an aero-mechanics, the reason being that the processes of equilibrium (in water) and the meteorological processes in the air have each their own peculiar character. Finally, the ego organisation is directly connected with a part of the all-pervading “warmth” through which we are continually moving as long as we live in the physical world.

I draw a line through the word “warmth”, because it is with a part of it only that the ego is connected. We wake up, and place ourselves with our ego organisation—place ourselves as spirit—into the world of earthly forces. Our connection with these forces is in reality not a physically mediated, but a magical connection, a magical connection however which can take effect only within a particular space—namely, within the boundaries of our organism. When you have begun to understand that this connection is not a physical, but a magical connection, then you have taken a good step forward.

Now let us pass on to the astral body. The astral body is also connected with certain forces that work upon us when we are awake, and here too the connection is direct—not indirect, not merely through the ether body. Among these forces we have again a part of the force of “warmth”. (You must remember, throughout, that the warmth element works in two directions; part of it reacts on the physical body, and part on the etheric body.) Then, the astral body is directly connected also with the forces of “light”. You must know however that what Spiritual Science speaks of as forces of light is not identical with what modern physics understands by the term. We do not want here to enter into a discussion of theories, but let me suggest the following. You look out upon the world around you, and perceive it all lit up. What enables you to do this? Something gives you the capacity to perceive the world illumined in this way, and it is something in the ether. Light is, in fact, an ether force. Modern science speaks of light as of something that is present where we see things illumined. Spiritual Science speaks of light in another way. It calls “light” that which underlies other sense-perceptions too; it speaks, for example, of the light of perceptions of sound. Present-day physics, when it speaks of perceptions of sound, is in reality speaking merely of their external correlate—namely, the vibration of the air. The movements in the air are but the medium of the real sound or tone, which is something etheric; the vibrating that goes on in the etheric brings about the vibration of the air. Light lives also in the perceptions of smell. In short, all perceptions have as their basis a light of a kind that is much more all-pervading than the light that is spoken of in the physics of the present day. I admit, people are liable to grow confused when we speak of light in this way. For, although it was so spoken of in ancient spiritual knowledge and even as late as the 12th and 13th centuries, all understanding of it was then lost and people began to use other names for it, which are still less intelligible! This is what makes all the alchemical books written after the 12th century so very difficult to follow. What is important for you, however, at the moment is to know that this is what we mean by “light”. Now the astral body is connected with this light; that is to say, it has direct relation—not indirect through the etheric body—with all that underlies sense-perception on the earth. This is a most interesting fact. Outside lives the light in the ether, but we have also the etheric within us. The light works upon our ether body. When we wake up, we not only come into connection with the light that is within us; but, turning aside as it were from the light that is within us, we member ourselves into the light that streams through the external world. It is the same with the external “chemical forces” that are at work in the world around us. Into these too we member ourselves, directly. And this is very important, for it means that, while he is awake, man is membered into a kind of cosmic chemistry. Modern science knows the chemistry of the lifeless, but has very little understanding of organic chemical processes; it has no knowledge at all of the chemistry that is a universal world-chemistry. And this cosmic chemistry it is, of which we become part and member when we awake from sleep. Similarly, we become part and member of the all-pervading cosmic life, the “life ether”—again, directly.

All that we have been describing—necessarily only in outline—has to be achieved, has to be brought to fulfilment, while the human being is gradually building up, first his second body, and then his third. He has to dive down into himself, and through very penetration of his own being, immerse himself at the same time in the earthly-cosmic forces, the earthly-cosmic active forces. Entering into himself, he must in so doing be able to lay hold of the world.

In one domain, and in one only, modern science has still a clear perception of how things really are. In its study of the organisation of the eye, physics proceeds in a way that one could only wish might be followed in many domains. The eye is regarded, as you know, in physics as a contrivance, a mechanism, an instrument that works in accordance with the laws of physics. In order to come to a clear comprehension of the eye, the physicist makes drawings of it, in which he demonstrates the refraction of light through a lens, the formation of the objective picture, and so forth—the very same kind of drawings as he would make for a mechanical instrument. What the physicist is unable to do is to pass on then to the way in which the element of soul enters into this mechanical instrument. The whole thing is exceedingly interesting. The physicists have before them this complete picture of the eye. But there they come to a standstill. What they would like to do is to find their way to the element of soul through the brain. Just look at all their queer somersaults in thought, all those interesting, but in fact nonsensical theories of psycho-physical parallelism or interaction! The truth is that the ego organisation and the astral body come straight into the physical eye itself, the eye that we can draw and describe; there, within the eye, the ego and astral body take immediate hold of the physical. Nevertheless, just in the case of the eye, the scientists do, as you see, come very near understanding the true state of affairs. They can, in fact, hardly help doing so, owing to the peculiar seclusion of the eye; for the eye lies almost outside the body, it is built in from without during embryonic development. And so, in the case of the eye, a certain measure of understanding is attained. But the fact is, what is thus seen to be true of the eye holds good for the whole human organism. The whole human organism has to be understood in the light of an inner physics, a spiritual physics, a physics that allows for the subtle, more fleeting light-forces to be added to the earthly forces. We must learn to recognise the presence within the human organisation of something which comes in reality from the environment, something of which the soul-and-spirit of man lays hold, directly, notwithstanding that it is purely physical, having been constructed in accordance with the laws of physics.

But now, how will it be when abnormal conditions are present? It can quite well happen that in the case of some organ (it cannot be the whole organism) the human being has no possibility of making direct connection, by means of this organ, with the external world. The organ stands in the way, as it were, making it impossible for the human being to find contact with the external world via that organ. What will be the result? Let us take, for example, the lung. The lung may be so placed in the human organism that when the human being wakes up, he is not able to make contact with the external world. Imagine he is asleep. While he is asleep something happens in his lung which has the effect that if he were now to wake up, he would come down into the lung but would not be able to get out again, to get through to the external world. His ego and astral body would be under necessity to press into the lung, to squeeze themselves into it; but they would not be able to come forth again. What the human being should be able to do, as you know, is to come down with his astral body and then come forth again into the world in all directions. The lung should be merely the way through. But in this case, the lung does not provide any free passage; it holds fast the ego and astral body—that is to say, it will do so if the human being wakes up. The unfortunate thing is that when such a condition is present, he always does wake up. For, owing to the special way that the chemical processes are at work in such a case, and infiltration of some substance in fine distribution enters into the lung; the lung organisation which is already in some way misplaced, gets filled with a fine substance that has special affinity for it. The lung is then irregular; consequently the human being wakes up. But how? He wakes up, without gaining consciousness. In order to gain consciousness he would have to come forth from the lung; for he can acquire consciousness only when he has succeeded in penetrating right through. If he has merely come in, he wakes up; if he succeeds in pressing his way through, he gains consciousness. In the case we are considering, he stops short, he remains in the organ; and sleep which is healthy unconsciousness, passes over into pathological unconsciousness. The human being wakes up, but remains unconscious.

You see, we have come in this way to an exact description, drawn from within, of the condition of the epileptic. Epilepsy is just the condition I have been describing—and especially so in the years of childhood. The epileptic is able to dive down with his ego organisation and astral body into the physical body and ether body—that, he can do; but he does not come forth into the physical world, he is held fast within. Let us consider then how it will be if the astral body enters into the lung, and is held fast there, cannot get out again. The astral body will remain pressed against the surface of the lung; astral body and ego organisation will be, so to speak, damned up, congested beneath the surface of the organ. This condition then manifests outwardly as a fit. That is what fits really are. Every time a fit occurs, an inner congestion is taking place at the surface of one or other organ. These congestions are to be found, above all, in the brain. But we know how the parts of the brain are related to the other parts of the body; a congestion in the brain may be due entirely to the fact that congestion is present in the liver, or in the lung, in which case the cerebral congestion is only a projection, a feebler copy of the congestion in the bodily organ. Whenever a fit occurs, this congestion of ego organisation and astral body within an organ can be observed. And so we have at last found our way to the true cause of epileptic fits. Everything else that can be said about them amounts to no more than a description of the external phenomena. You see now how impossible it is to come to a true knowledge of epilepsy unless we are able to go beyond physical body and etheric body and take into account also ego and astral body. Nothing of any real value can be said about fits if we do not know that at the surface of some organ, astral body and ego organisation are being terribly squeezed and crushed. They cannot get out, they try to make their way out, they push and are held back.

And now you will naturally ask: What am I to do when symptoms of epilepsy show themselves in a child—lapses of consciousness, associated with fits, or other phenomena of which we have still to speak? What can one do in an individual case? You must investigate the case out of your own instinctive insight, you must put it to the test. Find out, to begin with, whether the disturbances in consciousness are nearly related to the phenomena of ordinary giddiness. In many epileptics this is decidedly the case. Phenomena of giddiness show themselves; one notices in the child a disposition or tendency to giddiness. If we should find that the gaps in consciousness are only brief, but that there are on the other hand very marked symptoms of giddiness, we would be able to know with certainty where the trouble lies. For in such a case, the ego organisation and the astral body would be failing to enter into direct relation with the forces of balance. You must, therefore, proceed first of all to investigate whether this is so in the child with whom you are dealing—namely, that the ego organisation and astral body do not make right connection with the forces of balance.

If you find this to be the case, let the child do gymnastics or Eurythmy, but giving him always at the same time objects to hold, such as dumb-bells or the like. Especially during the period between change of teeth and puberty are such exercises for balance important. If you give the child two dumb-bells of exactly the same weight—you must have them weighed on a chemical balance—and let him do exercises with them, making Eurythmy movements, or other gymnastic movements, this will be one thing achieved. Then you can go on to something else. Let the child hold in his left hand a dumb-bell that is lighter than the one in his right hand, and again let him do exercises; then let him take in his right hand a dumb-bell that is lighter than the one in his left, and once more do exercises. Then tie some object—it need not be particularly heavy—to one of his legs, and let him walk about with it, so that he becomes conscious of the force that is pulling at his leg. When he walks in the ordinary way, he is not conscious of the force of gravity. It is, however, important for him to place himself, with his ego organisation, right into the force of gravity. When you attach something to his leg, he at once becomes conscious of gravity. You can then hang the weight on to the other leg. And now, to produce an activity that comes nearer to the mental or spiritual, let him feel movements that he makes with his arms; let him think himself into a stretching movement made with the left arm, and then again into a stretching movement with the right arm; finally, with both arms at once. Another way of helping him to become conscious of gravity is to get him to lift one leg while keeping the other still. To sum up, in cases where you perceive, from the attacks of giddiness, that the child does not enter properly into the earthly forces, you get him to make movements in which he is obliged to learn control of his external balance. Similarly, you will find methods of treatment that will help epileptic and epileptoid children to adapt themselves to the other forces.

So you see, there is certainly something you can do. Good results can often be achieved also in the case of epileptics in whom you perceive that their circulatory system is disturbed, and that the whole way in which the fluids are circulating is really the cause of the phenomena. If you notice that in connection with the attacks of epilepsy (which take the form of fits and perhaps also of giddiness), feelings of sickness or nausea are present, then you will know that you have to do with an incapacity to combine properly with the element of water. In such a case it will be good to bring the watery element as much as possible to the notice of the child, before he receives it into his organism. Try to prepare the child's food in such a way that he tastes it quite specially. Something could also be achieved by letting the child learn to swim. Learning to swim is very good for epileptics; only, we must understand what is involved and be intelligent and sensible in the use of such a treatment.

When cloudings of consciousness occur unaccompanied by any marked feeling of nausea, carefully regulated breathing exercises are not bad, in order to restore connection with the air. And to establish a right connection with warmth, we should accustom epileptic children—really all children, but particularly epileptics—to feel the warmth. It is, as a matter of fact, quite wrong to allow any child to go about half naked, with nothing on his legs, and is often the cause in later life—only, people do not know it—of irritation of the appendix and even appendicitis; for epileptic children it is a downright poison. Epileptic children should be clothed in such a way as to induce a tendency to sweating; sweating should be always mildly present in them in nascent state. They should, in fact, be a little too warmly clad. This is real therapy. All the talk we hear nowadays about “hardening”—to what does it lead in the end? People who have been thoroughly hardened as children, when they grow old, cannot even walk across a sunbeaten market square without tottering. A person has not been made hardy if he cannot walk safely over a sunbeaten pavement. Watch some old man taking off his hat while he is walking across an open square on a hot summer afternoon! You are afraid his knees will give way any minute. Such, as a rule, are the consequences of this modern hardening.

