The Rudolf Steiner Archive

We may take it as obvious that only a very small proportion of what my present hearers probably expect for the future of their professional life can be indicated in this series of lectures; for you will all agree that any confidence in the future among medical workers depends on the reform of the actual medical curriculum. It is impossible to give any direct impetus to such reform by means of a course of lectures. The most that may possibly result is that certain individuals will feel the urge to help and participate in such reform. Any medical subject under discussion today has, as its background, those initial studies in anatomy, physiology and general biology, which are the preliminaries to medicine proper. These preliminaries bias the medical mind in a certain direction from the first; and it is absolutely essential that such bias should be rectified.

In this series of lectures I should like, in the first place, to submit to you some facts bearing on the obstacles in the customary curriculum to any really objective recognition of the nature of disease per se. Secondly, I would suggest the direction in which we should seek that knowledge of human nature which can afford a real foundation for medical work. Thirdly, I would indicate the possibilities of a rational therapy based on the knowledge of the relationship between man and the surrounding world. In this section I would include the question whether actual healing were possible and practicable.

Today I shall restrict myself to introductory remarks, and to a kind of orientation. My principal aim will be to collect for consideration from Spiritual Science all that can be of value to physicians. It is my wish that this attempt should not be confused with an actual medical course, which it nevertheless will be in a sense. But I shall give special attention to everything that may be of value to the medical worker. A true medical science, or art, if I may call it so, can only be attained by consideration of the factors to which I have referred.

Probably you have all, in thinking over the task of the physician, been baffled by the question: “What does sickness mean and what is a sick human being?” The most usual definition or explanation of sickness in general and of sick people, is that the morbid process is a deviation from the normal life process; that certain facts which affect human beings, and for which normal human functions are not in the first place adapted, cause certain changes in the normal life process and in the organisation; and that sickness consists in the functional deficiency of the organs caused by such changes. But you must admit that this is a merely negative definition. It offers no help when we are dealing with actual diseases. It is just this practical help that I shall aim at here, help in dealing with actual diseases. In order to make things clear it seems advisable to refer to certain views, which have developed in the course of time, as to the nature of disease; not as indispensable for the present interpretation of morbid symptoms, but as signposts showing the way. For it is easier to recognise where we are now if we appreciate former points of view which led up to those now current.

The accepted version of the origin of medicine derives it from the Greece of the fifth and fourth centuries before the Christian era, when the influence of Hippocrates was supreme. Thus an impression is produced that the system of Hippocrates—which developed into the Humoral pathology accepted until well into the nineteenth century—was the first attempt at medicine in the Occident. But this is a fundamental error, and is still harmful as a hindrance to an unprejudiced view of sickness. We must, to begin with, clear this error away. For an unbiased view the conceptions of Hippocrates which even survived until the time of Rokitansky, that is until the last century—are not a beginning only, but to a very significant degree are a conclusion and summary of older medical conceptions. In the ideas which have come down to us from Hippocrates we meet a final filtered remainder of ancient medical conceptions. These were not reached by contemporary methods, i.e., through anatomy, but by the paths of ancient atavistic vision. The most accurate abstract definition of Hippocratic medicine would be: the conclusion of archaic medicine based on atavistic clairvoyance. From an external point of view, we may say that the followers of Hippocrates attributed all forms of sickness to an incorrect blending of the various humours or fluids which co-operate in the human organism. They pointed out that these fluids bore a certain ratio to one another in a normal organism, and that this ratio was disturbed in the sick human body. They termed the healthy mixture or balance Krasis, the improper mixture Dyskrasis. The latter had to be influenced so that the proper blend might be restored. In the external world, they beheld four substances which constituted all physical existence: Earth, Water, Air and Fire—Fire meaning what we describe simply as warmth. They held that these four elements were specialised in the bodies of man and the animals, as black bile, yellow bile, (gall) mucus (slime), and blood, and that the human organism must therefore function by means of the correct blending of these four fluids.

The contemporary man with some kind of scientific grounding, who considers this theory, argues as follows: the blending and interaction of blood, mucus, bile and gall, in due proportion, must produce an effect according to their inherent qualities known to chemistry. And this restricted view is thought to be the essence of Humoral pathology; but erroneously. Only one of the four “humours,” the most Hippocratic of all—as it appears to us today—namely “black bile” was believed to work through its actual chemical attributes on the other “humours.” In the case of the remaining three fluids, it was believed that besides the chemical properties there were certain intrinsic qualities of extra-telluric origin. (I am referring to the human organism for the moment, excluding animals from consideration.) Just as water, air and fire were believed to be dependent on extra-telluric forces, so also these ingredients of the organism were believed to be inter-penetrated with forces emanating from beyond the earth.

In the course of evolution, western science has completely lost this reference to extra-terrestrial forces. For the scientist of today, there is something absolutely grotesque in the suggestion that water possesses not only the qualities verifiable by chemical tests, but also, in its action within the human organism, qualities appertaining to it as a part of the extra-terrestrial universe. Thus the Ancients held that the fluids of the human body carried into the organism forces derived from the cosmos itself. Such cosmic forces were regarded less and less as the centuries went on; but nevertheless medical thought was built up on the remains of the fading conceptions of Hippocrates until the fifteenth century. Contemporary scientists therefore have great difficulty in understanding pre-fifteenth century treatises on medical subjects; and we must admit that the writers of these treatises did not, as a rule, themselves fully comprehend what they wrote. They talked of the four elements of the human organism, but their special description of these elements was derived from a body of wisdom that had really perished with Hippocrates. Nevertheless, the qualities of these fluids were still matters of discussion and dispute. In fact, from the time of Galen till the fifteenth century, we find a collection of inherited maxims that become continuously less and less intelligible. Yet there were always isolated individuals able to perceive that there was something beyond what could be physically or chemically verified, or included in the merely terrestrial. Such individuals were opponents of what “humoral pathology” had become in current thought and practice. And chief among them were Paracelsus and Van Helmont, who lived and worked from the end of the fifteenth century into the seventeenth, and contributed something new to medical thought, by their attempts to formulate something their contemporaries no longer troubled to define. But the formulation they gave could only be fully understood with some remainder of clairvoyance, which Paracelsus and Van Helmont certainly possessed. If we ignore these facts, we cannot arrive at any conclusion concerning peculiarities of medical terminology whose origin is no longer recognisable.

Paracelsus assumed the existence of the Archaeus, as the foundation for the activity of the organic “humours” in man; and his followers accepted it. He assumed the Archaeus, as we today speak of the “Etheric” body of man.

Whether we use the term Archaeus, as Paracelsus did, or our term, the etheric body, we refer to an entity which exists but whose origin we do not trace. If we were to do this, our argument would be as follows: Man possesses a physical organism (see Diagram No. 1) mainly constructed by forces acting out of the sphere of the earth; and also an etheric organism (Diagram No. 1 in Red) mainly constructed by forces acting from the cosmic periphery. Our physical body is a portion as it were of the whole organism of our Earth. Our etheric body—like the Archaeus of Paracelsus—is a portion of that which does not belong to the earth, but which acts on and affects the earth from all parts of the cosmos. Thus Paracelsus viewed what was formerly designated the cosmic element in man—of which the knowledge had perished with Hippocratic medicine—in the form of an etheric body, which is the basis of the physical. But he did not investigate further—though he gave some hints—the extra-terrestrial forces associated with the Archaeus and acting in it.

The exact significance of such facts grew more and more obscure, especially with the advent of Stahl's medical school in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Stahl's school has wholly ceased to comprehend this working of cosmic forces into terrestrial occurrences; it grasps instead at vague concepts such as “vital force” and “spirits of life.” Paracelsus and Van Helmont were consciously aware of the reality at work between the soul and spirit of man and his physical organisation. Stahl and his followers talk as though the conscious soul-element was at work, though in another form, upon the structure of man's body. This naturally provoked a vehement reaction. For if one proceeds like this and founds a sort of hypothetic vitalism one comes to purely arbitrary assertions, and the nineteenth century opposed these assertions. Only a very great mind, like Johannes Müller (the teacher of Ernst Haeckel), who died in 1858, was able to overcome the noxious effects of this confusion, a confusion of soul forces with “vital forces” which were supposed to work in the human organism, although how they operated was not very clear.

Meanwhile a quite new current made its appearance. We have followed up the other current which faded out; the new current in the nineteenth century had a rather different bearing upon medical thought. It was set in motion by one extremely influential piece of work dating from the preceding century: the De sedibus et causis morborum per anatomen indugatis by Morgagni. Morgagni was a physician of Padua, who introduced an essentially materialistic trend into medicine; the term materialism is used here, of course, as an objective description, without sympathies and antipathies. The new trend initiated by Morgagni's work consisted in turning the interest to the after-effect of disease upon the organism. Post-mortem dissections were regarded as decisive; they revealed that whatever the disease may have been, typical effects could be studied in certain organs, and the changes of the organs by disease were studied from the autopsy. With Morgagni, pathological anatomy begins, whereas the former content of medicine still retained some traces of the ancient element of clairvoyance.

It is of interest to observe the suddenness with which this great change finally occurred. The volte-face took place within two decades. The ancient inheritance was abandoned and the atomistic-materialistic conception in modern medicine was founded. Rokitansky's Pathological Anatomy (published in 1842) still contains some traces of the “Humoral” tradition; of the conception that illnesses are due to the abnormal interaction of the fluids. Rokitansky achieved a brilliant combination of the study of organic change, with a belief in the importance of the fluid (humours); but it is impossible to consider these bodily fluids adequately without some recognition of their extra-terrestrial qualities. Rokitansky referred the degenerative changes revealed in autopsies to the effect of the abnormal mixture of the bodily fluids. Thus the last visible trace of the ancient tradition of “Humoral pathology” was in the year 1842. The interlocking of this perishing heritage of the past with attempts such as Hahnemann's—attempts forecasting future trends of dealing with more comprehensive concepts of disease—we shall consider in the next few days, for this subject is far too important to be relegated to an introduction. Similar experiments must be discussed in their general connection and then in detail.

The two decades immediately following the appearance of Rokitansky's book were decisive for the growth of the atomistic-materialistic conception in medicine. In the first half of the nineteenth century there were curious echoes of the ancient conceptions. Thus, for example, Schwann may be termed the discoverer of the vegetable cell; and he believed that cells were formed out of a formless fluid substance to which he gave the name Blastem, by a process of solidification, so that the nucleus emerges together with the surrounding protoplasm. Schwann derived cells from a fluid with the special property of differentiation, and believed that the cell was the result of such differentiation. Later on the view gradually develops that the human frame is “built up” of cells; this view is still held today; the cell is the “elementary organism,” and from the combination of cells, the body of man is built up.

This conception of Schwann's, which can be read “between the lines” and even quite obviously, is the last remainder of ancient medical thought, because it is not concerned with atomism. It regards the atomistic element, the cell, as the product of a fluid which can never properly be considered as being atomistic—a fluid which contains forces and only differentiates the atomistic from itself. Thus in these two decades, the forties and fifties of the nineteenth century, the older, more universal view approaches its final end, and the atomistic medical view shows its faint beginnings. And it has fully arrived when, in 1858, appeared the Zellular Pathologie (Cellular Pathology) of Virchow. Between Pathologischen Anatomie, 1842, by Rokitansky and Zellular Pathologie, 1858, by Virchow one must actually see an immense revolution—proceeding in leaps and bounds—in the newer medical thinking. Cellular Pathology derives all the manifestations of the human organism from cellular changes. The official ideal henceforth consists in tracing every phenomenon to changes in the cells. From the change in the cell the disease is supposed to be understood. The appeal of this atomism is its simplicity. It makes everything so easy, so evident. In spite of all the progress of modern science, the aim is to make everything quickly and easily understood, regardless of the fact that nature and the universe are essentially extremely complex.

For example: It is easy to demonstrate through a microscope that an Amoeba, in a drop of water, changes form continuously, extending and retracting its limb-like projections. It is easy to raise the temperature of the water, and to observe the greater rapidity with which the pseudo-podia protrude and retract, until the temperature reaches a certain point. The amoeba contracts and becomes immobile, unable to meet the change in its environment. Now, an electric current can be sent through the water, the amoeba swells like a balloon, and finally bursts if the voltage becomes too high. Thus it is possible to observe and record the changes of a single cell, under the influence of its environment; and it is possible to construct a theory of the origin and causation of disease, through cumulative cellular change.

What is the essential result of this revolution which took place in two decades? It lives on in everything that permeates the acknowledged medical science of today. It is the general tendency to interpret the world atomistically which has gradually arisen in the age of materialistic thought.

As I stated at the beginning of this address, the medical worker today must of necessity inquire: What sort of processes are those we term diseased? What is the essential difference between the diseased and the so-called normal processes in the human organism? Only a positive representation of this deviation is practicable, not the official and generally accepted definitions, which are merely negative. These deviations from normality are stated to exist, and then there are attempts to find how they may be removed. But there is no penetrating conception of the nature of the human being. And from the lack of such a conception our whole medical science is suffering. For what, indeed, are morbid processes? It cannot be denied that they are natural processes, for you cannot make an abstract distinction between any external natural process, whose stages can be observed, and a morbid process within the body. The natural process is called normal, the morbid one abnormal, without showing why the process in the human organism differs from normality. No practical treatment can be attained without finding out. Only then can we investigate how to counter-balance it. Only then can we find out from what angle of universal existence the removal of such a process is possible. Moreover, the term “abnormal” is an obstacle to understanding; why should such-and-such a process in man be termed abnormal? Even a lesion, such as a wound or deep cut with a knife, in the finger, is only relatively “abnormal,” for to cut a piece of wood is “normal.” That we are accustomed to other processes than the cutting of a finger says nothing; it is only playing with words. For what happens through the cutting of my finger is, when viewed from a certain angle, as normal as any other natural process. The task before us is to investigate the actual difference between the so-called diseased processes, which are after all quite normal processes of nature, but must be occasioned by definite causes, and the other processes, which we call healthy and which occur every day. We must ascertain this essential difference; it cannot, however, be ascertained without a knowledge of man which leads to his essential being. I shall give you, in this introduction, the first elements; we shall later on proceed to the details.

As these lectures are limited in number, you will understand that I am principally giving things which you cannot find in books or lectures and am assuming the knowledge presented in those sources. It would not seem to me worth while to put a theory before you, which you could find stated and illustrated elsewhere.

Let us therefore begin here with a simple visual comparison which you can all make: the difference between a human skeleton and that of a gorilla, an ape of so-called high grade. Compare the visible outlines and proportions of these two bony frameworks. The most conspicuous feature of the gorilla, in point of size, is the development of the lower jaw and its appurtenances. This enormous jaw seems to weight down, to overload, the whole bony structure of the head (see Diagram 2), so that the gorilla appears to stand upright only with an effort. But there is the same weightiness in comparison with the human skeleton, if you examine the forearms and hands and fingers. They are heavy and clumsy in the gorilla; whereas in man they are delicate and frail; there the mass is less obvious. Just in these parts, the system of the lower jaws and forearms with the fingers, the mass recedes in man, whereas it is very obvious in the gorilla. The same comparative peculiarities of structure can be traced in the lower limbs and feet of the two skeletons. There, too, we find a certain weight pressing in a definite direction. I should like to denote the force which one can see in the systems of underjaw, arm, leg, foot—by means of this [e.Ed: down and left slanting arrow.] line in the diagram. (See Diagram 3).

These differences in structure suggest to the observer that in human beings, where the weight of the jaws recede and the arms and finger bones are delicate, the downward pressing forces are countered everywhere by a force directed upwards and away from the earth. The formative forces in man must be represented in a certain parallelogram of forces which results from the same force which is directed upwards and which the gorilla appropriates externally only, standing upright with difficulty. I then arrive at a parallelogram of forces that is formed by this line and by this one. (See Diagram 4).

As a rule nowadays we are content to compare the bones and muscles of the higher animals with our own, but to ignore the changes in form and posture. Yet the contemplation of the formative changes is of essential significance. There must be certain forces acting against those other forces which mould the typical gorilla frame. They must exist. They must operate. In seeking them we shall find that which has been lost inasmuch as the ancient medical wisdom has been filtered from the system of Hippocrates. The first set of forces in the parallelogram are of a terrestrial nature, while the other set of forces which unite with the terrestrial forces so as to form a resultant which is not of terrestrial origin, must be sought outside the terrestrial sphere. We must search for tractive forces which bring man into the upright posture, not merely on occasion, as among the higher mammals, but so that these forces are at the same time formative. The difference is obvious: the ape if he walks upright has to counteract forces which oppose the erection with their mass; whereas man forms his very skeleton in accordance with forces of a non-terrestrial nature. If one not only compares the particular bones of the man with those of the animal, but examines the dynamic principle in the human skeleton, one finds that there is something unique and not to be found in the other kingdoms of nature. Forces emerge that we have to combine with the others to make the parallelogram. We find resultants not to be found among the forces of extra-human nature. Our task will be to follow up systematically this “jump” leading from animal to man. Then we can find the origin and essence of “sickness” in animals as well as in man. I can only indicate little by little these lines of inquiry; we shall find much of importance from these elements as we continue further.

Now let me mention another fact, which concerns the muscular system. There is a remarkable difference in muscular reactions; when in repose, the chemical reactions of the muscles are alkaline, though very slightly so in comparison with most other alkaline reactions. When in action, the muscular reactions are acid, though also faint. Now consider that from the point of view of metabolism the muscle is formed out of assimilated material, that is, it is a result of the forces present in terrestrial substances. But when man passes to action the normal properties of the muscle, as a substance affected by ordinary metabolism, are overcome. This is quite evident. Changes take place in the muscle itself, which are different from ordinary metabolic processes, and can only be compared with the forces active in the human bone-system. Just as these formative forces in man transcend what he has from outside, inter-penetrating terrestrial forces and uniting with them so that a resultant arises, so we must recognise the force that is manifested through the altered metabolism of muscles in action, as something working chemically from outside the earth into terrestrial chemistry. Here we have something of an extra-terrestrial nature, which works into earthly mechanics and dynamics. In metabolism there is something active beyond terrestrial chemistry, and capable of other results than those caused by terrestrial chemistry alone.

Those considerations, which are concerned both with forms and qualities, must be the starting point in our quest for what really lies in the nature of man. Thus we may also find the way back to what we have lost, yet sorely need if we are not to stop at formal definitions of disease that cannot be of much use in actual practice. An important question arises here. Our materia medica contains only terrestrial substances taken from man's environment, for the treatment of the human organism which has suffered changes. But there are non-terrestrial processes active in him—or at least forces which cause his processes to become non-terrestrial—and so the question arises: how can we provoke an interaction leading from sickness to health, by methods affecting the sick organism through its physical earthly environment? How can we initiate an interaction which shall include those other forces, which work in the human organism, yet are not limited to the scope of the processes from which we take our remedies, even when they take effect through certain forms of diet, etc.?

You will realise the close connection between a correct conception of human nature and the methods that may lead to a certain therapy. I have intentionally chosen these first elements which are to lead us to an answer, from the differences between animals and men, although well aware of the objection that animals, like men, are subject to diseases, that even plants may become diseased, and that morbid states have recently been spoken of even among minerals; and that there should therefore be no distinction between sickness in animals and in the human race. The difference will become obvious when it will be apparent how little value in the long run, adheres to the results of animal experimentation undertaken solely to gain knowledge for use in human medicine. We shall consider why it is undoubtedly possible to attain some help for mankind through experiments on animals, but only if and when we understand the radical differences, even to the smallest detail, between animal and human organisms.

I want to emphasise that in referring to cosmic forces, far greater demands are made on man's personality than if we merely refer to so-called objective rules and laws of nature. The aim must be set before us to make medical diagnosis more and more a practice of intuition; the gift of basing conclusions on the formative phenomena of the individual human organism (which may be healthy or sick) can show how this training in intuitive observation of form will play an ever-increasing part in the future development of medicine.

These suggestions are only intended to serve as a sort of introductory orientation. Our concern today was to show that medicine must once more turn its attention to realms not accessible through chemistry or Comparative Anatomy as usually understood, realms only to be reached by consideration of the facts in the light of Spiritual Science. There are still many errors on this subject. Some hold the main essential for the spiritualising of medicine to be the substitution of spiritual means for material. This is quite justifiable in certain departments, but absolutely wrong in general. For there is a spiritual method of knowing the therapeutic properties of material remedies; spiritual science can be applied to evaluate material remedies. This will be the theme of that portion of our subject matter which I have termed the possibilities of healing through recognition of the inter-relationships between mankind and the external world.

I shall hope to base what I have to say about special methods of healing on as firm a foundation as possible, and to indicate that in every individual case of sickness it is possible to form a picture of the connection between the so-called “abnormal” process, which must also be a process of nature, and those “normal” processes which again are nothing else than nature processes. This primary problem of how the disease process can be regarded as a natural process has often cropped up. But the issue has been evaded again and again. I find certain facts about Troxler of great interest in this connection. Troxler taught medicine at the University of Berne and in the first half of the last century he devoted much energy to maintaining that the “normality of disease” should be investigated; that such investigation would finally lead to the recognition of a certain world connected with our own, and impinging on our world, as it were, through illegitimate gaps; and that this would be the key to something bearing on morbid phenomena. Please imagine such a diagrammatic picture; a world in the background whose laws, in themselves justified, could cause morbid phenomena amongst the human race. Then, if this world meets and interpenetrates our own, through certain “gaps,” its laws, which are adapted to another world, could do mischief here. Troxler wanted to work in this direction. And however obscure and difficult his expressions on many subjects may be, one notes that he had struck out a path for himself in medicine, with the purpose of working towards a certain restoration of medical science.

A friend and I once had the opportunity of inquiry into Troxler's standing amongst his Bernese colleagues and into the results of his initiative. The detailed History of the University had only one thing to say about Troxler: that he had caused much disturbance in the university! That had been remembered and recorded, but we could find nothing about his significance for science.

Let us now continue our inquiry on the lines already laid down, and attempt to elucidate the nature of man by observing certain Polarities governing the human organism. Yesterday we found ourselves obliged to combine the weighing down forces found in the animal with certain vertical forces to form a parallelogram, and to consider an analogous phenomenon in the chemical reactions of the muscle. If these ideas are followed up in the study of the bone and muscular system and are supported by all the resources of practical experience, we might make Osteology and Muscular Pathology of greater value for medicine than has hitherto been the case. Special difficulties arise, however, if we try to connect the knowledge of man with the needs of medicine today, in our consideration of the heart. What in Osteology and Myology is only a slight defect becomes an evident defect in Cardiology. For, what is the common belief about the nature of the human heart? It is regarded as a kind of Pump, to send the blood into the various organs. There have been intricate mechanical analogies, in explanation of the heart's action—analogies totally at variance with embryology, be it noted!—but no one has begun to doubt the mechanical explanation, or to test it, at least in orthodox scientific circles.

My outline of the subjects for consideration in the next few days will afford piecemeal proof of my general point of view. The most important fact about the heart is that its activity is not a cause but an effect. You will understand this if you consider the polarity between all the organic activities centering round nutrition, digestion, absorption into the blood, and so on: follow, passing upwards through the human frame, the process of digestion up to the interaction between the blood that has absorbed the food, and the breathing that receives air. An unbiased observation will show a certain contrast and opposition between the process of respiration and the process of digestion.

Something is seeking for equipoise; it is as though there were an urge towards mutual saturation. Other words, of course, could be chosen for description, but we shall understand each other more and more. There is an interaction in the first place between the liquefied foodstuffs and the air absorbed into the organism by breathing. This process is intricate and worth attention. There is an interplay of forces, and each force before reaching the point of interplay accumulates in the heart. The heart originates as a “damming up” organ (Stauorgan) between the lower activities of the organism, the intake and working up of food, and the upper activities, the lowest of which is the respiratory. A damming up organ is inserted and its action is therefore a product of the interplay between the liquefied foodstuffs and the air absorbed from the outside. All that can be observed in the heart must be looked upon as an effect, not a cause, as a mechanical effect, to begin with. The only hopeful investigations on these lines, so far, have been those of Dr. Karl Schmidt, an Austrian medical man, practising in North Styria, who published a contribution to the Wiener Medizinische Wochenschrift (1892, No. 15), “The Heart Action and Curve of the Pulse.” The content of this article is comparatively small, but it proves that his medical practice had enlightened the author on the fact that the heart in no way resembled the ordinary pump but rather must be considered a dam-like organ. Schmidt compares cardiac action to that of the hydraulic ram, set in motion by the currents. This is the kernel of truth in his work. But we need not stop short at the mechanical aspect if we consider the heart action as a result of these symbolic inter-penetrating currents, the watery and the airy. For what is the heart after all? It is a sense organ, and even if its sensory function is not directly present in the consciousness, if its processes are subconscious, nevertheless it serves to enable the “upper” activities to feel and perceive the “lower.” As you perceive external colours through your eyes, so do you perceive, dimly and subconsciously through your heart, what goes on in the lower abdomen. The heart is an organ for inner perception.

