The Rudolf Steiner Archive

I would now like to deal with some of the questions that have been put to me, and here there are a few questions that seem to me to be particularly important to you.

The first question is about gonorrhea. Now, in order to understand what should actually be done, it is necessary to study the nature of the disease. It seems to me that in this area in particular, people are all too easily satisfied with simply saying: infection, infection, and more infection. That is, after all, what is actually being said. Certainly, in these and similar diseases there is an extraordinarily great and powerful possibility of infection; but the knowledge of contagion is the very least that can be inferred from the knowledge of the healing remedies. It is not much to know that something is contagious. The only thing one can do is to take precautions to reduce the risk of infection. That is something that is self-evident. But it is good to penetrate into the matter at hand, especially with such things.

Now, we must be clear about the fact that the human organism really is a closed system, and that, to a greater or lesser degree, everything that lies outside of it is poisonous to the human organism. So, in fact, anything that lies outside of the human organism is a poison. There are, however, certain adaptations in which the effect that would otherwise be a toxic effect is, so to speak, isolated. And this isolation of an effect that would otherwise be a toxic effect occurs for the realization of etheric impulses and astral impulses, namely when female and male seed unite. It also occurs in numerous other cases, but especially when female and male seed unite. The effect is eminently toxic when the two polar substances combine. So the effect is eminently toxic, but it is isolated and exposed to the forces of the cosmos in isolation, which can even be described in detail. These are the concentrated forces of the sun and moon, to which what arises from the union is then exposed.

This exposure is only possible if the male and female seed actually interact. With any substance that lies outside the female seed, that is, that is produced in organs that are not the female sexual organs, the male seed gives a useless poison everywhere in the human organism as well as in the outside world. Conversely, the female seed releases a poison that cannot be processed with every substance, except for that which is secreted by the male sexual organ. This poison is actually, basically, only under metamorphosis, sometimes a poison for the oystercatcher, sometimes a poison for the tripper. And with that, we are dealing with diseases that are something essentially different than the syphilis diseases that we have discussed. We are dealing with the production of poisons that cannot endure exposure, either in the human organism or beyond the human organism.

Now, such substances are also, in essence, extremely potent infectious agents. They are, in fact, the carriers of parasites of the smallest kind, hypermicroscopic organisms. And it is with such an effect that we are dealing, that is to say, with an interaction of the astral-etheric organization in the male and female, which then, when it works down into the physical, produces these corresponding poisons. That is the essential thing. The danger of infection is secondary. It is always there precisely because in this way the strongest poisons of all are produced for the organ.

I believe that it is extremely important that such things are understood at last, so that we do not always look at the corresponding symptoms, as I would like to call them, in the same way that the entire reproduction of the human race was once viewed, by tracing the whole human race back to Eve's ovary for all of the Earth's future. This is, of course, a very superficial consideration. It is also an easy way out to say: This disease is infectious; the infectious one has been infected again, and one naturally ends up being vague, but one does not arrive at any real insight. But if one arrives at such an insight, as I have just indicated, then one naturally asks oneself the following question. Then one says: How can we now get at the effect that arises in the human organism under the influence of this poison?

So you have to create something to which you can expose this poison, just as you can expose the fertilized female germ to the universe. So you have to create an atmosphere, so to speak, in the astral-etheric organism, an atmosphere that has a certain absorption capacity, not for the poison, which is then excreted when the poison-producing forces are absorbed in the astral and etheric.

And now it is precisely in such things that the healing powers are often allowed to work together from two sides, and one will really be able to achieve good things in such a case if one takes a preparation, such as some carbonate of alkali, alkali carbonate internally and then applies compresses locally, strong oily eucalyptus compresses locally, but allows both things to work together. This will most certainly lead to a cure, even if it is perhaps slow but thorough. This is because the alkali carbonates essentially work in such a way that they create a special etheric body from the human being's entire etheric body, so to speak; and the eucalyptus extract works in such a way that it flows through this created etheric tract as if it were astral. So that one actually creates an atmosphere around the genital tract that absorbs the poison-producing forces. This is what one can envisage in the process.

Would anyone like to say something about this right now? All these things are not really here to be discussed, but to be tried out. They will prove themselves. Now I would like to address a question that I have found here, and that is:

Can a patient who has become a morphine addict due to severe asthma be successfully weaned, including from morphine, using the remedies citric acid, Prunus spinosa and Nicotiana tabacum, as applied by the Clinical-Therapeutic Institute

in Stuttgart?

With asthma, it is a difficult matter, because asthma is essentially based on the fact that the exhalation, the exhalation current, encounters resistance as it passes through the airways. It gets stuck, so to speak. This is something that can be seen very clearly in the astral organism.

It is always somewhat problematic when recording these things, but you are all anthroposophists and will take the things as they are meant, of course. So, the outgoing air stream, you can actually see something like hooks in the human being's astral body, into which it sticks (see drawing). That is the finding. And that just goes to show that asthma is really the one form of illness that is right on the border of purely psychological illnesses, by which I do not mean so-called mental illnesses, but those illnesses that are related to the psychological life. Mental illnesses do not need to be related to the psychological life at all, but can merely be physical illnesses, in which case the psychological is merely a symptom. So-called mental illnesses should not be called mental illnesses at all, because they are almost always a real organic illness that finds a psychological counterpart, simply a shadow image, and that is merely a symptom. It is best to cure so-called mental illnesses by recognizing from the physical findings as a symptom complex whether there is a kidney disease, liver disease, or a real organic brain disease. By mental illnesses, however, I mean those where, for example, psychological effects really underlie them, such as shock effects or anxiety effects and the like, in other words, where psychological causes are present. And with asthma, it is indeed the case that you often have to go back a long way to find the psychological causes.

When one has grown as old as I have, one has always encountered cases of asthma of the most varied kinds, and I must say that often, when looking for the cause of asthma, one has to go back to the embryonic stage, if one goes back to find the cause of the onset, apart from the karmic one. And the external causes often really lie in the embryonic stage. They lie in the fact that the mother has had shocks or worries that have occurred again and again during pregnancy. Such things have an extraordinarily strong effect on the entire mucous membrane system of the respiratory tract, and it is from this that the causes for what later manifests itself in asthmatic symptoms already go out during the embryonic period.

Now, however, the following is of particular importance for asthmatic symptoms: asthma manifests itself in very different ways, depending on the individuality of the person, and it is very important that we can really fight the other symptoms of asthma that exist in the organism. Then we make the organism strong enough that it can do something itself later to fight the asthma. And so I would now like to indicate the possibilities of how to deal with these matters, since it is indeed an irregular movement of the astral body in the bronchial-lung area.

There is something, I might say, very ingenious at the bottom of it, as asthma is generally a very ingenious disease. If one examines a person suffering from asthma with, if I may say so, occult vision, one finds that in his case, above all, what I might call the inner appetite of the organism is eliminated.