So far we have been considering mainly the things that in early childhood lead the ego organisation into the elements into which it needs to be led. Here however begins the sphere where the doctor must come in, and co-operate with the teacher. For we shall not get to the heart of the trouble, when epileptic phenomena are present, without employing remedies, nor should we shrink from doing so. As soon as the epileptic phenomena show signs that the astral body is involved—that is to say, that the higher elements, the ether elements, are holding up the astral body from penetrating to the external world—then naturally it is upon these higher elements in the human being that we must work. And it will be a question of finding the way to do this. But first of all we have of course to be able to recognise whether the astral body is involved or not. How can we know whether the astral body is involved?

Anyone who has observed many epileptic children, or many children with a tendency to epilepsy, will have noticed two conditions which differ very considerably from one another. There is, first, the condition where the child does not defy moral judgements; he adapts himself to the moral and ethical standards that one would desire to impart to every child. When we have to do with epileptic or epileptoid children who readily adapt themselves in this way to the moral order, then the indications that have already been given will perhaps suffice. But if we have to do with children who are not accessible to moral influence, who, for example, readily become violent during their attacks—for epileptic attacks may disguise themselves as outbursts of violence of which the child has afterwards no memory—if, in short, there seem to be moral defects, then it is important to intervene in early childhood with actual remedies. In these cases, we shall quite definitely try to fight the epilepsy with the remedies that are in general use for the purpose, or with remedies prescribed by us under certain conditions, remedies like sulphur or belladonna—thus entering here upon a systematic therapy. As to this more medical part of the treatment, we shall be speaking of it later. Today I want only to show you how the things we can perceive externally in the child may be a sign to us that we need to pass from the more educational treatment to the more medical. There will, in fact, be some epileptic children who are thoroughly well adapted to fit into the external world, and with whom we shall have on this account actually to avoid the use of external methods and exercises, and work primarily by means of internal therapy.

This brings us at the same time to the point where epileptic phenomena pass over quite naturally into other phenomena. You remember what I said yesterday, that thoughts cannot themselves really ever be false; and today I have been speaking more fully of the way in which the human being members the thoughts into his organism. For, a phenomenon like that of the astral body becoming congested in the lung is due to the fact that the thought of the lung has not been properly membered into the organism. All such phenomena are accordingly due to defects of thought! They are the result of our being unable, as we descend into our organism, to gain the control of it that we require to gain in order that we may be able to build it up a second time. But now, we bring with us also our will nature, that is distributed over the several organs; we bring it with us from our former earthly life. And whereas the thoughts cannot of themselves be false, but are always true and correct—that they appear distorted in us is due entirely to our own organism; and this, as we have seen, can go so far that organs framed by such thoughts are liable to be distorted in their structure—whereas the thoughts cannot be false, of the will we have on the contrary to say that when it comes from pre-earthly into earthly existence, it hardly can be right and true. It arrives in complete uncertainty and has to build itself up within the thought system. Of the thought system we can say with truth that never in all the world is it wrong; on the other hand, it is scarcely possible for the will system to be in any way right unless we ourselves take it in hand. We invariably bring into the world a faulty will system, consequently we never under any circumstances descend to earth to become physical human beings, bringing with us morality.

We have to acquire morality, little by little. The morality we had in our last incarnation we used up between death and new birth, when we were engaged in that wisdom filled building activity; we spent it all before we came to birth. Ethics and morality have to be acquired anew in each single earthly life. This has a very significant result, namely, that inasmuch as we come from pre-earthly existence without morality, we have to develop intelligence in our will. We enter with our will into our organs, and in our will we must develop intelligence for what is brought to us in the way of ethics and morality. We must develop a “sense” for it.

It is quite wonderful, how moral and ethical impulses pour into the child when he is learning to speak! For imitation reaches into the most intimate things of life, and it is exceedingly important that we be conscious of this; we must never forget it. If teachers and parents in the environment of the child are immoral, if their talk is immoral, then not what they do outwardly, but the immoral quality and import of what they say and are, will be imitated in the deep inner organisation of the child. Here too, you see, it is once more a question of the human being's entering into connection with the external world, but this time via the whole organism, not by way of the single organs. And if there is again congestion, it will arise from the fact that, whereas in the previous case we failed to come forth in every direction with our thoughts, this time we fail to come forth with our will. And the failure to press through with the will finds expression in moral defects. You see now what are the inner causes of moral defects. These occur, namely, when what enters in from pre-earthly existence and should find its way through to an ethical and moral relation to the world around us, gets stopped up or congested in the whole human organism. For we should be able to receive into us the ethical and moral principles of the world around us; but this we cannot do if there is this congestion, if we come to a standstill with our spirit and soul, remaining within the physical organisation, unable to push our way through.

We are here right in the sphere of the moral and ethical in human life; and we must be clear what that means. When you meet with the characteristic phenomena of epilepsy, then you will have to make your diagnosis from the symptoms I have indicated—attacks of giddiness, obliteration of consciousness, etc.—that is, you will make your diagnosis from transitory phenomena of this kind. If, however, you want to be able to recognise moral defects, you will have to think, not of passing temporary symptoms, but of permanent symptoms. The really serious disturbances—what can cause these to arise? Everything is conditioned, of course, by karma. We have accordingly to speak of two aspects of a human being. There is his physical and mental constitution that shows itself to us when we meet him; and then we have to discern within this the working of his karma.

Suppose the embryo lies in such a way in the organism of the mother that there is pressure at a certain point, and the brain, when it is formed, is narrow in comparison with the rest of the organisation. What can we observe as a result of this? If those influences from the brain which are of particular importance between the ages of seven and fourteen proceed from a brain that is too narrow, they become disturbed and congested, and a reflection of the pressure and congestion makes its appearance in the functioning of the spleen. And then in consequence of this kind of congestion the child will develop no feeling of any kind of moral principle or standard. Just as colours are simply not there for the man who is colour-blind, so the moral and ethical impulses contained in our words, when we speak in admonishment or reproof, are simply not there for such a child. He has been rendered morally blind. And we have then the task of dispelling this moral blindness.

We shall find, if we proceed carefully in our investigation, that external deformations can never fail to be for us most significant symptoms. Although there will always be a great deal to be said against the charlatan phrenology that is commonly practiced, a genuine phrenology really should be studied by anyone who wants to form his conclusions correctly about moral defects. For it is indeed most interesting to see how moral defects which are connected with karma are forces of such strength that they manifest themselves quite unmistakably in deformations of the physical organism. And whenever we find in a child this evidence of what may be described as karmically conditioned immorality, there is a special call for us to come in with our curative education. If we bring with us to our work the qualities of which we were speaking yesterday—inner courage, readiness to face decisions—then we shall be able to imbue the warnings and admonitions that we have to give with the requisite inner strength. For we need inner strength and power, in order to give our admonitions in the right way. That healing is possible is clear from the following example which I have often quoted. A German poet, who had already made his name, went once to a professional phrenologist. The latter was expecting to make all kinds of interesting discoveries, but all of a sudden, when he touched a certain place on the poet's head, he turned deathly pale and could not trust himself to speak. And as; a rule he would become quite talkative if he found anything of interest. The poet began to laugh and said: “I know what it is, you have found the tendency to thieving; and I did have it quite strongly.” The phrenologist had in fact discovered that the man could have become a kleptomaniac. He had however transformed his kleptomania into the art of writing poetry.

Matters of this kind have to be approached in the manner I explained yesterday. We must not be so ready as we usually are, to jump to conclusions. For it is, you see, like this. Man develops his human qualities mainly in two directions—towards the pole of thought and ideation and the forming of mental pictures, and towards the pole of will. Now as for the mental process, the thought process—that is ill if it is not a thief, and a persistent thief too! The brain-mental-organisation, the whole life of ideas, has to be a downright thief and apply no moral considerations whatever in connection with what it must and should receive. It must have the intention and habit of acquiring everything for itself. And it will even be found that there is a tendency to epilepsy or to some other illness, if the mental organisation does not snatch and grab at things in all directions. But this aptitude for thieving must not, for heaven's sake, slip down into the will organisation! The will has to be modest and restrained. It has to be sensitive, and have a feeling for “mine and thine”—a feeling which develops only gradually in contact with life in the outside world. The animals, who live more in the life of mental pictures than man does, would starve if they did not possess the habit of acquisitiveness, the impulse to get everything for themselves. These things need to be understood. But in man the propensity must not be allowed to find its way down into the will-organisation, it must remain in the finer, mental-picture-forming activity. If the astral infiltration of our brain (if I may so express it), which is, as we said, entirely justified in seeking to acquire everything for itself—if this astral infiltration makes its way down into the metabolism-and-limbs organisation or into the rhythmic system, then the urge to seize hold of everything for itself begins to manifest in the will. The urge may at first show itself in a comparatively harmless manner. You may notice a child beginning to take whatever he can lay hands on, gradually piling up for himself a little store or collection. Naturally one tries to check such a habit whenever it begins to show itself, and so it does not assume large proportions. We must accustom ourselves however to detect the tendency. As a rule of course the child does not achieve his end, because someone starts thrashing him. But we must be on the watch for this predisposition, we must take careful note of any inclination on the part of a child to collect things, to save up things for himself. And we must be sensitive for the point at which the tendency begins to be pathological; for if it goes beyond a certain limit, it becomes pathological.

People who follow the ordinary, conventional standards, have no judgement as to how far collecting may legitimately go—unless some particular occasion brings it home to them. One can be an exceptionally proper and correct person in every way, and collect postage-stamps; the collecting mania is here relatively harmless. If however a child begins, in imitation, to do the same kind of thing, you may take it as a sign that he has pushed down this quality of acquisitiveness into the sphere of the will. And then it is important that you should take particular care to see whether you have here to do with moral defects that are due to the working of karma. You should be able to discover for yourselves whether this is so, in the light of the connections I indicated yesterday. You will then have to approach the child with this understanding in your soul, and to proceed to educate him morally and ethically, doing it as effectively as you can, and with the utmost inner vitality—never in a dull or heavy manner! Working thus with inner vitality, you will make up stories in which the kind of thing the child does is carried to an absurdity. You will tell him a story about stealing, and you will go on doing this again and again. In this way you will actually intervene in the child's karma, you will be working right into his karma.

If we are really awake and “on the spot”, following with intense interest, in each individual case, to see just how the child does the things, then we shall be doing curative educational work of a kind that can remain in the sphere of the moral and ethical. Every kleptomaniac is exceedingly interesting. Qualities which are in their right place in the sphere of ideas have, you see, sunk down, in such a child, they have gone right into his toes, into his finger-tips. Naturally we must know this if we want to educate him. Under some circumstances it will even be good to introduce into the stories gestures that come natural to the kleptomaniac himself. We must transplant ourselves wholly into the particular case we are dealing with, and then invent legends or tales in which the things that are done by the child are shown to end in absurdity.

Think over all that I have been saying. Later on, we shall show you some kleptomaniacs. Think it over well, and you will see how, when such an understanding is present, the diagnosis itself can lead us straight on to the therapy.

• 1. Hans Driesch, 1869 – 1941, Zoologist and Philosopher—Neovitalist.
• 2. A drawing was made.
• 3. An arrow pointing upward was drawn.

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.¹ 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.

• 1. The “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.

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.¹ 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.

• 1. The “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.