The polarity in man is only comprehensible if we know that his structure is a dual one and that the upper portion perceives the lower. The following too must be considered: the lower functions—one pole of the whole human being—are considered through the study of nutrition and digestion in the widest sense, up to their interaction with respiration The interaction goes on in a rhythmic activity; we shall have to consider the significance of our rhythmic system later. But linked up with and belonging to the respiratory activity there is the sensory and nervous activity, which includes all that appertains to external perception and its continuation and its being worked up in the nervous activity. Thus, respiration and sensory and nervous activity form one pole of the human organism. Nutrition, digestion, and metabolism in its usual sense, form the other pole of our organisation. The heart is primarily that organ whose perceptible motion expresses the equilibrium between the upper and lower processes; in relation to the soul (or perhaps more accurately in the sub-conscious) it is the perceptive organ that mediates between these two poles of the total human organisation. Anatomy, physiology, biology can all be studied in the light of this principle; and thus light is thrown, and only thus, upon the human organisation. As long as you do not differentiate between these two poles, superior and inferior, and their mediator the heart, you will not be able to understand man, for there is a fundamental difference between the two groups of functional activity in man, according to whether they pertain to the upper or the lower polarity.

The difference amounts to this: all the processes of the lower sphere have their “negative” so to speak, their negative counter-image in the upper. The important point, however, is that there is no material connection between these upper and lower spheres, but a correspondence. The correspondence must be correctly apprehended. without search for or insistence on direct material connection.

Let us take a very simple example: the tickling irritation which causes coughing, and the actual cough itself. In so far as they belong to the upper sphere their complementary counterpart in the lower sphere is diarrhea. There is always a counterpart to every such activity. And the key to the understanding of man consists in the correct apprehension of these correspondences with several of which we shall deal in the course of our study.

Furthermore, there is not only a theoretical correspondence, but, in the healthy organism, an actual close contact between upper and lower spheres. In a healthy organism this contact is so close, that any upper function, whether it be associated with respiration or with the nerves and senses, must somehow govern a function of the lower sphere and proceed in harmony with it. This will provide us later on with the key to the process of disease: there immediately arises an organic irregularity, whenever there is a predominance of either the upper or the lower function, which destroys its complementary equilibrium. There must always be a certain proportion and correspondence between these two sets of activities, so that they complete one another, master one another, proceed harmoniously as they are mutually orientated. For there is this definite orientation. It is individually different in individual human beings, but nevertheless it governs and relates the whole of the upper processes to the whole of the lower.

Now we must be able to find the bridge leading from the healthily functioning organism, (in which the upper spheres correspond harmoniously with the lower) to the diseased organism. In describing a disease one may start from the indications in what Paracelsus called the “Archaeus” and we call the “Etheric body”—or, if to avoid offending people who do not like these terms, you can also say you will speak in the first place of indications of disease in the functional or dynamic, i.e. of the first signs of a morbid condition. And if we speak of what is first indicated in the etheric body or in the purely functional, one can also speak of a polarity, but a polarity which bears within it a non-correspondence, an irregularity, arising in the following manner.

Let us assume that within the lower sphere, that is to say, the apparatus of nutrition and digestion in the widest sense, there is a preponderance of the inner chemical or organic forces of the food which has been eaten. In the healthy organism it is essential that all the forces active and immanent in the foodstuffs themselves, which we examine and test in our laboratory work on these foodstuffs, should be overcome by the upper sphere, so that they do not in any way interfere with the efficiency of the inner sphere of the organism and that all activity from external chemistry and dynamics has been entirely overcome. But the upper sphere may be inadequate to the task of penetrating the lower, of thoroughly brewing, or I might say, etherising it—which is more exact—all through. The result is the transference into the human organism of a preponderant process which is foreign to the organism, a process such as normally takes place outside the human body and should not operate within that body. As the physical body does not at once bear the brunt of these irregularities, the first symptoms appear on the functional side, in the etheric body (Archaeus). If we wish to find a current term to designate certain aspects of this irregular function, we must call it Hysteria. We shall use the term Hysteria for the too great autonomy of the processes of Metabolism; and we shall learn later on that the name is not inappropriate.

Specific manifestations of hysteria in its narrower sense are nothing but this irregular metabolism raised to its culmination. In essence, the hysterical process, even in it's sexual symptoms, consists of metabolic irregularities, which are external processes having no rightful place in the human body. That is, they are processes which the upper sphere has been too weak to master and control.

This is one pole of disease. If such morbid manifestations as are hysterical in character appear, we have to deal with an excess of an activity that belongs to the external world, but is operating in the lower sphere of the human organism.

But the same irregularity of reciprocal action can also arise if the upper process does not take place in the proper way and occurs in such a way as to overstrain the upper organisation. This is the opposite, and in some sense, the negative of the lower processes. It is not that the upper processes are over-stimulated; they cease, as it were, before the mediating action of the heart transmits them to the lower sphere. This type of irregularity is too strong spiritually, too organically-intellectual, if I may use such a term, and shows itself as Neurasthenia. This is the other pole. We must keep these two irregularities of the human organism clearly before us—they remain still in the realm of mere functions, they are two defects, expressed respectively in the upper and the lower sphere. And we shall gradually have to learn that the human polarity tends towards either the one or the other deficiency.

Neurasthenia is a functional excess of the upper sphere. The organs of that sphere are too much occupied, so that processes which should be transferred and conducted downwards through the heart, take place in the upper sphere and do not pass into the lower organic currents (harmoniously mediated by the damming up in the heart). You will observe that it is much more important to become aware, so to speak, of the specific physiognomy of the disease than to study by post-mortems the organs which have become defective. For post-mortems reveal only the results and symptoms. The essential thing is to form a comprehensive picture of the whole morbid condition; to visualise its physiognomy. This physiognomy will always reveal a tendency in one or the other direction towards the Neurasthenic or the Hysterical Type. But of course, we must use these terms in a wider sense than that usually accepted. If one has acquired an adequate picture of the interaction of the upper and lower spheres, one will gradually learn that irregularity manifesting functionally only in its initial stages—and therefore, as we should say in the etheric sphere—becomes denser in its forces and takes hold of the physical organism. Thus, what was at first merely a tendency to hysteria, may take physical form in various abdominal diseases. And conversely, neurasthenia may develop into diseases of the throat or head.

The study of this imprint of what were originally only functional irregularities of neurasthenia and hysteria, will be of the utmost significance for the medicine of the future. If hysteria has become organic, there will be disturbances of the whole digestive process and all the other processes of the abdominal sphere. Such processes have their repercussions on the whole organism; we must be careful to bear these repercussions and reactions in mind.

Now let us suppose that a manifestation which would be undoubtedly hysterical, if it were manifested functionally, does not come to expression at all as a disturbance of function. It does not appear in the functional sphere, the etheric body imprints it immediately into the physical body. It is there, but it is not evident in any definite disease of the lower organs. We may say indeed that the organs bear the signature of hysteria. It has been driven into the physical organism, and therefore does not manifest by hysterical symptoms on the psychological plane; and it is not yet sufficiently pronounced to become an appreciable physical affliction. But it is strong enough to work within the whole organism. Thus we have this peculiar condition: something on the borderland, so to speak, between sickness and health influences the upper organic sphere from the lower. It reacts on the upper sphere and in some sense infects it, appearing in its own negative. This phenomenon, in which so to speak, the first physical effects of hysteria affect those regions which are subject to neurasthenia in their own typical irregularities, gives a tendency to Tuberculosis. This is an interesting connection. The tuberculous tendency is a repercussion of the abnormal action of the lower body sphere on the upper, as has just been outlined. The whole of this remarkable interaction is set in motion by an uncompleted process which reacts on the upper sphere, and produces a tendency to tuberculosis. And it is necessary to recognise this primary tendency of the human organism before any rational antidote to tuberculosis can be discovered. For the invasion of the human body by pathogenic bacteria is only a result of primary tendencies such as I have described.

This does not contradict the fact that tuberculosis is infectious under certain conditions. Of course these conditions are a necessary prerequisite. But unfortunately this predominance of the activity of the lower organic sphere is alarmingly prevalent in present-day humanity, and this implies a disastrously frequent predisposition to tuberculosis.

The concept of infection, however, is none the less valid here. For any highly tuberculous individual affects his fellow beings: and if any person is exposed to the sphere in which the tuberculous patient lives, then it may happen that the effect turns again into a cause. I have often tried to illustrate the relationship between primary causes of a disease and infection in the following analogy. Suppose that I meet a friend of mine, whose relations with other people do not in general touch me. He is sad and has reason to be so, for he has lost one of his friends by death. I have no direct relationship with this friend who has died, but I become sad with him at his sad news. His sadness is, so to speak, first hand and direct; mine arises indirectly, communicated through him. Nevertheless, the fact remains that the mutual relationship between me and my friend provides the pre-condition for this “infection.”

Thus both concepts—of primary origin and of infection—are justified, and are so especially in the case of tuberculosis. But they should be applied in a rational manner. Institutions for the treatment of tuberculous persons are often breeding grounds for tuberculosis. If tuberculous persons are to be collected and crowded together in special institutions, then these institutions should be dissolved and replaced by others as often as possible. There should, in fact, be a time limit for their dispersion and removal. For this disease has the peculiarity that its victims are extremely liable to secondary infections. A case which may be by no means hopeless, becomes serious if it is surrounded by severe cases of tuberculosis. For the present, however, I am referring to the specific nature of tuberculosis. And it offers a striking example of the interaction of various processes in the human organism. As you will observe, such processes are dominated by the polarity of the upper and lower spheres, which correspond to one another as positive and negative images. The particularly striking phenomena which lead to tuberculosis following the special organic constitution which I have indicated, may be followed up; and they reveal in their future development a general concept of the true nature of disease. Let us take the most frequent symptoms of an individual who is an incipient tuberculous case. Tuberculosis is in his future, and his present state prepares for it. We find perhaps that he coughs, feels pain in the throat and chest, and perhaps also in his limbs; there will be certain states of exhaustion and fatigue; and there will be profuse sweating at night.

If we take all these symptoms together what do they mean? They are, first of all, the effect of those internal irregular interactions to which I have referred. And at the same time, they represent the resistance offered by the organism, its struggles against the deeper foundation of the disease. Let us take the simpler manifestations first. It is certainly not always and under all circumstances beneficial to attempt to stop a cough. It may even sometimes be necessary to stimulate coughing by artificial means. If the lower organic sphere cannot be controlled by the upper, the healthy reaction manifests as the irritation leading to coughing, in order to prevent the invasion of certain things which are undesirable. To suppress coughing as an invariable rule, may be deleterious, for the body will then absorb injurious substances. Coughing is the attempt to get rid of such substances, which cannot be tolerated under the prevailing conditions. Thus the tickling irritation which provokes coughing is a danger signal of something which is wrong in the organism, so that the need arises to repel the invaders, which could otherwise easily effect an entry.

What of the other symptoms, enumerated above? They too are forms of organic defence, ways of doing battle with the dangers which approach as the tubercular tendency. The pains in the throat and limbs simply proclaim the obstruction of those processes in the lower sphere, which are not adequately controlled by the upper. If the tubercular tendency is perceived in good time, it may be beneficial to support the resistant organism by moderate stimulation of the coughing, by stimulating the resultant phenomena—as will be indicated in the subsequent lectures—by appropriate diet, and even by stimulating the typical fatigue. Again, if there is marked emaciation, this too is only a form of organic defence. For if this emaciation does not take place, the process which develops is perhaps that activity of the lower sphere which the upper cannot control. The organism dwindles and loses weight, in order to defend itself by getting rid of those elements which cannot be controlled by the upper sphere.

Thus it becomes exceedingly important to study symptoms and cases in detail, but not in order immediately to prescribe a corpulency treatment for any one suffering from emaciation. For this emaciation may be highly beneficial, in relation to the actual organic conditions at the time.

An especially instructive characteristic of the incipient tuberculous subject, is the heavy loss of perspiration at night. This is a form of organic activity taking place during sleep, which should really take place during working hours, during full physico-spiritual awakeness. But it does not do so, and is obliged to find expression during sleep. This is both a symptom and a method of defence. When the organism is relieved from spiritual occupation, it has recourse to the form of activity manifest in “night sweats.”

To evaluate this fact properly, we must know something of the close connection between all the excretory processes and those activities which include soul and spirit. The constructive processes, the vital processes proper, are the foundation of the mere unconscious. Corresponding to the conscious soul and organic functions of our waking hours, are always processes of excretion. Even our thinking does not correspond to constructive cerebral processes, but to processes of excretion, i.e. destruction. And night sweats are an excretory phenomenon which should be concurrent with a spirit and soul activity in normal life. But as the upper and lower spheres are not in correct interaction with one another, the excretory process accumulates and then takes place at night, when the organism is relieved from spirit and soul activity.

Thus you will see that a careful study of all the processes connected with growth and development in the healthy and the diseased human organism leads to the conclusion that there is an interaction between the phenomena of disease. Emaciation is one phenomenon. But in its relation to the tubercular tendency, it is part of the disease. Indeed I would say that the phenomena of disease are organically linked up. They constitute an ideal organisation. One such phenomenon belongs in a sense to another. Therefore it is entirely reasonable to come to the help of an organism—keeping to the example of incipient tuberculosis—which has not the strength to react adequately and to provoke from outside the necessary reaction, viz. that one form of disease is made to follow on another. The doctors of old enunciated this truth as a significant educational rule of medicine. They said: The danger of being a physician is that he must not only be able to cure sicknesses but must also provoke them. And in the same measure in which the physician is able to heal diseases he can also provoke them. The ancient world was more aware of these subtle inter-relationships (through the atavistic power of clairvoyance) and they beheld in the physician a double power, who could smite with sickness, if he were of evil will, as well as cure. This aspect of medicine is associated with the need to provoke certain states of disease, in order to put them into a certain relation to others. Such conditions as coughing, pains in the throat and chest, emaciation, persistent fatigue, profuse nocturnal perspiration, all are symptoms of disease, yet they must sometimes be provoked, even though they are diseased.

This will naturally lead to the duty not to abandon the sick person when only half-healed, i.e. when the necessary phenomena have been provoked for then the second stage of the healing process begins. We must not only see to it that the appropriate counter-reactions have taken place, but that these reactions are now cured and the whole organism restored to its proper way of functioning. Thus in tubercular cases, having stimulated coughing and pains in the throat, for example, we must then pay heed to the processes of elimination; for there will then be always a tendency to constipation and stasis. It will be necessary to quicken the digestive function into a function of evacuation, even to the extent of stimulating diarrhea. It is always necessary to stimulate diarrhea, following the provoked coughing, pains in the throat and similar symptoms. For we must not consider or treat manifestations of the upper sphere, as though confined to that sphere alone. We must often seek a cure through the processes of the lower sphere, even where there is no direct material connection but merely a correspondence.

These correspondences deserve the most careful consideration. Let us take as an example the typical fatigue and exhaustion. I should prefer not to regard this fatigue as purely subjective, but as organically determined, as emerging always when the metabolic processes are not fully controlled by the upper sphere. Now if these conditions of fatigue have to be stimulated in the treatment of tuberculosis, they must be subsequently countered, at the appropriate moment, by means of a diet which activates the digestion. (We shall deal later with the special requisites of such a diet). Thus the person in question will digest his food better and more easily than usual.

Emaciation, similarly, should receive a dietary treatment, leading to a degree of fat formation which cushions the organs and their tissues. And the subsequent treatment of night sweating, after powerful stimulation, must be through the suggestion of activities in which there are spiritual efforts to be made; the patient makes efforts bound up with thoughts, which make him sweat until a normal perspiration is gradually regained.

It is obvious that if we first realise the correspondence between the upper and lower sphere in man, by a correct understanding of the cardiac function, then we can understand the first fore-shadowing of the disease on the functional plane in the etheric body, as we have done in the case of Neurasthenia and Hysteria. Then we can pass on to an understanding of its imprints on the organic and physical structure, and finally to the physiognomy of the disease as a whole. This comprehensive image will enable us to stimulate the course of sickness in the direction of a more or less secondary disease, in order, when the time has come, to lead the whole process back to health.

Of course the worst obstacles to these therapeutic methods are external and social conditions; therefore medicine is to a large extent a social problem. On the other hand, the patients themselves offer grave difficulties, for they expect their doctors to “get rid of something”, as they often express themselves. But if we simply “get rid of” some existent condition, it may well be that we make their state worse than before. This must be taken into account; often one does make them worse than before, but they must then wait till the opportunity arises to restore them to health once more. Before that can happen, however, as many of you can testify, they have only too often fled and ceased treatment!

So the proper study of both the sick and the sound human being convinces us that the physician must have a hand in the after-treatment if the whole treatment is to be of real value. And you must direct your efforts publicly to this goal. We live in a time of belief in authority and it should not be difficult to initiate such public efforts and emphasise their necessity. I must, however, beg your permission to observe that neither the individual patients nor the medical profession find it inopportune to follow up all the ultimate ramifications of disease, and are more or less satisfied if they have “got rid of” something.

You will observe that this correct perception of the role of the heart in the human organism is able to lead us gradually into the essence of the state of disease. It is, however, vital to note the radical difference between the activities of the lower organic sphere, which have to some degree overcome external chemical processes (but are yet at the same time somewhat like the upper activities)—and the upper activities which are opposed and polar to them.

It is extraordinarily difficulty to define this organic dualism adequately, for our language has hardly any terms to indicate processes contrary to the physical and the organic. But perhaps you will understand clearly—and I shall not hesitate to come up against possible prejudices amongst you—if I try to elucidate this dualism with the following analogy. We shall deal in detail with the subject later on.

Let us think of the qualities proper to any sort of material substance, that is, the qualities essential to its working when absorbed into the lower sphere of the organism, e.g. through the digestion. But if I may use the expression—we can homeopathise, we can dilute the aggregate states of the substances in question. This is what happens if one dilutes in the way of homeopathic doses. Here something occurs which does not receive due attention in the Natural Science of today, for mankind has a strong tendency to abstractions. They say, for example, that from a source of light—for example, the sun—the light radiates in all directions, and finally disappears into infinity. But this is not true. No such form of activity vanishes into infinite space, but it extends within a certain limited orb and then rebounds elastically, returning to its source, although the quality of this return is often different from its centrifugal quality. (See Diagram 5). In Nature there are only rhythmical processes, there are none which continue into infinity. They revert rhythmically upon themselves. That is not only the case in quantitative dispersion, but also in qualitative. If you subdivide any substance, it has at first certain distinctive qualities. These qualities do not decrease and diminish ad infinitum; at a certain point, they are reversed and become their opposites. And this intrinsic rhythm is also the foundation of the contrast between the upper and lower organisation. Our upper organisation works in a homeopathic way. In a certain sense it is diametrically opposed to the process of ordinary digestion, its opposite and negative. Therefore we might say that when the homeopathic chemist manufactures his minute dilutions, he thereby transfers the qualities which are otherwise linked with the lower organic sphere, into those which belong to the upper sphere. This is a most significant inner relationship and we shall discuss it in the ensuing lectures.

I propose to incorporate all the inquiries and requests I have received in the course of these lectures. Of course they contain repetitions, so I shall group the answers together, as far as possible. For it makes a difference whether we discuss what has been asked or suggested, before or after a certain basis has been laid down. Therefore, I shall try, in today's address, to establish such a basis for every future consideration, taking into account what I have had from you in the way of requests and suggestions.

You will remember that we first considered the form and inner forces of the osseous and muscular systems, that yesterday we reviewed illustrative examples of the process of disease, and the requisites of curative treatment; and that we took as our starting point on that occasion, the circulation in the cardiac system.

Today I shall describe the introductory principles of a conception that may be derived from a deeper study of human nature regarding the possibility and the essentials of healing in general. Special points will be dealt with in subsequent comments, but it is my intention to begin with these basic principles.

If we examine the medical curriculum of today we shall find, roughly speaking, that therapeutics are dealt with concurrently with pathology, although there is no clear and evident connection between the two. And in therapeutics at the present time, purely empirical methods generally prevail. It is hardly possible to discover a rational cure, combining practice with sound principles, in the domain of therapeutics. We are also aware that in the course of the nineteenth century, these deficiencies in the medical conception led to what was termed the Nihilist School. This Nihilism laid all stress on diagnosis, was content to recognise disease, and on the whole, was sceptical as regards any rationale of healing.

But in a purely rational approach to medicine, we might surely expect something suggesting lines of treatment to be given together with diagnosis? The connection between therapeutics and pathology must not be external only. The nature of disease must be recognised to such a degree that some idea can be formed from it as to the appropriate methods of the curative process.

And thus the question arises: How far does the whole intricate web of natural processes admit of curative Media and curative processes? An interesting axiom of Paracelsus has often been quoted, to this effect: the medical man must pass Nature's examination. But it cannot be maintained that the more recent literature dealing with Paracelsus has made much use of this axiom; for, if it had, there would be definite attempts made to unravel the curative processes from Nature herself. Of course, there are such attempts, in those processes of disease in which Nature herself gives counsel. But these examples are more or less exceptions, for there have already been injuries of one kind or another; whereas a genuine study of Nature would be a study of normal processes.

This leads to a further inquiry. Is there really any possibility of observing normal processes—in the current sense of the term—in Nature, in order to gather from them some conception of the healing method? You will immediately perceive the serious difficulty in this connection. We can of course, only observe curative processes in Nature in a normal way, if diseased processes are normally present in Nature. So we are confronted with this: Are there processes of disease in Nature itself, so that we can pass Nature's examination and thus learn how to heal them?

We shall try today to advance somewhat nearer to the answering of this question, which will be fully dealt with in the course of these lectures. But one can say at once in this connection that the path here indicated has been made impassable by the natural scientific basis of medicine as practised today. This means very “heavy going,” in the face of prevailing assumptions, for curiously enough, the materialistic tendency of the nineteenth century has led to a complete misconception of the functions of that system of the human organism with which we must now deal in sequence to the osseous, muscular and cardiac systems, viz. the nervous system.

It has gradually become the fashion to burden the nervous system with all the soul functions and to resolve all that man accomplishes of a soul and spirt nature into parallel processes which are then supposed to be found in the nervous system. As you are aware, I have felt bound to protest against this kind of nature study in my book Concerning the Problems of the Soul.

In this work, I first of all tried (and many empirical data confirm this truth, as we shall see) to prove, that only the processes proper to the formation of images are connected with the nervous system, whilst all the processes of feeling are linked—not indirectly but directly—with the rhythmic processes of the organism. The Natural Scientist of today assumes—as a rule—that the feeling processes are not directly connected with the rhythmic system, but that these bodily rhythms are transmitted to the nervous system, and thus indirectly, the feeling life is expressed through the nerve system.

Further I have tried to show that the whole life of our will depends directly on the metabolic system and not through the intermediary of the nerves. Thus the nervous system does nothing more than perceive will processes. The nervous system does not put into action the “will” but that which takes place through will within us, is perceived.

All the views maintained in that book can be thoroughly corroborated by biological facts, whereas the contrary assumption of the exclusive relation of the nerve system to the soul, cannot be proved at all. I should like to put this question to healthy unbiased reason: how can the fact that a so-called motor nerve and a sensory nerve can be cut, and subsequently grown together, so that they form one nerve, be harmonised with the assumption that there are two kinds of nerves: motor and sensory? There are not two kinds of nerves. What are termed “motor” nerves are those sensory nerves that perceive the movements of our limbs, that is, the process of metabolism in our limbs when we will. Thus in the motor nerves we have sensory nerves that merely perceive processes in ourselves, while the sensory nerves proper perceive the external world.

There is much here of enormous significance to medicine, but it can only be appreciated if the true facts are faced. For it is particularly difficult to preserve the distinction between motor and sensory nerves, in respect of the symptoms enumerated yesterday, as appertaining to tuberculosis. Therefore reasonable scientists have for some time assumed that every nerve has in itself a double conduction, one from the centre to the periphery, and also one from the periphery to the centre. Thus each motor nerve would have a complete double “circuit,” and if the explanation of any condition—such as hysteria—is to be based on the nervous system, one has to assume the existence of two nerve currents running in opposite directions. You see: as soon as one gets down to the facts, one must postulate qualities of the nervous system directly contrary to the accepted theories. Inasmuch as these conceptions about the nervous system have arisen, access has actually been barred to all knowledge of what goes on in the organism below the nervous system as in hysteria for example. In the preceding lecture, we defined this as caused by metabolic changes; and these are only perceived and registered by the nerves. All this should have received attention. But instead of such attentive study, there has been a wholesale attribution of symptoms and conditions to “nerves” alone, and hysteria was diagnosed as a kind of vulnerability and disequilibrium of the nervous system. This has led further. It is undeniable that among the more remote causes of hysteria are some that originate in the soul: grief, disappointment, disillusion, or deep-seated desires which cannot be fulfilled and may lead to hysterical manifestations. But those who have, so to speak, detached all the rest of the human organism from the life of the soul, and only admit a genuine direct connection between that life and the nervous system, have been compelled to attribute everything to “nerves.” Thus there has arisen a view which does not correspond in the least with the facts, and furthermore offers no available link between the soul and the human organism. The soul-forces are only admitted to contact with the nervous system, and are excluded from the human organism as a whole. Or, alternatively, motor nerves are invented, and expected to exercise an influence on the circulation, etc., an influence which is entirely hypothetical.