Let us first agree on this concept of the “inner appetite” of the organism. You only come across this concept of the inner appetite of the organism when you observe very young children. They don't just taste with their tongues. I have always said this to teachers: young children do not just taste with their tongues, they taste with their whole organism. The whole organism is something like a fine organ of taste. It is just that later on this tasting is localized around the palate, tongue and so on. But this differentiation, which occurs relatively early, is only a partial one. In subconscious spheres, the human being tastes and thus generates this inner experience of appetite through his whole organism. Simply the whole organism has that striving power that is called appetite.

Now, when there is a loss of appetite in the separate main tract, as is experienced, there is also, and this is particularly the case with the asthmatic to a high degree, a loss of appetite in the organism. And in asthma, the whole organism loses its appetite; it has no desire to absorb the ingested nutrients, especially those that enter the general circulation. He even has an aversion, but he is unaware of it because it is unconscious within, especially towards cooked food. This can be observed quite well from external symptoms that occur in his life. This must be dealt with first. You must first restore the appetite of the organism.

It is generally good to know how to help an organism that you think has lost its appetite, that is, where the right connection between the etheric organism and the astral organism is interrupted, because that means being without appetite. Now it is good to know what is good for it. And it is always good to teach the organism the right dosage of what can be obtained in the form of tannic acid, for example from sage leaves, from nut leaves, from oak bark or willow bark; in short, if one teaches the human organism, I want to say, that which perhaps corresponds to the first decimal place, just only in terms of percentage, of tannic acid. This is what is particularly important for the astral body in such a case. It is stimulated to extend its activity to the ether body when it is supplied with this tannic acid. The ether body, on the other hand, does not react to this. So if you supply tannic acid on one side only, you will only cause disorder. You have to help the ether body on the other side as well. And this can be done, for example, by making a leaf extract from Veronica officinalis, from this speedwell, and extracting the bitter substances from it by name. These bitter substances are found in such plants – they can also be extracted from other plants wherever these bitter extractive substances are found in them — and then you will take one or the other in turn, in the morning one and in the evening the other, for example, and you can then regulate the rhythm between the astral and etheric bodies and in this way initiate the healing. Then you instruct the patient to lie in bed for weeks on end, not to get up at all, but to sleep in a chair, and when he tries to fall asleep, to meditate on breathing in the mind, thus to see or feel in the mind: inhalation, spreading the breath, exhalation, - to breathe quite consciously when he falls asleep; when he wakes up, to let him start breathing consciously again for a few minutes. If you strengthen your moral powers in this way, applying them to your own organism, namely to breathing, but in such a way that you can apply them unwaveringly - in any other position than when sleeping in a chair, especially when lying position, it is quite impossible for the patient to carry it out – and then use this as the third act of the cure, it is to be hoped that the asthma itself can be controlled even in very late stages of development. Morphine addiction is then only a consequence, and this will then be removed. One must try to fight the morphine addiction then.

Now for another interesting case that has been presented to me. However, I would like to emphasize that, of course, it is more or less problematic to give things without seeing the patient in question. It is just that I would like to say that the case can also be constructed ideally, but let us briefly state what is at hand in this forty-five-year-old postal clerk who, as a result of something, has suffered a nervous breakdown, then initially, it seems, became sleepless and ended up in a state where the patient is no longer in control of himself, where the head thinks alone, and is therefore automatic. That was probably the first stage. Then this stage seems to have passed into another, where he developed a trembling of the limbs after two years and probably also convulsive states in the limbs.

The main thing to do in such a case is to know that the whole condition is not located in organs other than those that have a directing effect on the human will system through the ego organization and the astral organization. The will system comes into consideration. And the irregular and abnormal nature of the will system is already evident in this peculiar surrender to the automatism of thought. This has nothing to do with thoughts, but everything with the will that underlies the development of thought. But everything is aimed at working deeply down into the subconscious in order to actually form the will in the mere metabolic-limb-organism, to pull it out of the rhythmic organism, to pull it out of the nerve-sense organism. So the tendency to relocate the entire physical and etheric will organs to the lower organism is actually present.

You would certainly have been able to observe this tendency in such a case, had you had the opportunity to observe this postal clerk, let us say, from some point in time and again after two years. You would have noticed that the reciprocal relationship between the lower lip and the upper lip had changed during these two years. Two years ago, it would have seemed to you that perhaps a certain, not quite harmonious relationship had taken place in the movement of the upper lip to the lower lip, that one has the feeling that it does not fit together as it does in normal people, and after two years it will have become stronger. The lower lip will have continued its naughty movements more than the upper lip. You will be able to observe such things. You will also be able to observe such an interrelationship between the legs and arms in discordant movements.

Now, in such a case, a combination of a drug treatment, a physical treatment, let us say, with a spiritual treatment in eurythmy therapy should be considered. These two things must be combined here, and this case is actually typical of this.

In such cases, use comfrey baths with a fairly strong addition of comfrey, which you can then count on for silicic acid. Comfrey has a very high percentage of silicic acid, so use comfrey baths and you will be able to achieve a significant strengthening of the ego organization through these comfrey baths. But it is only there under the influence of the bath. There is a constant danger that it will disappear again after a short time. It is driven towards the tendency to be something lasting if you now have eurythmy therapy vocalization, simply vocalization, after the bath has run its course, for an hour of eurythmy therapy vocalization. That is what you are stimulating then, which was initially only predisposed in the equisetum bath. And then you can hope, in this way, to fight the matter, above all from the periphery, from the limb organism. You just have to try to find the point from which you can fight the matter.

Now I have been somewhat concerned with this other case, which is very interesting; it is just not clearly presented. It says here:

Lupus-like, increasingly severe proliferation of the mucous membrane on the palate, causing difficulty in swallowing, in a thirty-seven-year-old female patient who had pulmonary tuberculosis seven years ago, second and third degree, but who has now largely recovered. She had an operation for gallstones that were not present.

I would like to know what happened immediately after the operation on gallstones that were not present!

Suffers from disorders of the digestive tract, from flatulence, which is beneficially influenced by eurythmy therapy S-exercise and has been minimal lately; has been suffering from severe grief for years. Could a successfully performed I-exercise have caused the lupus disease? What should be done?

Do you really think that this is something lupus-like?

It could also be scurvy; it just looks like that.

You don't have to assume that. In reality, it can only be that the plastic power of the etheric organism simply does not work sufficiently into the peripheral tracts. It cannot be anything else. And this would have to be remedied by simply injecting bee venom in perhaps a sixth decimal potency and making the process a total one, which arises from the fact that the bee venom very strongly stimulates the etheric body to take up the astral forces in a way that is truly directed towards the whole human organism.