From everything we have heard in the foregoing lectures it is clear that the essence of the Christ Event may be indicated in the following way.—The stage of evolution denoted by an ascent of the human soul to the realms of the Spirit was attainable in pre-Christian times only within the Mysteries, and through the dimming of the degree of Ego-consciousness then present in man. This stage of evolution was to receive an impulse—the fruits of which still lie, for the most part, in the future—whereby on rising into the spiritual world a man can retain the full Ego-consciousness that is normally his on the physical plane alone. This advance in evolution, made possible by the Christ Event, is truly the greatest advance that has ever taken place or ever will take place in the history of the Earth and of humanity. Whatever else may develop in Earth-evolution in this connection will simply be an elaboration of the mighty impulse given by the Christ Event.

Let us now ask: What was it that was to be brought about by that Event? There was to be a repetition, in a particular case, of certain happenings connected with the secrets of the ancient Mysteries. It was, for example, part of those secrets—and to some extent it is still the same to-day—that on penetrating into his own physical body and etheric body a man experienced in his astral body the temptations of which we spoke yesterday. And in the Greek Mysteries a candidate for Initiation had perforce to encounter all the difficulties and dangers approaching those who pour themselves out into the Macrocosm.

These experiences encountered in one or another mode of Initiation, were undergone by a great and sublime Individuality, by Christ Jesus, as a pattern for mankind. The impulse thus given made it possible for men in the course of their future evolution gradually to achieve the development resulting from Initiation.

What happened formerly in the Mysteries may be described in the following way.—Although Ego-consciousness was dreamlike and dim, certain experiences were nevertheless undergone by the candidate in his inner life of soul. Egoism was aroused in him, making him wish to be independent of the external world. But as was said yesterday, every human being is and must always be dependent on the external world, for the simple reason that he cannot create his means of nourishment by magic or dispense with what he acquires through his physical body. Because this is so he is exposed to the illusion of believing that what is acquired merely through the physical body constitutes the world and its glory. This experience was undergone by every pupil, every candidate for Initiation, but in a condition different from that in which it was undergone at the very highest level by Christ Jesus. Therefore if someone were to describe what happened to a candidate in the ancient Mysteries and then write of the same experiences in the life of Christ Jesus, there would in certain respects necessarily be similarity in the descriptions. For what had come to pass was that happenings formerly shrouded in the secrecy of the Mysteries had now moved to the arena of world-history.

Occurrences such as the following were very frequent in antiquity, especially in the last centuries before the appearance of Christ.—Suppose some painter or scribe, having been told about a certain rite enacted during an Initiation, set to work to portray or describe it. Such a painting or description might well bear a resemblance to the account of the Christ Event given in the Gospels. We can therefore imagine how in many centres of the ancient Mysteries the candidate for Initiation, having completed certain preparations, was bound with outspread arms and hands to a kind of cross in order that his soul might be released from his body. He remained in this condition for a time, undergoing the experiences already described. All this might have been painted or related in writing, and then some scholar, finding it to-day, might assert that what was undergone in the Mysteries had been founded on some older tradition; he might then add that the Gospels themselves are simply repetitions.

Statements to this effect are very widespread. In the book Christianity as Mystical Fact I have explained the sense in which secrets of the ancient Mysteries come to light in the Gospels, and that the Gospels, fundamentally, are repetitions of the descriptions of Initiation in the Mysteries. Why, in relating events in the life of Christ, was it possible to describe the processes enacted in the Mysteries? It was possible because everything that took place in the Mysteries in the inner life of the soul, had become historic fact; because the Christ-Jesus-Event was a re-portrayal of symbolic rites enacted during the process of the old Initiation, but fulfilled now at the higher level of full Ego-consciousness. This fact must always be kept in mind. The similarity of episodes in Christ's life—as narrated in the Gospels—with procedures in the Mysteries will certainly be realised by those who are convinced that such procedures became historic reality through His coming, although they were enacted on an entirely different level of consciousness.

The following could also be said.—Those destined to witness the Christ Event in Palestine observed the fulfillment of the Essene prophecy and were aware of the Baptism by John, the Temptation and what followed it, the Crucifixion, and the ensuing happenings. They could say to themselves: Here is a life lived through by a sublime Being in the body of a man. What are the all-important points in this life? Certain things take place as external events and they are identical with experiences undergone in the Mysteries by candidates for Initiation. We need therefore simply turn to the canon of a Mystery-rite and there we should find the prototype of a process that may now be described as an historical fact!

Here, then, is the great secret. What had formerly been shrouded in the darkness of temple-sanctuaries, perceptible—but only in its effects—to those in the outer world possessed of spiritual vision, was now enacted as the Christ Event on the stage of world-history itself. It must of course be realised that in the days of the Evangelists, no biographies were produced of the kind familiar to us to-day. In a biography, let us say, of Goethe, of Schiller, or of Lessing, every detail of their lives is probed into and every scrap of information collected, usually resulting in a mass of unimportant data purporting to convey the essentials of a life-history. Whereas all these details hinder one from discerning the points that really matter, the Evangelists were content to describe what was of central and fundamental importance in the life of Christ Jesus, namely that in this life there was a repetition of the process of Initiation—but enacted here in the great setting of world-history. Is it any wonder that in our time numbers of people have been taken aback by a certain disconcerting development which comes home to us even more forcibly in the light of the following facts.—

Myths and sagas have come down to us from the past. Anyone who understands their origin and character will realise that many of them are narratives of happenings in the spiritual worlds, seen by ancient clairvoyance and clothed in imagery of the sense-world; other myths again are portrayals of happenings in the Mysteries. For example, the myth of Prometheus, among many others, is partly a presentation of acts performed in the Mysteries. We often find the scene described of Zeus with a god of lower rank who is destined, according to the Greek account, to be his tempter. Zeus standing on a mountain being tempted by Pan—this theme is portrayed in many and various ways. What was the purpose of such imagery? It was meant to give expression to the process of man's descent into his inner being, where he encounters his own lower nature, his egoistic Pan-nature, when he penetrates into his physical and etheric bodies.

The ancient world is full of accounts of experiences undergone by a candidate for Initiation along the path leading into the spiritual world, and in the myths and sagas these accounts are given artistic form.

Scholarship of to-day which fails to penetrate below the surface—and this is what bewilders many people who either cannot or will not recognize the facts—declares when it finds the story of Pan tempting Zeus on a mountain that this shows clearly that the story of the Temptation told by the Evangelists is merely the repetition of an allegory already familiar to them. Scholars then draw the conclusion that there is nothing of unique importance in the Gospels, which appear to them to be compilations pieced together from ancient mythology in order to present a fictitious figure called Jesus Christ. In a certain widespread movement in Germany there were many vapid discussions as to whether Christ Jesus ever lived at all. And with a really grotesque lack of understanding—although with ostentatious erudition—all the sagas and myths alleged to contain earlier parallels of the Gospel scenes were enumerated. It is useless to-day to attempt to give an idea of the actual state of affairs, although it is well known to those who are conversant with these matters. But spiritual movements in our time develop along very strange lines!

I should not have spoken of these things if it were not constantly necessary to take a stand against arguments levelled by ostensibly profound scholarship against the facts and expositions of Spiritual Science.

The real truth of these matters is what I have presented in these lectures. Accounts originating in the Mysteries are necessarily recapitulated in the Gospels, but the secret of Initiation is now connected with an Individuality altogether different. The intention is to show that the experiences formerly undergone in a condition of dimmed consciousness were passed through by this Individuality, this Being, without any loss of Ego-consciousness. Therefore when it is said that the Gospels contain hardly anything for which there is no earlier parallel, we need not be surprised but we must realise that in former times it was a matter of the human being having to rise into the Kingdoms of Heaven, because the Kingdoms of Heaven had not then already ascended to Ego. The really new thing was that what could formerly only be experienced in other realms, and through a kind of attenuation of the Ego, could now be experienced in Malkhut in the ‘Kingdom’, with the Ego erect and self-supporting.

Hence after Christ Jesus had undergone the experience described in St. Matthew's Gospel as the Temptation, He began to preach of the ‘Kingdom.’ What was the gist of His teaching? It was this: What a man formerly attained through suppressing his Ego and receiving other beings into himself, is now and henceforward to be attained in full Ego-consciousness.—That is the essential point. Hence it is not repetition of events connected with Initiations only that are repeated in the life of Christ, but the vital point in the ‘preaching of the Kingdom’ is this: Everything promised to those who were formerly admitted into the Mysteries or who accepted their teachings, is now offered to those who learn to experience in themselves the reality of the ‘I’, the Ego, in the way prefigured for mankind by Christ.

Everything, therefore, even features of the doctrine, must necessarily appear again in some form. But it must not surprise us that emphasis was laid upon the difference between the old teachings and the new, that it was stressed: What could not, in former times, be attained through the Ego, can now be attained by the Ego itself—in full, consciousness! Let us suppose Christ had wanted to draw attention to the great truth that in former times, according to teachings that had reached them from the Mysteries, men had always looked up to the Kingdoms of Heaven, saying: Blessedness can stream down to us from there—but it does not penetrate into our Ego.—In those circumstances it would have been necessary for Christ still to uphold what was formerly said about the Divine Father-Source of existence, for contact with it was indeed attainable when Ego-consciousness was dimmed, and it was the nuances only that needed to be changed. He would have had to speak to the following effect: If you were formerly bidden to look up to the realms of the Divine Father-Source of existence and wait until His radiance streamed upon you, it may henceforward be said that not only does His radiance stream down to you, but whatsoever is willed on high must penetrate into the deepest core of the human Ego and , be willed there also.

Again, let us suppose that each single phrase in the Lord's Prayer had existed previously, and that the only one needing to be altered was to the effect that when in former times men looked up to the Divine Father-Spirit in the Heights everything there remained unchanged, shining down into the earthly realm.—Christ would now have had to say that the heavenly realm must come down to the Earth where the Ego has its dwelling-place; and the will that is fulfilled above in the Heavens must also be fulfilled upon the Earth.—It follows that those who are possessed of deeper insight and perceive the finer shades of difference, will not be in the least surprised that the phrases used in the Lord's Prayer may also have existed in ancient times. A superficial thinker, however, will not notice these fine shades of difference, for in so far as he does not understand the purpose of Christianity he fails to perceive their importance! And when he finds that these phrases were current in earlier times, he will say: ‘There you have it; the Gospels record the Lord's Prayer—but it was already in existence before they were written!’ The essential shades of difference, however, have escaped him.

You can now realise what a vast difference there is between genuine understanding of the scriptures and extern al study. The important factor is for those who discern the new shades of meaning to compare them with the old. The scholar who lacks the deeper understanding and fails to perceive these shades of difference will continue to insist that the Lord's Prayer had already been in existence before the time of Christ.

Attention must be paid to these things and mention made of them here because anthroposophists ought to be able to some extent to make a stand against the dilettante learning that makes its superficial interpretations and its voice heard to-day and by way of innumerable channels in newspapers and periodicals comes to be accepted as ‘science’.

Let me say something further in connection with the Lord's Prayer. There was once a certain individual who set out to collect from every available ancient tradition, from every relevant passage in Talmudic literature, sentences bearing some sort of resemblance to those of the Lord's Prayer. Mark well: the compilation produced by this learned scholar is nowhere to be found originally in this form; the single sentences have been taken piecemeal from one document or another. Carrying this method to the point of absurdity, we might also say: The first sentences of Faust were put together by Goethe in the same way! It might be possible to produce evidence that in the 17th century there was a student who had failed in his examination and afterwards said to his father: Have I not studied jurisprudence with toil and sweat! And another who had failed in his medical examination said: Have I not studied medicine with toil and sweat! And from this the first sentences in Faust are supposed to have been composed. It is an absurdity, but the principle and method are exactly the same as those of the trend in Gospel criticism to which I allude.