These errors helped to mislead the best brains, when hypnotism and “suggestion” came into the field of scientific discussion. Extraordinary cases have been experienced and recorded, though certainly some time ago. Thus, ladies afflicted with hysteria completely mystified and misled the most capable physicians, who swallowed wholesale all that these patients told them, instead of inquiring into the causes within the organism. In this connection, it is perhaps of interest to remind you of the mistake made by Schleich, in the case of a male hysteric. Schleich was fated to fall into this error, although he was quite well accustomed to think over matters thoroughly. A man who had pricked his finger with an inky pen, came to him and said that the accident would certainly prove fatal that same night, for blood poisoning would develop, unless the arm was amputated. Schleich, not being a surgeon, could not amputate. He could only seek to calm the man's fears, and carry out the customary precautions, suction of the wound, etc., but not remove an arm on the mere assertion of the patient himself. The patient then went to a specialist, who also declined to amputate. But Schleich felt uncomfortable about the case, and inquired early the next morning, and found that the patient had died in the night. And Schleich's verdict was: Death through Suggestion. And that is an obvious—terribly obvious explanation. But an insight into the nature of man forbids us to suppose that this death was due to suggestion in the manner assumed. If death through suggestion is the diagnosis, there had been a thorough confusion of cause and effect. For there was no blood poisoning—the autopsy proved this; but the man died, to all appearance, from a cause which was not understood by the physicians, but which must obviously have been deep-seated and organic. And this deep-seated organic cause had already—on the previous day—made the man somewhat awkward and clumsy, so that he stuck an inky pen into his finger, which is an action most people avoid. This was a result of his awkwardness. But this external and physical clumsiness was concurrent with an increased inner power of vision, and under the influence of disease, he foresaw that his death would occur that night. His death had not the least connection with the fact that he hurt his finger with an ink-stained pen, although this was the cause of his sensations, owing to the cause of death which he carried within him. Thus the whole course of events is merely externally linked with the internal processes which caused the death. There is no question of “death through suggestion” here. He foresaw his own death, however, and interpreted everything that happened, so as to fit into this sentiment This one example will show you how extremely cautious we must be, if we are to reach an objective judgment of the complicated processes of nature. In these matters one cannot take the simplest facts as a starting point.

Now we must pose this question: Does sensory perception, and all that resembles such perception, offer us any basis on which to estimate the somewhat dissimilar influences which are expected to affect the human constitution, through materia medica?

We have three kinds of influence upon the human organism in its normal state: the influences through sense perception, which then extend to the nervous system; the influences working through the rhythmic system, breathing and blood circulation; and those working through metabolism. These three normal relationships must have some sort of analogies in the abnormal relationships which we establish between the curative media—which we must after all take in some way from the external world of nature—and the human organism. Undoubtedly the most evident and definite results of this interaction between the external world and the human organism, are those affecting the nervous system. So we must ask ourselves this question: How can we rationally conceive a connection between man himself and that which is external nature; a connection of which we wish to avail ourselves, whether through processes, or substances with medicinal properties for human healing? We must form a view of the exact nature of this interaction between man and the external world, from which we take our means of healing. For even if we apply cold water treatment, we apply something external. All that we apply is applied from outside to the processes peculiar to man, and we must therefore form a rational concept of the nature of this connection between man and the external process.

Here we come to a chapter where again there is in the orthodox study of medicine a sheer aggregate instead of an organic connection. Granted that the medical student hears preliminary lectures on natural science; and that on this preparatory natural science, general and special pathology, general therapeutics and so forth, are then built up, but once lectures on medicine proper have begun, not much more is heard of the relationship between the processes discussed in these lectures, and the activities of external nature, especially in connection with healing methods. I believe that medical men who have passed through the professional curriculum of today, will not only find this a defect on the theoretical and intellectual side, but will even have a strong feeling of uncertainty when they come to the practical aspect, as to whether this or that remedy should be applied to influence the diseased process. A real knowledge of the relationship between the remedy indicated and what happens in the human body is actually extremely rare. So the very nature of the subject makes a major reform of the medical curriculum imperative.

I shall now try to illustrate the extent of the difference between certain external processes and human processes, by means of examples drawn from the former category. I propose to begin with what we can observe in plants and lower forms of animals, passing on from these to processes that can be activated through agencies derived from the vegetable, animal and especially the mineral kingdoms.

But we can only approach a characterisation of pure mineral substances, if we start from the most elementary conceptions of natural science, and then go on to the results, let us say, of the introduction of arsenic or tin into the human organism. But, first and foremost, we must emphasise the complete difference between the metamorphoses of growth in the human organism, and in external objects.

We shall not be able to escape forming some notion of the actual principle of growth, of the vital growth of and in mankind, and conceiving the same principle in external entities as well. But the difference is of fundamental significance. For instance, I would ask you to observe a very common natural object: the so-called locust tree, Robina pseudacacia. If the leaves of this plant are cut off where they join the petioles, there occurs an interesting metamorphosis; the truncated leaf stalk becomes blunt and knobby, and takes over the functions of the leaves. Here we find a high degree of activity on the part of something inherent in the whole plant; something that we will provisionally and by hypothesis term a “force,” which manifests itself if we prevent the plant from using its normally developed organ.

Now, observe, further, there is still a trace in mankind of what is so conspicuously present in the simple growing plant. For instance, if a man is prevented for one reason or another, from using one of his arms or hands for any purpose, the other arm or hand grows more powerful, stronger, and also physically larger. We must bring together facts like these. This is the path that leads to the cognition of remedial possibilities. In external nature these trends develop to extremes. For instance, this has been observed: A plant has grown on the slope of a mountain; certain of its stems develop in such a way that the leaves remain undeveloped; on the other hand the stem curves round and becomes an organ of support. The leaves are dwarfed; the stem twists round, becomes a supporting organ, and finds its base. These are plants with transformed stems, whose leaves have atrophied. (See Diagram 6).

Such facts point to inherent formative forces in the plant itself enabling it to adapt itself, within wide limits, to its environment. The same forces, active and constructive from within, are also revealed among lower organisms in an interesting way.

Take, for example, any embryo which has reached the gastrula stage of development. You can cut up this gastrula, dividing it through the middle, and each half rounds out and evolves the potentiality within itself of growing its own three portions of the intestine—the fore, middle and hind portion, independently. This means that if the gastrula is cut in two, we find that each half behaves just as the whole gastrula would have behaved. You know that this experiment can even be applied to forms of animal life as high in the scale as earthworms; that when portions are removed from these creatures, they are restored, the animal drawing on its internal formative forces to rebuild out of its own body the portion of which it has been deprived. We must point to these formative forces objectively; not as hypotheses, assuming the existence of some sort of vital force, but as matters of fact. For if we observe exactly what occurs here, and follow its various stages, we have this result. For instance, take a frog, and remove a portion in a very early stage of development, the bulk of the mutilated organism replaces the amputated portion by growing it again. A critic of a materialistic turn of mind, will say; Oh yes, the wound is the seat of tonic forces, and through these the new growth is added. But this cannot be assumed.

Suppose that it were the case, and I were to remove a part of an organism, and a new part grows on the site of the injury (b) (See Diagram 7) through the tonic force (c) located here; then the new growth should strictly speaking be the immediately adjacent part, its neighbour in the intact and perfect organism. Actually, however, this does not happen; if portions of the larval frog are amputated, what grows from the site of the injury are extremities, tails or even heads; and in other creatures antennae. Not, that is to say, the strictly adjacent parts, but those of most use to the organism. Therefore, it is quite impossible that the normally adjacent structure develops at the point of amputation through the specially localised tonic forces; instead, we are obliged to assume that, in these re-growths or repairs, the whole organism takes part in some way.

And so it is really possible to trace what happens in lower organisms. As I have indicated the path to follow you can extend its application to all the cases recorded, and see in all of them, that one can only achieve a conception of the matter along this line of thought.

And in man, you will have to conclude, however, that things do not happen in this way. It would be extremely pleasant and convenient to be able to cut off a finger or an arm, in the certainty that it would be grown again! But this simply does not happen. And the question is: what becomes of those forces, growth forces, which show themselves unmistakably in the case of animals, when it comes to the human organism? Are they lost in it? or are they non-existent?

Anyone who can observe Nature objectively knows that only by this line of inquiry can we arrive at a sound conception of the link between physical and spiritual in man. For the forces we learnt to know as plastic formative forces, which mould forms straight from the living substance, are simply lifted out of the organs, and exist entirely in the soul and spiritual functions.

Because they have been so lifted, and are no longer within the organs as formative forces, man has them as separate forces, in the functions of soul and spirit. If I think or feel, I think and feel by virtue of the same forces that work plastically in the lower animals or the vegetable world. Indeed I could not think if I did not perform my thinking, feeling and willing with these same forces, which I have drawn out of matter. So, when I contemplate the lower organisms, I must say to myself; the power inherent in them, which manifests as a formative force, is the same as I carry within me; but I have drawn it out from my organs and hold it apart. I think and feel and will with the same powers that are formative and active plastically, in the lower organisms.

Anyone wishing to be a sound psychologist, whose statements have substance, and not mere words, as is usual today, would have so to follow up the processes of thinking, feeling and willing, as to show that the very same activities in the regions of soul and spirit manifest themselves on the lower level as plastic formative forces.

Observe for yourselves how we can achieve within the soul things we can no longer achieve within our organism. We can complete trains of thought that have escaped us by producing them out of others. Our activity here is quite similar to organic production; what appears first is not the immediately neighboring, but one lying far removed. There is a complete parallelism between what we experience inwardly through the soul, and the external formative forces and principles of Nature. There is a perfect correspondence between them. We must emphasise this correspondence, and show that man faces the same formative principles in the external world, as he has drawn from his own organism for the life of his soul and spirit, and which therefore in his own organism no longer underlie the substance.

Moreover, we have not drawn these elements in equal proportions from all parts. We can only approach the human organism properly, if we have first armed ourselves with the preliminary knowledge outlined here. For if you observe all the components of our nervous system, you will find the following peculiarity: what we are accustomed to term nerve-cells (neurons) and the nerve tissue, and so forth, develop comparatively slowly in the early stages of growth; they are not very advanced cellular formations. So that we might reasonably expect these so-called nerve-cells to display the characteristics of earlier primitive cellular structures yet, they do not do so at all. For instance, they are not capable of reproducing themselves; nerve-cells, like the cells of the blood, are indivisible. Thus we find that in a relatively early stage of evolution, they have been deprived of a capacity that belongs to cells external to man. They remain at an earlier stage of evolution; they are, so to speak, paralysed at this stage. What has been paralysed in them, separates off and becomes the soul and spirit element. So that, in fact, with our soul and spiritual processes we return to what was once formative in organic substance. And we are only able to attain to this because we bear in us the nervous substances which we destroy or at least cripple in a relatively early stage of growth.

In this way we can approach the inherent nature of the nerve substance. The result explains why this substance has the peculiarity both of resembling primitive forms, even in its later developments; and yet of serving what is usually termed the highest faculty of mankind, the activity of the spirit.

I will interpolate here a suggestion rather outside the subject we are at present considering. In my opinion, even a superficial observation of the human head with its various enclosed nerve centres, reminds one rather of lower forms than highly developed species of animal life, in that the nerve centres are enclosed in a firm armour of bone. The human head actually reminds us of prehistoric animals. It is only somewhat transformed. And if we describe the lower animal forms, we generally do so by referring to their external skeleton, whereas the higher animals and man have their bony structure inside. Nevertheless our head, our most highly evolved and specialised part, has an external skeleton. This resemblance is at least a sort of leit-motif for our preceding considerations.

Now let us suppose that we have occasion, because of some condition that we term disease, (I shall deal with this in more detail later) to bring back into our organism what has thus been removed. If we replace or restore these formative forces of external nature—of which we have deprived our organism because we use them for the soul and spirit—by means of a plant product or some other substance used as a remedy—we thereby reunite with the organism something that was lacking. We help the organism by adding and returning what we first took away in order to become human. Here you see the dawn of what can be termed the process of healing: the employment of those external forces of nature, not normally present in man, to strengthen some faculty or function. Take as an example—purely by way of illustration—a lung. Here too we shall find that we have drawn away formative principles to augment our soul and spiritual powers. If we discover among the products of the vegetable kingdom, the exact forces thus drawn from the lung and re-introduce them in a case of disturbance of the lung system, we help to restore that organ's activity. So the question arises; which forces of external nature are similar to the forces that underlie the human organs and have been extracted in the service of soul and spirit? Here you will find the path, leading from the method of trial and error in therapy, to a sort of “rationale” of therapy.

In addition to the errors fostered in respect of the nervous system—which refers to the inner human being—there is another very considerable error, regarding extra-human nature. This I will just touch on today and explain more fully later.

During the age of materialism, people accustomed themselves to think of a sort of evolution of natural objects, from the so-called simplest to the most complex. The lower organisms were first studied in their structural evolution, then the more complex; and then attention was directed to structures outside the organic realm, that is in the mineral kingdom. The mineral kingdom was envisaged merely as being simpler than the vegetable. This has led to all those strange questions and speculations, concerning the origin of life from the mineral kingdom, a changing over of substance occurring at some unknown point in time, from a merely inorganic to an organic activity. This was the Generation Aequivoca or spontaneous generation, which provoked so many controversies.

However an unbiased examination certainly does not confirm this view. On the contrary, we must put the following proposition to ourselves. In a way, just as we can conceive of a sort of evolution from plant life on through animal life to man, so it is not possible to conceive of another evolution, from organisms, in this case, plants, to the minerals, inasmuch as the latter are deprived of life. As I have said, this is only a hint which will be made clearer in later lectures. But we shall only avoid going astray here, if we do not think of evolution as ascending from the mineral through the vegetable and animal forms to mankind, but if we postulate a starting point in the center, as it were, with our evolutionary sequence ascending from plant through animal life to man, and another, descending to the mineral kingdom.

Thus the central point of departure would lie not in the mineral kingdom, but somewhere in the middle kingdoms of nature. There would be two trends of evolution, an upward and a downward. In this way we should come to perceive, in passing downwards from plant to mineral, and especially—as we shall see—to that particularly important mineral group, the metals, that in this descending evolutionary sequence, forces are manifest which have peculiar relationships to their opposites in the ascending trend of evolution. In short: what are those special forces inherent in mineral substances, which we can only study if we consider here the formative forces which we have studied in lower organic forms, and apply the same methods?

In mineral substances such formative forces manifest themselves in crystallisation. Crystallisation reveals quite definitely a factor in operation on the descending line of evolution that is in some manner interrelated—but not identical—with that which manifests as formative forces on the ascending line. Then if we bring to the living organism that force which inheres in mineral substances, a new question arises. We have already been able to answer a previous and similar inquiry: if we restore the formative forces that we have absorbed from our organism by our soul and spiritual activities by means of vegetable and animal substances, we help the organism thus treated. But what would be the effect of applying these other, different, forces coming from the descending evolutionary line, that is from the mineral world, to the human organism? This is the question which I will put to you today, and which will be answered in detail, in the course of our considerations.

But with all this, we have not yet been able to contribute anything of real help to the question at the forefront of our programme for today, viz: Can we gather by careful listening a healing process straight from nature itself?

Here it depends on whether we approach nature with real insight—and we have attempted to get at least an outline of such understanding—whether certain processes will reveal their inherent secret. There are two processes in the human organism—as also among animals, which are of less interest to us at the moment—which appear in a certain sense directly contrary to one another, when looked at in the light of the concepts with which we are now equipped. Moreover these two processes are to a great extent polar to one another; but not wholly so, and I lay special stress on this not wholly, so please bear it in mind to avoid misconstruction of my present line of argument. They are the formation of blood, and the formation of milk, as they take place in the human body.

Even externally and superficially these processes differ greatly. The formation of blood, is, so to speak, very deep seated and hidden in the recesses of the human organism. The formation of milk finally tends towards the surface. But the most fundamental difference is that the formation of blood is a process bearing very strong potentialities of itself, producing formative forces. The blood has the formative power in the whole domestic economy of the human organism, to use a commonplace expression. It has retained in some measure the formative forces we have observed in lower organisms. And modern science could base itself on something of immense significance, in the observation and study of the blood; but it has not yet done so in a rational manner. Modern science could base itself on the fact that the main constituents of blood are the red corpuscles, and that these again are not capable of reproducing themselves. They share this limitation of potentiality with the nerve-cells. But, in emphasising this attribute held in common, all depends on the cause; is the cause the same in both cases? It is not, for we have not extracted the formative forces from our blood to anything like the same extent as from our nerve substance. Our nerve substance is the basis of our mental life, and is greatly lacking in internal formative force. During the whole span of life from birth, the nerve substance of man is worked upon by or is dependent on external impressions. The internal formative force is superseded by the faculty of simple adaptation to external influences. Conditions are different in the blood, which has kept to a great extent its internal formative force. This internal formative force, as the facts show, is also present in a certain sense in milk; for if this were not so, we could not give milk to young babies, as the most wholesome form of nourishment. It contains a similar formative potentiality as the blood; in this respect both vital fluids have something in common.

But there is also a considerable difference. Milk has formative potentiality; but lacks a constituent that is most essential to blood, or has it only in the smallest quantity. This is iron, fundamentally the only metal in the human organism that forms such compounds within the organism as display the true phenomenon of crystallisation.

Thus, even if milk also contains other metals in minute amounts, there is this difference: that blood essentially requires iron, which is a typical metal. Milk, although also potentially formative, does not require iron as a constituent. Why does the blood need iron?

This is one of the crucial questions of the whole science of medicine. The blood actually needs iron (we shall sift and collect the material evidence for the facts I have sketched today). Blood is that substance of the human organism, which is diseased through its own nature, and must be continuously healed by iron. This is not the case with milk. Were it so, milk could not be a formative medium for mankind, as it actually is; a formative medium administered from outside.

When we study the human blood, we study something that is constantly sick, from the very nature of our constitution and organism. Blood by its very nature is sick and needs to be continuously cured by the addition of iron. This means that a continuous healing process is carried on within us, in the essential process of our blood. If the medical man is “a candidate for Nature's examination,” he must study first of all, not an abnormal but a normal process of nature. And the process essential to the blood is certainly “normal,” and at the same time a process in which nature itself must continually heal, and must heal by means of the administration of the requisite mineral, iron. To depict what happens to our blood by means of a graph, we must show the inherent constitution of blood itself, without any admixture of iron, as a curve or line sloping downwards, and finally arriving at the point of complete dissolution of the blood. (See Diagram 8, red). whereas the effect of iron in the blood is to raise the line continuously upwards as it heals. (yellow line).

There indeed we have a process which is both normal and a standard pattern to be followed if we want to think of the processes of healing. Here we can really pass Nature's examination, for we see how nature works, bringing the metal and its forces which are external to mankind, into the human frame. And at the same time, we learn how the blood, which needs must remain inside the human organism, must be healed and how what flows out of the human organism, namely milk does not need to be healed, but which if it has formative forces, can wholesomely transmit them to another organism. Here we have a certain polarity—and mark well, a certain, not a complete polarity—between blood and milk, which must have attention and observation, for we can learn very much from it.

The discussion yesterday was certainly of absorbing interest, but I must enter a caveat in connection with a question that has just been handed to me. I must again—as on a previous occasion—emphasise that we shall only reach an adequate method of ascertaining the relationship between individual remedies and individual phenomena of disease, after having answered in these lectures certain preliminary questions.

Only these can enable us to judge the significance of every fact we discover about the connection between man and that external nature from which our remedies are derived. In particular, until we have settled these preliminaries, we shall not find it possible to deal with the connection between specific remedies and specific organs, for the simple reason that the connection is a complicated one, and we can only appreciate its real point when we have answered certain preliminary questions. This we shall try to do today and perhaps also in part tomorrow. Then we shall be in a position to point out a definite connection between particular remedies and the disease of particular organs.

I want to make an introductory remark today and at once; and to ask you to accept it provisionally, because it throws light on many things.

Regarding what was said in yesterday's lecture, [Ed: A lecture on the Ritter treatment of disease given by one of those attending the course.] I should like to ask you to face the reverse side of the matter. In that lecture, many very instructive cases were cited of undoubted cures—and certainly we must feel deeply gratified at this result. But I can suggest a very simple means whereby these cures would become more and more infrequent, and of course, I only make this suggestion so that you do not use this means although one might be led to use it. And I can, of course, only mention this amongst persons who have acquired a certain knowledge of Anthroposophy.

The method referred to would consist in making every possible effort to make the Ritter therapy universally accepted. In face of successes of this treatment, you forget that you work as individual physicians. Possibly individuals among you may be aware of the struggle you have to wage against the majority of other doctors; and you may be aware that the moment you make Ritter's treatment into an accepted university institution, you would cease to be a minority in opposition and that treatment would then be practised by many others—I will not go so far as to say by all. You would then find the number of your successful cures appreciably diminished.

So strangely do things befall in real life; they are often quite different from what we have imagined.

As individual medical men you have the greatest interest in healing the individual patient, and modern materialistic medicine has even—one might say—sought in this way a legal justification for its aim of healing the individual. But this justification really consists in the claim that there are no diseases; there are only sick, diseased people! Now, this justification would be valid if patients were really so isolated regarding their sickness, as appears to be the case today. But in actual fact, individual patients are not so isolated. The fact that certain dispositions of disease spread over a wide region, as was mentioned yesterday by Dr. E., is of great importance. After curing one case, you can never be sure of the number of other individuals to whom you have brought the disease. The single case of disease is not viewed as part of a general process, and therefore, taken one by one, the individual result may be most striking.

But one who aims at the benefit of mankind as a whole must speak—if I may say so—from a different angle. This is the factor which requires not only a one-sided purely therapeutic orientation, but a completely worked out therapy on the basis of pathology. This is precisely what we here attempt to provide, bringing a certain rationale into what is otherwise merely an empirical thinking on a basis of statistics.

We will start our inquiry today from a fact that is common knowledge, and can fundamentally help us to judge the relationship of man to external nature, but has not been given anything like due attention, in ordinary medical and biological thinking.

This is that man as a threefold being, in his nerves and senses system, in his circulatory system (as a being living in rhythms) and finally in his metabolic system, has a certain negative relationship to the events of external nature, especially in the plant world. Please give your consideration to this: in external nature (let us consider only plants to begin with) there is in the flora a tendency at work to concentrate carbon; to make this substance the base of all vegetation. Inasmuch as we are surrounded with plants, we are surrounded with organic structures whose essential nature consists of carbon concentration. Do not forget that the same substance is also present in the human organism, but that it is essential to the organism to arrest this formation, to keep it, as it were, in a permanent status nascendi, of dissolution, and to replace it by the opposite substance.

We have the initial stages of this process in what I have recently termed the lower human organism. We deposit the carbon and, begin, as it were, out of our own forces, the process of plant formation, and at the same time, we are compelled to fight against this process, at the urge of our upper organism. We cancel the plant formation by opposing carbon with oxygen, by changing it into carbon dioxide, and thus we develop in ourselves the process directly opposite to plant formation.

I recommend you to give heed wherever these processes contrary to external nature are found. You will thereby reach a more fundamental comprehension of what man actually is. You do not understand man's nature by weighing him—to take a symbolic example for all investigations by means of the methods proper to physics; but you will understand something about the mechanics of man immediately if you consider that the brain, as is well known, has an average weight of about 1,300 grammes, but that this full weight cannot press upon the lower interior surface of the cranium, for if it did, all the delicate network of minute veins in that region would be crushed and obliterated. The pressure of the brain on its base does not exceed twenty grammes. The cause is the well known hydraulic principle enunciated by Archimedes, that the brain becomes buoyant as it floats in the cerebro-spinal fluid, so that its total mass and weight are not effective but are counteracted by the surrounding liquid. And just as the weight of the brain is neutralised and we do not live within the physical weight of our organism, but within the buoyancy which is the force opposed to material weight—so is it with other human processes. In fact we do not live in what physics would make of us, but in that part of the physical that is neutralised or counteracted in us. And similarly we do not live in the processes observable as operative in external nature, which reach their final manifestations in the vegetable world, but we live in the cancelation of the plant formation process. This fact is of course an essential in building the bridge between the human organism in disease and remedies drawn from the vegetable world.

This theme could be treated—so to speak—in the style of a poetical story. We could say: if we take in all the beauty of the vegetable world that surrounds us in external nature, we are entranced and rightly so. But it is otherwise if we cut open a sheep's body and forthwith become aware of another kind of flora which certainly originated in a similar way to the flora of the external world.

If we open the body of a freshly killed sheep and encounter the full force of the odour of putrefaction from its entrails, we most certainly feel far less pleasure in the existence of the intestinal flora. We must carefully note and consider this fact; for it is simply self-evident that the same causes which favour the growth of vegetation in external nature, must be counteracted in man, and that the intestinal flora ought not to develop in us. Here we have a remarkably extensive field of research, and I would venture to recommend, as a theme for doctoral theses for younger students, to make use of this subject matter, and especially of comparative anatomical research, on the intestinal structures of various animal groups, through mammals up to man. As I say, a remarkably rich source, for much that is most significant here has not yet been investigated. Try particularly to find out why the opened sheep exhales so foul an odour of putrefacation by reason of its intestinal flora, whereas this is far from being the case in birds, even in carrion birds, whose bodies when opened smell comparatively pleasant. There is very much in these matters that has received no scientific study and research up till now. And the same is true of the comparative anatomy of the intestines. Think for a moment of the considerable difference in all birds from both the Mammalia and mankind. (It is just here that materialists, for instance the Paris expert, Metchnikoff, have perpetrated the greatest errors). In birds there is a remarkably poor development of both bladder and large intestine. Only in those groups which form the Ratites (the Ostrich and its relatives) does the colon begin to enlarge, and certain approximations to the bladder appear. So that we are led to the important fact that birds are unable to accumulate their excretions, retain them for a while within their bodies and then evacuate them as occasion offers; but on the contrary, there is a continuous equipoise between what is taken into their bodies and what is evacuated from them.