The underlying organizing principle of the spiritual, bee venom, is at the root of it all again. So that, when it comes to seeing that the organic effect is, so to speak, breaking down at the periphery, and does not want to enter into the periphery, you can always do a great deal of good with bee or wasp venom, and then support the effect of the injection from within by making a liquid pulp of honey and milk, and then giving that as a daily nutritional supplement.

This is something that really presents itself in such a way that one sees that the organism, which has become cramped and shows such abnormal phenomena at various peripheral points, in turn spreads its effect on the one hand, under the influence of the insect poison that enters the circulatory system, and on the other hand, under the influence of that which is substantially related to milk and honey, develops and spreads in the organization. That is what I believe can be recommended in such a case.

Now I would like to talk about the question that, as it seems, is also close to your heart. This is the question of nervous diseases, spinal cord diseases and so on.

Of all nervous diseases, spinal cord diseases are of course the hardest to treat. The other nervous diseases are much more treatable. But one would be able to treat the so-called nervous diseases much more if one considered that in the nerve, in the nerve cord, in the nerve at all, there is a substance that continuously tends towards crumbling. Unlike other parts of the organism, the nerve contains no constructive, sprouting or growth forces. Instead, the nerve contains everywhere that which tends towards the ego organization, in that it actually always wants to separate and crumble. It just has to be continually prevented from crumbling. In the moment when the ego organization is not strong enough to prevent the nerves from crumbling, then the most diverse phenomena actually arise. Depending on whether it is the ego organization or the astral organization that is not strong enough, either the actual nervous diseases arise when the astral organization is not strong enough, or when the ego organization is not strong enough, the various neuralgias arise, or the various conditions with semi-psychic symptoms, and so on.

Now we have to be clear about how to act on the nervous system in such a way that a kind of phantom of the astral and ego organisms arises in the nervous system. This really occurs when one attempts to get the forces – that is, when there is an already severe nervous disease, not a partial one – the silica effect into the whole nervous system. This is, so to speak, something of a postulate, to get silicic acid into the nervous organization.

Now, if there are no particular obstacles or inhibitions, you get the silicic acid into the nervous system because there is an extraordinarily strong affinity between the form of the human nervous system and the arnica substance. This is already very strong. And if you give arnica injections, especially in high potency, of course, in the fifteenth, twenty-fifth, even thirtieth potency, you will find in most cases that the arnica injection works in such a way that the sick person then even gets the urge and drive to do something against his nervous state. For it must always be brought about that the patient suddenly realizes: whatever is in the nerves is relieved by some remedy, and I can now use my ego organization, my astral organism. In this case, it is a matter of relief. In a nervous patient, the ego and astral organisms are intensely occupied with the nervous process. Something must be introduced into the nervous process that imitates the ego organization and the astral organization. And that is precisely what the remarkable configuration in Arnica does. Arnica is, after all, a mixed compositum of all kinds of things, and it is truly a kind of microcosmic imitation of all kinds of macrocosmic things. The Arnica substance does this to a very special degree.

Just think of everything that happens. First of all, there is the silicic acid that is found in Arnica montana. This is the basic substance. It is extremely sensitive, a deeply significant reagent for all possible cosmic influences. Silicic acid is an extremely fine reagent for everything that affects the earth. Then there is always a tendency in Arnica montana to transfer these fine silicic acid perceptions of the cosmos, one might say, and to shape them plastically in the potash salts and also lime salts, which are distributed in Arnica montana in a wonderful way.

Now imagine the whole effect that I described earlier for tannic acid; this effect on the astral organism is also present in arnica. So that what is now brought in from the cosmos is, as it were, plastically imprinted in the potassium calcium salts by the silicic acid, and directly carried into the organism through the tannic acid content of the arnica. Then, as if by a miracle, the arnica substance simultaneously develops a sedative so that the person does not feel the disturbing effect of the penetration of foreign substance into the physical correlate of the astral body. This is because the arnica substance contains something camphor-like. So it contains its own sedative. Then the arnica substance, wonderfully embedded in rubber and similar substances, contains protein substance, which gives it an affinity to the etheric body. And then we have phosphorus inside, namely essential oils, which builds the whole thing up in such a way that it directly becomes a phantom of the human ego-organism. |

Therefore, if you introduce the correct dosage into the organism – but by injection, the other things will not work as strongly by injection – a substance from Arnica montana, you will usually see that, at least initially, there is a strong influence on the nervous system. The right process will be there when you can see how the patient now feels stronger and believes that they can now conquer the problem on their own. This feeling must be evoked. If it does not come, then take the help of Arnica montana, alternating with that which now supports him by also boosting the effect of Arnica montana from the respiratory side, so alternate with a fairly high-percentage formic acid injection. You will see that then the thing can occur.

If you cannot manage that, then it is of course necessary to take an extract of the part of the nervous system of an animal in which the actual source of the disease can be found, depending on whether it is in the brain or in the spinal cord, and then inject this in high potency instead of formic acid in alternation with arnica. So, for example, if you suspect that the nerve disease originates in the visual area, then take the secretion from the four-hilled substance or such a substance of an animal, extract it, take it in a fairly high potency and inject it to support the Arnica montana. Let the support go exactly where it is needed. These are things that one must always observe.

However, a mild toxic effect may occur, especially when Arnica montana cures are successful – it should even occur – that can be observed in something. But you will always see that this mild toxic effect can be counteracted by per os alkalis in some combination. I believe that what I have described here is actually very important for what should be done in the case of nervous diseases, including spinal cord diseases, which could only be diagnosed in the right stage, and in which one should get rid of that medical impudence that is so rampant, especially in Western Europe, that one attributes almost all cases of tabes dorsalis to some kind of syphilitic cause. It is complete nonsense. And if you obstruct your own view from the outset, you will naturally not be able to come to terms with your view. Most of the diseases of the spinal cord do not at all arise from any syphilitic starting points, but from colds that appear harmless to most people, in the gastric or other abdominal tracts, or from the fact that the spine itself has been exposed to a cold. It is just that, well, of course, according to the well-known social conditions of the last decades, the purely external complication of syphilis and spinal cord disease occurred very frequently, and the view was then distracted by this, and one did not do the right thing, namely to fight the consequences of syphilis on its own and those of spinal cord disease with something like what I have just described. It should always be considered and treated as a nervous disease, as I have just described.

Now the interesting thing is that if you localize the nerve disorders in the digestive tract or even in the stomach and they do not go further beyond the digestive organs, you can achieve the same thing – and this is extremely interesting – if you take Chamomilla instead of Arnica montana and treat it in exactly the same way by injection. And this is interesting because you can see from this – because chamomile is almost completely lacking in silica – that silica is only necessary when you get beyond the digestive tract with the nerves. It lacks silica. On the other hand, it contains sulfur, which is particularly beneficial when it comes to stimulating the etheric body in the digestive system.