The following sentences, pieced together as stated, are sup-posed to have produced the Lord's Prayer:

‘Our Father which art in Heaven; O Lord Our God, hallowed be thy name, and let the remembrance of thee be glorified in heaven above, and upon earth here below. Let thy kingdom reign over us now and for ever. The holy men of old said: remit and forgive unto all men whatsoever they have done against me. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil thing. For thine is the kingdom, and thou shalt reign in glory for ever and for evermore.’¹

The Lord's Prayer is alleged to have been compiled from these sayings which, as I said, were collected from many sources. But the nuance that would indicate the unique significance of the Christ Event is entirely lacking. Nowhere is it said that the Kingdom of Heaven is to come down. The words are ‘Let thy kingdom rule over us now and for ever’—not: Thy Kingdom shall come to us! That is the essential point, but superficial scholarship entirely fails to perceive it. And although these sayings came not from one source but from records in many archives, the words of salient importance in the Lord's Prayer are nowhere to be found: ‘Thy will be done on Earth as it is done in Heaven.’ That is to say, the Ego itself is to participate actively. There you have an example of the difference between superficial research and really thorough and conscientious research which pays attention to every detail. The findings of conscientious research are available, if only people will take account of them.

I have purposely read you these sentences which are quoted in Robertson's book. It has now been translated into German as a kind of modern gospel, in order that it may become widely known; for until now, a certain Professor² who has given a number of lectures on the subject of whether Jesus actually lived, was obliged to read it in English. The book has quickly become famous and the translation of it has meant that people need no longer make the effort to read it in a language not their own. It has been possible for a Professor at a German Academy to travel about lecturing on the question: ‘Did Jesus live?’—and then, on the basis of the facts I have mentioned, to give the answer that there is no documentary evidence whatever to prove that a personality such as Jesus ever lived. Robertson's book is also recommended as an excellent work of reference. Anthroposophists should, however, be warned that they will hear many other things from these investigations into New Testament texts, and I want still to speak of something particularly characteristic.

The book attempts to show that versions of the Lord's Prayer existed not only in the Talmud but also in chronicles of great antiquity. To strengthen the contention that the Lord's Prayer was a compilation of phrases previously in existence and needed no Christ to utter it for the first time, the book quotes certain lines from a prayer in the Chaldaic language, inscribed on tablets, invoking Merodach, the ancient Babylonian god. Listen to this passage which occurs in a footnote:³

‘In the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society for October, 189x, Mr. T. G. Pinches published for the first time a translation of a tablet found at Sippara in 1882, in which there occur, in an invocation of Merodach, the lines: “May the abundance of the world descend into thy (the city's) midst; may thy command be accomplished in time to come... may the evil spirit dwell outside of thee.” ’

And the learned scholar who was so deeply impressed by this passage, adds: ‘Here we have prayer norms, on the lines of the Lord's Prayer, dating perhaps from 4000 B.C.’

Can you detect any similarity between the Lord's Prayer and these sentences? Nevertheless the author of the book regards them as prayer-norms of which the Lord's Prayer is simply a copy! Such things are accepted to-day as the findings of genuine research.

There is another reason for bringing this to the notice of anthroposophists, for they must be able to reassure their consciences which might well be troubled by hearing that something or other has been established by external research, or by reading in newspapers or journals of the discovery of a tablet in Asia proving that the Lord's Prayer was already in existence 4,000 years before Christ. A very necessary question would be: Upon what basis has this been proved?—I am trying to show you the kind of foundations underlying many things that are said to-day to be ‘scientifically established’. Such examples are everywhere to be found and it is well for anthroposophists to realise the worthlessness of much that is so often held against Spiritual Science.—But we will proceed.

The all-essential point is that Christ Jesus inaugurated an evolutionary process based upon the human Ego, upon the retention of fill Ego-consciousness. The Initiation of the Ego—that was what He inaugurated. We can say that the Ego, the is the kernel of man's whole being, that all human nature to-day centres in the Ego, and that what was brought through the Christ Event to the Ego, and hence into the world, can also lay hold of, all the other members of man's being. But this, naturally, will have to take place in a very particular way and in keeping with the evolution of humanity.

These lectures show clearly what it is that can be developed. Properly speaking, knowledge of the surrounding physical-material world acquired by man not through the senses alone but also through the intellect using the brain as its instrument, has been possible only since times shortly preceding the Christ Event. Before then, men were endowed with a kind of clairvoyance. As you know from my lectures, this was the case from the early epochs of Atlantis onwards. But the faculty that was still universal and functioning in full strength during the first epochs of post-Atlantean evolution, gradually declined. Until the time of the Christ Event, however, there were still many human beings who in intermediate states of consciousness between waking life and sleep, were able to gaze into and participate in happenings of the spiritual world. Such participation did not merely mean that a man endowed with clairvoyance to a slight extent was able to assert: ‘I know that behind everything physical and material there is the spiritual, for I actually see it.’—This was not all. Human nature in ancient times was such that it was possible, without difficulty, to enable a man to partake in the happenings of the spiritual world, To-day it is very arduous, relatively speaking, to undergo the true esoteric training leading to the attainment of clairvoyance. Natural clairvoyance manifests to-day as a last remnant, a heritage from olden times, in somnambulistic and kindred conditions. These conditions cannot be regarded as regular in our age; but in the distant past they were normal and could be sublimated and enhanced by certain measures.—Something else, too, was connected with this.

To-day, people are not guided by true history and what they happen to believe decides what is or is not historical fact. But however strongly it may be doubted, the truth is that up to the time of Christ, processes of healing, for instance, could be made effective by inducing clairvoyance. In the present age, when humanity has descended more deeply into the the physical world, this is no longer possible. But in those earlier times it was still easy, by applying certain specific measures, to enable the soul to become clairvoyant and to penetrate into the spiritual world. And because the spiritual world is health-giving, in itself and sends its forces into thc physical world, it was possible to bring about healings in this way. In a case of illness certain processes were put in motion, enabling the person concerned to see into the spiritual world. And the streams of the spiritual world flowing down into his whole being had a curative effect. This indeed was the usual method of healing. (The ‘temple healing’ spoken of nowadays is sheer dilettantism.) The fact that souls have lost the clairvoyance that was universal in former times, signifies an advance in evolution. But the earlier clairvoyant condition could be so sublimated that healing forces streamed from the spiritual into the physical world and in the case of certain illnesses cures could be effected, We need not therefore be surprised when it is said by the Evangelists that as a result of the Christ Event not only those possessed of the old clairvoyance would be able to reach the spiritual world, but also those who, owing to the evolution of humanity, had lost contact with it.

In ancient times the riches of the spiritual world were revealed to men's clairvoyant vision. Now, however, it could be said: Evolution has progressed and those who can no longer gaze into the spiritual world have become poor in spirit, beggars for the spirit. But because, through Christ, the forces of the Kingdoms of Heaven can now flow into the Ego, even when the Ego is functioning on the physical plane, those who have lost the old clairvoyance and the riches of the spiritual world, they too can experience the spirit in themselves and be blessed. Hence the momentous words: From now onwards, not only those who through the old clairvoyance are rich in the things of the spirit are blessed; but those too who are beggars for the spirit, are blessed; for when the path has been opened for them by Christ the Kingdoms, of Heaven flow into their Ego.

In earlier times the nature of the human physical organism was such that even in the normal state the soul was able to some extent to emerge from the body; this meant that a man became clairvoyant, rich in the treasures of the spirit. The densification of the physical body—for which, admittedly there can be no anatomical proof—meant that man could no longer be rich in the things of the spiritual world, of the Kingdoms of Heaven. In describing existing conditions, one would have to say: Man has become a beggar for the spirit; but the powers brought down by Christ enable him to experience within him-self the Kingdoms of Heaven.—That, then, is what might be said in reference to the processes of the physical body.

If it were a matter of describing what actually took place in man as an Ego-being, one would have to show how each of his members could be blessed inwardly, in a new way. The new truth relating to the physical body is expressed in the words: Blessed are they who are beggars for the spirit; for within themselves they will find the Kingdoms of Heaven.

In regard to the etheric body, this could be said: In the etheric body lies the principle of suffering. Only a living being can suffer as the result of injury to the etheric body—an astral body must, of course, be there as well—but the seat of the suffering must nevertheless be looked for in the etheric body. To express the new truth applying to healings brought about in earlier times through forces streaming from the spiritual world, one would have to say: Those who suffer can henceforth find consolation not only by passing out of their bodies and thus being linked with the spiritual world as was formerly the case; if they now establish a different relationship with the world they can find consolation within themselves, because through Christ a new force has been imparted to the etheric body. Hence concerning the etheric body it could be said: Those who suffer can now be blessed not only through reaching a spiritual world and in a clairvoyant condition allowing the forces of that world to stream upon them; now, if they can find the path to Christ, to the new truth, they can find within themselves consolation for all suffering.

And what would have to be said about the astral body? In former times, when a man was striving to subdue the emotions, passions and egoistic impulses of his astral body, he turned his gaze to higher spheres, pleading that strength might be vouchsafed to him from the Kingdoms of Heaven; through certain measures to which he was then subjected, the harmful instincts of his astral body were quelled. But now the time had come when through Christ's Deed he was able to receive into his Ego the power to curb and tame the passions and emotions of his astral body. The new truth relating to the astral body would therefore be expressed as follows: Blessed are those who have become meek through the power of their own Ego; for it is they who will inherit the Earth! This third Beatitude is indeed profound. Let us study it in the light of what we have learnt from Spiritual Science.—The astral body was incorporated into human nature during the Old Moon period of evolution. The Luciferic beings who had gained influence over man, established themselves in his astral body, and in consequence of this he could not, at the beginning, hope to reach his highest earthly goal. As we know, the Luciferic beings had remained at the Old Moon stage and prevented man from progressing in the right way along his path of development. But now that Christ had come down to the Earth and the Ego gould be filled with His power, it was possible for man to fulfil the essential principle of Earth-existence, inasmuch as he could now find within himself the power to curb the astral body and expel the Luciferic influences. Hence it could be said: He who curbs his astral body, he whose own inner strength keeps him from being moved to anger without the consent of his Ego, he who is inwardly serene and at the same time strong enough to keep his astral body in check—such a man will fulfil the purpose of Earth-evolution. Infinite light is thus shed by Spiritual Science on the third Beatitude.

How will man succeed in bringing about the sublimation and beatification of the other members of his nature through the Christ-power within him? He will succeed if his soul and body alike are laid hold of worthily by the power of the Ego. Concerning the Sentient Soul we can say : If a man desires to experience the Christ within himself, he must develop in his Sentient Soul a longing as strong as the instinctive longing he otherwise feels in his body and calls hunger and thirst. He must be capable of thirsting after the things of the soul with the same intensity as the body hungers and thirsts for food and drink. What man can develop through the Christ-power within him has always been referred to as ‘thirst after righteousness’. And when he fills his Sentient Soul with the Christ-power, he can find within himself the possibility of satisfying his thirst after righteousness.

The fifth Beatitude, as might be expected, is especially note-worthy, for it concerns the Intellectual or Mind-Soul. Anyone who has studied the book Occult Science, or Theosophy, and has also followed what has been said for years in lectures, knows that the three members of the human soul—Sentient Soul, Intellectual or Mind-Soul and Spiritual Soul (Consciousness-Soul) are held together by the Ego is present in the Sentient Soul in a dull condition; in the Intellectual or Mind-Soul it lights up and only then does man become wholly and completely man. Whereas in the lower members of his being, in the Sentient Soul too, he is ruled by divine-spiritual Powers, he becomes a self-dependent being in the Intellectual or Mind-Soul. Here the Ego flashes up and is active. Therefore when the Intellectual or Mind-Soul has received into itself the CHrist-power, this cannot be expressed in the same way as in the case of the lower members of human nature. In the lower members—physical body, etheric body, astral body and Sentient Soul too—man is connected with certain divine Beings who penetrate into these members, and whatever qualities he develops there are carried up again to these divine Beings. But whatever evolves in the Intellectual or Mind-Soul will be an essentially human attribute when it develops the Christ-quality. When a man begins to be conscious of the working of the Intellectual Soul, this makes him less and less dependent upon the divine-spiritual Powers around him. When he takes the Christ-power into himself he can unfold in the Intellectual or Mind-Soul those qualities which pass like to like, which are not besought from Heaven but which go forth from and return again to the same being. We must therefore feel that something streams from the qualities of the Intellectual or Mind-Soul and that something of a like character a truly wonderful way the fifth Beatitude points to this very quality. The wording here differs from that of all the other Beatitudes, and although the various translations are not particularly good, they have not been able entirely to conceal the essential point.—Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy.'‘What streams forth streams back again—these words convey the true meaning when understood in the light of Spiritual Science.