It is one of the most superficial views to regard the flora of the human intestines—and, as we shall see later, also the microscopic fauna found there and elsewhere in the human organism—as anything to be called the cause of sickness. It is really quite appalling, in the course of examining and collating the literature pathology today, to find in every chapter the refrain: In cases of this disease we have discovered such and such a bacillus, in cases of that disease, another bacillus and so forth. Such facts are of great interest to the study of the botany and zoology of the human organisms, but as regards the condition of disease they have at best only the significance of indicators, indicators enabling one to conclude that if this or that form of disease is present, the human organism thus affected offers appropriate soil for the growth of this or that interesting vegetable or animal micro-organism. They mean this and nothing more.

With the disease as such, this development of microscopic flora and fauna has only very little to do; and that little, only indirectly. For, I ask you to observe that the logic displayed in contemporary medicine today on these themes, is quite remarkable. Suppose for example you discover a landscape, in which you find a number of extremely well fed and healthy looking cattle. Would it occur to you to say: all that you behold in this countryside is as it is, because the cattle have somehow descended from the air and have infected the district? Such an idea would hardly occur to you; rather will you be obliged to inquire, why there are industrious people in this district, why the soil is specially propitious for this or that form of pasturage, and so on. You will probably exhaust all the possible reasons for well-fed and cared for livestock, in your mental review; but you would never dream of propounding the theory that the countryside has been infected by an immigration of well fed cows! This however is exactly the train of reasoning displayed by Medical Science today, in respect of microbes, etc....

These remarkable creatures simply prove, by their presence, that there is a certain type of medium or substratum favourable to them, and attention should accordingly be directed to the study of this substratum. Of this substratum, of course there may be indirect causes and effects. For instance, in the country-side we spoke of, someone might say; “Here are a lot of fine, well-cared for cattle; if we send a few more, perhaps some more people will put their backs into it and join the others.” Thus it is, of course, possible, that a well prepared substratum is incited by the invasion of bacteria to develop some disease on its own part. But with the study of disease as such this concentration on the nature of bacilli has nothing whatever to do. If only care were taken to build up a sound logical line of thought, nothing of what is perpetrated by official science to the ruin of sound thinking, could occur.

The really decisive factor is a certain unbalanced interaction of what I have recently termed the upper and lower spheres in man, which may disturb or destroy their correct and normal relationship. So that a defective counter-activity of the upper sphere may set free in the lower sphere forces which cannot cope with the process of plant formation; a process which is there as an inborn tendency and requires to be checked. Then there is opportunity for the growth of abundant intestinal flora, and such intestinal flora becomes a symptom of defective abdominal functions in man.

Now there is this peculiarity: the activities which normally proceed from the upper sphere to the lower, are dammed up, as it were, if they cannot fulfill their downward course. Therefore, if there are obstacles which prevent the performance of the functions for which the lower part of the body is organised, those functions are pushed backwards. That may seem to some people an unscientific expression, but it is more scientifically accurate than much that is written in the usual text books on Pathology. These processes, normally proper to the lower sphere of man, are pushed back into the upper, and we have to observe and follow this up as a cause of discharges from the lungs and other parts of the upper body, such as the pleura and so on, and inquire into the state of the normal or abnormal secretory processes of the lower sphere of man It is very important to get a clear view of this reversal of organic processes from and through the lower sphere into the upper again, so that much that manifests in the upper parts are simply abdominal processes pushed back. And this reversal of processes does occur if the correct interaction between the two spheres is disturbed.

Here is another circumstance for your consideration. You all know it as a fact; but it has not received adequate attention, although a healthy scientific view would lay great stress on it. At the very moment that you have thoughts about any organ of your bodies, or to express it better, thoughts that are connected with any organ, there is a certain degree of activity in that part. Here is, I suggest to you another wide field for future doctoral theses! Just study the association of certain trains of thought with, for example, the flow of saliva, the flow of mucoid substance from the intestines, the flow of milk, of urine, of seminal secretion; all these are the accompaniment of thoughts which arise and proceed concurrently with these organic phenomena.

What is the fact before us? In your soul life certain thoughts arise; organic phenomena appear concurrently; the two processes run parallel. What does it mean? What arises in your thoughts is entirely within the organs. If you have thoughts synchronising with a glandular secretion, you have drawn the activity which is the basis of the thought, the thinking out of the gland itself. You perform the activity apart from the gland, leaving the gland to its own fate, and the gland performs its proper activity; it secretes. The secretion is held up, that is to say what otherwise is set free from the gland, remains within it, because thought unites it with the gland. Here then, you have so to speak, in a tangible form, the passing of plastic activity from out of the organ into the thought. You can say to yourselves: if I had not thought thus, my gland would not have secreted. That is: I have drawn a force out of the gland, transferred it into my soul life, and the gland has given forth its secretion.

The human organism supplies the most obvious proof of my argument in our previous considerations, that what we experience in soul and spirit is simply the operation of those formative forces, separated in us, but working in the rest of Nature's order. The external natural processes take place, by virtue of the same forces that develop the flora of fields and woods, corresponding to our intestinal flora; in the external flora are the same formative forces that we extract in the case of our own flora. If you look at the flora of the mountains and meadows, you must recognise in them the same forces that you evolve in your thoughts, when you live in representation and feeling. And the humble vegetation of your intestines differs from the external flora, because the latter do not have to be deprived of the thoughts. Thoughts are inherent in the external vegetable world, as much parts of the plants as their stems and leaves and blossoms.

Here you get an idea of the kinship between what holds sway in flowers and foliage and that which works within yourselves when you develop an intestinal vegetation, which you deprive of formative powers, taking those powers away for your own use. For indeed, if you did not do this you would not be a thinking being. You take away from your intestinal flora what the flora out in nature still retain.

This is equally true of the fauna. It is impossible to correlate the nature of man with remedies from the vegetable world, without understanding what I have just said. Similarly until we realise that mankind has drawn away from his intestinal fauna the forces formative of animal life in external nature, we can get no right concept of the use of sera.

So you can see that a system, a rationale in these matters, is only obtainable when we envisage the relationship of man to his environment. And I would draw your attention to another point that is curiously significant. I do not know how many of you some time ago noticed the most preposterous placards forbidding people to spit. As you know the purpose behind them was to combat tuberculosis. These prohibitory placards are abjured for the reason—which ought to be common knowledge—that the daily diffused light of the sun destroys the bacilli of tuberculosis in a very short time. If you examine a sputum specimen after a short time, it contains no more such bacilli. So that even if the assumption of current medicine were valid—this prohibition would be extremely absurd. Such prohibitions have significance for the elementary observance of cleanliness, but not for the widest aspects of hygiene.

For the student who is beginning to estimate facts correctly, this is very important, for it indicates the inability of the kinsman of intestinal fauna or flora, the bacillus, to survive in the sunlight. Sunlight does not suit it. Where can the bacillus survive? In the interior of the human body. And why just there? It is not that the bacillus itself is the noxious agent, it is the forces active within the body that we must consider. And here is another fact that is ignored. We are continually surrounded by light; light—as you will of course remember perfectly from your study of science—has supreme importance for the evolution of the extra-human beings, and especially for the development of all extra-human flora. But at the border line between ourselves and the world outside, something very significant happens to light, that is, to something purely etheric; it becomes transmuted. And it needs must be transmuted. For, consider how the process of plant formation is held up in man, how this process is so to speak broken off and counteracted by the process that manufactures carbon dioxide. In the same way, the process contained in the life of light is interrupted in man. And so, if we seek for light within man, it must be something transformed, it must be a metamorphosis of light.

At the moment of crossing the border of man inwards we have a metamorphosis of light. This means that man does not only transform the common, ponderable processes of external nature within himself, but also the imponderable element—Light itself. He changes it into something different. And if the bacillus of tuberculosis thrives in the human interior and perishes in the full sunlight, it is evident—to a sound judgment of the fact—that the product of the light as transmuted within us, must offer a favourable environment to these bacilli, and if they multiply excessively, there must be something wrong with the product of transmutation, and thence we get the insight that amongst the causes of tuberculosis is involved that of the process of transmutation of light within the patient. Something occurs which should not occur, otherwise he would not harbour too many of the tuberculosis bacilli—for they are always present in all of us, but as a rule in insufficient numbers to provoke active tuberculosis. If they are too prolific, their “host” succumbs to the disease. And the tuberculosis bacillus could not be found everywhere, if there were not something abnormal in the development of this transmuted light of the sun.

It will again be easy to work out an adequate number of doctorial theses and scientific papers on this. Empirical material gleaned from observation, will pour on you in floods, in corroboration of views which I can only offer here in mere outline.

What happens if a human being becomes suitable soil for tuberculosis bacilli is that either he is not constitutionally capable of absorbing sunlight, or he does not get enough sunlight owing to his way of life. Thus there is not an adequate balance between the amount of sunlight he receives from outside, and the amount he can transmute; and this forces him to draw reserves from the already transmuted light stored up within him.

Please pay particular attention to this: Man by the very fact of being man, has a continuous supply of stored and transmuted light within. That is necessary to his organisation. If the mutual process, enacted between man and the external sunlight, does not take place properly, his body is deprived of the transmuted light, just as, in cases of emaciation, the body loses fat which it needs. And in such cases, man faces the dilemma of either forcing his upper sphere to become diseased or of depriving his lower sphere of what he needs for the upper: that is of making his lower sphere sick, by depriving it of transmuted light.

You will gather from this that the organisation of man needs not only ponderable substances, derived from the external world and transformed, but that imponderable, etheric substances are also present within him, although in metamorphosis. Further you will conclude that these basic principles afford the possibility of building up a correct view, on the one hand, of the healing effect of the sun's light: we can expose the human being directly to the sunlight, in order to regulate his disordered interrelation to the environing light. And, on the other hand, we may administer internally those substances that counteract the irregularity in the deprivation of transmuted light. We must counter-balance the deprivation of transmuted light, by means of what can be drawn from the remedial substances. There is the window through which you can observe the human organisation at work.

But now—you must excuse my somewhat undiplomatic expression, it is really objective, detached from sympathy or antipathy—everybody who observes the world must after a time acquire a certain anger against every use of the microscope, against every research on the microscopic scale: because microscopical methods are more apt to lead away from a wholesome view of life and its disturbances, than to lead towards it. All the processes actually affecting us, in our health and sickness, can be much better studied on the macroscopic than on the microscopic scale. We must only seek out the opportunities for such a study in the world of the macrocosm.

Let us return to the Birds. As a result of the absence of a bladder and large intestine, these creatures possess a continual balance between nutrition and evacuation. Birds can evacuate their waste matter in flight; they do not retain it; they do not store it in themselves. They have no organs for such a purpose. If a bird were to accumulate and retain excretions, this would be a disease which would destroy it. In so far as we are human beings we have gone further than the birds on the evolutionary path, in the phrase that meets contemporary opinion; or—as would be a more correct statement—we have descended below the level of that order. For birds do not need to wage the vigorous war against intestinal flora which does not exist in them; this war is unavoidable in higher animals and mankind.

But let us consider a—shall we say—somewhat more highly placed activity of ours; the metamorphic activity of the etheric element, the metamorphosis of light, as just described. In respect of these functions we are on the same grade as birds. We have a large intestine and a bladder in our physical organism, but in our etheric organism, in these respects, we are birds; these organs are actually absent in the dynamics of the cosmos. Therefore we are obliged to work up light as soon as we receive it, and to give forth the products by excretion. If a disturbance arises here, there is no corresponding organ for its operation. We cannot stand the disturbance without our health suffering accordingly. So when we observe the birds with their miniature brains, it becomes evident that in the macrocosmos they are replicas of our more subtle organisation. And if you want to study man with reference to this finer organisation which separates itself from his coarser organisation which has descended below the birds—then, my friends, you must study the processes of the world of birds macroscopically.

Here I should like to interpolate a comment. We human creatures would be in a sad state, if in our etheric organism we had the same superiority over birds as we have in our physical; for the etheric organism cannot be enclosed and sequestrated, in the same way, from the external world. If we possessed organs of smell receptive to the storage of transmuted light, the social life of mankind would be an appalling experience. We should have the same experience we get when we cut open a sheep and inhale the fumes of its entrails. Whereas, in actual fact, the etheric aroma of mankind, as perceived among ourselves, may be compared to the relatively far from disagreeable smell of a freshly killed carrion bird. Contrast this with what we smell if we open the body of a ruminant animal and even of such an animal as the horse, which is not a true ruminant although it has the tendency to become a ruminant in its organisation.

So what we have to do is to investigate the analogy between what happens in the external animal and vegetable worlds, and what happens in regard to the intestinal flora and fauna in the human organisation, which has to be combated and counteracted. And in deciding the relationship between any specific organ and any specific remedy, we must pass from the general definitions just given, to the particular definitions and descriptions of the following lectures.

Now pass from the reasons compelling us to combat the intestinal flora and fauna, inasmuch as within the circulatory function we find something that attacks the process of plant formation. Let us consider man's nervous and senses system. This aspect of our nature is far more significant for its totality than is generally believed. Science has become so remote an abstraction, that it has not been realised how this nervous and sensory system, which is interpenetrated with light and the warmth inseparable from light, is linked up with the internal life. This is because the imponderable elements that enter the body with the light, must be absorbed and transmuted by our organs, and are forming organs in us, just as do the substances of the ponderable world. The special significance of the nerves and senses system for our human organism has been neglected.

But whereas, if we enter more deeply into the lower man we descend out of the formative force of intestinal flora into that of intestinal fauna, we come, if we ascend in man, out of the region where the intestinal flora is combated, into the region where there must be a continual combating of the tendency of man to become mineralised, to become sclerotic. You can observe externally in the greater ossification of the human head how the tendency towards mineralisation increases the more man develops upwards.

This tendency towards mineralisation is of great importance for our whole organisation. We must constantly recall—as I have done already in public lectures—that in dividing the human being into three systems, i.e. the head man, the trunk man and the limb man, we must be careful not to imagine that these three are external to one another within external spatial boundaries. Man is of course wholly head man, but qualitatively distributed. That which has its chief focus in the head, also extends over the whole man. The same is true of the other main systems, circulation system, limb and metabolic system; they too, extend throughout man's body. So the tendency to mineralisation, localised chiefly in the head, exists and must be counteracted all through the body. Here is a field of knowledge of which the contemporary student can no longer understand anything when he glances through the ancient treatises written in the light of atavistic clairvoyance. For after all, only the smallest minority of those who trouble to read that Paracelsus writes of the salt-process, get any worth-while idea from it today. But the salt-process belongs to the region that I am now outlining, just as the sulphur process belongs to the region previously described.

Man has an inherent tendency to mineralisation; just as the forces fundamental to the development of our internal flora and fauna can get “out of hand,” so also can the mineralising tendency. How is it to be counteracted? Only by shattering it; by, as it were, driving a perpetual succession of minute wedges into it. And here you enter the region where you have to pass from serotherapy through vegetable therapy to mineral therapy. You cannot do without this, as you only reach a starting ground for the support of all that needs support, in man's struggle against mineralisation, against general sclerosis, in the interaction between the minerals and those human substances which tend themselves to become minerals. It does not suffice simply to introduce the mineral, in its crude state as found in the external world, into the human organism. The right method would indicate some form of the homeopathic principle. For it is precisely from the mineral kingdom that we must set free the forces opposed to the action of the external forces of that kingdom.

It is a sound comment (and one already made) that we have only to turn our attention to the very slight mineral content of many medicinal springs, which have a remedial effect, in order to observe a conspicuous homeopathic process. This process shows that at the very instant in which we liberate the mineral components from their externally known forces, other forces emerge which can only be fully liberated through homeopathic dosage. This subject shall be given special consideration later on. But I would add the following consideration today, and address my remarks particularly to the younger members of my audience.

Let us assume that you are making comparative investigations into the structural changes of the whole intestinal system, let us say from the fishes, through the Amphibia to the reptiles—the conditions in the Amphibia and reptiles in this respect, are most interesting—to the birds on the one side, and the mammals, and finally, man, on the other. You will find that remarkable changes of form occur in the organs. For instance, there are the Caeca the equivalent of what has become the vermiform appendix in man; in the lower mammals, or, in bird groups which deviate from the normal type—the rudiments of the vermiform appendix appear. Or study the quite different way in which the great gut, which does not exist in fishes, evolves through the ascent of so-called more perfect classes, into what we can recognise as the larger intestine (colon). Between this and the manner in which caeca become what we recognise as the appendix in mankind, (certain species of animals have several appendices) you will find a remarkable complementary relationship.

A comparative study should bring this interrelationship into sharp relief. Of course you can put the question from the outside, as it were, and you know how often it is so put: why is there such a thing as the vermiform appendix in mankind? Yes, that is often asked. And if the question is raised, it is generally forgotten that man exhibits a duality, so that what originates in the lower sphere has always complementary organ in the upper, and that certain organs of the upper sphere could not evolve without their complementary organs, almost their opposite poles, in the lower. The more the fore-brain approximates to the form which it reaches in mankind, the more evolved does the intestine become in the direction of the process of the depositing of waste material. There is a close correspondence between cerebral and intestinal formation; if the great gut and the caecum did not appear in the course of animal evolution, it would not be possible for men capable of thinking, to arise on a physical basis; for man possesses the brain, the organ of thinking at the expense—I repeat, entirely at the expense of his intestinal organs, and the intestinal organs are the exact reverse side of the brain parts. You are relieved of the need for physical action in order to think; but instead your organism is burdened with the functions of the highly developed larger intestine and bladder. Thus the highest activities of soul and spirit manifested in the physical world through man, so far as they are dependent on a complete brain formation, are also dependent on the equivalent structure of the intestine.

This crucially important inter-relationship throws much light on the whole way in which nature works. For, however paradoxical, it is nevertheless permissible to say, that man has a vermiform appendix in order that he may think like a human being. That which shapes and reveals itself in the appendix, has its polar complement in the human brain. All that is in one sphere has its analogies in the other. These are facts which must be acquired once more through new methods of knowledge. We cannot merely echo the physicians of antiquity, who based their doctrine on atavistic perceptions. That road will not lead us to many results. We must reconquer these truths ourselves. And in that reconquest we shall find the purely materialistic achievements of medicine, which are averse from such associations, a real obstacle.

For medicine and biology today, the brain is simply an internal organ and so are the contents of the abdomen and pelvis; entrails, all of them. And thus they made the same mistake as if they identified positive with negative electricity; just electricity, what is the difference? The mistake here is quite analogous but is overlooked. For, just as between positive and negative electricity there arise tensions which then seek their equilibrium, there is also perpetual tension within man, between the upper and lower organic spheres. And the control of this tension really comprises what we must search for in the field of medicine. This tension also manifests itself (I will merely indicate this today, but treat it in detail later) through the forces concentrated in two organs: the Pineal Gland and the so-called Pituitary Gland. In the pineal, all those forces are focused and marshaled which are contrary to those of the pituitary, the hypophysis cerebri, that is to those which are of the nature of the lower organic sphere. It is a mutual relation of opposing tensions. And if we were in the habit of forming an opinion of the state of this balance of tensions, from the general health of the individual case, we should have laid a very sound foundation for the remedial treatment to follow.

As we go further into that special realm where pathology is to meet therapeutics and where, in a certain sense, we build a bridge between the two, we shall need to mention many things that can only remain a sort of ideal for treatment and cannot be everywhere fully applied. Nevertheless, if we had a comprehensive picture of all that matters in the treatment of disease, we should be able to select one or other particular point, and at least we should know how a fragmentary diagnosis of a given disease can be utilised.

First and foremost, we must consider the importance, even in the most special cases, of knowing the whole personality before us. This should include all the main data of the patient's life. Some medical practitioners have given me their confidence, and discussed various topics with me, and I have often been amazed. My first question was: “How old is the patient?” and the practitioner could give no definite answer. He had himself formed no opinion on the patient's age. As we shall see in the next few lectures, it is one of the essentials to know this, for therapeutics depend very much on the age of the person treated. The day before yesterday we heard it said of certain remedies, that while in some cases they were of extraordinary efficacy in others they failed.¹ Here arises the question whether there was any connection between the failure and the age of the patient under treatment We must collect and collate very exact records concerning the influence of age upon the effect of remedies.

Then there is the factor of stature. We should always pay special attention to the stature and build of the patient—whether he is short and compact or tall and lanky. It is important to be able to judge, from differences in build, the forces inherent in what we term the etheric body of man. I have given much consideration to the possibility of avoiding these terms, which belong to the reality of man's being; but it is impossible to do so, and presumably you would not wish to do so. Of course we could replace them by other terms that find more approval among those who are not Anthroposophists. Perhaps of this course. Here and now, however, we shall retain this vocabulary for the sake of better understanding.

We can judge what I might term the intensity of the etheric body's activity by the build and physique of the individual. One should wherever possible find out—(I will mention every factor, although often they cannot be considered for lack of the necessary data) whether in his youth the patient grew slowly or rapidly. All such facts are symptomatic of what we might term the action of the etheric body, or let us say, of the functional manifestations of the man in relation to his physical body. This must be taken into account, if we want to perceive a connection between the man and his medical remedies.

Then we must find out the relationship of both physical and etheric bodies to the higher members of the human organisation, to what we call the astral body, (the soul proper) and the ego (the spiritual proper). So for instance we should ask the patient about his dream-life: does he dream much or little? An extensive dream-life is an extremely important constitutional peculiarity, for it testifies to a tendency of the astral body and Ego to unfold an activity of their own, and not to concern themselves very closely with the physical body, so that the formative forces of the soul do not flow down into the organic system.

Another question that should be put—although it may be “uncomfortable”—is whether the individual patient is fond of movement and exertion, or inclined to inertia. For personalities with the latter tendency have a powerful internal agility of their astral bodies and egos. This may appear paradoxical, but the activity referred to does not reach our consciousness. And for this very reason the individual is not consciously industrious, but, on the whole, lazy. For what I here define as the opposite of inertia is the organic capacity to grip the lower human sphere by means of the higher members, i.e., to transmit activity from the astral body and from the ego, into the physical and etheric bodies. Lazy people have very slight capacity of this kind. The lazy man is really, from the point of view of spiritual science, a man asleep.

Then we should inform ourselves about the patient's eyesight: is he short-sighted or long-sighted? Short-sighted individuals have a certain reluctance of the astral body and ego to permeate the physical body, and short-sight is one of the chief symptoms of this reluctance.

I would offer a further suggestion which might some day be feasible. It would be most important in the treatment of disease, and, as I believe, could become valuable in practice if the various professions were to develop more social feeling. My suggestion is this: it would be most useful if dentists and dental surgeons were to use their knowledge of the dental system and all that is connected with it, that is, of the digestive system as well, so as to be able to offer a sort of diagram to their patients on each occasion of treatment or consultation. Of course the patients themselves must be persuaded to co-operate, but, with some social sense, this would perhaps be possible. On such a diagram the dentist would note the efficiency of all factors related to dentition, whether there was any early tendency to dental caries;, whether the teeth have kept in good condition in later life, and so forth. As we shall see during the next lectures, these matters are crucial for the correct judgment of the total human organisation. And if the physician who has to treat an isolated case of illness could obtain a summary of the patient's state of health from the state of his teeth in this way, the document would be an extremely important basis for the treatment.

Further, you should learn from the patients themselves their chief physical sympathies and antipathies. It is particularly important to know whether any person you propose to treat, has a keen appetite for salt, for instance. His most pronounced tastes in food should be ascertained. If he has a strong appetite for all saline flavours, we have to deal with a person in whom there is too close a connection between the ego and astral body on the one hand, and the physical and etheric bodies on the other. The affinity between his soul and spirit and his bodily organism is, so to speak too complete. The same conclusion may be drawn from liability to vertigo—fits of dizziness following external mechanical movements, such as rapidly turning round. It should be noted whether a patient becomes dizzy easily following certain bodily movements.

Moreover, one ought to acquaint oneself—though this is very generally known—with every disturbance of elimination, with the whole glandular activity of the patient. Where there are irregularities of elimination there are also always disturbances in the interaction of ego and astral body with the etheric and physical bodies. These are a few indications of what must be ascertained in the first consultation with any patient. They are chosen as examples, but you will perceive their general trend, in so far as the individual bodily constitution is concerned. Later on we shall discuss also the indications of habits of life, the access to good air, etc. These are rather matters for consideration under the special headings. But you have had an outline of the way to obtain a view of the sort of person you have to treat. For only when this is known in detail, will it be possible to judge how to administer or compose any remedy.

I should like to remind you of the general fact mentioned before that there is an inherent relationship between man and the whole non-human world. In Spiritual Science this relationship is often formulated in this, admittedly abstract, manner in the course of evolution mankind has discarded and released the other natural kingdoms out of his own entity, and therefore external things retain a relationship to him. But in place of this abstract formulation, we shall have to point to repeated specific and concrete instances of the relationship in organo-therapy. Let us be clear, first of all, as to the actual basis of this remedial reaction of man to non-human nature.