Now some questions have arisen, but we don't have more time to deal with things in depth: “What is the essence of short-sightedness and long-sightedness?”

Don't you think it's worth asking whether these things could be therapeutically influenced? The causes of these lie on the palm of your hand, and you don't ask about these things. You mean, how can they be therapeutically influenced, whether they can be cured by mere medical remedies? It will be possible to cure them, both short-sightedness and long-sightedness can be cured, and thus also prevented, because you are quite right, glaucoma is of course essentially connected with long-sightedness. People who are not clear-sighted do not easily develop glaucoma. But a medicinal cure, which is indeed possible, will only be successful if it is initiated perhaps even before the age of three. So you have to notice the tendency towards short-sightedness or long-sightedness in the child very early on. Then you can do a lot with highly potentized belladonna. But you actually have to notice it before the child has fully learned to speak and walk. Once the organism has reached the stage of physical development that it has reached, once it has learned to walk, stand and speak, the entire tendency towards the formation of the crystalline lens and the vitreous body, which underlie hyperopia and myopia, is already present. And because it is something purely mechanical and formal, it is difficult to do anything. On the other hand, as long as the eye can still be affected by the unformed, wriggling movements, the as yet unoriented arm movements and so on in the child, and this is achieved by a highly potentized belladonna, which is imbued with a certain feeling, a certain sensation, one might think that something can be done. But it will probably not be easy to make his observations. That is to be said about it.

Now, unfortunately, we have to conclude these considerations. I hope that we will continue them again at a suitable time. It will always give us a very special satisfaction here if we can, so to speak, insert into the announced medical college activity that we can give the doctors something when they come to such meetings. I hope that in the future this can always be achieved in some way or other. But it will also be possible for those friends who stay in touch with the Dornach School to receive answers to their questions about these or those things from time to time – we will make sure that this is done in the right way. So if you send questions to Dr. Wegman, we will provide answers together, although not in the supplement to the 'Goetheanum', of course, but in a form that can only be sent to the doctors. But I believe that we should set it up so that when someone asks a question, the answer should always go to our anthroposophical doctors, because it is always actually interesting for everyone and we will make the most progress this way. We will try to initiate communication with the doctors here in Dornach in a corresponding way.

Dr. Palmer: Dear Dr. Steiner, I hope you will allow me to express my colleagues' and my own heartfelt thanks for taking time out of your busy schedule over Christmas to devote a few hours to us. We who work at the Clinical-Therapeutic Institute in Stuttgart know how much we need these hours, and we would ask you to continue to support us with your advice and assistance.

The only thing I would have liked would have been just that it could have been more hours. But however much we thought about it with Dr. Wegman, it did not result in more than these three hours. As I said, it would have been my wish that it could have been more hours; but hopefully another time! Hygiene as a social issue.

I think the main thing we will have to discuss should be discussed in connection with specific questions that you ask. I will only say a few words, I would like to say a few words in advance about the fundamentals.

In the course of human development, much of the reality has been lost because the knowledge of the spiritual, which also lives in everything physical, has gradually been lost. But medicine is undoubtedly one of the things that have lost the most, for the simple reason that by merely limiting oneself to knowledge of nature, all insight into the human being and his life must be lost. For it must be emphasized again and again that all processes that take place in nature are such processes that cannot take place in the same way within the human organism.

We want to disregard animal and plant organisms. Today, there is a belief that a process that is observed externally in nature can also exist in some way within the human organism. One speaks of combustion and all kinds of other physical processes within the human organism. Such do not actually exist in reality, and just as we have before us in the self-contained human organism something unnatural, which, to the external eye, is different from an extra-human natural object outside, so too is every single process in the human organism something thoroughly different. All the processes that take place outside of the human being in nature have a building and breaking down effect on the human being. And if we want to understand the human being, we must recognize three levels of breakdown.

The first degradation is the one that happens from the inside out, so to speak, through everything that affects the human being from the earth. The forces of the earth work in such a way that they degrade the human being from within. The forces that work from the air, primarily through breathing, and are transferred to the human being, have a degrading effect from the earth's orbit. And the forces of light from the Cosmos have a degenerative effect on man. Thus the extra-human forces of the Cosmos have a degenerative effect on man in three ways, and the degeneration occurs immediately if the ego organization and the astral body do not participate in the human organization. The astral body and the ego organization counteract the degenerative principles in man. In that moment, therefore, the breakdown by the extra-human forces must occur, in which the I and the astral body no longer work in man. But this also shows us that we cannot get by without gaining more and more real insight into the higher members of human nature, even when we consider the medical aspect.

Medicine has arrived at mere trial and error, experimentation, only because in recent times it has no longer dared to reckon with the higher limbs of human nature, with the supersensible. But the process of illness cannot be understood if it is not grasped as being connected with the higher limbs of human nature. And the process of recovery, the process of healing, cannot be understood either without being placed in such connections with the higher limbs of human nature. For, let us consider the following: In the human head, in the human skull, the processes of decomposition of the physical body and of the etheric body are essentially at work. These processes of disintegration that are active there make it possible for the astral and the I to be active in the human head. In contrast to this, in the metabolic limb organization, in all that is connected with the motor system and the metabolism, we are dealing with the building processes of the human organism, both of the etheric body and of the physical body. In these anabolic processes, only the ego and the astral body are active in the most eminent sense for the metabolic and motor system. The astral body and the ego are active in everything that takes place in the metabolism. The ego organization is active in everything that is movement. So that in the metabolism-limb system we have: I and astral body engaged; in the human head they are, as it were, exposed, there I and astral organization are quite free. So that if we wanted to draw schematically, we could draw: physical head, etheric head, but now free astral body and I, not engaged in physical and etheric. On the other hand, if we now omit the middle human being, the rhythmic, the blood human being, and consider the metabolic, limb-bearing human being, then, firstly, the etheric body is fully engaged in this. It is also present in the head, but in addition, the astral body and I-organization are engaged here – not left free internally, but rather effecting the processes.

When we look at the child, we see a complete connection between what is free in the head as the astral body and ego organization, and what is bound to the physical organization as in the body, whereas we do not have such an inner connection in the adult and therefore the whole body is not so dependent on what is going on in the head as it is in the child. In the child, the whole body is still dependent on what is going on in the whole head.

It is quite impossible to acquire a knowledge of human nature without really taking the higher aspects of human nature into consideration. For no one can really understand what is going on in the motor and metabolic systems of the human being without also taking the soul and spirit into account. At best, the organization of the head can be used as an aid, as it is very strongly modeled internally on physical, extra-human laws. The organization of the head is permeated by an etheric body and differs from the extra-human organizations, but it is most similar to the extra-human organization.