With the sixth Beatitude, relating to the Spiritual Soul, we come to that principle in man in which the real nature of the the Ego, comes fully into expression; ascent to the spiritual world can now take a new form. As we know, the Intellectual or Mind-Soul came to active expression in the epoch when Christ appeared. We are living now in the epoch when the Spiritual Soul must come to expression and when man is to rise again to the spiritual world. Whereas consciousness of self first lights up in man in the Intellectual or Mind-Soul, in the Spiritual or Consciousness-Soul his ‘I’ unfolds to the -full extent and now ascends again into the spiritual world. A man who takes the Christ-power into himself will find the way to his God when he pours his ‘I’ into the Spiritual Soul. In experiencing Christ in his Ego at the level of the Spiritual Soul, he will find his God.—Now it has been said that the expression of the Ego in the physical body is the blood; the blood has its centre in the heart. Therefore the sixth Beatitude will have to indicate that through the quality imparted to the blood and to the heart, the Ego can experience God. What are the words? ‘Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God.’ Again this is not an entirely adequate translation but it suffices.

Spiritual Science sheds light upon the whole structure of these wonderful words spoken by Christ Jesus to his intimate disciples after the Temptation. The further Beatitudes relate to the development of the higher members of man's being: Spirit-Self, Life-Spirit, Spirit-Man. Therefore the words do no more than indicate what man will experience in the future and what only a few chosen ones are able to experience at the present time.

The seventh Beatitude relates to the Spirit-Self : Blessed are they who draw to themselves the Spirit-Self as the first purely spiritual member of their being; for they will be called the children of God.—The first member of the higher triad has entered into them. They have received the Divine into themselves and have become an outward expression of the God-head.

But it is now clearly shown that only chosen ones, only those who fully understand what the future is to humanity as a whole can succeed in unfolding the Life-Spirit. What men of the future, having received Christ into themselves in the fullest sense, will call the ‘Life-Spirit’ is now within the reach of a few individuals only. But because they are chosen individuals, the others are unable to understand them and they are persecuted. With reference, therefore, to those who are persecuted because as individuals they represent a stage that belongs only to the future, the words are uttered: Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness' sake: for in themselves they find the Kingdoms of Heaven.

And the last Beatitude concerns the closest, most intimate disciples only; it refers to the ninth member of Man's being: Spirit-Man.—‘Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you... for my sake.’

And so these wonderful utterances relating to the nine members of man's being show how the when filled with Christ, works in the different members and brings them blessedness. In the verses following the account of the Temptation, the Gospel of St. Matthew expresses with majestic grandeur the effect of the Christ-power in the ninefold nature of man, first in the present and then in the immediate future, when those into whom the Spirit-Self already shines are called ‘children of God’—although of these there are only a few specially blessed ones. What is so wonderful is that the indications are quite definite when concerned with members of man's being that have already developed, but become indefinite in the later utterances which relate to the distant future.

But once again we have an example of superficial scholar-ship. Suppose someone were investigating the question of whether similar utterances are also to be found elsewhere and whether the Evangelists might have strung them together from other sources. And suppose this investigator had no notion of the all-important point—that the Beatitudes apply to the Christ-filled Ego! Failing to notice the wonderful enhancement indicated in the utterances, he might well quote the following—and indeed two or three pages later in the book already mentioned,⁴ in a chapter entitled ‘The Beatitudes’, reference is made to an ‘Enoch’—who is not the usual (Ethiopic) Enoch—and nine so-called ‘Beatitudes’ are cited. The author admits that the original record can be assigned to the first period of the Christian era but he considers that the utterances we have characterized as being so profound could have been copied from the following nine 'Beatitudes’ of the 'Slavonic' Enoch:⁵

1. Blessed is he who fears the name of the Lord, and serves continually before his face.

2. Blessed is he who executes a just judgment, not for the sake of recompense, but for the sake of righteousness, expecting nothing in return: a sincere judgment shall afterwards come to him.

3. Blessed is he who clothes the naked with a garment, and gives his bread to the hungry.

4. Blessed is he who gives a. just judgment for the orphan and the widow, and assists every one who is wronged.

5. Blessed is he who turns from the unstable path of this vain world, and walks by the righteous path which leads to eternal life,

6. Blessed is he who sows just seed; he shall reap sevenfold.

7. Blessed is he in whom is the truth, that he may speak the truth to his neighbour.

8. Blessed is he who has love upon his lips, and tenderness in his heart.

9. Blessed is he who understands every word of the Lord, and glorifies the Lord God.

Certainly there is beauty in these sayings. But when you study their whole construction and realise that they simply set forth a few principles suitable for any epoch but not specifically for the one of drastic transformation due to the inauguration of the power of the ‘I’—then, if you still think it possible to place these Slavonic sayings on a par with the Beatitudes of St. Matthew, you will not be far removed from those who make superficial comparisons between the various religions of mankind and whenever they come across similarities at once insist that there is uniformity, ignoring what is of essential importance.

To understand these things is to realise that human evolution progresses, that humanity advances from stage to stage, and that a man is not born in a new physical body in a later millennium in order to repeat experiences already undergone, but to experience in what respects humanity has advanced in the intervening time. That is the purpose alike of history and of human evolution. And of this the Gospel of St. Matthew speaks on every page!

• 1. See p. 417, in Christianity and Mythology, by John M. Robertson. Second edition. First published in 1900 by Watts & Co. London. It is stated that this compilation was made more than two centuries ago by the Rev. John Gregorie, from the Jewish Euchologues.
• 2. Dr. Arthur Drews.
• 3. Op. cit. pp. 418-
• 4. Christianity and Mythology, p. 422.
• 5. From the Book of the Secrets of Enoch, trans. from the Slavonic by W. R. Morfill, and edited, with introd. notes, by R. H. Charles. (Clarendon Press, 1896).

With this course I hope to supplement last year's course, so that it will really complement it and result, at the end, in the crystallization of a variety of views on therapeutics. I will try to look from another vantage point at the human being who is ill and needs to be healed. By studying these matters from another angle we will not merely gain fresh viewpoints, but at the same time we will extend the subject matter of our studies. This time I would like to show how the constitution of the human being—physical body, etheric body, and so on, with which you as anthroposophists are all familiar—is active in the processes of becoming ill and healing. Last time I had to confine myself more to describing the outer manifestation of the inner human being. This time I will try to show how the different members of man are influenced by substances outside the human being. I will try to show what these substances really are that can be used as remedies, and to show how a remedy can be effective by influencing the human organism in a different way from the merely material.

At this point in my introduction, however, I must make the following presupposition. Last time we spoke here, we dealt with the same subject, considering from different aspects the use of substances—and in general what is physical—as remedies. But as soon as we have to go further and consider the higher members of human nature, the super-sensible members of the human being, we can no longer speak about substances in the same way. We often do so for the sake of brevity, but throughout this presentation we must bear in mind a fundamental fact: we must be quite clear that we cannot proceed from what is material in the way customary in current science if we really wish to understand man's relation to his environment and what happens to him in health and illness. We must begin from processes, not substances, from events in progress, not finished products. And when we speak about substance, we must picture that the substance appearing in the outer world to our senses is nothing more than a process come to rest.

Let us say we are looking at siliceous earth. We call it a substance. But we have not grasped what is essential if we merely form a mental picture of this so-called object with certain borders. We grasp what is essential only if we take into account the very comprehensive process that exists as an individual process taking place in the entire universe. This process then crystallizes out, as it were; it comes to rest, attains a kind of equilibrium, manifesting then as what we behold as siliceous earth (sandstone). It is essential to focus our attention on the interaction between processes within the human being and processes that unfold outside in the universe, for both in health and illness the human being stands in continuous interaction with the universe.

I would like to present to you in an introductory way something that can lead us to some thoughts about this interaction. We will then be able to begin tomorrow on our actual subject matter. First we must try to grasp man's essential nature by means of an anthroposophical spiritual science. I have often spoken of the threefold nature of the human being. Today I will at first express myself schematically, directing attention to the way this threefold nature is concentrated spatially within the human being. When we distinguish the nerve-sense system, we know that it is chiefly concentrated in the head but that it nevertheless extends throughout the human being. Only in his head is the human being first and foremost a nerve-sense being, but on the other hand the entire human being is also “head,” though less “head” in the remainder of his organism than in the head itself. Thus we can think of what we call the “nerve-sense man” as localized in the head.

If we are to make these thoughts of the threefold nature of the human being fruitful for our present purpose, we must then think of the “rhythmic man” (which encompasses the breathing and circulation) as twofold, one member tending more toward the respiratory system and the other more toward the circulatory system. Inserting itself into the circulatory system is then everything involved in connecting the “limb man” with that of the “metabolic man.”

In studying the human head, we are looking at the member of the human organism that corresponds primarily to the nerve-sense man. The organization of the head differs essentially from that of man's other members. This is also the case with regard to the higher members of the human being. If we study the human head from the viewpoint of spiritual science, we see this head as a kind of imprint—one might say a kind of extrusion—of the ego, astral body, and etheric body.

We must then still consider the physical body in its relation to the head. This physical body is present in the head in a different way, you could say, from the physical element that is an imprint of the ego, astral body, and etheric body. At this point let me emphasize the higher aspect of this by pointing out that the human head, as it manifests itself at first in the human embryo, is not shaped merely by the forces of the parental organism; cosmic forces are at work in the human head. Cosmic forces are working into the human being. In the forces we call etheric, the parental organism is active to a high degree, but even in the etheric, cosmic forces are acting out of the soul-spiritual life before birth, or rather before conception. What was living in the spiritual world before conception continues to work, especially in the astral body and the ego; it continues its work, forming the human head. The ego conveys its imprint onto the human head, and the astral and etheric bodies both convey their physical imprints. The physical body alone, which of course we receive only on earth, is not an imprint but a prime agent (ein Primär Wirksames).

Thus I can say—sketching this schematically—that the form of the human head is an imprint of the ego. The ego organizes itself within the head in a definite way. At first it organizes itself primarily by differentiating the warmth conditions within the head. The astral body's influence is more remote, its organizing principle is contained in the gaseous, airy processes that permeate the head (see drawing). Then the etheric body imprints itself, and finally we have what is the physical body for the head—a physical process, a real physical process (see drawing, hatching). I will indicate this by pointing to the bony portion of the back of the skull if the eyes are here (see drawing). But the physical forces concentrated here extend over the whole head. Here, in this physical part of the human head formation, is a real, primary physical process. It is not an expression of anything else, but is present as a process carried out in itself.

In this physical head process, however, we really have a duality, a cooperation of two processes. It is a cooperation of two processes that can be understood only if the spiritual investigator studies them in relation to certain other processes taking place outside in the universe. Look outside in the universe at the process in the ancient rocks that finds expression in slate-formation, especially out of siliceous earth. There you have a process diametrically opposed to the physical process at work in the formation of the head. We see here an important connection between the human being and his environment. This process that unfolds in the mineralizing process is also present within the human head. Today it is almost clear to geologists that every process of slate-formation, every mineralizing process in which silica takes part, is connected with what one may call the “de-vegetabilization of vegetable substance” (Entvegetabilisierung). In slate-formation we must see a plant world that has become mineral. And in trying to understand this kind of de-vegetabilization of the vegetable kingdom, which is especially significant in the earth's slate-formation, we learn to grasp the polar process at work in a different way in the human head.

Another process cooperates with this process, however, and this other process must also be sought outside in the world. We must look for it in limestone rocks, for example. Today it is almost a geological truth for outer science that chalk formations are essentially the result of a process of earth formation that we might call the “de-animalization process of animal substance” (Entanimalisierung). It is the opposite process to animal evolution. Again the polar opposite process to this is at work within us. If we ascribe to silica and calcium—which are processes come to rest—a role in the formation of the physical human head, we must realize that something that plays a very significant part outside in the cosmos, at least in the entire nature of our earth, thereby works upon this physical human head formation. At the same time we are able, by way of preparation in orienting, to understand that when we look at silica or silicon, we see its essential kinship to the process taking place in the physical head (when I speak of silica here, I mean the arrested process); when we look at the process of chalk-formation that has come to rest in limestone, we see that it has something to do with its polar opposite, with the other force that cooperates polarically in the human physical head.