You know that there is much controversy on this theme. As we shall explain more fully later, different methods of treatment are arranged against one another. One of these disputes is all too well known to the public; that waged by the advocates of homeopathy and of allopathy respectively. It might interest you to hear about the part Spiritual Science should take here. But its intervention is somewhat peculiar. I shall give a general statement regarding it now, but reserve the details for later addresses. Strictly speaking, in the light of the results of Spiritual Science, there are no allopaths. There are in reality no allopaths because even what is described as an allopathic remedy is subjected within the organism to a homeopathic process and heals only through and by virtue of this process, so that, in actual fact, every allopath is supported and helped in his characteristic methods, by the homeopathic processes of the organism under treatment. This carries out what the allopath forgets, the dispersion of the particles of the remedial substances. But, of course, there is a considerable difference, according to whether we relieve the organism of this homeopathic function, or not. This is simply because the curative processes within us are associated with the condition of these remedies after they have been gradually homeopathised, whereas the organism has no curative interaction with the substances of the external world in their usual state. When these are taken into the body, they are “foreign bodies,” causing really awful disturbances and overloading if the body is burdened with the forces contained in allopathic dosages. We shall give special consideration to the cases in which it is impossible to relieve the organism of this homeopathic effort.

Homeopathic dosage has really up to a point been very carefully copied from Nature herself, although fanatics have often gone too far and jumped to conclusions. How can we find a way to the relationship between man and his non-human environment? As I pointed out yesterday, in another context, we cannot merely repeat what the physicians of old time have laid down, although an intelligent study of their works can be helpful. But we have also to investigate this interaction between the human and extra-human world with all the resources of modern science. And we must hold steadfastly to the knowledge that we cannot get much further by means of chemical research into various substances, that is, by consideration of the results of laboratory tests on such substances. This is a kind of microscopy; I have already suggested that this should be replaced by macroscopic observation of the Cosmos itself.

Today I have to put some significant facts before you which may to some extent show in what way the extra-human world corresponds in a sort of threefold division to the threefold nature of man. First of all, consider all soluble substances. Solubility is the last and latest attribute of special importance in the evolution of our planet, What has been deposited as the solid element is mainly derived from a cosmic process of solution which has been overcome and has deadened and thrown off the solid particles. But it is a purely external view to consider the planetary process as a merely mechanical deposit of sediment, and to construct geognosy and geology on this premise. Rather may we maintain that in the process of solution something is manifested that man has liberated from his own being, in so far as it occurs externally in the extra-human nature. Something that man has set free is at work. So we must inquire what are the relationships between external processes of solution and the internal functions of our organism.

It is of fundamental significance, that certain individuals in whom the spirit and soul principle is too closely linked with the etheric and physical bodies, have an organic hunger or thirst for salt; that means that they tend to reverse the process of depositing salt. They want to cancel the process of earth-formation within their own bodies, and restore salt to an earlier, more primitive, state than that in which the earth has solidified. It is very important to include these connections in our view. They afford real insight into the connections between the human organism and external nature. We may conclude that our human nature has inherent in it an organic need to reverse certain processes that take place in the external world, to fight against them. As I pointed out yesterday, there is even a resistance to the force of gravitation, shown by the buoyancy that lifts and suspends the human brain. This resistance is a general tendency.

And what does this opposition to earth-solidifying forces mean? It means nothing less, in essence, than the liberation of the lower man from the soul and spirit principle, the expulsion of this principle from the lower sphere into the upper in the first instance. Thus in all cases where there is a pronounced appetite for salt, the lower organic sphere is striving somehow for liberation from the too potent activity of the soul and spirit within it, and trying, so to speak, to cause this activity to flow towards the upper organic sphere.

Let us assume disturbances of function in the lower sphere, disturbances that have been recognised as such. Later on we shall see how one can recognise the particular methods of finding out the diseases that result. What can we do about them?

Here I must interpolate a comment which may be of use to those who tend to be one-sided towards the use of mineral remedies. This antipathy is not justifiable. As we shall see, purely plant remedies can only be efficacious within very definite limits, and mineral remedies are of great service, particularly in more serious cases. So I ask you not to take offense, if I start from mineral remedies, from the efficacy of mineral remedies, however, which are incorporated within the realm of organic life.

You can throw a strong light on certain treatments of the human pelvis and abdomen, in relation to the upper organs, by studying the oyster: there is great significance in the oyster and the formative process of its shell. The oyster is encased in a covering of carbonate of lime, Calcarea Carbonica, and it expels this substance from its body, to form the shell. You must accept a little help from Spiritual Science here; but if you study the oyster with this help, you will become aware that although this mollusk occupies a very low position in the animal world, its position in the Cosmos is relatively high. For this reason: the force that man carries within him which manifests itself as his power of thought, is extruded from the oyster to form the shell. If the oyster could link up the formative forces that are conducted outwards with its actual organic growth, it would become a highly intelligent creature and be put on a very high level in the animal kingdom.

The forces which pass outwards from the interior, show the path by which this potentiality is canalised, drained to the exterior. And you can see clearly, and, so to speak, tangibly, in the origin of the oyster shell, the operation of carbonate of lime. It operates to draw the excess activity of the soul and spirit from the organism.

Suppose you find a case of superfluous and excessive activity of soul and spirit manifesting within the lower bodily sphere, as happens in certain forms of disease, which we shall describe in due course. You must have recourse to the remedy we owe to the shells of oysters or similar substances, which, through the mysterious forces of carbonate of lime work outwards from within. Something quite crucial in the treatment will therefore depend on comprehending that certain healing forces are active in this centrifugal tendency. All that is associated with the therapeutic properties of Calcarea Carbonica and similar substances can only be rationally understood, if viewed in this context.

All the forces inherent in phosphorus, e.g., are polar opposites to those in carbonate of lime. (The expressions I use in this connection are at least no less scientific, in their true significance, than much that today passes for science.) If all “saline substances” behave in such a way as to give themselves up to the environment, the reason is that all salts arise through deprivation and liberation of the corresponding substances from the inner workings of light and other imponderable elements. I might say that all that is saline has so repelled the imponderable elements through its very origin that they are alien to it.

Of phosphorus the exact contrary is true. Ancient atavistic knowledge was indeed not without justification in calling phosphorus the Light-bearer. Men saw that phosphorus does carry and contain that imponderable light. What salt repels and holds at bay, phosphorus carries within it. Thus the substances at the opposite pole from salt, are those that appropriate, so to speak, the imponderable entities—principally light, but also others, for instance, warmth—and interiorise them, making them their inner properties. This is the basis of the remedial efficacy of all the qualities of phosphorus, and of all that is allied to phosphorus in its healing effect. Therefore phosphorus, in which the imponderable are internally stored, is especially conducive to bringing the astral body and the ego into closer relationship with the physical organism.

Let us suppose that you are consulted by a person suffering from some disease (we shall deal with particular diseases later) in which there are particularly vivid and frequent dreams. This means that the astral body likes to separate from the physical, does so with ease, and goes about its own business. Moreover the patient tells you that he has a constitutional tendency to inflammations affecting the periphery of the organism. This is a further symptom showing that the astral body and ego are not settled properly in the physical. If these symptoms are found, you will be able to employ the force where with phosphorus grips its imponderables to make the astral body and ego occupy themselves more with the physical body. In persons who have restless and disturbed sleep, even in very different cases of disease, one can beneficially employ phosphorus, for it tends to restore and re-unite the astral body and ego to the physical and etheric bodies.

Thus we find phosphoric and saline substances, polar opposites in some measure. And I would ask you to bear in mind the cosmic roles played by these two groups, as of far more significance than—if I may say so—the individual names applied in modern chemistry to all the separate substances. In the course of our discussions we shall see how phosphorus can be used for healing purposes, in the form of related substances.

Here then you have, in external nature, two states which are polar to one another; that which acts in a saline manner and that which acts in a phosphoric manner. And between them, there is a third group: that which acts Mercurially. Just as man is a threefold being, a creature with nerves and senses, with a circulatory system, and with metabolism; and as circulation is the bridge linking nerves and senses to the metabolic functions: so also there is a mediatory function in external nature. It comprises everything that possesses, to a great degree, neither the saline character nor the character of interiorising the imponderables, but—so to speak—holds the equipoise between these two, by manifesting in the form of drops. For mercurial substances are essentially those which tend to assume the form of drops, by virtue of their inner combination of forces. This is the point which matters in all mercury substances, not whether they are known today under the name of quicksilver. The test of what is mercurial is the combination of forces whereby a substance is poised midway between the liquefying tendency of the saline, and the concentrating tendency in which imponderables are held together. So we must give special heed to the state of the forces that are the most evident in all mercurial substances. You will find accordingly, that these mercurial substances are mainly linked up with all that is calculated to bring about a balance between the activities for which phosphorous and saline substances are best qualified. We shall find that their effects upon the organism are not contradictory to the indications just given, when we deal specially with syphilitic and similar diseases.

In this sketch of the three groups: Saline. Mercurial. Phosphoric. I have presented to you the most conspicuous mineral types. But in dealing with the saline group, we have already had to refer to an organic activity, as manifested in the formation of the oyster's shell, which works behind the saline nature. Such an organic process is in a certain sense at work also when imponderables become concentrated in phosphorus. But as in that case, all depends on interiorisation, the process becomes less obvious externally. Now let us turn from the contemplation of these typical forms manifested in the external world, to other processes that have been segregated at a different epoch from man—viz., plant life.

As we have already recognised from a somewhat different point of view, the character of the plant represents the opposite of the activity proper to the human organism. But in the plant itself we can clearly differentiate between three kinds of manifestation. This threefold diversity strikes you very plainly, as you observe that which unfolds earthward to form the root and that which springs upward to send forth blossom, fruit and seed. The external direction in space as such indicates the contrast between the plant nature and Man (the animal must be left aside for the moment). This contrast in direction contains something of great significance and value. The plant sinks itself deep into the earth with its roots and stretches its blossom, its reproductive organs, upwards. Man is the direct opposite in his relation to the Cosmos. He sends his roots, so to speak, upwards, with his head, and he strives earthwards with his organs of reproduction. Thus it is not in the least unreasonable to picture our human frame as containing a plant, with its root sent upwards and its blossom opening downwards in the reproductive organs. For in a special way the plant nature is fitted, as it were, into the human. And again, there is a remarkable difference in Man and animal in that the plant hidden in the animal lies horizontally, that is at right angles to the direction of the growing plants, while Man has completely turned round and has executed a semicircle of 180 degrees when compared with the plant. This is one of the most instructive facts for the study [of] man's relationship to the external world.

If our students of medicine would investigate such macrocosmic matters more closely, they would learn more of the forces operative, even, for instance, in the living cells, than through the methods of microscopy. For the most important forces that work even in the cells—and quite differently in plant, animal or man—can be observed and studied macroscopically. The human soul can be studied to much better effect, by observing the co-operation of that which extends vertically upwards and downwards, and that which lies in the balance of the horizontal. These forces can be observed in the macrocosm and are operative even down into the cellular tissues. And what is active within the cells, is in fact nothing less than the image of this macrocosmic working.

Let us consider the vegetation of the Earth; but not in the usual fashion, by wandering on the Earth's surface to contemplate one plant beside another, examine it minutely in all its parts, invent a title of two or three separate names, and then list the plant in a system of classification. No: you must bear in mind that the whole earth is one single entity, and that the whole vegetable world pertains to the Earth's organism just as your hair belongs to yours—(although with this difference, that hairs resemble each other closely whereas plants are various and differ one from another). You can no more regard the single plant as an independent organism than you can so regard the single hair. The cause of the variety among plants is simply this; the Earth in its interaction with the rest of the Cosmos develops different forces towards the most diverse directions, and in this way gives a different organisation to the plants. But there is a certain basic unity in the constitution of the earth, from which all plant growth derives. The following consideration is therefore important. To give an example; suppose you are studying mushrooms and fungi: for these the earth itself is, so to speak, the support and matrix. Pass higher up the scale to herbs; here, too, the earth supports and nourishes, but forces from outside the earth have also influence in shaping their leaves and flowers: the force of light, for instance. And most interesting of all vegetable forms are the trees. Turn your attention to trees and you will recognise that the formation of their stems or trunks (by virtue of which trees become perennial) represents a continuation of what the whole earth is for the plant that nestles upon it. Please visualise this relationship of earth and plant. The herbal plant springs up out of the earth. This means that we must search in the earth itself for the forces fundamental to growth, which interact with the forces streaming on to our earth out of the Cosmos. But when a tree grows, do not, please, be too much shocked by what I say, for this is really the case—the earth rises up and grows, so to speak to cover over that which formally flowed directly out of the earth into the herb-like plant. That shoots up into the trunk—and all tree trunks are really outgrowths of the earth. If we have forgotten this, it is because of that gruesome materialistic concept of today, that the earth is merely composed of minerals. People do not realise how impossible is the concept of a mineral earth! The earth has other forces as well as those which segregate into the mineral kingdom; it has the forces that sprout into vegetation.

These forces rise up out of the soil and become trunks. And all that grows upon the trunks is in a relationship to them comparable with that of the lower plant forms and herbs to the earth itself.

Indeed I would say that the soil of earth is itself the trunk, or main stem, of those lesser vegetable growths, and that the trees formed an extra trunk to carry their essential organs—blossoms and seeds. Thus you will observe that there is a certain difference as to whether I take a blossom from a tree or from a herb-like plant. Consider further the formation of parasitic plants, more especially the mistletoe. In it you find the blossoms and seed organs which are normally united to the supporting plant, separated and stuck upon a stem like a process apart. Thus the formative process of the mistletoe represents an intensification of what is active in blossom and seed formation, and at the same time, in some sort, a separation from the terrestrial forces. What is non-terrestrial in the plant emancipates itself in the formation of the mistletoe. We see that upward urge away from the earth, which interacts with extra-terrestrial forces, gradually liberate and separate itself in the efflorescence of blossom and fruit, and arrive at a remarkable individualisation and emancipation, in the mistletoe.

Bearing this in mind, together with the varied forms of plants; you will admit that there must be considerable organic difference according as a plant tends most to root-development, its growth forces manifesting principally in the root, but its blossoms small or even atrophied. Such plants tend more towards the earth forces. Those plants which liberate themselves from the earth forces are those that give themselves up to the formation of blossom and seed, or, most of all, those that live as parasites upon others of the vegetable kingdom.

All plants tend to make some one organ particularly predominant. Take the pineapple, which tends to make its stem predominant, or indeed any other plant. Every principal organ of the plant, roots, stems, leaves, blossoms, fruit, becomes the chief and most conspicuous organ of this or that plant kind. Take for instance, Equisetum (the horse-tail), and observe the trend to become all stem. Other species, again, tend to become all leaves,

There is a certain parallelism between these divergent tendencies in the vegetable growth and those three types of mineral activity in the external world that I have enumerated today. Let us consider the emancipatory tendency in plants—that urge which culminates in the activity of the parasitic species; here is something which tends to the interiorisation of imponderables. That which streams earthward out of the cosmos as imponderables is as definitely collected and conserved in blossoms and fruit, if blossoms and fruit prevail, as in the phosphor substance. So we may maintain that, in a certain sense, blossoms, seeds and all that tends towards mistletoe and other parasite development in plants are “phosphoric.” And on the opposite pole we find that the root process which the plant develops by regarding the earth as its mother-ground is closely related to salt-formation.

Thus both these polarities face us in the world of the plant. And further: in the visible linkage between the blossom and fruit process that extends upwards and the downwards anchorage in the earth we have the mediating activity of the mercurial process.

Now, take into account the opposite placing of organs, in man and in the plant respectively. You must conclude that all substances tending inwardly towards the formation of flowers and fruit must be closely related to the organs of the hypogastrium and all those organs directed and orientated by them. All phosphoric substance must therefore have close interaction with these lower human organs. We shall presently confirm this. On the other hand, all that tends towards root development will be intimately connected with all organs of the upper organisation. But of course you must bear in mind that we cannot make a simple and external threefold division of man's body. On the contrary, for instance, much that appertains to the lowest organic region, the digestive system, strives for its continuation as it were in the direction of the head. It is a complete, one might say a foolish error to suppose that the substrate substance of thought is mainly given in the grey matter of the brain. This is not so. The grey matter serves principally to conduct nourishment to the brain. It is essentially a colony of the digestive tract, surrounding the brain in order to feed it, whereas the white matter of the brain is of a great importance as substrate substance of thought. You will find something in the anatomical structure of the grey matter which is much more linked with a more general function of the whole body, than with the function usually attributed to it. As you see dealing with digestion, we cannot restrict ourselves to the lower abdominal regions. Nevertheless, in considering what is derived from or connected with roots, we shall find a definite affinity with what can be applied to the upper organic sphere in man. And all those portions of plants that achieve the equipoise between the blossom and fruit process, and the root process, and manifest in the common herbs through the leaves, will as a decoction have special influence on circulatory disturbances, that is on the rhythmic balance between the upper and lower spheres. Here then is the parallel between minerals that absorb and concentrate the imponderables, minerals that repel the imponderables, and the intermediate group, and the whole configuration of the plant.

This furnishes you with the first rational method (as indicated by the plant itself, in the respective development of this or that organ) of establishing a mutual relationship with the human organism. We shall see how this basic principle works in detail.

We have pointed out these mutual relationships between the vegetable, the mineral and the human. In recent times, there has been a very hopeful addition, in the suggested relationship and interaction between human and animal substances. But not only were the initial ventures in serotherapy carried out by curious methods; there are also objections to customary serotherapy, in principle.

For when serotherapy was first introduced, Behring proceeded in a somewhat strange way. Those who merely followed the many speeches that were delivered, and publications that were issued, dealing with the mere fringe of the problem and with the results that were expected to come from the serum, received the impression that a thorough reform of all medical practice was impending. But after careful reading of the description of the actual experiments given in the fundamental scientific papers, they learned—without exaggeration, as some amongst my audience can probably confirm—that this treatment based on tests with guinea pigs (as laboratory material), which it was proposed to extend to human subjects, had proved “successful” with a “remarkably large” number of guinea pigs. Actually, only one amongst the legions of these creatures treated with the serum showed a favourable result. I repeat, one single guinea pig in such a dressed-up test treatment, at a time when the big drum had already begun to beat in the cause of serotherapy. I cite this one fact, and I think some of you already know it well. And if I may so call it, this extraordinary intellectual slovenliness in scientific publicity deserves to be definitely recorded in the history of Science. To state in principle today what will be outlined in detail during the following lectures:—it is not the processes of the extra-human world that are superficially most apparent, that work most effectively in mankind, but those that must be discovered and extracted from the deeper levels of being.

Mankind is actually related, in a certain way, to all that he has shed from his being: to the phosphoric process, and saline process, the blossom process, the fruit processes, the root process, the process of leaf formation; but in a reversed sense, bearing within him the tendency to cancel and change into its opposite that which manifests in external nature.

It is not the same with animals. For the animal has already gone half the way towards mankind; man is not opposed in the same sense to the animal, but stands rather at right angles to the animal. He has reached an angle of 180 degrees from the plant. This is significant, and demands serious consideration when the question arises of the use of serum and similar remedies of animal origin.

• 1. In a lecture given by one of those attending the course.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I have drawn your attention to certain fundamentals in human adaptation to telluric and cosmic conditions. The indications referred mainly to space, but we must relate space to time. For man must be considered as a whole;—the whole human being is, so to speak, child, adult and old man, and is so organised that these three time-members of his being are present in every individual. The results of our present inquiry we shall have to combine with the results of super-sensible research, and then we shall be in a position to proceed to more special studies.

Just as educational theory and practice for the young have to take note of the different epochs in the child's life, i.e., from birth to the change of teeth; from this to puberty, and so forth, so also must medicine contemplate human life and constitution as a whole from birth until death. In dealing with this I shall begin by using the anthroposophical terminology familiar to us, and then consider how this vocabulary may best be rendered for a more unprepared audience. It will be easier for us to translate thus after having proceeded further in our inquiry.

It is most important to grasp that in childhood the functional content of both the ego proper and the astral body—to use our terms—has to be fitted into the human being. During the period of childhood, this functional content becomes fitted into the organism, so that later on it can really work with the supple and plastic organic substance. Therefore it can occasion no surprise that the disturbances associated with this permeation of the higher human elements into the lower, occur in childhood, especially from the seventh to the fourteenth, fifteenth or sixteenth year, for at this period the etheric body has to struggle for its right place in relation to the physical body, so that sexual maturity may come about. And there is a frequent risk of the elasticity of the physical and etheric bodies not coinciding. To equalise and balance these two comparative elasticities is in the main the duty of the astral body. If they do not work harmoniously together, the astral body often has to intensify its energies; and if its forces are insufficient for this extra call, morbid symptoms result, which must be met by external measures, and so you will find that in childhood there are forms of illness which break out in physical manifestations, as, for instance, in chorea. All diseases and disturbances culminating in this complex of symptoms, that is, accompanied by psychic disturbance, in addition to the organic manifestations, are linked up with the unaccustomed effort and strain on the astral body, in the task of bringing about an equilibrium between the elasticities of the etheric and the physical bodies.

If you observe in pregnant women symptoms of the same kind as in chorea, you will be well able to understand their origin, for the harmony of elasticity in physical and etheric bodies is of course interfered with by pregnancy, and the astral body has to shoulder the same extra responsibility as fell to it in childhood. Therefore it will be necessary to reinforce and stimulate the whole range of the astral body's activity in the illnesses peculiar to the early years of life, and sometimes synchronising with the pregnant state as well. We must see that the functions of the astral body are so directed as to act as a balancing factor between the elasticity of the physical and that of the etheric. (The necessary measures will be discussed in the lectures to follow.)

On the other hand and this is why I have emphasised the need of taking age into consideration—you will find that diseases tending to Polyarthritis and the like, generally appear from the fourteenth, fifteenth or sixteenth year, till the end of the twenties. In this period of life the astral body has to put itself into the correct relationship with the physical and etheric, and if it has not been adequately prepared for this by the necessary treatment in childhood, it will not be able to establish the correct relationship. The result will be the appearance of morbid symptoms, either in the period from the middle teens to the end of the twenties, or in the following period. The important point is, to give great weight to the time-factor in the study of disease, and—if I may express myself in a somewhat superficial manner—not to assume that nature has made the human organism with a special eye to our convenience, so that we may easily and conveniently read off from it the curative measures necessary. But the human organism has not been made with a view to ease and convenience in the discovery of cures. And there is too much inclination to assume that such is actually the case. Of course there is a certain truth in the axiom “Like is cured by like.” But it may happen that the main group of symptoms—which is taken to be the “Like” to be cured by “like”—has arisen in another period of life: for instance, a complex of symptoms may be present before the age of twenty, possibly provoked by external measures; and these same external measures which provoked the morbid process at the earlier age, may become a remedy, to some extent, after the twenties have been left behind.

In visualising the general health of any individual, we must bear in mind that man lives in two life-epochs, which are in some respects polarised. In youth he is under other influences than he is later on. The dominant influences in youth are those of the outer planets, Jupiter, Saturn and Mars, and in later life the inner planets, Venus, Mercury and the Moon, to give them the titles already mentioned. But the earliest and most conspicuous influence of all is that of the Moon.

Thus we have to complete the consideration of Space by the consideration of Time. Only by these means can we learn correctly to estimate and appreciate certain phenomena of human life and constitution. We shall, when we go more into detail, give some indication of how to proceed if one wants to see the facts in the light of the true knowledge of man.

The influences that mould man begin their work before birth, and indeed even before conception. In the course of my investigations, I have often wondered why so many morbid processes have been described as “of unknown origin” in current medical literature; that is, as matters whose origin cannot accurately be determined. The cause of this uncertainty is the neglect of that whole complex of forces which we have recognised as extra-telluric, which is already at work while man approaches—not only his birth—but his own conception. Acting thus on man, they also provoke opposite reactions later on, so that certain processes that actually antedate conception, have reactions after conception or after birth. Sometimes it is only possible to observe and record the post-natal effects, which are a species of defensive reaction against what was present before conception in the whole system of nature.

These considerations apply particularly to all the processes of ossification and sclerosis Not only sclerosis, but bone formation in itself, is a reactive process: both react to processes operative before conception. They are quite normal contrary or defensive reaction is included among the formative forces and counteracting the processes of dispersal and diffusion that act in man before conception. It is extremely important to bear that in mind. It is impossible to control the tendency to sclerosis without reference to extra-telluric factors working from birth or from conception onwards, and without referring this tendency to an extra-human and extra-telluric process dating from before the time of conception.

All these processes are liable to go over a certain limit, to swing over their normal level, as it were. Ossification or sclerosis, e.g., swing towards a medium position, and can overleap it and become too strong. They then take the form of “dispositions,” which reveal much that is most significant in the inner being of man. When the particular factor that manifests itself normally in bone formation or sclerosis, and only becomes abnormal with advancing age, in its own sphere, swings over to the opposite half and works into other organs outside its proper sphere, then indeed we have a symptom that is the morbid antithesis of a pre-natal process, and that manifests in the various kinds of carcinoma formation.

It is only by including man's whole course of being and becoming in our sphere of vision, that we can grasp these phenomena. For otherwise the development of carcinoma must always remain a mysterious factor in the life of man, if we cannot relate it to some process necessarily at work in man that exceeds its limits and invades other regions.