What does it actually mean to understand the disease? Assuming you are dealing with any organ of the metabolism, you have to assume a very specific connection between the physical and the etheric and how the astral body and I-organization intervene in this organ, say in the liver. The astral body and I-organization must intervene in a very specific way. The moment the I and the astral body withdraw somewhat from this organ, the organ becomes similar to the head organ, and one must always be aware that when any metabolic organ, and also anything related to metabolism, shows an irregularity, the astral body and I-organization are not involved enough in the organization of this organ; and in the head it is the other way around. If the astral body and the ego intervene too strongly, then the pathological condition occurs in the human head; so that actually the human head is that which is most strongly predisposed to the vegetable-mineral interior in man, and the motor and metabolic organs are those which are most strongly predisposed to the animal-human. Actually, one only sees the opposite. One believes that the head organization is the one that is most spiritual as an organization. But when the head organization becomes too spiritual, consciousness becomes clouded. At the moment when too strong vegetative processes intervene in the head organization, at that moment the head becomes diseased. In the moment when too few processes emanating from the ego or astral body intervene in the metabolic-limb organism, in the moment when the metabolic-limb system becomes similar to the head system, that system becomes ill.

The doctor's approach must therefore be to ask: How do I get it to happen that when I see any illness associated with clouding of consciousness, how do I get it to prevent this? I must prevent the too strong intervention of the I and the astral body. — Or, how do I get it to happen that the astral body intervenes more strongly when it intervenes too weakly? And you see, here we have a case where the way we think, our way of thinking, plays an extraordinarily important role, especially in medicine. For it is certainly necessary to become familiar with the healing substances, the healing remedies. But of course you will rightly ask how one comes to know the healing remedies. And you cannot get to know them unless you first experience in the spiritual what is really going on in the human being. Now, you see, in order to experience what is really going on in a person, a certain way of thinking is necessary. And that is what I wanted to say in principle in my introduction, that a certain way of thinking must already permeate the physician. For example, one must start, I would say, from more external natural things. First of all, the physician must realize that everything that can be called warmth, light, and so on, is actually present in two ways. You see, in summer, light and warmth come down to earth from the sun. Sunlight and solar heat take hold of what sprouts, sprouts, blossoms, and bears fruit on the earth. And actually, what is essentially interesting to us about flowering and fruiting is that they are the carriers of sunlight and solar heat.

But what about winter? In summer, sunlight and solar heat penetrate into the earth, and the sunlight and solar heat that are in the earth continue to have an effect throughout the winter. And so light and sun come into consideration from two sides.

But if we look at what the sun and the earth's orbit in general, the cosmic, brings to the earth from this orbit, we see that all of this has an effect on the human metabolic and limb system. The entire metabolic and limb system is already influenced by what comes in from the cosmos. Everything in the head is influenced by what was already preserved in the earth by cosmic forces. In this respect, the human being stands on the earth in reverse. His metabolic-limb system is influenced by what is extraterrestrial and cosmic. But you can extend this to every single substance. Take lead, for example, because lead is a particularly effective remedy for certain things. We find lead as it exists in non-human nature in the form in which it was created by the total cosmic forces; it works in the most eminent sense when it is there through the cosmic forces, and in the most eminent sense it works through the limb-metabolic system up into the head. If we melt the lead, that is, if we subject it to an earthly process, then it acts directly on the head system. This is the great difference.

Among our medicines, we have an essential remedy, antimony, grey spear luster. If we take it as it exists outside as a fibrous ore – the spear-like is formed out of the cosmos – then in antimony we have a remedy that acts on the metabolism. If we subject antimony to an earthly process so that it becomes antimony sulfate, then we are acting in a specifically human way on the human head.

And you see, it is a matter of penetrating everywhere with this way of thinking, not only into the substance, but into the processes, into what is happening. It is not right to say that lead is a remedy for this or that. It is a matter of knowing how the process has taken place, whether we have a raw material or whether we have subjected the substance to some process. The way in which substances are treated is, after all, the essential thing. And the way of thinking should stop looking for the remedy in the substance as such. We should increasingly say to ourselves: When there is disease, there is a process that is not embraced by the whole of the human organism. If we want a remedy, we must strengthen the person, we must subject the person to such processes that we understand exactly. That is what it comes down to.

I would now like to tell you something to which this whole introduction should lead, which may at first seem somewhat paradoxical to you, but which is necessary to be truly grasped in the whole of medical life. That is, if one studies all those processes that one has to study in the universe, one has to study them to see whether they are cosmic or telluric processes or those that vibrate between the two. We have no way of really getting to these processes if we cannot understand how the soul is structured in these three different regions of the human being. Without understanding the soul, it is actually impossible to really get to the person.

And you see, you have to take the following into account. In the adult human being, the soul is actually a much stronger unity than the physical organism. The physical organism is clearly divided into three parts: the nervous-sensory system, the rhythmic system and the metabolic-limb system. These can be distinguished from one another. But the soul fills both the head system, the nerve-sense system, and the rhythmic system, as well as the metabolic-limb system. It is only very sleepy, dreamy in the lower system, but it fills the whole human being according to its three parts. But when a person is supposed to develop a system in particular, when the soul is supposed to pour its activity into a particular system, what actually happens? It is true that a person can occupy themselves with thinking, walking, or working with their hands or legs – we have to speak of the middle system separately. But what happens to the soul when a person is actively engaged, when a person is walking? When a person walks or works with his hands, it is truly the case that the same power is expressed in all that is in the world that is called love, which remains in arms and hands, in legs and feet (gap in the text). A person must come to the boundary of his skin when he is active, which then, when it overflows beyond the human being, unfolds as love.

But what does it mean in practical terms: the human being walks? It means that he lovingly animates the human organism within his skin, that is, he energizes his astral or ego organization in an appropriate way. And when he walks, he energizes his ego organization in such a way that he draws it out to a certain extent from the physical and etheric organism. When thinking, he exercises it in such a way that he pours it into the physical and etheric organization. Man withdraws his astral and I-limbs when walking; while stretching out his legs, he withdraws the astral body and the I when walking. When he thinks, he radiates them in, of course, but only to the skin. And if we take this into account, we can say that we simply have the beginning of illness in the activity of the organism. Because when, without the person lovingly filling his organism, the astral body and I-organization withdraw from the metabolic limb system, then pathological conditions arise. If the etheric body and the physical body are filled in the head without it being caused by arbitrariness, pathological conditions will again occur. So that what a person does arbitrarily is immediately corrected. Daily life in thinking and moving: it is a continuous process of making oneself ill. Only the human organism can make itself healthy again immediately.

And an understanding of these things depends on the fact that one can now really muster so much love for what happens in the case of illness that one can look at it as what actually shows one in a physical way what the spiritual in man is. You see, when a person becomes ill in the liver, let's say he gets abnormalities in the liver, then his astral body is not sufficiently active in the liver. What is the corresponding spiritual activity where something similar happens? It occurs when I take a particularly strong inner interest in something external. At the moment when one looks at something with intense attention, one is actually suffering from liver disease at that moment. At that moment, the astral body withdraws from the liver, but it balances out again immediately. And by going through the various processes of illness in the human organism, one can always study what happens in a healthy person through their will, through their arbitrary life. If the arbitrary processes were not continually being balanced, the person would continually make themselves ill through the arbitrary processes. So one can learn what the soul and the spirit are like if one likes the processes of illness as processes of study, really loves them.