In the human head, these processes that we can find around us today stand in connection with other processes not to be found on the earth but seen only in imprint, the head being an imprint of the etheric body, astral body, and ego. Regarding these members of human nature we have to do with arrested processes that are not directly earth processes. Only what I have described when speaking about the actual physical head is really an earth process in the human being. The other processes are not actual earth processes, although we will find their connection with the earth processes, as you will see.

We will now pass on to consider the second member of the human organism, in order to have a kind of overview. In trying to localize it in space, we may call it roughly the chest system. It is the member in the human organism essentially comprising the rhythmic man, and we will divide it schematically into a system of respiratory rhythm and a system of circulatory rhythm. Examining this second member of man's being as a whole, we must say that everything I have designated here (see drawing) as the organization of respiratory rhythm in the widest sense is mainly an imprint of the ego and astral body. Just as the head is an imprint of the ego, astral body, and etheric body, so the respiratory rhythm is an imprint of the ego and astral body. It has something primarily active in itself, (see drawing, hatching), with the cooperation of physical body and etheric body.

In the human head only the physical body is active in itself; as we have seen, there even the etheric body is an imprint. In the system of respiratory rhythm, the prime agent is constituted by the interpenetration and cooperation of the physical and etheric bodies, and only the ego and astral body provide the imprint. This applies essentially also to the system of the circulatory rhythm, but to a lesser degree, for the entire metabolic organism inserts itself into the circulatory system. Thus in the circulation, the characteristics of the metabolic-limb system already begin to be evident. The limbs then, with everything that projects into them as metabolism—with the exception of the actual circulation—are in essence an imprint of the ego and a cooperation of the physical, etheric, and astral bodies (see drawing).

Thus, if we study the chest man we find as its imprint-organization only what is related to the ego and astral body, and we find that its primary organization is not merely physical but is the physical permeated by the etheric. This is more strongly the case with the respiratory rhythm, whereas in the case of the circulatory organism, another element from the metabolic system inserts itself.

You see, then, that the different members of the human being interact in different ways. Corresponding to the various physical members that we can call “head system,” “chest system,” and “limb system,” there are different interactions of the members that spiritual science calls physical body, etheric body, astral body, and ego. The human head, regarded as a process, is essentially physical body, for what is not physical body there is an imprint of the ego, astral body, and etheric body. The middle realm of the human being is essentially a cooperation between physical body and etheric body, for what is not physical body and etheric body is an imprint of the ego and astral body. And the metabolic-limb man is entirely an interplay of physical, etheric, and astral bodies and an imprint only of the ego. The chest man and the metabolic-limb man overlap more, however. (See drawing on page 7.)

Now we must focus our attention on the part played in the middle system by the process working in the organization of the physical head, and which we had to regard as a process having come to rest in siliceous earth. The curious thing is that this process of siliceous earth formation works more strongly and extensively in the middle system. In the head it works more delicately. Here in the middle system it works more strongly, more extensively, and in a more differentiated way. And it works most strongly in the metabolic-limb man. In focusing our attention on the process we found connected with siliceous earth, we find that it works most strongly where it has to come to the help of the ego, where it has to support the action of the independent ego that has only its imprint in the physical metabolic system. This silica-producing process works most strongly where it has to support the action of the ego on the metabolic-limb man. It works less strongly where it merely has to help the astral body; and it works least strongly of all where it needs to help only the etheric body, i.e., in the head.

We might put this the other way around. Regarding this process which we consider as arrested in silica, we can say that in the human head organization it works most strongly as substance and least strongly as force. Here, where it works least strongly as force, it works most strongly as it approaches the point where it comes to rest in substance. If we regard silica as the substance lying before us, we have to say that its action is strongest in the head. If we regard it as the outward indication of a process, we have to say that its weakest action is in the head. Where the activity as substance is strongest, the dynamic activity is weakest. In the middle system, the two activities of silica as substance and as force are approximately balanced. Regarding the metabolic-limb system, the dynamic action gets the upper hand. We have here the weakest action as substance and the strongest as force. Thus the silica-producing process actually organizes the entire human being through and through. Now that we have inquired into the relationship between the physical organization of the head and the outer environment that has a reciprocal relationship with the human being, we may inquire into the reciprocal relationship of the middle system to the outer environment, insofar as the organization of respiratory rhythm is concerned.

If the spiritual investigator studying the human head really wishes to understand it, he must turn his gaze to two processes at work in the formation of the earth: not only that which forms silica or silicic acid but also the limestone-forming process. We will examine this more closely later.

The organization for the rhythmic respiratory system is less external, less peripheral, lying more toward the inside of the human body. And insofar as it consists of a cooperation, primarily a cooperation of the physical and etheric as they interweave themselves with the imprints of the ego and astral, it does not point us directly to something in the environment, to a process that exists already in nature and that we can encounter there. If we are looking for a characteristic process in the outer world to correspond with this whole interaction, we must first create it ourselves. If we burn plant substances and obtain plant ash, then the process manifested in the burning and production of ash, and in the settling of the ash, is related to the breathing process in a way akin to the relationship of the silica process to the processes that unfold physically in the head. And if we want to make effective use of the part of the process of ash-formation having its correlate in the rhythmical breathing process, we cannot, of course, introduce it directly into the breath—in the human organism we can never do that—but we must introduce it through the opposite pole, so to speak.

If I sketch it here, this would be the rhythmic breathing process, and this the rhythmic circulatory process (see drawing). In the rhythmic breathing process, plant ashes represent the processes that are effective for our purpose. But we must make the plant-ash process effective in the opposite pole, in the rhythmic circulatory organism, proceeding indirectly by way of the metabolism (see drawing). We must incorporate this plant ash, that is the forces into the circulatory rhythm in order that they may call forth their polar counter-activity in the rhythmic breathing process.

Perceiving these relationships, we come to realize how extremely important they are for an understanding of the human organism. Just as we saw that the process confronting us in silica-formation has something to do with the entire human being, so now—applying this to the process by which plant ash is formed—we gain a mental picture of the middle system of the human being. Once again, this is seen to consist of two members, possessing a rhythm of breathing and a rhythm of circulation. When we focus our attention on the upper part, the rhythm of breathing, we see that the structure of the organs concerned is essentially determined by a process that is the polar opposite of the process revealed to us when plant substance is burned and ash is obtained. To a certain extent a struggle is taking place in the rhythmic process of breathing—a continual struggle against the process of plant-ash formation. But this struggle does not take place without its opposite penetrating the organism and provoking this process in the organism.

As human beings we live on the earth where there are silica processes and limestone processes. We would not be human beings if these processes permeated us. We are human beings through bearing within us the polar opposites of these processes. We are able to oppose the silica-formation process because we bear the opposite pole within us; we are able to oppose the limestone-formation process because we bear its polar opposite within us. It is chiefly owing to our head formation that we bear these poles within us, but the entire organism is also concerned, as I have described it in our breathing process, for example. Through our breathing rhythm we carry on the struggle against the plant-ash process; in ourselves we bear its opposite pole. If we focus our attention on these things it will not appear strange that a blow calls forth a counterblow, to express myself somewhat crudely. It is quite clear that if I intensify the silica-forming process in the organism, the countereffect will be modified; likewise, if I introduce into the organism the product of a combustion process, the ountereffect will be produced.

The important question thus arises of how we are to gain control of this action and reaction. This is what I mean when I am always saying, characterizing it abstractly, that we must first know what the processes are within the human organism, even into the ego, and what the processes are taking place outside the human organism. These processes are differentiated, both within and outside, but they are related to each other as polar opposites. The moment that anything that should be outside my skin, according to its nature, comes to be inside it—or the moment anything acts from outside inward that should not do so (this may happen by means of only a gentle pressure) an inner counter-reaction arises. In that moment I have the task of producing such an inner counter- reaction. For example, if I find that, instead of the normal process opposing silica there is too intense a tendency to this process, I have to regulate this from outside by administering the appropriate substance and thereby inducing the counter-reaction. The counter-reaction will then occur by itself.

This is what enables us gradually to perceive and understand the interaction between the human being and his environment. To be able to gain insight into the different gradations of the ego's influence in the human being, you must realize that the ego, when it wishes to act through the limbs and metabolism, is chiefly assisted by what is contained in the silica-forming process regarded as force, and that in the silica-forming process in the human head the action as substance is strongest. Thus its action as force in the head must assist the ego with diminished intensity. Now if we focus on the relationship of the human ego to the metabolic-limb system, we find the origin of human egoism in this relationship. The sexual system is indeed a part of this system of human egoism. And the ego primarily penetrates the human being with egoism indirectly through the sexual system. If you understand this, you will be able to see that there is a kind of contrast between the way the ego uses silica to work on the human being from the limb system and the way the ego works from the human head by means of silica. One could say that in the head it works without egoism. When this is studied by spiritual scientific investigation, it is possible to see this differentiation.

If I were to represent this remarkable activity schematically, I would have to say the following: Considering the ego as a real element of man's organization, what it does from the limb system by means of silica (see drawing, red) is essentially to encompass the human being, blending everything present in the human being in the fluids into an undifferentiated unity, so that it forms an undifferentiated, uniform whole. Then, in what is really the same process but now regarded in its activity as a force, we find the least intensive silica-forming tendency, and this works in the opposite way (yellow); it differentiates and radiates outward. From below upward the human being is held together and undifferentiated by means of silica. From above downward he is differentiated into separate components. This means that in relation to the human being the forces working organically in the head become differentiated for their work on the individual organs. In a sense they are stimulated by the silica-process belonging exclusively to the head organism to work in the appropriate way in the various organs—heart, liver, and so on. There we encounter the process which, when acting from below upward, mixes everything together in the human being, whereas when it works from above downward its action works to mold separate organs, regulating the organization through the individual organs.

We need to gain a clear conception of the results of these two tendencies in the human being—the blending tendency on the one hand and the tendency to differentiate the various organs on the other (the synthesizing-organizing activity in contrast to the differentiating-organizing activity). If we gain a clear conception of the way these two can act irregularly in a particular person, we will gradually learn to treat a person on the basis of this when something is the matter with him. We will see how to do this in the lectures that follow.

But we must be extraordinarily cautious in our investigations along these lines. For example, what does contemporary natural science do when it investigates the human organism? It says, for example, that the human organism contains silica, fluorine, magnesium, calcium. It states that silica is in the hair, in the blood, in the urine. Let us consider two of these points, that silica is in the hair and in the urine. For materialistic science, it is simply a matter of investigating the hair and finding silica in it and investigating the urine and finding silica there. But the essential thing is not in the least that here or there this or that substance is found. That silica is found in hair is not at all essential; what is important is that it is there in order to be active from there. We have hair for a purpose; there are forces that proceed from our hair back to the organism, very delicate forces. The most delicate forces proceed from the hair back into the organism. But silica is present in urine because it is superfluous. It is not needed and is therefore excreted. It is of no importance whether silica is in the urine, for it is inactive. There we find the silica that should not be within the human organism and that does not have the least significance within the organism.

It is the same when we investigate any substance whatsoever, magnesium, for example. If there were no magnesium in our teeth, they could not be teeth, because in the magnesium process forces are active that play a most important part in building up the teeth. You have learned that from Professor Römer's lecture. Materialistic science, however, tells us that magnesium is also in milk. But the magnesium in milk has no significance. Milk owes its existence as milk to the fact that it is strong enough to eliminate the magnesium that is there. Magnesium as such has no place in milk. Of course, we can find it by analysis, but the milk-forming process can only take place by being able to expel the magnesium forces. We only learn something about this peculiar contrast between the processes at work in building up teeth and in producing milk when we know that magnesium is an essential constituent in the tooth-forming process, belonging to this process dynamically. In the process of milk-production it is like the fifth wheel of a cart and is eliminated.