Another phenomenon can be considered in a similar way—the cases of hydrocephaly we often observe during childhood. We all have the tendency to become hydrocephalous, and this tendency is a necessary one; otherwise we could never attain adequate development of our brain and nervous system. For these must, as it were, be formed from out of the fluid element present in man. Thus we can observe a prolonged struggle during childhood between hydrocephaly and another factor that enters the human organisation in order to oppose the hydrocephalous tendency. We ought to have a definite term for this polar opposite, as well as for hydrocephaly itself; the opposite is a deficiency of liquid in the brain. It is neglected as a morbid condition today, but it is the antithesis of hydrocephaly. As young children, we oscillate perpetually between hydrocephaly and its unnamed antithesis which appears later on.

But we may be liable to overlook an important factor in Time, the exact moment, which always exists, even if not apprehended, in which the hydrocephalous tendency may be allowed to cease. (We shall deal later with the therapeutic aspect.) Ignoring this time factor, we may remove the hydrocephalous tendency too soon, either through education, or dieting, or special treatment in childhood, and especially in early infancy. Thus a normal tendency is obliterated too soon. And the results illustrate the harm of too short a view of the whole course of human life.

Legions of medical doctoral theses could be produced if adequate study were devoted to the association between the course of hydrocephaly in infancy and childhood, and syphilis, or the disposition to this disease in later life. The search for microbes is not really helpful here. Help and light come from consideration of the factors already mentioned. It would be of immense help to the prophylactic treatment of syphilis, if attempts were made to immunise man in earliest childhood against the forces that later on may manifest in the various symptoms of syphilis—for these are various,

In diagnosis it is particularly necessary to remember these relations, and to refer back to the proper causes, which lie in the whole process of man's coming into being. Here is another matter of extreme significance. The whole organic process, as it were, advances against the heart, both from the upper bodily sphere, and from below upwards through the hypogastrium. The whole formative process of man presses towards the heart, from both sides; the heart is the real barrier, or organ acting as a dam. This organic pressure on the heart takes place at different ages. Let us consider the symptoms, which appear at an early age and may reach a culmination in pneumonia or pleurisy in youth.

If we consider carefully all that contributes towards them, they will be perceived as a process that has been advanced, the same as that which in still earlier youth manifests itself as hydrocephaly. Hydrocephaly has simply been shifted downward in the body, and appears here as a disposition to pneumonia or pleurisy, together with all the effects related to these in childhood.

These manifestations in childhood have their contrary processes in later years; they may recur later on, but do so in their polar form. And in the case of Endocarditis, e.g., even in acute cases, the physician would do well to inquire whether there were any morbid symptoms at an earlier age, having any connection with pneumonia or pleurisy. And the lesson should be: beware of suppressing such phenomena as pneumonia and pleurisy in children by hasty and intensive treatment. Of course, it is obvious that parents and teachers are most anxious that such symptoms should vanish; but it is highly advisable to leave them to take their course. The medical man should watch over the case and avert possible harmful by-effects, but allow the process to “work itself out.” Particularly in such cases, a kind of “physical” treatment, or, as it is now termed, Nature-healing, is to be recommended; this may be desirable in other cases, of course, but in none more so than in diseases of the type of pleurisy or pneumonia during childhood. This means, one should try to ensure the most normal course of the process of disease; the course is neither accelerated nor stopped too early.

If such a process is shortened before the proper time, the result is a comparatively early disposition to cardiac diseases with all their accessories, especially a susceptibility to polyarthritis so it is urgently necessary to beware of interfering with the process of disease in this region. The tendency to cardiac diseases would be removed in many individual cases, if what we may term the intention of pneumonia or pleurisy were not disturbed.

In all these instances we can see the inter-relationships in the whole process of man's growth and development. In this connection one should also remember the case in which the patient is only slightly affected and in which a cure is easier, but in which it is sometimes impossible to be sure whether it has been achieved or not. In such a case one may be compelled to tell the patient not to be anxious, that his condition will soon be relieved, etc., for it would also be of the greatest benefit if we did not try to cure so much! The cure of disease as such is certainly an excellent thing. But it should be borne in mind that there are many people who have passed through every sort of disease—according to their own account, at least—and have also tested every method of treatment. These people, when they have reached a good age, are not easily satisfied by another remedy for their complaints, for they are always “invalids,” It would be a good thing to make people aware that most of them are really not so ill as they believe. Of course there are drawbacks in such an attitude. But it may well be brought forward in the present connection.

All these things must be considered in the light of the complexity of man's being. He has, to begin with, his physical organisation; then his etheric organisation, which takes such great trouble to work its way into the physical organism between the seventh and fourteenth years. This etheric body is expelled again during certain processes, such as gestation. After the fourteenth year there begins the active installation of the astral body, and later that of the ego itself.

The ego must not be visualised, however, as external to the body in previous stages of growth. It is never external to the body in the waking state, but its “installation” means that the collaboration becomes intensified. Therefore every organic disturbance occasions difficulties and obstructions for the ego in maintaining its position. Contemporary medical science, without knowing it, even shows in diagrams and graphs these difficulties of the ego in coping with the other three vehicles. Of course, living and moving in a materialistic age, one does not fully see this combat in these diagrams. But whenever you trace a proper “fever curve,” you are recording an exact expression of this struggle of the ego. For studying this struggle, therefore, there is hardly anything more instructive than the temperature chart. Of course this may be less significant for therapy than for pathology. But we must know of these matters and understand them, at least in their main outlines. For we can only gain a true insight into the nature of, e.g., pneumonia or abdominal typhus, if we can visualise the course of its temperature curve. Let us suppose we are studying the two main types of temperature curve in pneumonia, and comparing the curve in critical, and in less serious cases. How different in the two cases is the effort of the ego whose intervention in the organisation is impeded! How differently does the ego carry out its counter-attack! In pneumonia, for instance, the temperature curve shows first the struggle, and then the collapse to a temperature below normal, in critical cases. (See Diagram 12). It becomes possible to carry out the counter-attack because of the previous efforts and exertions. In the other type (the lytic case), it is less possible to counter-attack out of the forces of the individual; so the more irregular drop of temperature is actually more dangerous.

The temperature curve in typhus is still more illuminating as regards the working of the ego upon the three other human vehicles. It presents a graphic and definite record of what the ego has to surmount. Such examples can prove how the introduction of natural-scientific methods into medicine compels us to know about the manifold human organisation. The confusions that have arisen in medical science originated in the materialistic phase, which made science limit its observation to the physical body. These processes in the physical body, however, are never autonomous, and above all they are never all of equal significance. For some of these manifestations may be due to the action of the etheric body, others again to that of the astral body, or the ego. They are all physical processes, but specialised and differentiated according to their origin. Their character differs widely, according to which of the higher members of man is operative within the physical body.

Now, if you bring together all that was said yesterday as to human dependence on the extra-telluric and telluric forces, and what I added today about human development extending into time, you will be able to form a conclusion that may be of help in the investigation with which we are now concerned. You will be able to postulate that certain forces are continually in action on man. These forces (if we consider the physical and etheric bodies) are extra-telluric as well as telluric, which work against them. They may be subdivided into those of the outer planets, Saturn, Jupiter, and Mars; and those of the inner planets, Venus, Mercury and the Moon. These latter forces, as a matter of fact, change into telluric influences. (See Diagram 13 arrow pointing outwards.) The interaction of Earth and Moon is complex and deceptive in certain ways, and easily misinterpreted. Man is apt to think: there is the moon, above, whence its influence must descend. But this view is incomplete. The moon is not merely earth's satellite circling around her; the same force that dwells within the moon and works upon the earth, is also contained within the earth itself. The earth has its own lunar principle working outwards from within. (See Diagram 14). Physical manifestations such as the tides and many allied phenomena are not essentially telluric, but lunar; nevertheless they are not directly due to lunar influence (as recent theories claim), but to the lunar principle in the earth itself. There is an apparent correspondence between these effects and the moon, but there is, at least generally, no immediate connection in time. So when we trace the influence of the inner planets, we must look for their counter-image in the earth itself, so that the physical effect, the effect upon the physical, comes via the earth. And on the other hand, to the outer planets must be ascribed effects in the realm of soul and spirit.

We may define the Moon's action thus: it throws, as it were, certain formative forces down to the earth, and they manifest themselves in the human activities, especially those of creative fantasy and imagination. The lunar influence on the imaginative and creative powers of the soul is immense. These things should be studied; they are, of course, not adequately investigated and recorded in this age of materialism. But that they exist, is irrefutable. The moon affects directly the soul and spirit, promoting creative imagination. The Moon's counterpart, the lunar influence on all organic life, starts from the earth, and from there acts on the human organisation. This (twofold) action must be taken into account. The same rule holds good for the inner planets, which lie beyond the moon.

Thus man is affected in the most diverse ways, by telluric forces—call them terrestrial if you so prefer—and by extra-telluric forces If we wish to study these forces, we must look at the result of their co-operation in the whole human entity. They cannot be traced in any isolated part of man, and least of all in the cell—please note especially, in the cell least of all. For what is the cell? It is the element that obstinately maintains its separate existence, its own separate life and growth, contrary to the whole of human life and growth. Picture to yourselves, on the one hand, man built up in his whole frame by the telluric and extra-telluric forces, and on the other hand, the cell as that element which intervenes in the operation of these forces, upsets their ground-plan and conception, and even destroys their working by developing its own urge towards independent life. Actually we wage a ceaseless war in our organism against the life of the cell. And the most impossible of conceptions has just arisen in that Cellular Pathology and Cellular Physiology which find cells as the source and basis of everything, and regard the human organism as an aggregate of cells. Whereas, in truth, man is a whole in relationship with the cosmos, and has to wage perpetual war against the independent life and growth of the cells.

In fact the cell is the ceaselessly irritating and disturbing factor in our organism, not the unit of construction. And if such fundamental errors enter into the general scientific view, it is not to be wondered at if the most mistaken conclusions are drawn regarding the nature of man in all its implications.

So we may say that the formative process of man and the process of cell formation represent, as it were, two opposite sets of forces. The individual organs are right amidst the action of these forces; they become liver or heart and so forth according to whether the one or the other set of forces prevails. They represent a continuous balance between two poles. Some of the organs tend towards the cellular principle, and the cosmic factors have to counteract this tendency. Or again, in other organs—which we shall presently specify—the cosmic action dominates the cellular principle. In the light of this knowledge, it is especially interesting to observe all the organic groups that lie between the genital tract and the excretory tract on the one hand, and the heart on the other. These organs, more than any others, resemble the actual state towards which cellular life tends to develop. This resemblance is noticeable in comparison with all the other organs of man. And we must draw the following conclusion as to the essence of the cell. The cell develops—let us exaggerate somewhat, but consciously, and in order to make our point clear—an obstinate and antagonistic life, a life of self-assertion. This obstinate life centred in one point meets the resistance of another force, external to it. And this external element counteracting the cellular process, takes away the vitality from its formative forces. It leaves untouched its globular shape as of a drop of liquid, but sucks the life from it, as it were.

This should be an elementary piece of knowledge familiar to all; everything on our earth that is globular in form, whether within or external to the human frame, is the result of the interplay of two forces, one urging towards life, the other drawing life away.

If we examine the concept of the mercurial in ancient medicine we learn that it was held that the mercurial has been deprived of life but retains the globular form. This means that the mercurial element must be visualised as tending obstinately to the condition of a living drop of matter, i.e., to a cell, but as prevented by the planetary action of Mercury from being more than a corpse of a cell—that is to say, the typical quicksilver globule. Here is the condition midway between the saline and phosphoric; and here is also a glimpse of the very intricate road we must follow in order to understand the living working of planetary forces in the earth's substances. Were it not for the planet Mercury, every drop of quicksilver would be a living thing. And all the parts of the human frame which tend most definitely to the cellular principle—that is, the region specified above—need more than any other to receive the proper influence of the planet Mercury. This means that the region below the heart and above the organs of evacuation, depends very much on the preservation of a certain inherent tendency to maintain the cellular process, without letting it get so out of hand that it is quite overwhelmed by life forces. That is, it depends on making the cellular process remain under the devitalising life-paralysing Mercury condition; otherwise the activity of the organs under discussion would at once tend to become exuberant.

Now to follow up these facts, further and further, to the relationship between these organs and the metal mercury or quicksilver: the representative of the mercurial condition. As you will observe, this path you are following represents a perfectly rational train of thought, and what has been found through super-sensible vision will have to be confirmed by external and sense-perceptible facts, for the humanity of the present and future. Therefore it is advisable to follow up in clinical observation and in literature the detailed effects upon the human organism of the minerals and metals themselves, and of the minerals and metals contained in plants or animals. We can begin such an investigation with some particularly significant and characteristic facts. Thus I have already referred to a tendency originating before conception, that has to be counteracted by the process of ossification or sclerosis. But there is a complete counterpart to sclerosis and ossification; to produce it one would only have to induce lead poisoning in a man. Of course the experimental tests must not go so far as to set up serious plumbism, for the purpose of studying arterio-sclerosis. But it is most important to be able to follow up cases in which nature itself makes the experiment, in order to find out the inner relationship between lead and the phenomena produced in the human organism through the same forces as are formative in lead. It is possible to trace by close study the correspondence between the process working in lead, and the process of ossification and sclerotisation in man.

A parallel study could be made of the inter-relationship of the processes inherent in the metal tin, and all that I have already described as the balance between hydrocephaly and its counterpart. This would reveal that this whole complex in childhood, which tends to establish the right ratio of density between the bony part and the soft parts of the head, is due to the action of the same forces as those belonging to tin.

As we have seen, this process moves towards the lungs in later life, So we come to this—that we need only collect and collate material that has been recorded in medical literature for centuries, in order to see the deep relationship between this process, with its accessory symptoms in pneumonia and pleurisy, and the forces proper to iron. Then we have to follow this relationship to the normal process that comes about through the normal action of iron in the blood. You can follow up the same process working between iron and the blood, until it approaches the lungs and their accessories, and you will get an intuitive conception of the efficacy of iron in cases where the balance between hydrocephaly and its opposite has progressed as it were. Thus do these forces work with and into one another. Only by recognising this continuous interaction, and by reference to the extra-human processes, can we be in a position to ascertain the healing effects of remedial substances.

It it were actually found worth while to consider human nature from this angle, the observer would indisputably develop a sense of intuition of great importance in all diagnosis. For diagnosis really depends on the “seeing together” of so many elements. In every diagnosis, the physician should visualise the position and attitude of the patient to the world; the manner of his earlier life, his probable future way of life. There is already in the man of today the germinal disposition of what he will live through and experience, especially in the organic sphere, during the rest of his life.

The connection between what we have stated as to the effects of lead, tin and iron on the human organism, and the effects of the influence of other metals, is to be found in the polarity between the metals referred to and the workings of copper, mercury and silver.

What I have said does not mean any “pushing” of certain remedies. But it has to be presented to you, in order to establish the very definite inter-relationships between the configurations of forces in the metals—and of course other substances—and the formative forces of the human organism. This is why certain forces, as, for instance, those inherent in copper, work in a particular way against those inherent in iron. We must bear this opposition in mind, so as to know what substances to apply or use, if a certain type of force—e.g., that of iron—becomes too active and predominates. In some diseases the forces of iron are obviously too strong; there we must have recourse to copper or copper products, which can also be derived from the vegetable kingdom, as you will see later on.

Perhaps with this survey I have asked you to assimilate too much in many respects. I hope, however, that if you examine my statements in detail, you will recognise the need of following up these things and the possibility of very fruitful results for the transformation of the study of medicine and the whole medical practice and life.

The mode of expression in which we use to abridge or to simplify somewhat our ideas, when we say etheric body, astral body, etc., can be traced back to the imprint of these higher bodies in the realm of physical functions. Nowadays, people are not very ready to link up expressions in the realm of physical functions with the spiritual foundations of existence. But this must be done if medical thinking and conception are to become permeated with Spiritual Science. For instance, it will be necessary to study in detail the exact manner of the interaction between what we term the etheric body and what we term the physical. You have learned that this interaction is at work in man and we have just dealt with its coming into a kind of disorder in relation to the influence of the astral body. But the same interaction also takes place in extra-human nature.

Think this out thoroughly to its conclusion, and then consider that you are gazing profoundly into the relationship between man and nature. Man is surrounded—let us choose this one thing to begin with—by all the earth's flora in their many species, which he perceives through his different senses. You can at least admit the possibility of an interplay between the flora and all that our earthly atmosphere contains, in the first place, and all that lies outside this earthly sphere, in the planetary and astral regions, in the second place. In considering the flora, suppose the earth's surface to be here (See Diagram 15)—then we can say that the plants refer us to the atmospheric and astral regions (in the literal sense of a pointing to the stars, to the extra-telluric). And even apart from occult research, we can intuitively sense a living interchange between what manifests in blossom-bearing and fruit, and what flows into them from the whole wide universe. (Of course you must make use of a certain intuition here; but as I have already remarked, you will not get very far in medicine without intuition.) Let us Suppose that having realised the external cosmic interplay, we turn our thoughts to our own inner being. There, too, we shall find a certain relationship to that which surrounds us. Just as the etheric and the physical are closely united in in the plant-world, so must we surmise a certain kinship between this union and the manner of connection of the etheric and the physical in man himself.

How then can we speak concretely about this relationship of the etheric with the physical? From the abstract point of view, we can say that the etheric is nearer to the astral than to the physical; for the etheric is open to the forces from above. But we must expect also some relationship between the etheric and the physical. So we must take this two-sided kinship and must look for something which guides us to it. I shall try to do this in the most concrete manner possible.

Walk through an avenue of lime trees in bloom, and try to visualise what happens as you pass between the trees, enveloped in the scent of the lime blossoms. Realise that something is taking place between this fragrance of the limes in flower and, so to speak, the nerve ramifications in your olfactory organs. Turning your conscious thought to this process of perception, you become aware of a certain opening-out or release of the capacity for smelling, which meets the scent of the lime blossom. And you conclude that a process takes place through which an internal sphere in yourself opens to meet something outside, and that the two combine in some way to produce something by virtue of their inner kinship. So you must say that what is diffused in the air as scent from the lime trees—arising without a doubt from an interplay between the flowers and the whole extra-terrestrial environment as they open out towards it—is inwardly felt by you through your sense of smell. There you undoubtedly have something that passes from the etheric body to the astral, for otherwise you could not perceive it, and there would only be the mere process of life. The perception of smell itself proclaims the participation of the astral body. And that which reveals the kinship with the external world, simultaneously shows that the production of the sweet fragrance of the lime blossoms is the polar process to that taking place in your olfactory organs. The fragrance flowing from the blossoms shows the interaction of the plant-etheric with the astral element that embraces it and fills the surrounding universe. So in our sense of smell, we have a process that enables us to take part in the relationship between the plant-life of the earth and the astral element outside the earth.

Now take the sense of taste, and, as an example, something not unlike the scent of the lime blossom, though appealing to another sense, say the flavour of liquorice or of sweet ripe grapes. Here we have to do with a process in our taste organ in contrast to that of smell. You know how closely related they are; and you will also realise the resemblance between what happens functionally in the two cases. But you must, at the same time, understand that tasting is a much more organic and internal process than smell. Smelling is far more a surface activity; a participation in extra-human processes widely diffused in space. But that is not so with taste. Taste reveals certain properties inherent in the substances themselves, and therefore closely interwoven with matter. You can learn more of the internal quality of plants by taste than by smell. Call some intuition to your aid and it will help you to know that all connected with the solidification of matter in plants, and all that is revealed in the organic processes of solidification, is disclosed if we taste the contents of the plant. The essential nature of the plant defends itself against solidification and this is manifested in the tendency of the plants to be fragrant. So you really cannot doubt that taste is a process associated with the relationships of the etheric and the physical.

Now compare smell and taste. As you react to the plant-world through both these senses, you experience the twofold relationship which the etheric has to the astral on one side and to the physical on the other. You literally enter the etheric, or its expression, if you study these two processes of taste and smell. Where they occur in man, there is a physical revelation of the etheric in its dual relationship to the physical and the astral. When we examine what takes place in the acts of tasting and smelling, we live, so to speak, near the surface of man. Our task today is to pass beyond the abstract, mystical view and to approach the concrete grasp of spiritual truth, so that a true science may be fertilised by spiritual science. What can it avail people to listen to perpetual talk of the need to grasp the Divine in man, if they only understand by that a purely abstract Divinity? This method of approach only becomes fruitful if we can consider concrete instances in detail, and trace, say, the interiorisation of outer processes. For example, if we trace in smell and taste the etheric element which is external yet related to man, we perceive, in what is, perhaps, the crudest of our upper sensory processes, the interiorisation of external processes. It is so extremely important for our time to get beyond mere abstract and mystical notions.

Now you are fully aware that in nature every process tends to pass over into another, to be metamorphosed into some other process. Take what we have just said, for instance, that the sense of smell is located more on the surface of our organism, (See Diagram 16) while that of taste is more inward (we are speaking here with reference to the plant-world). Both these sense activities occur within the etheric, which opens into the astral on the one hand and solidifies into the physical on the other. The sense of smell reaches outwards towards the evanescent scent of the flowers, while that of taste lives in the process that opposes aromatisation, and interiorises that which externally produces solidification. When we carefully examine smell and taste, we find that in them the outer and the inner merge, as it were.

But in nature, all processes merge into others. Consider again the aromatic qualities of plants, through which, in a certain sense, they tend away from solidification and towards diffusion even so to speak, going beyond their limits in striving towards the active the amateurish term—into the atmosphere, so that this bears in itself some of the plant existence in the aroma. The phantoms of the plants are still bound up with the aroma. What actually happens when the plant pours its fragrant phantoms into the air, frustrating the process of solidification, and sending forth from the blossoms something that tended to become blossoms too? Simply a process of combustion held back. If you picture to yourself the further metamorphosis of this aromatic activity, you reach the conclusion that it is a combustion that is held back. Compare the process of combustion proper, with the aromatisation of plants. They are two metamorphoses of the same unity. I would even say that combustion is aromatisation on another level.

Let us now see what is in plants that produces flavour. It is more deep-seated and does not urge the dispersal of formative forces into the air like a phantom, but gathers them together that they may be used to build up the internal structure. If you follow up this formative activity with your taste, you come to the process lying below solidification in plants, i.e. to salification, which is a metamorphosis, on another level, of solidification (See Diagram 16). In plants, therefore, we find a strange metamorphosis. The aroma-process directed upwards is, in a certain sense, suspended combustion, which may lead to the initial stages of combustion (for processes of efflorescence are combustion processes). While in the downward tendency you have solidification and salification, and what you taste is something that is held back on the way to salification. But if saline substance is deposited in the tissues of the plant itself, it is something that has gone a step beyond the path of plant-formation; the plant has pressed the phantom of its form down into its actual being.

Here we have the “ratio” for finding remedies and light is thrown on the whole plant-kingdom because one now begins to realise what takes place there. I must again emphasise that this consideration of concrete facts is the only thing that can help us.

To find the next step, you need only remember that wherever it is possible, and from motives of opportunism in a higher sense, I shall link up what I have to explain with current ideas. Thus you should be in a position to build the bridge between what spiritual science is able to give and what is taught by external science. Naturally the contents of the following paragraphs could be stated in a more strictly spiritual-scientific way. But I will connect my remarks with the customary ideas of modern science, because they exist. The physiologist today keeps to the material that lies before him; the spiritual scientist does not need this material before him in the same way, for he does not use the method of dissection. We need not imitate the methods which over-rate anatomical inspection, yet we must reckon with the fact that they have been used and that their results have been established for some time. They will only cease to be employed when natural science has been fertilised to some extent by spiritual science.

Let us examine the close relationship, to which spiritual science will give the key, between the process taking place within the eye, and the processes of smell and taste—particularly of the latter. Let us compare the ramifications of the nerve of taste into neighbouring tissues, with the optic nerve within the eyeball. The relationship is so close that we could hardly avoid looking for an analogy with the process of taste, if we wanted an inward characterisation of the process of sight. Of course the nerve of taste is not continued into anything like the highly intricate structure of the eye, which is situated in front of the retina, and therefore sight is in many ways different.

But what begins as the process of sight, behind the wonderful instrument of the physical eye, has a close inner relationship to the process of taste. I mean that in the act of seeing, we are performing a transformed tasting, metamorphosed because the organic processes of taste are supplemented by the processes due to the intricate structure of the eye. In each one of our senses, we must distinguish between what our organism brings to meet the outer world and what the outer world brings to meet our organism. We must look at the inner process that takes place when the blood runs into the choroid of the eye, where the organism works into the eye. This process is more pronounced in certain animals, which not only have our ocular apparatus but the pecten and the xiphoid processes as well. Now the latter are organs of the blood circulation thrusting the ego forward into the interior of the eye, whereas with us, the ego recedes leaving the eyeball inwardly free. But by means of the blood, our whole organism works through the eye into the whole process of vision. And there, within the process of vision, the transmuted tasting is present. Therefore we may call sight metamorphosed tasting. And in our diagram (See Diagram 16), we have to put sight as metamorphosed tasting above taste and smell.