And this love of disease must, of course, be connected with something else. After all, one does not just want to study the disease; that is the less important thing. But if one can heal again, what does one have then? Then one has an insight into the way in which the divine world has come about from the most diverse spiritual activities and beings, how the world has been created. And that is the starting point for a doctor's work: to say to oneself, first of all, that disease processes lead one into knowledge of the human being. They are real processes of knowledge. But the healing processes can only be grasped with a religious attitude. To really relate to the world with a religious attitude must permeate all this medical work. Without that, knowledge will never come about in detail.

Of course, you will always be able to say: Well, yes, there we have the remedies, and anthroposophy also comes along and gives remedies, but the whole thing cannot be seen through! — It can be seen through if you take into account such things as have now been characterized, if you can permeate a real process of knowledge with the diagnosis and a real process with the therapy. These things must be taken very seriously. Only by adopting this attitude can we understand what has been put forward as what anthroposophy has to say for medicine. Of course, the details are only what can be put to practical use. But it is necessary to permeate all medical activity with this attitude that we have been talking about.

I would now like you to ask one or two more questions, so that we can move on to specific considerations tomorrow. I just wanted to touch on the qualitative side.

First question: As a doctor today, you are sometimes forced to use remedies that you don't like to use, and some of these remedies are certainly so that you shouldn't use them. Can't anything be said about remedies that you shouldn't use?

Dr. Steiner: I would like to say the following in principle to this question: There is a big difference between a remedy that I can understand how it works in the human organism and one that I cannot understand. That is a big difference. Of course, this difference is initially relative for external practice, as long as we do not have medical faculties where one goes through a course of study such as that taught by anthroposophy. Until then, it will always happen that the practical doctor will also take note of what is advised by anthroposophy: 'This is a remedy for this or that'. Of course, we would love to start by teaching the science of human nature, so that by looking at an onion we would know how the onion process works in the human organism under these or those antecedents. That would be our favorite, of course. But for the time being it is relative, and for the time being it can only be the case that a remedy is given for this or that. But from here, a remedy is hardly given without its inner effect in human nature being made known. For example, it is not said that silicic acid of equisetum is taken without knowing that it causes a kidney process. The irritated kidney is reduced in its over-irritability. So the over-irritability of the kidney is reduced when silica from equisetum is added to the kidney. This is obvious, and one should know (gap in the text). But now I ask you on the basis of trust: How do the investigations happen outside? They are done externally with the help of statistics, they are done in such a way that so and so many patients are given the remedy. Actually, we don't really know what is going on, and above all, the big difference between a real remedy and one that is not a real remedy is that with a real remedy, we understand the process and know how it affects the whole of human life. If today you heal something by any means, you cannot know what will become of it in five years. But if you understand the process completely, you do not need statistics. With our remedies, it is never a matter of statistics. You will see from the book that is about to be published how it is not dependent on statistics whether a remedy works or not, but on the study of the individual case. If you have a box of matches and try the match, you will not burn all the matches, but you know when you have burned a match that each one can burn. Likewise, you know that each process must proceed as you know it. It is therefore not a matter of statistics, but of understanding the individual case. Therefore, we will always have great difficulties when people say: Give out your remedies, they should be tried! — But that does nothing; it does not create trust in the remedies. Of course, our remedies will produce extraordinarily favorable results statistically, but the usual cases are either not correctly diagnosed or are cases where additional remedies have yet to be administered. Now, I believe that the essential thing when it comes to such remedies, which heal without being understood, is, above all, to really understand how things work. You see, it is remarkable that even the trial leads to all sorts of interesting things. Today, all kinds of remedies for syphilis appear. Arsenic plays a role everywhere. Why is that? With us you hear: Arsenic is something that stimulates the astral body to do so when it is lethargic, to stimulate it to intervene more in the physical body. This astral body is made active by introducing arsenic into the human being. These remedies, discovered by trial and error, are actually based on this effect on the astral body. Of course, you can also see how they are mistaken, how they are caused by an illusion. One relies on the penetrating effect of arsenic in cases where the astral body can really become so strong through arsenic. And in the case of syphilis, only arsenic really cures. So with all such remedies, one must always see through the effectiveness of the remedy. One should always strive to see through the effectiveness of a remedy. Our way of thinking must therefore become more and more known, and that is precisely what we want to achieve through the book, namely to introduce it into the medical way of thinking to be cultivated here and not so much to point out the remedies. It will also be important to point out the way of thinking for remedies that are not indicated by us. After all, there are good remedies outside our area, and if necessary one gives this or that.

Second question: When we were here last time, we talked about bronchial asthma. You indicated as a remedy that one should meditate on breathing. Are we justified in giving such a meditation in such cases? I didn't know what else to do, I found a saying by Goethe:

In breathing there are twofold blessings:
To draw in air, to discharge it,
The former presses, the latter refreshes;
So wonderfully is life combined.
You thank God when He presses you,
And thank Him when He releases you again.

I didn't know if that was right.

Dr. Steiner: You see, in such matters one must accept that because you are going half-spiritually or three-quarters spiritually for my sake, you also have something spiritual in your response when the attitude I have spoken of today is present. This being rooted in the earthly, then in the cosmic through the head, if the doctor has learned to think and feel spiritually and to behave in the same way towards the patient, then one can take responsibility for something like that. But if you approach the sick with an attitude that is often shaped by a materialistic world view, if you approach the sick with an attitude that is indifferent to the soul, then you can usually achieve the opposite of what you actually want to achieve with such things, even if they have nothing to do with the soul. You see, there are really many people who work with such things over and over again – and today it is not completely ruled out for doctors either – who work with such things. They will sometimes bring about relief, even if it is not a cure. If the sick person is strengthened by it, then this relief can really lead him to healing. But if people ask whether you can really achieve something like that, I have to say that if you really love the sick person, then it will be possible. But if you are indifferent towards the patient, then it will not help.

You should really have the courage to heal. That is why I have always mentioned the courage of healing here with our institute, where this is the case. It is the worst thing a doctor can do, even when a patient is very seriously ill and you want to cure him, to think of death. As a doctor, you should forbid yourself to think of the patient's death as a possibility. After all, the imponderables are so strong. It is an immensely strengthening force when you, under all circumstances, send the thought of death away to the very end – to the very end! — and think only of what I can do to save the patient's life force, to save what can be saved. If this attitude is developed, many more people will be saved than if the opposite attitude is developed, which somehow predicts death from these or those things. One should never do that. And one must indeed take such things into consideration. Then one is justified in having the courage to heal.