It is similar with fluorine, for example. We cannot understand the entire process of the development of the teeth without knowing that fluorine is an essential constituent of tooth enamel. It is also present in the urine, but as an excretory process, having no significance there. Fluorine is present in urine because the organism is strong enough to eliminate it since it cannot make use of it.

Merely physical investigation as to whether something or other is somewhere or other determines nothing essential. One must always know whether a substance is justifiably present in a particular part as an active constituent, or whether it is merely there because it has been thrown out. This is the essential aspect, and it is essential for us to acquire concepts like these if we are to understand the human being—and other organic beings—in conditions of health or illness.

In order to speak more popularly, of course, it is necessary to do without the help of these concepts, because in our age there is so little general cultivation of finer, more differentiated concepts. One is therefore compelled to speak more in abstractions, which then are not comprehensible. In combatting materialism, one is very frequently not comprehensible. We need to descend into those domains that the scientist is supposed to understand, and where he has facts before him that he can investigate; then we are brought by spiritual science to be able to show that ideas deriving from analyzing a substance by means of physical-chemical science and saying: “This and this are in that and that,” can lead to nothing but errors.

This is what I wished to present to you today as an introduction. We will continue our studies tomorrow.

In turning our attention now to the study of remedies, we will also discuss the remedies we have already introduced. I have no interest, of course, in describing how the idea forms in me that this or that can be a remedy. Instead I want you to come to an insight into why this or that substance can be used as a remedy. I would like the perception of the remedial value of a substance to be formed, as it were, in your own souls. Therefore I would like to direct the discussion today in such a way that we undertake a theoretical investigation of how one arrives at the view that something can be used as a remedy.

Of course it must be stated at the outset that an acquaintance with the main principles of an anthroposophical knowledge of the human being provides the basis for this. A correct interpretation of remedies can arise only if one is impelled from the ground up to conduct the whole investigation in an anthroposophical sense. Thus you will also see that what I have said in the last few days will flow into the theoretical investigations presented today.

Let us proceed from the fact that the interaction between the human being and his environment can be studied by investigating the plants. By first comprehending the processes in the plant world, one acquires a correct insight into the continuation of mineralizing processes into the inner aspects of the human being. In presenting this type of investigation, however, we must realize that something shaped out of the whole cosmos is at work in the entire process of plant formation—in the formation of roots, leaves, blossoms, seeds, and so on. This follows from everything we have studied in the last few days. This process that tends particularly to shaping the plants, even to shaping them inwardly, cannot be replaced by an artificial synthesis, by a chemical synthesis. At most, it can only be replaced in this way in very few cases. For example one must be clear about the following: In the roots of a plant we have to do with the part of the plant-forming process that is bound to the more-or-less inner forces of the earth's surface. Soul-spiritually, the human being is a being growing in a plant-like fashion from above downward. His head harbors many of the forces that interact with the forces of the earth itself. There is a deep kinship between that which shapes the root in plants and all the forces of the human head. Thus, when clear ideas need to be gained about the process that takes place in root formation in plants, it must always be realized that this process has a reciprocal relation to the human head.

Let us examine the root of gentian (gentiana lutea) as an example of how to explore such matters. Gentian is a plant in which the blossoming forces come to strong outward expression. Therefore in the root we will find forces that tend very strongly toward the blossoming element. In other words, the root's forces are somewhat weak, a great deal is expended in the direction of blossoming and leaf formation. Nevertheless, the whole form of the blossom shows that the root nature is still present very strongly. Thus we cannot count on gentian, as a matter of course, strongly affecting the activities in the human organization proceeding directly from the head, i.e., as outer physical effects. Rather we should expect gentian to act on what supports breathing from out of the head. Since effects in the organism always are polaric, we must imagine that especially the digestive organs begin to breathe very strongly in the way I explained yesterday if we administer gentian roots. This stimulates an active breathing activity in the stomach and intestines, but we must keep in mind what we have learned in these lectures regarding the necessity of first treating the plant substances if these are to stimulate this breathing activity. We must boil the roots, and administer the decoction.

Let us now turn to some external aspects of the plant. We notice that the gentian root has a bitter taste and a strong smell; thus it acts very strongly on the astral. We therefore have an effect on the astral nature in the digestive realm of the human being. Moreover, gentian root contains sugar. You will recall that I have frequently pointed out how the process of working through sugar in the human organization involves a strong stimulation of ego activity. I have said that you can study this even in external statistics. For example, Eastern Europeans and Russians, in whom the ego activity is somewhat withdrawn, use a very small quantity of sugar each year, whereas the statistics show a greater consumption of sugar the further West we go, i.e., among the English, in whom the ego develops an extraordinarily vigorous activity. Such things must certainly be taken into account if one wishes to gain knowledge in the world.

Gentian root is also rich in fatty oils. Fatty oils, when passing through digestion, have a strong effect on the lower breathing, since fatty oil intensifies the mobility, the inner mobility, of the stomach and intestinal organs. Therefore you can see how it is possible really to describe what is taking place in the human organism. One notices at once that the astral activity is stimulated and therefore that the breathing mobility of the stomach and intestinal tract is stimulated. One can therefore say that the intestines develop a greater activity and the stomach is strengthened. This whole effect is the result when the astral body is strengthened generally. The whole effect calls forth mineralizing processes, but only to the extent that these solidify the organs and make them stronger. This is the slight influence of the ego acting through the sugar. Thus if we use a decoction of gentian roots, we stimulate the activity of the astral body and, acting through the sugar content of the root, allow the ego to assist.

There is a danger, however, of the ego going too far. If the ego continues to work below like a whip, a reaction is set up polarically in the head, and one can observe that such patients suffer from headaches as a side-effect. Nevertheless, the effects I have mentioned are produced. We observe an intestinal activity that is essentially of an enhancing, stimulating character, and we will use such a remedy, either alone or in some combination, if we notice that an illness manifests in connection with loss of appetite or dyspepsia, and especially if there is a generally sluggish digestive activity. In this way the metabolism is inwardly stimulated and becomes more active. By this means we can therefore work against tendencies toward gout and rheumatic conditions. In addition, in applying gentian root we will have made appropriate use of something that has a mildly antipyretic effect. This is because the deficient intestinal activity induces a reaction in the upper human being, and the febrile activity proceeds from this. Thus if we strengthen the lower human being, creating a counterweight to the upper human being, we have introduced an antipyretic activity.

This is the approach we must take if we wish to come to concrete relationships of the outer world to what is within the human being. It is quite correct to draw attention to currents acting on the human being from outside. In this respect, a man like Rosenbach has made remarkably good preliminary studies. However, if we only speak about these currents in abstractions, we do not at first realize that what acts from outside emerges from concrete things. It emerges from the fact that such relationships prevail between the root-nature of the plant world, the forces that are active in the root nature, and these forces once they have entered the human being. In this way we grasp things that otherwise are only characterized abstractly as currents. Spiritual science is concerned with working out of concrete processes.

Let us study a most instructive plant from this standpoint—the clove [clove root] (geum urbanum). We will again take the root and prepare a decoction from it. It is extraordinarily interesting if you investigate the clove root and recall something of what was said about the gentian root. Of course we must again assume an interaction with the head forces, because we are dealing with the root. Now clove root has a tart taste, exceptionally tart. In clove root we have etheric oils, i.e., oils that we must assume act on those parts of the organism not situated close to or within the intestinal tract, like those we spoke of in discussing the root of the gentian. Rather we have more to do with what should take place in the stomach, or perhaps only in the esophagus. We must also take into account another most essential fact here, namely the starch present in the clove root. Therefore we must appeal to forces that work in a more intensive way than the forces that are necessary to digest sugar. To digest starch, the process has to begin earlier. The sugar has first to be produced. You see, one must really pursue the processes in detail.

The clove root also contains tannin, and this too we must take into consideration if we wish to investigate the remedial effect of anything. Tannin points to the fact that the starch is working more toward the physical, becoming something that cultivates that which opposes even tannin. In the case of the clove root, then, the whole effect must be ascribed more to the ego than to the astral body. We have here an intensification of the ego's activity. Because of this, we have to do with what takes place in the lower human organism. This effect is a complete polar opposite to the stimulation of the head that takes place through the ego. We have to do with what I would like to call the outer digestion, laying hold of substances while still in the stomach, before they have gone over into the intestinal activity. Every system extends through the entire human organism, and the part of the nerve-sense apparatus still present in the intestines and digestive organs is stimulated; we therefore have to do with a predominance of the ego's influence.

What is the consequence of this? First, we have in clove root a strong antipyretic force; second, by working on the earlier digestive processes we can affect those later on, i.e., the actual intestinal activity. We give the intestinal activity less to do. In this way we can combat diarrhea in particular, and also mucous discharges from the intestines, for these things are due to overburdening the inner digestive activity. Thus you see that these investigations lead to a perception of the way outer forces penetrate what is within the human being.

This study of roots is of special significance, so let us take another root, for example the the root of iris germanica. Here we will also prepare a decoction from the root. The iris shows us even by its outer manifestation that it works strongly on the ego. The repulsive smell and bitter taste of the root reveal at once that the ego here interacts strongly and physically with the outer world. In the iris root there is something that stimulates this physical activity very much, that is, tannic acid. We also find something else that works upon the ego activity: starches. Finally, we find something that, through its physical effect, has an influence wherever it is stimulated to do so; we have resins in the iris root. Through all this the ego is brought into an especially lively activity. This lively activity of the ego—this driving force of the ego—can be noticed first in the urine activity, where a purgative, diuretic effect appears. These are outward expressions of ego activity.

We can find the conditions treatable by this remedy if we simply ask, “What is the human organism suffering from when these things are not in order?” The answer is dropsy and similar conditions. In decoctions of iris root we therefore have something with which we should try to combat dropsy and similar edematous conditions.

In taking a step upward in our study of the plants, let us consider the green leafy parts of the plant. We will take a characteristic plant like marjoram (majorana origanum). We must realize, when we come to the leaf, that nature herself completes certain processes that we must first carry to completion in the roots. When we take the leaf therefore, it is not good to prepare a decoction directly. We need the finer forces of the leaf and can obtain these by preparing an infusion. The forces that we really need are made available through preparing the leaf in an infusion. Here again you can grasp what we are dealing with by means of the senses. The infusion of marjoram has the peculiar flavor that might be called the “warming” flavor. At the same time, it has a certain bitterness. Then you have the aromatic smell, the ethereal oil, that proves so clearly that here something is working outward. In addition, you have something that need only be added to intensify all this, but whose physical effect does not manifest as early as other products. This aspect does not appear in its physical effect until it has passed through the stomach and has reached the intestines. These are the various kinds of salts present in the leaf, especially in marjoram. You may therefore say that this leaf-infusion has a particularly strong effect on the breathing activity of the inner organs: it calls forth a certain breathing activity in the inner organs. This finds expression in the sweat-provoking effect of this infusion, i.e., the inner organic activity in the form of breathing is stimulated. It has a diaphoretic effect, and the reaction therefore strengthens the activity of the inner organs. With infusions of marjoram leaves, one can work on the one hand against upper respiratory congestions, rhinitis, etc. and on the other hand against uterine weaknesses.

All this will become clearer when we move on to the effect of blossoms. Let us look at this effect in an instance where the plant shows it with special clearness, for example, where many small blossoms are clustered together in an inflorescence, as in the elder (sambucus nigra) or lilac. Let us be quite clear that here the plant is penetrated by precisely those forces that have a great deal to do with the environment of the earth, that contain cosmic influences, cosmic radiations. From this we note that elder flowers also contain ethereal oils. We notice it particularly from the fact that these flowers contain sulfur. In these flowers we therefore have something from the mineral kingdom that proves especially effective if we wish to stimulate breathing, but now from the other side: to stimulate the actual breathing organization, whereas earlier we spoke of stimulating breathing in the digestive organs and organs near them, before the breathing of the actual respiratory organs intervened. When we use elder flowers in the form of an infusion we stimulate particularly the etheric activity of the human organism, and only by way of this etheric activity do we stimulate the activity of the astral body. It is especially the breathing in the upper, posterior organs that is stimulated, not so much the head organs as those belonging to the actual respiration. Of course, reactions such as purging and sweating naturally appear everywhere. Now, however, the organs of breathing are stimulated. The normal breathing activity is intensified and—because this has to have an effect on the blood—the blood circulation is stimulated from inside the human being.