The processes of taste and of sight correspond to something external that co-operates with something internal. Thus the, process of taste must metamorphose itself upwards; sight is the upper metamorphosis of taste. Now there must also be a complementary downward metamorphosis of the process of taste, diving down into the lower bodily sphere. In the visual process we raise ourselves to the external world; the eye is enclosed in a bony socket, it belongs to the outside; it is a very external organ, built in accordance with the external world. Now we turn to the opposite direction and imagine the metamorphosis of the process of taste downwards into the depths of the organism. Here we come to the opposite pole of the sense of sight; we find, as it were, what corresponds in the lower part to the visual process in the upper part of the body. And this will throw much light upon our further inquiries.

In tracing the metamorphosis of the process of taste downwards, we find the digestive function.

You can only come to an inner understanding of this function, by recognising it, on the one hand, as a metamorphosed continuation of the process of taste, and on the other, as the complete polar opposite of the exteriorised process of sight. For the exteriorised visual sense enables you to recognise what in the outer world around you corresponds to digestion, of what digestion is an organic interiorisation. On the other hand, you become aware to what extent digestion must be called akin to the process of taste. It is not possible to understand the more intimate activities of our organism, in so far as they focus in the digestive process, unless you visualise that entire process as follows: good digestion is founded on capacity to taste with the whole alimentary tract, and bad digestion results from an incapacity of the whole tract to carry out this function of tasting.

Let us remember now that the process we are considering divides itself into taste and smell. As we have pointed out, taste is more involved in the relationships of the etheric with the physical: and smell, on the other hand, in those of the etheric with the astral. The continuation of the process of taste downwards into the organism is likewise bifurcated. This appears in the tendency of the digestive function towards faecal excretion, while on the other hand, we have excretion through the kidneys in the form of urine.

The two bifurcations, upper and lower, are exactly complementary. There are two polar opposites, one dividing upwards into taste and smell, while downward you have the division into digestion proper, and into that function which separates from mere digestion and is based on the more intimate activity of the kidneys and is accessory to their work in the body.

Thus it becomes possible to regard all that happens within our bodies, bounded by the surface of our skin, as an introverted external region. Every continuation upwards leads into the external world; man opens himself up to the exterior in this region.

Now we can follow the matter up in another way. There is, again, a faculty in us which lives in our soul, but is bound to the organism, not bound indeed in any materialistic sense, but in that peculiar sense of which you know from other lectures. For in thinking and the forming of “representations,”¹ (see Diagram 16) we have a metamorphosed seeing, once more turned inward in a certain sense.

Just consider for a moment how many of the representations you use in thinking are simply continuations of visual images; compare for a moment the soul-life of the congenitally blind or deaf person with your own! In thinking we have an interiorised continuation of seeing. And we may even find light thrown upon the remarkable interaction between the anatomy of the head and brain, and the process of thought itself. (This would furnish fine material for medical essays!) When we carefully examine our thinking processes, especially the connection between the powers of combination and association and the cerebral structure, we come upon formations resembling a transformation of the olfactory nerve. So we may say that from an internal point of view, our discontinuous, analytic thinking is very like its counterpart, seeing. But the combination of “things seen,” the association of representations, resembles smell in its internal organic formation. This contrast is expressed in a remarkable way in the anatomical structure of the brain.

Thus we find thinking and representation as the one end of a metamorphosis. What then may be regarded as the complementary interiorised process? Remember the power of representation can be termed a transformed sight; something that is exteriorised in sight and radiates back into the interior in thought. In thinking we try to reverse our vision, as it were, and to direct it again into the organism. So its polar opposite will be a process that does not in any way try to lead into the interior, but to lead out. This polar opposite is the process of evacuation—the conclusion of digestion. (See Diagram 16). Thus evacuation becomes the counter-image of representation. Here you have in a more intimate aspect what I have already dealt with from the standpoint of Comparative Anatomy, when I tried to show the close relationship between the so-called mental (spiritual) capacities of man and the regulated or non-regulated process of excretion; basing my argument on anatomical structure and the existence of the flora of the intestines.

Here is the same truth revealed by another approach. In thought we have an internal continuation of sight, and in evacuation an external continuation of digestion. Now refer to what we said before, that the aroma process in plants is a suspended combustion, and their solidification a suspended salt-process. This again throws light on what takes place within the body! Only—we must be clear that a reversal takes place. In representation, we have the sense of sight reversed and turned inwards, while in the lower bodily sphere there is a reversal towards the outside. So we have to recognise the relationship of the upper process to salification and of the lower to combustion, or to “fire.” (See Diagram 16). So if you apply a suitable remedy containing aromatisation and suspended combustion in plants, to the hypogastrium, you will help and relieve it. Conversely, if you apply to the upper part of man what tends to keep back or to interiorise the salt-process within the plant, you will give help in this sphere also. This rule we shall have to discuss and apply in detail.

Thus the whole external world may reappear in our human interior. And the more deeply internal the process, the greater the need to find its external analogue. We must see something very closely akin to the aromatic and combustion processes—but akin in the sense of polarity—in the activities of the digestive organs, especially of the kidneys. Again in the upper region, from the lungs upward, through the larynx into the head, we must see something related to the tendency to salt formation in the plant; all this tends to salification in man. We might even say, or rather we can say, that if we have once acquired a knowledge of the different ways in which plants absorb and collect salt, we need only look for their analogies in the human organisation. We have dealt with this in general today, and we shall go on to consider it in detail.

With this you have a basic principle for the whole of plant therapy. You have a general picture of the whole process of mutual action and reaction between the interior and the exterior world. But you will already be able to see some specific applications. Take, for instance, some of the odours which even as such are linked with taste, so that they may be fully experienced if the plant is not only sniffed, but chewed. Then we find a synthesis of smell and taste, aroma and flavour, as for instance in balm or ground ivy. In such cases we find that in the scent there is already an element of salification; there is a collaboration between the saline and aromatic tendencies. And this is an indication of their correspondence in the organism, an indication that balm, for instance, is suitable for the external organs and the chest, whereas such very fragrant forms as lime or rose blossom are akin to that which lies deep within the abdomen or in the neighbourhood of the abdominal wall.

All the organs and functions of our upper sphere in the regions of the smell and taste activities, are interlocked with a life-process, which can be so termed in a deeper sense—i.e.—respiration (See Diagram 16). Let us look for the polar complementary activity; it must be something branching from the digestive process, before digestion passes into evacuation, and be the polar counterpart of “representation.” Yet it must be something organically adjacent to the process of digestion, just as respiration is organically adjacent to the process of smell and taste. So we find the converse of respiration in the lymph and blood processes, in the process of blood formation and especially in what branches off and is pushed inward from the digestion, i.e., the processes in the lymphatic glands and similar organs contributing to blood formation. Here then are two polar processes; the one branching from the digestive system, the other from the more external sensory processes; one, respiration, in the second line behind the sensory organs; and the other situated just in front of where the digestive process leads to excretion—the process of blood and lymph. It is remarkable how, starting from actual processes, we come to an insight into the whole human being, whereas in current medicine man is studied only from the organs, considered externally. Here, however, we take our start from the processes and we try to understand the individual person out of the whole relationship between man and the external world. We find interactions that directly depict the etheric activities in man; and these have been our object of study today. And the two processes of breathing and blood formation meet again in the human heart itself. The whole outside world (including man) appears as a duality that is dammed up in the heart, and in it strives for a kind of equilibrium.

Thus we come to a remarkable picture, the picture of the human heart, with its interiorising character, its synthesis of everything that works from outside into our bodies. Outside in the world there is an analysis, a scattering, of all that is gathered together in the heart (See Diagram 17). You come here to an important conception that might be expressed thus: You look out into the world, face the horizon and ask:—What is in these outer surroundings? What works inwards from the periphery? Where can I find something in myself that is akin to it? If I look into my own heart. I find, as it were, the inverted heaven, the polar opposite. On the one hand you have the periphery, the point extended to infinity, on the other you have the heart, which is the infinite circle concentrated to a point. The whole world is within our heart. To use an illustration, perhaps one that is somewhat crude:—Picture to yourselves man standing looking on into the infinite expanses of the world; perhaps standing on a high hill, looking out and around. And suppose that the tiniest dwarf imaginable is put in the human heart. Try to realise that what the dwarf sees within the heart is the complete inverted image of the universe, contracted and synthesised. This is perhaps purely a picture, a kind of imagination. But if righty conceived and taken up, it can work as an orderly regulative picture, a regulative principle, that is able to guide us, and to help us rightly to combine our isolated attainments of knowledge.

Most of the foundations for our special studies and inquiries have now been laid down, and they will be the basis for answering the many questions you have addressed to me.

• 1. The term “representation” renders the German Vorstellung better than the usual translation “idea,” which is ambiguous.

We discussed yesterday what may be termed the approximation of the human organism to the external world. One can see in the interplay between the two senses, smell and taste, how human nature enters into a closer connection with the occurrences of extra-human nature. We make these investigations because it is important for spiritual science to co-ordinate remedial methods and human organic processes, as closely as possible. In healing, the main consideration is always the correct perception of the particular factors contained in what we apply to the body, whether by chemical, physiological or purely physical measures; and which factors are contained in the healthy functions of the organism and are missing in the morbid state. One must “think together” both processes, that external to, and that within, the human organism.

These two processes approach most nearly in the perception of taste and smell. In all that concerns the remaining senses, they lie further apart. For example there is considerable distance within the human body, between seeing and digestion—even using “digestion” in the more limited sense of what goes on between the chewing of the food within the mouth and its being worked up by the glandular activities in the intestines. The remaining region of the digestive apparatus I comprise within elimination, which may occur within the body (by absorption) and evocation which disposes externally of waste matter. The functions which occur below the great glands I would classify under the heading of elimination.

The sense of sight perceives those external objects which as it were lock up in themselves what comes to the surface in smell and taste. It is that element in the process of smell which leaves the extra-human nature in order to become perceptible to man. In other cases, this element locks itself up in the substance, and then we look at it from outside. If we contemplate the forms of visible things we have before us externally the formative principle which in the olfactory process reveals itself in substance only. I would even suggest that you follow up the phenomena revealed in smell, not only into the vegetable world but into the mineral kingdom as well. You will find that the same basic principle as appears in smell is at work in the formative processes outside us. Its polar opposite is the digestive process. This latter appropriates as it were the elements revealed to our sense of taste; and hides, secretes within our bodies, what is thus revealed in taste. It is significant that we have hitherto had to describe extra-human nature, as being almost wholly situated in the unconscious region. True, the connections with the whole universe are present in man: man is related to Saturn, Jupiter, etc.; but the relations are concealed in the depths of our organisation. At the risk of offending current modes of thought, I would suggest that the astronomical affiliations form the most deeply unconscious region in man, they are transmuted into the most secluded of his organic processes.

But we have also organs that open in a way our human organism from within; and thus bring man into relationship with what happens at a certain nearness to our earth's surface; that is to say, into relationship with the meteorological world, in its widest meaning. And if we do not limit our healing efforts to mere substances with curative properties, but extend them to tracing the curative processes, we must include within our purview the relationships of man to the meteorological processes—again in the widest sense of the term.

We are already able to distinguish what is associated mainly with the astronomical world from what is associated mainly with the meteorological world, in our organism. This distinction, to be sure, needs a more delicate method of observation. At first, no doubt, these statements may shock your preconceptions, but I hope to convince you in time that the classification above mentioned is the best of foundations for curative treatment. As a general rule we find that the organs which open to the meteorological sphere are those farthest from the surface and most deeply internal. The chief amongst them is the liver, and all the vesicular structures, especially represented by the bladder itself, the bladder being extremely important pathologically, even one of the most important of our attributes for pathological purposes. Another member of this group is the lung: which opens externally in order to mediate breathing. Then again, we must include the heart in this group, and if you have correctly interpreted much that has been said in our previous lectures, you will easily understand this fact. And indeed all these organs are associated with by going thoroughly into the problems of the human relationship to the world without, and especially into the connection of the human activities with the world environment.

I would urgently suggest that you make a thorough effort to trace back all the cases of cardiac lesions brought to your consulting rooms, to disturbance of human activity. Definite investigations should be made into the differences—and they are considerable—between the heart action of—for instance a peasant, who cultivates his bit of land, and has very few occasions for getting away from it, and the heart action of persons whose profession implies a good deal of motoring or at least a good deal of railway travel. It would be of utmost interest to obtain adequate comparative data on this topic. For you will find the tendency to cardiac complaints mainly dependent on the sedentary immobility of the person who, while thus sitting still, is carried forward by forces outside himself, whether in a railway carriage or a motorcar. This passive abandonment to motion is the cause which as it were deforms all processes dammed up in the heart.

All this acting and reacting between man and the external world, is dependent on the manner in which he develops warmth. Here you see the relationship of the heart's activity with the impulse of warmth in the world belong to man; and you conclude that if enough warmth is generated by man through his own activity, the sufficient amount of warmth developed in the process of life, is itself the measure of the soundness of the human heart. Therefore it is important for the treatment of cardiac cases, to provoke spontaneous movements that are fully permeated with life and soul. I am convinced that after perhaps no more than fifteen years have gone by, people will think more clearly and justly in these matters, than they do today. They will say—“It is certainly curious that cardiac cases have acquired sound heart action through the practice of Eurhythmy!”¹—for Eurhythmic practice mainly regulates the spontaneous movements permeated with soul and even according to law. So it is perhaps permissible to mention these truly remedial exercises derived from Eurhythmy (curative Eurhythmy), in the treatment of all irregularities of the cardiac functions.

Now let us turn to all the manifestations of sub-normal vesicular action in man. What I am about to suggest may appear somewhat amateurish, but it is not so; it is built on foundations more scientific than what passes for science today. The bladder is mainly an organ of traction or suction; I might say that its operation is that of a cavity vacuum in the body, it draws in or sucks. Its function really depends on our organism being hollowed out in this very region; its action on the rest of the organism is exactly that of a gas globe in a vessel of water. If you have a gas globe, that is a sphere containing a thinned out substance, surrounded on all sides by water, a substance of greater density, the effect proceeding from this globe of tenuous substance is similar to that of the bladder on the human organism. This is why the essential functions of the bladder are disturbed in persons who have not the opportunity to perform their internal movements sufficiently; persons who e.g., do not take sufficient care to chew their food properly, who gulp it down instead of masticating it, thus unduly over-taxing the whole apparatus of digestion; or who do not take care to secure the proper mixture of movement with rest, during the digestive process itself and so forth. All that impedes the interior mobility also impedes and injures what might be termed the functional life of the bladder. Is it not the nature of man to accept and even try some form of movement, permeated with soul if you prescribe for “heart trouble”; but he is unwilling to accept suggestions for regulating internal movements. You will, however, at once succeed with a patient who is not inclined to give the body the necessary rest and who devours his food and disturbs his digestion in some other way, if you cure him “meteorologically,” i.e., by bringing him into an atmosphere richer in oxygen, so that his respiration becomes quicker and deeper and he must give more (though unconscious) care to the breathing process. This quickening and regulating of respiration passes over into regulation of the other organic processes and you will find that “change of air” (whether by artificial means or better still by natural ones) into a more highly oxygenated atmosphere, causes a certain improvement in cases of bladder disturbance, simply through this change of life habits.

Most important is the third organ, the liver, which is linked up with the external “meteorological” conditions in the widest sense. Although apparently secluded within the organism, the liver is in a high degree correlated to the world outside. A proof of this is the dependence of the liver's health and activity on the special quality of the water in a given locality. In order to comprehend the exact state of liver health of any local group of persons, the composition of the local water ought to be studied.

The activity of taste is beneficial to the healthy development of the liver, but if indulged to excess, degeneracy follows. Degeneracy of the liver is synonymous with too gross and too constant feeding. The internal enjoyment of taste, the prolongation within of sensations which should be limited to tongue and palate, whether the sensations be pleasant and attractive, or repelling, leads to degeneration of the liver. Therefore one should try, in the case of liver disturbances (which are often difficult to find out), to induce patients to cultivate the sense of taste, and try to distinguish flavours as such, and appreciate them. Of course there will be considerable difficulties in the thorough study of the relationship between the functional life of the human liver and the composition of the water in any particular locality; for the dependence is extremely subtle, and it must be borne in mind that in districts with a water supply full of lime, e.g., the whole life of the liver will differ from that of districts with water poorer in lime. It would be well to pay heed to these factors, noting that the functions of the liver are promoted by water from which the lime has been withheld. Of course, the ways and means to carry this out must be found.

And again, the lung and its life are closely connected with the conditions set up by the geology and geography of the given locality. There is a great difference according to whether the soil is mainly limestone, as here in Dornach, or siliceous, as in the mountains of “old rock”; that is to say, the lungs are essentially dependent on the earthy and solid structure of the region in question. One of the first tasks of any medical man beginning practice, is to study the geology of his district thoroughly; for such study is identical with the study of its inhabitants' lungs. And it should be fully realised that almost the most unfavourable case is when the lung is totally unable to adapt itself to the environment.

Do not misunderstand the view just stated. I refer to the actual internal structure of the lung; I do not mean the function of breathing, although this function is, of course, in its turn affected by the adequate or defective structure of the lung. We are dealing with the dependence of the inner lung structure on environment; whether the lungs tend to encrustation (hardening) or to becoming mucoid (slimy), is mainly due to the nature of the environment. Moreover the lungs are peculiarly dependent on corporeal exertion, and are certainly injured in persons who are obliged to do physical work to exhaustion.

These are the relationships which lead us to the dependences of such organs which, as lungs, liver, bladder and heart, open themselves to the influences of the “meteorological sphere.” Curative treatments of illness in any of this organic group should therefore be sought by “physical” methods. [e.Ed: i.e., open air, light, warmth, etc.] For the results in such cases are—I would say—in certain respects permanent. It is the greatest of services to a patient with weak lungs, and resident in an unsuitable district, to induce him to change his abode and move to a district which suits him more. Indeed those organs situated above the lungs are often helped in an extraordinary manner, by complete change of locality and manner of life. Change of district and daily habit can do comparatively little to relieve morbid conditions in the sphere from the heart downwards but they are extraordinarily beneficial to the lungs and all that is situated above them. It must only be kept in mind that all functions in the organism are interdependent, and that one must find out whether or not a hidden interplay may be at work. For instance, we may find degeneration of the cardiac vessels: then we have to inquire whether there may not be a tendency to degeneration of lung in the same subject, and whether the cardiac symptoms should not be treated from the aspect of the pulmonary condition.

These are at least hints as to the meteorological dependencies of man. Behind the meteorological sphere, as it were behind a screen, there is hidden the astronomical domain in the external world as well as in the interior of man The distinctions here are as follows: the meteorological sphere within us comprises that which appertains to lungs, liver, bladder and heart; in the external world, it comprises the solid earth and the realms of air, water and warmth. Behind and beyond this region, lie the formative processes in the plant and mineral realms; and to these formative processes, which are so closely akin to the extra-telluric, i.e. the astronomical domain, there is a polar opposite in man, viz., the organs situated more deeply within our bodies than the four systems of organs mentioned above. As the relation of the processes in plant and mineral to what lies behind lung, liver, etc., is not so obvious, the study of the healing processes in this realm becomes far more difficult. The rational path of investigation is the clear comprehension of man's organic tendency to perform and produce, somewhere, the exact opposite to the happenings of external nature.

Take, as a concrete instance, the processes proper to silicic acid (silicon). These processes are especially conspicuous wherever silicates are being formed, as quartz or similar minerals. They have their counterpart within the human organism. And it is these processes which extend their work to certain occurrences (which receive far too little attention at present) within the soil, between the arable soil and the siliceous element in the earth, on the one hand, and those plant organs which grip the earth; the roots. Again all the substances derived from the ashes of plants, are closely related to the siliceous process outside ourselves.

This external siliceous process has its counterpart within us; namely in those organs situated—if I may so express myself—above the cardiac activity towards the pulmonary; I mean the inner organic formative activity, which moulds the lungs and is directed upwards towards the head region. In this formative activity which takes place above the heart we find the polarity to the formation of silicates in external nature. The particular internal organic process consists essentially in producing a high degree of homeopathic distribution—to use this term again—of the external siliceous process.

Suppose you are in charge of a case in which all the symptoms point to the seat of disease as situated above the heart—one of the obvious symptoms would be profuse secretion from the lungs, and meningitis is an equally pronounced indication. The results may be all sorts of other morbid manifestations in the body: for pulmonary disturbances act upon disturbances of the cardiac vessels, since everything in the organism is interdependent. Those disturbances which involve a tendency to inflammatory states of the brain, may not manifest directly but can reappear in inflammatory conditions in the digestive apparatus or its ancillary organs, and it is all important to be able to locate the origin of all these symptoms; we shall have to deal with this in later discussions. In all such cases we must introduce something which disperses and dilutes the action of the external siliceous processes to the highest degree. This particular connection is extremely significant and characteristic, proving the necessity of transforming the siliceous process which plays one of the leading roles in external nature, by dispersing, dividing, and triturating, in cases of marked symptoms in the upper portion of the body. But suppose we find injuries and morbid symptoms produced by organic interaction in the lower parts as, e.g., in the heart itself? Then benefit may be derived from introducing the process already transformed by such plants as are rich in silicates, either by directly using the plant substance or through a further preparation of it. In all plants rich in silicates, careful investigation should be made, to determine their effect on all the processes of our organism below the heart—those processes having, of course, their repercussions on the upper part as well.

The complete opposite of silicon formation is contained is all that we will term the process of carbon dioxide formation in external nature. The two are in certain respects true polarities. Therefore it is so necessary to follow up the carbon dioxide process in curative treatment of all cases of the opposite disturbance to that just dealt with, namely in everything connected with digestion or having its starting—point in the digestive system. All carbon dioxide preparations have remarkable remedial success in this class of illness, especially if used in the form moulded by nature namely, straight from the plants.

Here a certain connection must be kept in mind. Consider for a moment the substances with their characteristics of taste and smell: smell points to the outside visible world, taste to the hidden depth of the organism. Then examine the digestive process from this point of view and you will find that at the beginning of digestion, the substances merge together; they mingle and mix. But as the organic process goes on we are engaged in separating what again had been mixed; there is a renewed division, not so much of substances as of processes. This renewed division after merging and mixing is an outstanding task of the organism. First there is the principal bifurcation of excretion, on the one side through the bowels and in the other side in liquid form, as urine.

This bifurcation brings us to the consideration of an organic system which has more than any other to be approached by medical intuition in curing; this is the kidney system, with its remarkable ramifications which extend also to its special processes. We shall deal with these later on. Here I would only remind you of the interrelationship, already mentioned in these discussions, between intestinal evacuation or excretion, and the activities in the head. There is a similar interrelationship between urinary excretion and all the processes that take place around the heart, in the cardiac system. The formative process of intestinal evacuation is, in effect, a human copy of the siliceous process, and the process of urine formation is a copy of the carbonic acid process. Such connections are able to build the bridge from the process happening in the healthy individual to the process in the unhealthy. Herewith we have laid special stress on the relation of the processes proper. But they must not be viewed in isolation. And we shall see that it is only through mastery of these correspondences and relationships that we can arrive at a proper use of what Dr. Sch. recently described in his extraordinarily illuminating address, [Ed: A lecture delivered by a medical man attending Dr. Steiner's course.] as the Law of Similarity.

This Law of Similarity contains something very significant. But the Law must be constructed upon all the elements obtained by the taking heed of the relationships we are about to ascertain. For behind all the interactions to which reference has been made, there lies the connection between man and the realm of metals. If we speak on the one hand, of the silicon principle, as the force which forms us, and of the carbonic acid principle, as the force that dissolves us—this perpetual tendency to mould, to dissolve represents the process of life. In contemplating the formative forces of silicon, we must not forget that the regions of our bodies most akin to silicon are those related to all the metallic group comprising lead, tin and iron and thus related for reasons already indicated in previous lectures. Indeed we may say that in considering the region from the heart upwards, we must consider the workings in man of the silicon process on the one hand and of what is at work from the part of the metals, lead, tin, and iron on the other. The iron forces are connected preferably with the formative process of the lungs, those associated with tin with the formative principle of the head and those associated with lead, with the formative principle localised in the bony skeleton. For the formation and the growth of the bones are determined from the upper organic sphere, and not from the lower.

Furthermore, one has to learn how to weigh the co-operating factors, e.g., how to blend a remedy containing silicates with a metal which must bear a resemblance to the three metals aforesaid: iron, tin and lead. In treating the lower organic sphere, on the other hand, one must keep in mind the affinity with copper, quicksilver, and silver, and in applying carbonic acid processes we must consider how to combine in some way either these metals themselves or those of similar nature, with processes yielding carbonic acid.

In this way we build the bridge between what is of metallic nature in the terrestrial sphere (conditioned by extra-terrestrial forces) and what is of non-metallic, rock-forming nature; just as we combine what is formed under the control of the carbonic acid-principle and what is formed under the influence of the silicon forming principle. Thus we gradually become able to grasp concretely in external nature the substances which we have to introduce into the human organism in order to heal in a particular case.

Again, it should always be borne in mind that all substances working to a lesser extent on the lower senses, as, e.g., taste and smell, and thus not advertising their nature—so to speak—loudly and conspicuously, can for that very reason be effective in very strong dilutions, whereas much weaker dilutions are advisable where the substance proclaims its inner nature insistently to taste and smell. Substances of powerful odour and flavour are often excellent medicinally, without any additions, or combinations, especially if their healing effect is not counteracted by the habitual diet of the patient concerned. We must only clearly understand what is the point in the curative effect.