Question: If one works as an assistant at a hospital and has to prescribe morphine and other drugs to patients, can something one does to the patient that is wrong be counteracted by something else, by one's attitude towards the patient, for example?

Dr. Steiner: Much can be achieved through the attitude. But if the interventions are necessary with physical substances, then these should be taken directly from the plant kingdom, not derived preparations, depending on how necessary it is to use the juice of the poppy plant directly. And not with an awareness of the inner process, on the contrary, by focusing on the outer form of the plant, on what is pleasing about the plant. It is difficult to give rules in such matters, because even when one is obliged to give the remedy, one's attitude is of great importance in picking up what comes to light in the patient. You have to pay attention to the mood that arises in the patient through the remedy, then you can intervene. The patient has become more transparent through the remedy in terms of helping. We will continue tomorrow, when I ask you to ask anything you have on your mind.

A participant asks about the significance of milkweed and dandelion juices as a remedy for leukemia. This remedy presented itself to him during a meditation.

Of course, it is important to take into account the accompanying symptoms, because leukemia can have a wide variety of causes. If it is the case that there can be a clear awareness that one is dealing with a disturbance in the rhythmic human being, then you will be right; then you will come to results. The thing is this: Wherever products are used that come from the plant kingdom and still have the remnants of the etheric body in them – and that is the case with resinous and milky juices, both in dandelion and in spurge; it is also the case with wax, for example in vegetable wax – all these substances have a strong effect on the human rhythmic system. But if we are dealing with something that has its primary cause not in the human being's rhythmic system but in the metabolism – these things merge into one another, but in principle they must be distinguished – then you will hardly succeed. Everything that still contains the etheric body within it has a very strong effect on the internal mobility of the astral body, and thus stimulates the entire activity of the organism from the astral body. And in this way one can achieve success. This is based on the fact that the astral body is strongly influenced by these substances and that, because it acts on the etheric body, it then also causes a balance in the etheric body.

What are the conditions for a smallpox epidemic to occur? It seems that this disease has lost its malignant character. I have observed such cases.

What does spiritual science have to say about vaccination?

In this matter, as with smallpox, we are dealing with a strong regression of the ego organization of all three other human bodies, both the physical and the etheric and astral bodies, in the individual. This strong regression, this weakening of the ego organization, can be due to the fact that the person, with their present ego, slips into the egos of past lives; and as a result, there is a strong affinity between the ego organization and the spiritual world. And what is remarkable about smallpox is that there is a certain similarity with what a person goes through when they undergo certain types of initiation. However strange it may seem, this is the case.

When a person, for example, really gets to know the effect of the zodiacal figures on people, such states of knowledge are associated with strong inner shocks. At least a person can undergo this by controlling it more, by working more on the soul, what is present in the case of smallpox, because it is a matter of the person living very strongly in the spiritual during the smallpox illness, albeit in a different way.

It can be said that the risk of infection is extremely high when suffering from smallpox. However, one should not be so careless as to always think of physical mediation in the transmission, but rather that the psychological predispositions are particularly strong in the case of smallpox. Proof of this could be that one can protect oneself very well if one is able to shut oneself away in the right way. I am able to speak about this because once, as a twenty-two-year-old person — I need not mention the circumstances — I taught a pupil whose mother was lying with black smallpox right next to it, separated only by a screen from the room in which I was giving my lessons. I did nothing about it, continued the lessons the whole time until the mother recovered. But I did it quite willingly, especially to see how one can protect oneself when one absolutely takes the smallpox patient, including those suffering from black smallpox, quite objectively like another object, like a stone or a bush, towards which one has no further feelings of fear or any other psychological stirrings, but takes it as an objective fact. In this case, the danger of infection must indeed be highly counteracted. Therefore, after all, the psychic factor can also play a strong role in the infection.

I have never been afraid of exposing myself to the possibility of infection, and in fact I have never been infected and have never suffered from an infectious disease. I was therefore able to determine that simply the consciousness, the strong consciousness of the existence of an illness can be the cause of illness from the astral body. The strong consciousness of an illness can be the cause of illness from the astral body.

And the smallpox vaccination? That is a peculiar case. You see, if you vaccinate someone and you educate them as an anthroposophist, it does no harm. It only harms those who grow up with predominantly materialistic thoughts. In such cases, vaccination becomes a kind of Ahrimanic force; the person can no longer rise above a certain materialistic feeling. And that is actually the most worrying thing about the smallpox vaccination, that people are virtually clothed with a phantom. The human being has a phantom that prevents him from getting rid of the soul entities as far from the physical organism as in normal consciousness. He becomes constitutionally materialistic, he can no longer rise to the spiritual. That is the worrying thing about vaccination. Of course, the statistics are always brought into play. The question is whether so much value has to be placed on statistics in these matters. With the smallpox vaccination, it is very much a psychological issue. It cannot be ruled out that the belief that the vaccination helps plays an incalculably large role. If this belief were replaced by something else, if people were educated in a way that would make them impressionable by something other than vaccination, for example, by bringing them closer to the spirit, it would be quite possible that, against the unconscious intrusion: here is a smallpox epidemic! - by complete consciousness of it: here is something spiritual, even if it is an unauthorized spiritual, against which I must protect myself! would work just as well as one would have to strengthen people against such influences.

If the circumstances are as they are, for example in our area, where the influence through education and so on is very difficult, how should one behave there?

You just have to vaccinate. There is no other way. Because fanatical opposition to these things is what I, not for medical reasons, but for general anthroposophical reasons, would not recommend at all. Fanatical opposition to these things is not what we are aiming for. Instead, we want to use insight to change things on a large scale. I have always regarded this, when I was friends with doctors, as something to be combated, for example with Dr. Asch, who absolutely did not vaccinate. I have always fought against that. Because if he does not vaccinate, someone else will. It is a complete nonsense to be so fanatical in the details.

Dr. Kolisko: As a school doctor, I observed that children who start school show a tremendous inner restlessness, which manifests itself particularly during sleep, so that the parents of children aged 6 or 7 complain that the children are plagued by nightmares, by motor restlessness, and that they have difficulty falling asleep. What are the circumstances that lead to this?