We can immediately conclude from these observations that it is possible to work against catarrhs by such means, and also inhibited sweat-formation, hoarseness, and coughing. And, because the effect that before appeared directly, now appears polarically, we can also use this remedy in rheumatic conditions. It is always a question of determining what curative forces a remedy may contain from the way it acts.

Let us now consider situations in which it may be necessary to act especially upon the head organization. What is it that really depends on the head organization? Digestion, its polar opposite, depends on it. Indeed, the cruder digestive processes, the cause of so many serious illnesses, depend on the head organization. Hence we must realize that we can influence the head through the cruder digestive processes. If we want to support what takes place within the human being—thus having an effect on digestion—so that the substances stream up into the head and are therefore able to unfold their effect from there, we must naturally do everything we can to bring this about. Therefore, although we want first of all to introduce the plant substance to the inner part of the body, we must form it in such a way that it works into the head. We can observe such an effect especially when we make use of seeds. Seeds by their very nature are especially suitable to influence the cruder digestive processes. And by acting directly on the cruder digestive processes, they act on the head in calling forth reactions. Nevertheless, it is very difficult to promote the effect from the digestion to the head. Therefore it will be useful to make a very concentrated decoction of the seeds, if this agrees with the patient. We can study this especially well if we consider the effects of decoctions of caraway seeds. These contain ethereal oils, which act essentially upon the ego; wax, which has a very strong physical effect; and also resins, which also unfold strong effects in the physical. The powerful effect is also shown by the aromatic smell. In addition, this decoction contains levulose.

If we consider all this in connection with what we have studied in the last few days, we will see that it strengthens the activity of the ego to an extraordinary degree. It affects the nerve-sense activity concealed in the digestive organs. It works especially on this weak nerve-sense activity in the digestive organs—this activity extends throughout the digestive organs in a very faintly formed metamorphosis. The effect of such a decoction on the lower human being resembles what one might call a subconscious metamorphosis of our outer sense perception. We are stimulated to perceive with the digestive system what is developing as process there. Hence this remedy is very valuable when administered through an enema. When given by enema, it calls forth a process that must act on the nerve-sense activity. This is an outer administration of the finer forces of the caraway seeds, and in this way a kind of subconscious perception is evoked in the digestive organs. The lethargic tissue fluid is especially stimulated by this means. By thus introducing a process strengthening the nerve-sense activity, perception is driven much further into the human being. The patient becomes a perceiver in his digestive organs, and this works against the opposite pole that we find when an inner activity begins that can also be perceived—consisting, indeed, of inner perception—when our organism begins to express itself in eruption-like states. By our strong perception of our organism when it develops such an organic activity, so that we are actually perceiving ourselves, we dampen down such activity and therefore have a curative effect on it. Such an activity represents a perception from within outward, a nerve-sense activity similar to, though a metamorphosis of, outer perception. Thus we can work beneficially with this remedy in cases of stomach cramps, colicky conditions, and flatulence.

Yet another process is extremely interesting to observe. Picture vividly to yourselves the subconscious process developed in such a case. This subconscious activity is extraordinarily similar to the activity of outer sense perception, but it takes place within. Consider that the outer activity of perception and the reflex activity are connected in a certain way. Perceptions that appear subconsciously can call forth defensive movements immediately. Study this cooperation of perceptive activity and the reflex reaction against it, and carry this over to the inner activity of the tissue fluid. You carry out this outer perceptive activity in floating in the air, in a sense. Sketching this schematically, let this be the air in which we carry ourselves (see drawing, bright). It is permeated with light, etc. Outer perception (red) unfolds in this direction; the inner reaction (blue) unfolds in this direction. In every sense organ there is a cooperation between external action and inner reaction. If you want an outer, abstract picture of this process, you should not choose the one chosen by the modern materialistic view, namely, that of a centrifugal and a centripetal nerve activity. Such a view is no more intelligent than saying: when a rubber ball is pressed it recovers its former shape by means of another force, i.e., by the counterpart of the pressure itself. It is no more intelligent to speak of motor-nerves than to explain the elasticity of a rubber ball by ascribing to it some center within that pushes out what has been pushed in. What happens in both cases is really no more than the restitution of the original form; it is the reaction that sets in, requiring no special nerves, because the whole phenomenon—action and reaction—is embedded in the astrality and ego nature.

Now picture this whole process working by way of the etheric activity in the tissue fluid (see drawing, yellow). Of course, a sense process does not take place in the tissue fluid under normal conditions, but it can be evoked in the way I have just indicated. A kind of contracting tendency arises, a tendency to work in toward the organism, and I will sketch that in this way, just as I indicate here the action of perception. But this (see drawing, red) is a process that in a sense assaults the outwardly directed forces in the tissue fluid (violet). Here is the action, and this is the reaction. Thus one is inserting a sense process, a metamorphosis of the sense process, into the tissue fluid. It is extraordinarily interesting to observe this insertion of a metamorphosis of the outer sense process into the tissue fluid. Now we must search for something similar that takes place in normal life, that is, some condition in which a kind of metamorphosis of these sense processes within the human being, a densified sense process, arises in the tissue fluid. This takes place when a woman secretes milk. Here, in fact, we have a densified metamorphosis of the outer sense process transferred inward. Now, if this milk secretion is deficient when it is supposed to be there, we have every cause to intensify this densified internal sense process in the tissue fluid. We can evoke this process with a decoction of caraway seeds, thus supporting the secretion of milk.

I have presented these things as examples of the way the whole working and weaving of the human organism and its connection with the outer world can be considered. Consider precisely what I have said: that a decoction of caraway seeds contains resin and wax, i.e., something whose consistency evokes very strong physical effects. Resin and wax are thereby very similar to what makes an impression on me from outside, only inwardly densified. This seed also contains etheric oils and levulose. This is something that stimulates the reaction of the ego. Taking all this together, you have everything contained in the sense process: action from outside, and the reaction extending to the ego from within. If you now metamorphose this sense process by not creating a sense impression but transferring this interaction inward into the tissue fluid's system of forces, you then have what evokes an inner sense process in you. The secretion of milk is such a process. You will see how the entire organization can be understood in this way.

These are the matters you must study if you wish to consider the effects of the substances of the outer world within the body. For example, if you study the effect of metal-mineral remedies, you will readily understand what you have learned from the influence of the plant element, but you will also realize something else: that the mineral element has undergone a change in passing into the plant process and continuing its activity there. In this mineralizing and “vegetabilizing” process, a transformation of the mineral forces has taken place. Part of the healing process thus depends on the transformation of the mineral forces. Imagine we were to build a sanatorium in the country. Then we could surround it with fields and manure these fields with various mineral substances, creating a soil whose content is known to us. We can sow there various plants from which we will use the root, leaf, fruit, and so on. Thus we will have control of the process by which the plant transforms the mineral into a remedy. We can strengthen this process by growing the plants we have just discussed and treating them in the way I just mentioned. We want to do this at our Research Institute in Stuttgart, but this must still be arranged. One can go still further, however. One can take what has been obtained from the plant itself as a remedy and can use it as a kind of manure, thereby intensifying its force. In this way ordinary triturated preparations will be made much more effective, for nature herself, and the forces active in nature, are allowed to do some of the work of preparation.

Of course we have to be clear about the following: for example, how should a mineral-metallic remedy act in order to have an effect? Salts, which are really mineral remedies, produce effects more toward the inside of the human being. The most peripheral activities, however, are influenced by just those mineral-metallic substances that are most firm. Here we have a direction for research, but always on the basis of spiritual scientific knowledge, for otherwise our thoughts will split up and run in every possible wrong direction. The thoughts of spiritual science guide our thinking in the right direction. When we look at a metal, we know it can only be weakly taken hold of by the inner human organism. There the activity of the ego must be highly stimulated, for it is the ego that, in a sense, undermines and penetrates into the interior of the substance, shaping this for its own purposes and summoning it to ego activity in the organism. The ego can be strengthened in this activity by the astral body. Thus when we make use of metals or minerals, we must always see whether we are stimulating the ego activity or the astral activity that then works back on the ego, or whether we are stimulating the interaction between the astral and ego activity.

Such stimulation can be achieved, for example, in the following way: We prepare a metallic ointment and apply it, let us say, to a skin eruption; we thereby stimulate the peripheral ego activity. This ego activity is similarly stimulated by a reaction within the human being. This arises within the human being first in an intensified nerve-sense activity in some organ. This leads from there to an intensified breathing activity, passing over to the astral. The effect is that those forces within the body then work against the skin eruption. We appeal to the whole body to work against the skin eruption.

On this basis the various metallic and mineral substances can be studied in a similar way. In lead, for instance, you have a substance that acts with extraordinary strength on nerve-sense activity, and then, dependent on this, on the inner breathing activity, including the inner breathing activity that takes place in the outer, peripheral organs, for example. If we use lead, either as an ointment or internally, we can achieve a good deal when it is necessary to evoke what I have just described. When we give it internally, however, we must realize that we are evoking the reaction of the upper human being by means of the activity stimulated in the digestive organs. If we apply carefully prepared lead ointment to the upper human being, we act directly on this upper system. In patients suffering from weaknesses in the head region—i.e., in which the upper human being develops neither a proper nerve-sense activity nor a proper breathing activity—we will be able to achieve a great deal with such lead cures, provided we do not go too far and cause lead-poisoning.

We must take into account something else with everything we may gather from the presentations in the last few days and in the previous course. It is most important to be aware of a great contrast here. Those substances tending more toward silver have a polar relationship to those tending more toward lead. In regard to these matters our classifications of minerals are most deficient. These defects are fundamental, for a reasonable classification of minerals would have to take into account these family relationships of the metals. We should see lead and its compounds at one pole, and at the other pole silver, while gold, for example, would be in the middle, and the other metals arrayed appropriately. I call silver and lead opposites because silver acts directly on the metabolic- limb system, especially on its periphery, on the part of the metabolic-limb organism that lies nearer the surface. Lead acts, likewise, on the part of the head organism lying closer to the surface. Thus silver stimulates the nerve-sense activity in the metabolic-limb system and from there calls forth the activity that permeates the whole body and that stimulates the breathing in everything that yesterday I called a metamorphosis of the central heart organ.

On the other hand, what proceeds from lead works on the nerve-sense activity of the head and on the breathing activity stimulated from there. Hence it stimulates the head formation, lung formation, and liver formation, that is, the organs belonging to the other path of metamorphosis. These organs in a sense surround the other organization of the human being, just as the lungs surround the heart, showing us the archetypal form of that which, as the “circulatory human being,” is in a certain respect the whole human being. We have the lungs surrounding the heart, the lungs embracing, as it were, the circulatory being with the respiratory being. Likewise, when we study the human being in regard to his brain formation, lung formation, and liver formation, that is, the whole upper posterior human being, we have a more all-encompassing breathing embracing all the blood vessels together with the heart. The digestive organization and also the sexual organization are surrounded in this way by the upper posterior human being. The human organization is such that the upper posterior human being surrounds the lower anterior human being. We must thoroughly understand the mutual relationships and differentiations of the upper posterior human being and the lower anterior human being, which comes to expression primarily in the interrelationship of heart and lungs; we must study this properly, the rhythmic interplay involved in this, the nerve-sense activity lying above and to the back, and the opposite pole in the metabolic-limb processes lying below and to the front. We must study the other manifestations of the upper and lower human being, and only then will we have the whole human being before us. Only in this way can we then master his other processes as well.

From this starting point, we will move on tomorrow to a special discussion of our individual remedies. In doing so, we will naturally be led to deal with some of the questions that have been posed here.