Before we can penetrate still more into these matters, let us realise that every one of the senses in man has fine shades of differentiation; and that the best material for tests to ascertain the reactions here, is the human being. Of course it is difficult to ascertain reactions to substances with no perceptible taste or smell. But may I draw your attention here to the possibilities of self education—a form of self-education of great value for medical smell especially—which consists in developing possible capacities of sensation which may give a sensory response even to—for instance—the process of silicon formation in external nature. Consider that there must be a meaning in the fact that quartz exhibits very regular crystal formations, and at the same time that this mineral and its allies so regular in their formations, tend nevertheless to the widest possible variety of crystallisation, for there is immense diversity in the crystals of all the silicates. He who can grasp these things can also perceive the action of a dispersing element in the possibility of all these different formations. There must of course be a fundamental dispersive force if there is the potentiality of such structural diversity as external nature reveals in the silicates. This is an indication for the therapeutic use of silicates in a “scattered” form. It is desirable to develop a capacity of sensation in these matters, such a sense will lead to a certain valuation concerning remedies. On the other hand, man must educate himself to become a suitable reactive instrument, and acquire sensory capacities for the fact for example—that the odours have a sevenfold classification just as the colour sensations. We have only to acquire the sense of difference between the sweet smell, the pungent smell and so forth to discover seven main nuances of smells, and the same is equally true of flavours. Moreover, if we acquire the power to differentiate all the odours in this olfactory scale—or olfactory spectrum if it may be so termed—we educate ourselves in the perception, e.g., of all the manifestations of burning and combustible substances. We penetrate into their essential nature. We shall see tomorrow how this can be done. If we also cultivate our capacity of taste and can perceive the difference between the faintest degrees of sweetness and of saltiness in flavours—and all the five shades between—we grow akin to the salt forming forces in external nature. And if we acquire this inner kinship, we also get a direct sensation from the natural sensory impression, as to which sphere or portion of the human organism this or that substance will benefit. Although the base must be careful and exact scientific investigations, it is most important that those scientific results should be accompanied by subjective perceptual experience; so as to develop a certain intimate feeling of kinship to the world of nature.

• 1. Eurhythmy is a new art of movement created by Dr. Steiner. See Eurhythmy as Visible Song: Eurhythmy as Visible Speech. Rudolf Steiner Publishing Co.

It is natural and obvious that in these lectures we should seek the method by which the study of medicine can be fertilised and quickened, and that we do not lose ourselves here in atomised details which can have a merely relative importance. The methodical study of relationships between external nature and man may well tend to equip every human individual with the means to observe nature independently. So we will cite some concrete examples which may indicate a pathway in a certain sense, to a particular realm.

Of course the spiritual-scientific investigation proper in yielding regulative principles, can find out many things which can be verified in the sense pointed out yesterday in Dr. S.'s address. On the other hand, if one applies these principles methodically they prove to be elucidating for many experiences. I should like to put a few illustrative instances before you which can be of great significance. Let us keep to the vegetable world for the moment; and consider the general effect of aniseed (Anisum Vulgare) on the human organism. We shall find its characteristic effects to be the increase and excitation of the secretory functions, primarily in the secretion and excretion of urine, of milk and also of sweat. How is this effect produced? We shall find with this particular plant, that this effect is linked with the minutely distributed portions of iron or iron salts, which aniseed contains. So we can observe, for ourselves, that the curative efficacy of aniseed depends on the fact that it takes away from the blood the forces working normally by means of the iron, and pushes them for a while to the region below the sphere of the blood.

The study of certain plants which act preferably upon the middle (rhythmic) system (i.e., between outside and inside, or between the surface of the body and the heart) shows us especially clearly how their effects extend to different regions; and this provides us with guiding threads to find out in a rational way the curative remedies. Study, for instance, a plant which is in this respect an instructor in the realm of nature; Cichorium intybus, the chicory. From this plant we may learn a variety of facts about our human bodies, if we only take the trouble to do so. We find that Cichorium intybus is not only an antidote to digestive weakness but also to weakness in the organs immediately exposed to the external world. Its second beneficial peculiarity is a direct influence on the blood itself, it prevents the blood from being slack in essential processes and prevents it from admitting disturbances in the composition of the blood fluid itself. Finally, and very valuably, the curative effects of Cichorium intybus reach to our periphery and under certain conditions may affect the organs of the head but especially of the throat and chest, and the lungs. This wide range of strong action on every part of the human being makes Cichorium intybus such an interesting subject for inquiry. One finds its effects extending fan-like in so many directions. We may ask, for instance: what is the origin of the counteraction to weak digestion? We shall find that this effect is due to the bitter substance extracted from the plant, which so strongly affects our sense of taste. This bitter extract, which still preserves its nature as a plant substance, has affinity to those substances in man which are not yet properly worked up and are still resembling their original external appearance.

We must remember that the substances we take in, are at first comparatively slightly modified in their passage as far down as the stomach. They are then further altered by the intestines, pass into the blood and have their farthest stage of transformation in the human periphery, the skin, as well as in the bone, nerve and muscular systems. All extractive substances are strongly akin to the external raw materials, before they have been transformed.

Cichorium intybus contains also alkaline salts, e.g., Potassium. It is here that we must see the source of its effects on the blood. Thus we can watch in this plant how the working forces diverge. The forces situated in the extractive substances are drawn into the organs of digestion by natural affinity. The forces inherent in the alkaline salts, are drawn by natural affinity into the organs related to the blood or the blood itself. Cichorium intybus also contains silicic acid (silicon) to a considerable degree. This substance operates through the bloodstream and beyond it, into the peripheral organs until it reaches the bony structure via the nervous system and the muscle system. So Cichorium intybus really says to us “here am I and I let myself be divided into three, so that I have effect on all three divisions of the human organism.” Such are the experiments of Nature itself, and they are always much more valuable and significant than those made by man; for Nature is far richer in its purposes than we can be, as we put our questions to it in experimental form.

Another plant full of interest in this direction is Equisetum arvense (the Horsetail). Here, too, we find strong effects as antidote against weak digestion and also strong effects on the periphery of the human frame. If we ask to what are these peripheral effects due, we again find they are due to the silicon content of the plant. And these two examples can be multiplied many times over, by any thorough study of medicine and of botany. Such comparative study will prove always and everywhere, that all substances which keep close to the plant nature, as extracts, are related to the digestive tract; and that the substances which tend to the mineral kingdom, i.e., silicic acid, work automatically and irresistibly outwards, from the centre of the human being to its periphery, and have their curative effect on that periphery.

Another superbly efficacious plant, simple and humble but infinitely instructive, is Fragaria vesca, the little wild strawberry of the woods. Its medicinal properties have only been obscured because it is eaten; and in this case the organisation of the eater masks as it were the plant's effects. But it would be well to test the plant on persons who are still sensitive, susceptible, and do not often eat strawberries. In such persons, the amazing value of the wild strawberry would reveal itself at once. It is on the one hand especially potent in normalising the formation of the blood. It may even be prescribed with benefit in cases of diarrhœa for this reason; the forces in the lower organic sphere which are deflected from their normal course can be, as it were, restored to their proper path, viz., into the blood system itself. Here, then, is, on the one hand, a force which is essentially active in blood formation. On the other hand, the wild strawberry also contains silicic acid, which promotes stimulation of all the periphery. The wood-strawberry is indeed a splendid multum in parvo. It tends, through its siliceous content, to stimulate the action of the periphery in our organism. Then, as this peripheral stimulation means a certain risk, if too much silicic acid is conducted to the periphery that there is not a simultaneous current of nutritive substances in the same direction, and that the bloodstream is not simultaneously sufficiently enriched to nourish these areas stimulated by the silicates—the wild strawberry itself prepares the blood which has to be transmitted. It expresses and manifests in a remarkable form, just what should be done, in order to balance and help the processes activated by siliceous compounds in the periphery of our human organism. Thus nature gives us, in single examples such as this—which could be considerably multiplied—remarkable glimpses of possibilities which may become practice, if we have the intuition to seek Nature aright.

From the same point of view, I will call your attention to another example. Study the rather extensive field of action of such plants as—for instance, Lavandula (Lavender). On the one hand, the constituents of lavender are powerful remedies for what I may term “negative conditions of the soul,” appearing as fainting fits, neurasthenia, paralysation etc. Thus, lavender operates towards the human surface and extremities, expelling the astral body which has overpowered the physical.

In considering the application of herbal remedies—and in fact all substances—which have proved of benefit in cases of what we may term negative soul states, we should do well to inquire whether opposite negative conditions exist, such, for example, as amenorrhoea in women. It will invariably be found that the same substance is effective in both directions. A plant of this description is Melissa the balm-mint, which is a remedy against vertigo and fainting fits, and at the same time a powerful ecbolic.

These examples have been cited in order to show the possibility of following the process occurring in the plant through its resemblance to the internal process in man. We must, however, keep in mind this reservation: the plant is really akin to a part only of the nature of man. I should like to ask all those who restrict themselves (with a certain degree of fanaticism) to plant remedies alone, to bear this in mind. Man is so constituted as to comprise and contain all the kingdoms of nature in himself; in addition to the human kingdom, there has been a kinship during the periods of man's formation, in his evolutionary stages, with all the other kingdoms of nature. Indeed in the course of evolution, we have, so to speak, put these nature kingdoms outside, and are able to reabsorb what is needful for us once more. Yes—it is really a process of reabsorption—of return. And this fact of reabsorption and return is very significant.

The elements most recently detached in the course of evolution, must be the soonest reabsorbed in any curative process. We will, for the moment, leave the animal world for later consideration. It is clear that in the course of evolution we have detached the mineral kingdom proper at a later date than the vegetable and therefore it is obvious that seeking the relationships to the plants alone is simply one-sided. Nevertheless the vegetable kingdom retains for us its instructive significance, and not least because if plants heal us, they do so, not only through their essential nature as plants, but also through those ingredients in their composition which appertain to the mineral kingdom. At the same time, we must bear in mind that the plant modifies and transforms a portion of its mineral elements and that the portion thus modified is not curative in such a high degree as the unmodified mineral residue. Thus the Silicic acid (silicon) which has been “overcome” and absorbed into the plant's processes, is not so powerful a remedy as silicon in its mineral form, for in this case the human organism is much more stimulated and requires greater effort in assimilating and taking it into the human unity, than in the assimilation of silicon in its modified vegetable form.

It must always be emphasised that man must evolve greater forces to cope with the greater forces he encounters. And the forces inherent in mineral substances, which are to be assimilated and overcome, are incontestably greater than those in vegetable matter. (May I interpolate here the emphatic statement that I am not making propaganda for anything whatsoever, I am only stating facts.) The difference between animal and vegetable diets is based on the principle just stated. If we live on exclusively vegetable food, our own human being has to take over all that portion of the process which the animal performs for us, after it has eaten and assimilated plants, and brought the substance a stage further. We may put it thus: the process brought to a certain stage by the plant itself, is then carried further by the animal. The formative process of the animal organism stops at this point, (see Diagram 18, red) whereas in the plant it stops here (Diagram 18, white).

The meat-eater dispenses with the particular digestive process performed within the animal; he leaves it to the animal to do it for him. Therefore the meat-eater does not develop those particular energies that must be and are developed by vegetable substance, which he must lead himself to the necessary point. So the organism has to mobilise quite other forces in order to deal with plant food than is the case with meat food. These forces, these potential forces for overcoming, whether used or not, are there: they exist within us and if not used they recoil, as it were, into the organism, and are active—with the general effect of causing great exhaustion and irritation to the individual. Thus it becomes necessary to emphasise strongly that there is considerable relief from fatigue, if a vegetarian diet is adopted. Man becomes more able to work because he gets used to drawing on inherent sources of energy which he fails to do but makes sources of disturbance by a meat diet. As already made plain, I am not “agitating” for anything. I know that even homeopathic physicians have repeatedly assured me that persons induced to abandon meat food are thereby exposed to consumption. Yes, that may be possible. Nevertheless the stark facts just stated, remain unaffected it is so, beyond all dispute. I will, however, quite freely admit that there are human organisms among us today that cannot tolerate purely vegetable food, that require meat in their diet. This depends on the individual case.

When we admit the need for creating a relation to the mineral realm and the mineral forces in the curative process, we are led to consider a further therapeutic requirement. We are led to consider a subject which has been much discussed, but which in my opinion can only be solved—or even really understood—if approached from the viewpoint of spiritual science.

In order to grasp the nature of the curative process it is most important, as it seems to me, to deal with the question of the comparative value of prepared, i.e., cooked food and food in its raw state. Again I must ask you—and on this theme most especially—not to take me for an agitator, either for or against either method! But we must examine, in a perfectly unbiased manner, the actual facts of the case. If people eat cooked and prepared food, and assimilate the forces left within it, they are externally performing an office which must be performed by the organism itself in the case of raw food. Man throws upon the process of cooking, in all its forms, something which his organism should do. Moreover man is so constructed, that in our periphery we are interrelated with the whole of outer nature, but in our “centre”—to which our digestion essentially belongs—we separate ourselves from nature and cut ourselves off as individuals. Let us try to represent this difference, in the form of a rough sketch. (See Diagram 19). Through our periphery (green in Diagram), we are closely interwoven with the cosmos, and we individualise ourselves in the digestive process up to the formation of the blood (red in Diagram); so that this digestive tract is the scene of several processes independent of the external processes of nature, in which man maintains his individual entity as distinct from the external processes—at least more so than in the polaric region where man is wholly inserted into the external processes. Perhaps I may make this more comprehensible if I add the following: I have already described how man is included in the whole cosmos through the operation of the formative forces of lead, tin and iron within the regions here colored green. In the regions marked red, the formative forces of copper, quicksilver and silver are active. The equipoise is held by gold, those forces mainly localised in the heart. To refer to man in this way means to look on him somewhat as a finger which is an organ of the whole cosmos. It implies an interaction and integration with the whole cosmos. But in the tract marked here (see Diagram 19) lies the contradiction contained in the fact that man, in digestion and in the allied functions, separates himself from the general world process—and the same is true for the complementary process of thinking and vision, where he once more individualises himself. This is why man tends to display, as it were, obstinate individual requirements in all things appertaining to digestion; and this instinctive self-assertion shows itself in the habit of cooking [i.e., changing] the raw materials of our food. This instinct demands that what is estranged from nature shall be used for human consumption. For were it consumed in the raw state, the average human being would be too feeble to work it up. To use an apparent paradox to eat would be a perpetual process of remedial treatment, if we did not cook our foodstuffs. And so to eat raw foodstuffs is far more of a remedial process than to eat cooked foodstuffs—the latter being much more merely nutritive. In my opinion there is extraordinary significance in the fact that the consumption of raw food is much more a remedial process than the consumption of food that has been cooked. Raw food diet is much more in the nature of specific curative treatment, than cooked food. I may add moreover that all cooked food is somewhat held up in its efficacy and remains within the region marked red in the diagram (see Diagram 19); whereas the substance introduced into the body, in its natural uncooked state, such as fruit, acts beyond the alimentary tract, and comes to manifest itself on the periphery, e.g., causing the blood to bear its nutritive power into the peripheral region.

You may confirm these statements in the following manner, and indeed such tests ought to be made. Suppose you are attempting curative treatment with siliceous substances; then put your patient for a while on a diet of raw food and you will see how materially the effect of the silicon is increased, because you are contributing further forces to its peripheral operation; you support its formative activity, its tendency to harmonise deformations. Of course I do not allude to gross malformations showing in anatomical deformities, but I mean deformations which remain in the physiological realm. To clear up these is the trend of the silicon, and here you support the trend by the administration of suitable nourishment, while the cure is proceeding. These combinations are what I wish to emphasise in our study of methods, for their operation is so extremely significant and because—as I believe—till now, so little studied and understood. They are studied to some extent it is true, but empirically, without any search for a “ratio”; and therefore we can find so little occasion for satisfaction in considering the work already available in this field.

In all these respects, individuality has to be taken into account. That is why I have already taken the opportunity to point out that it is hardly possible to make any assertion, in this field, which is not on the other hand incorrect in some way. But we must take the things referred to as our guiding lines, although in a particular instance we must be able to say; in this case I cannot prescribe raw diet, for it would produce this or that, in that particular individual constitution. Here it is advisable—there again it would do harm. The main lines of cause and effect, however, are as we have here described them. Only through such interactions, is it possible to see deeply into the human constitution as a whole. We must particularly distinguish between the periphery, where man is more embedded into the whole cosmos and can only be affected by the introduction of minerals—which are so remote from man—and, on the other hand, the regions I have designated red. These red regions may be influenced and cured by vegetable remedies, as well as by administering substances which are efficacious because of their inherent saline quality: that is, all the carbonates; whilst all alkaline compounds are as it were the median point and balance between the two. (See Diagram 19, yellow). Thus we have in a sequence: carbonates, alkalis, and silicates, or siliceous acid itself.

These, then, are the factors indicating mankind's relationship to nature around us. We visualise man, split into two parts, as it were, and we find a middle region in him, which causes the swing of the pendulum between these extremes. And we must acknowledge that this discrimination between the peripheral man and the more central individualised man, leads us into the depths of nature. Man is akin to all extra-terrestrial things through his periphery, as is shown by the efficacy of the mineral substances, which are in turn under the dominion of the planets and stellar constellations. Centrally, as an individual he is related to all earthly things. Through this earthly affinity, most fully expressed in the digestive system, man is also this concrete human individual that has the power to think and is able to evolve as a man.

We may consider the dualism in man as a dualism of the extra-terrestrial, the cosmic elements in him, and those which pertain to earth. There is a distinct cleavage in the human organism between the cosmic and telluric and I have already drawn your attention to how the peripheral, the extra-terrestrial region is mirrored, as it were, in man, in his possessing a spiritual organisation, and at the same time, the polar opposite, a digestive organisation. All that has to do with the elimination of the digestive products and all that has to do with elimination in the brain, and provides the foundation for mental activity—all these things alike refer to the peripheral, the celestial man. However strange and contradictory it may seem—this is the case. On the other hand, all the processes in man, whether fluid or more gaseous in their nature, which are connected with the formation of either urine or sweat—are indications of the terrestrial man as a being which individualises itself. These two polarities of human nature, which strive asunder, must strike us as very significant.

So far as I know this particular human duality has not been alluded to or treated, in modern times, in any therapeutically valuable manner. For, as you perceive, all the subjects of our inquiry are intended to bring therapeutics and pathology together; therapeutics and pathology ought not to be two separated domains. For that reason the themes of these discussions have a therapeutic orientation; what is pathologically apprehended makes us think in therapeutical terms. That is the reason for the method of my putting forward things here, and of course objections may easily be made, by those who disregard this therapeutic orientation.

For example, anyone who studies the external origin of syphilis must certainly get clear how far there must be infection (approximately at least) in order to develop syphilis proper. Merely to state this abstractly leads us to an emancipation of pathology. Please forgive a somewhat crude comparison—the actual infection or contagion in syphilis is of no more significance than the fact that in order to raise a bump on the head, it is necessary to receive a blow from a stone or some other hard object. Of course, there will be no bump, if there is no blow, nor injury from a falling tile etc.; but this particular statement remains unfruitful regarding treatment. For—to continue our comparison—the circumstances of an injury from stone throwing or so forth, may be of great social importance, but these circumstances mean nothing at all in the examination of the organism with a view to its cure. We must examine the human organism in such a way as to find within it the factors that play a part in therapeutics. In the treatment of syphilis, the factors above mentioned play prominent roles, and throw light on the curative process. What is put before you here and now, is so put before you, not so much for the sake of pathology as for the foundation of the bridge between disease and cure.

I assert this, in order to characterise and define our work here, its spirit and attitude; this latter will become more evident with every day that passes. In our age there is a tendency to treat pathology more and more as an isolated subject, and without reference to therapeutics. Therefore thought is deflected from things fruitful and—if followed up in the right way—of great significance in the search for all curative procedures. Think, e.g., of our question: what is the true meaning of this duality in the human organism, between the cosmic-peripheral—so to speak—and the terrestrial or telluric-central man? Both these aspects of man are complexes of forces, manifesting in different ways. All peripheral working manifests as formative powers. And I would even say that the last formative “deed” of this peripheral principle manifests as the ultimate periphery of the human frame and completes our human semblance. Examine, for instance, the relation of human hair to silicic acid; notice how in the peripheral region of man the human formative forces co-operate with the formative forces of silicon. You may actually measure the impact of alien influences which man permits or resists, from the dominance or the reverse—which is allotted to silicic acid in the head formation! Of course we must take the rest of the individual's stature into consideration as well; but if we merely go along the street nowadays, and can “see together” the bald heads, one finds out how far a man is tending to admit or to reject the impact of the siliceous formative process upon himself. This is a result of immediate observation which can be attained, without actual clairvoyance, but by careful investigation of nature's own ways. The forces in question—they are not at work inside the cells but control the total shaping of man—find their last expression in man's structure which of course includes the configuration of the skin together with its greater or small amount of hair growth and so forth. On the other hand, the more centralised region, which is more associated with carbon and carbon dioxide—bears in itself the dispersive forces, those which dissolve and even destroy the shape. We exist as men by virtue of our tendency perpetually to de-form the shape, which in turn is deprived perpetually of its deformations through forces proceeding from the cosmos. This is a duality inherent in man: moulding and deforming. This duality is a continuous organic process. Now, visualise on the one hand, the cosmic peripheral formative forces (See Diagram 20, arrow pointing downwards) which operate on man from outside. In the human heart these forces encounter the telluric forces; and we have already dealt with the equilibrium brought about through the heart. And assume that the peripheral forces acting upon man which reach their tidal mark, so to speak, in the heart, are held back before being dammed up in the heart. (See Diagram 20, arrow pointing to the left).

They diverge and form a diverticulum before reaching the great dam of the heart itself. And in so doing they form something within our organism, that testifies, though imperfectly, to the operation of the cosmic formative through the digestive organs and their allies towards the heart, also form a diverticulum before they reach the heart (See Diagram 20, right hand side). Then taking these two diverticulums, we should have here a concentration of all that is both spiritually and physically formative in man, and at the same time associated with all the secretory activities in the head and the intestines; a reservoir of forces that do not come to meet the action of the heart, but creates beforehand a kind of accessory heart that functions alongside the heart. Here, on the other hand, we have a kind of accessory digestive action, formed by a divergence of the forces originating in the earth and its substances and acting in man, deforming and dissolving his shape. Then duality in man would be organically established and expressed; this is how here the female sexual organs, the female sexual principle arises, and there the male principle. (See Diagram 20). Indeed, this gives a possibility to study the female sexual organisation in the light of its dependence on the cosmic peripheral formative forces. And there is the possibility to study the male sexual organisation, even its specific forms, if we regard it as dependent on the telluric forces of shape-dissolution.

This is the approach for really scientific comprehension of our human constitution down to these regions. Here is also the way of discovery of vegetable remedies, e.g., rich in formative power, which may be found efficacious in restoring paralysed and defective formative forces in the uterus. If you study the formative forces in this way you will find also the formative forces in plants and minerals This will be considered more particularly, but for the present I must outline the relationship on a large scale. If in the future these things will be clearly seen, then we shall really begin to have a science of Embryology. Today we have no such science, for there is no realisation of the strong impact of the cosmic realm at the beginning of embryological development. The cosmic forces are as fertilising in their operations as the male seed itself. The first stages of human embryological evolution must be studied wholly as part of the relation of man to the cosmos. What was, so to speak, injected with the male seed emerges as time goes on, for the formative forces which the cosmos tends to project into the female organism are so deformed by the operation of the male element, that the cosmic tendency towards a total shape is differentiated in the direction towards separate organs. The role of the female organisation goes to the totality of man's structure; the role of the male organisation, through the operation of the male seed, is specialisation, differentiation, i.e., the moulding of the several organs, and thus the deformation of the original uniform whole. We might say: through the feminine forces, the human organisation tends to the spherical or globular form; through the masculine, the human organism tends to specialise this globe, and divide it into heart, kidneys, stomach and so forth. In the male and female element we have before us the polarities of the earth and of the cosmos. And this is again a subject which leads its students to deep reverence for the primary wisdom, and to listen with very different feelings to the legends of Gaea fertilised by Uranus, of Rhea fertilised by Kronos, and so forth. There is something here quite different from vaguely mystical feelings, in the veneration with which we receive these ancient intuitions, in all their significance. At first one is amazed at such a comment as the following, which comes from scientists upon whom these truths dawn: “The old mythologies have more physiology in them than modern science has.” I can understand the shock and surprise; but the remark has its deep core of truth.

The further we advance, the more insistently we realise the inadequacy of contemporary methods—that ignore all the interrelations we mentioned—as guides to the understanding of the human organisation.

I will take this opportunity of repeating what has already been stated: namely that the contents of these lectures have not been derived from any study of ancient lore. What is here stated, is gained from the facts themselves: occasionally I have alluded to the coincidence with the primary wisdom; but my statements are never gained from it. If you study the processes in question with care, you will be led to those conceptions which remind us of some elements of ancient wisdom. I should never myself consider it admissible to investigate any subject by studying the works of Paracelsus. But I am often strongly inclined to “look up” in his books how a discovery which I have made may sound in his language. This is the sense in which I should like you to receive what I attempt to give. But it is a fact that as soon as we look deeper into human nature from the standpoint of spiritual science, we come to a great reverence for primary wisdom. But that is a question which naturally must be considered in other fields of knowledge than the medical.