The conditions that children show when they start school, that is, in Germany, stem from the fact that, due to the nutritional conditions that have prevailed for years, rather than the general conditions, the inner ability to digest food - not the process that takes place in the stomach, but the inner ability, where it is important to drive the food pulp out of the intestines - is highly disturbed. It is the case that these children actually become incapable of properly interacting with their astral body in the etheric body. As a result, these children are usually unable to really transfer what they take in as food, even if they take it in through charity, into the organism. Every food has its own inherent laws; it must pass through a certain stage of digestion, every food must pass into the inorganic state. This is something that is not known in external science, that, for example, the protein we consume as vegetable or animal protein must be thoroughly disorganized, converted into the mineral state and then reconverted into human protein. The whole process takes place in the state nascendi, but it does take place. This transmutation must take place, otherwise the process does not take place as a human process, but as a foreign one. So we can say that within the human skin, roughly speaking, apart from the presence of direct salts, there must be nothing that occurs outside the human organism. There is nothing within the human skin that is outside except salt. Everything else is transmuted. Now, just when their etheric body is becoming free – it becomes free when they enter primary school age – these children lose the ability to organize this freed etheric body in the right way, starting from the astral body. This is what causes this digestive disorder. They have extra-human processes in them; and such things must be combated quite rationally physically. We have this remedy, which we prepared when we had some particularly bad examples of such children. I believe you will always have excellent success in this direction. Dr., do you remember the pale little boy in the second class? What about him?

He is much better.

He is now quite decent, relatively.

We have also used it on many other children.

That was the next occasion: there was a pale boy whom the doctors had already given up on; he was supposed to die in the near future. We used this remedy on him: calcium carbonate and calcium phosphate. It turned out that this remedy was very effective in promoting digestion; then the internal conditions improved. It is always the case that shortness of breath and breathing difficulties occur when the astral body cannot work properly. If it is held back, shortness of breath occurs, which can also be the cause of hidden anxiety. All this can be improved with this remedy. This remedy is of the

manner that one can say that if a person is no longer able to benefit from what he eats, despite eating, then this remedy is an extraordinarily good one.

What do you do for spinal paralysis?

What are the symptoms?

Just tenderness over the affected vertebra. The x-ray shows that the affected vertebra may have melted together a little on one side, that the vertebra has now taken on this (shown or drawn) shape instead of its normal shape.

It is natural that in such things, where there are such localized conditions, it is very difficult to approach the matter if one does not go back to the primary cause. Which vertebra is it?

The sixth thoracic vertebra.

Is there any kind of external mechanical insult that can be proven?

No, but the finding is that it is derived from pulmonary tuberculosis.

But there are changes in the hilar glands.

It is the case that in the x-ray image, larger shadows are found at this point, which enter the lung tissue in a scattered manner.

How old is the patient?

Thirty-five years.

Has he had this problem for long? Has it been noticed for long?

About three months. I have four such patients, all of them women. Two of them have a trauma on their back from falling down the stairs. In the other two, the x-ray image is such that one could conclude that the problem originates in the lungs.

Can't you prove that the neighboring vertebra is also affected?

Not a single one. In one case it is the tenth, in other cases the sixth. These are adults, about 36 to 39 years old. In one child the case is traumatic, in a twenty-year-old girl it is also traumatic.

In such a case, one would have to try to examine whether the lungs – the matter does not of course have its cause there – have insufficient space at some point, perhaps because they have been expanded. And in this case, one will find something in the area where the lungs unfold towards the front. And there it will be a matter of finding further dilations in some area of the lungs, expansions, for this shrinking - it is a shrinking process. Perhaps it is not in the lung area; it could even be in the bone of one of the ribs. That would have to be looked for. Then it would be a matter of using something that is suitable for balancing the formation of the human body. Now we have a substance that is excellently suited for balancing traumas. That is tobacco. Injected in dilution, it proves to be what balances deformities. If the aim is to bring the remedy to work freely in the organism, phosphorus must be used. Then it will certainly be possible to achieve healing processes in this way. It can definitely be said that healing processes will be achieved if the person concerned is under twenty-eight years of age. But it is not impossible, especially in women, to achieve healing processes even at a later age. And when you have very stubborn natures that are very reluctant, you would have to get them to be cheered up artificially, to cheer up their growth forces, their vital forces a little, and in this way promote the effect. That is what I mean, that in such a case you could do that.

In connection with what has been said about syphilis, I would like to ask how a patient who has received mercury and salvarsan can be freed from the damage caused by the medicine.

The following can be done to alleviate damage caused by mercury: give the patient a very hot bath every day or every other day and let the patient sweat profusely. This alone will greatly stimulate the body to defend itself against the mercury. It is necessary to defend oneself against the mercury to the very depths of one's bones when one has been treated with it. For you have perhaps all heard that after mercury cures, small droplets of mercury can be detected in the bones when an autopsy is performed. When the organism is strengthened by the hot baths, it is already a strong helper to the organism. That it helps sufficiently can be seen from the fact that the bathwater turns black from the returning mercury. Did you not notice that? You have to notice it! Because you don't understand why the bathwater is so dark. If that does not happen, then an arsenic bath should be taken, with about 5% of an arsenical water added to the bath; again, the patient should take a warm bath and, in particular, it should be ensured that the peculiar smell of ink that arises is actually smelled by the patient, so that he has a sensory impression of it. (Gap in the text.)

In such a case, a follow-up cure is needed. The mercury may have been almost completely removed, but the destructive tendency introduced by the mercury remains in the organism. We must bear in mind that mercury has an extraordinarily strong effect on the human organism. One must consider: what is mercury for the human organism? If you follow the embryonic development, you have an ascending embryonic development, that is, from the germ rising to what becomes a human being, and you have a descending development, something that falls away, that is gradually destroyed. The regulator of this destruction is that which, in the human being, is the inner mercurial nature. And if it should turn out that there are too many vital forces, then you could check it by means of mercury, which works constitutionally towards the destruction of the human being. This destructive tendency of mercury must be combated psychically. If you can induce a person to pursue a completely abstract science quite regularly, geometry, for example, dutifully for half an hour every day, then that is the follow-up cure. Sharp, logically connecting and separating thoughts that engage the mind and help to develop inner activity, not passive surrender to the world, but this inner activity, is what must actually be applied for a very long time. Then you will be able to heal someone of the forces of Mercury.

Sometimes women develop nodular hardenings in the mammary gland. Is it safe to use Viscum prophylactically, even if the diagnosis of carcinoma is questionable?

Have you found that prophylaxis in this case causes any damage?

You once said that with this remedy, which is being considered for a disease, there is also a risk of causing something in the wrong case.

We use the viscuminjection in a very specific way. Let us assume the case of an error in the diagnosis. That can be the case. Of course, one would not proceed prophylactically because one has diagnosed that carcinoma is in its early stages. As soon as the tendency is there, prophylaxis can no longer do any harm. But let us assume that an error has occurred. Now we inject seven times in a row; then we take a break. If there really had been an error, we would see it immediately, because a kind of carcinomatous tendency would have arisen that would immediately disappear when we did the second seven injections. We would not go any further. What would be created would be transformed again by a similar process. If one is careful, it is quite impossible to do any harm with Viscum treatment.

Dr. Köller: I had a conversation with a lay doctor about carcinoma treatment. I told him that I believe Viscum is a cure for this. He replied that this would be the case, but that one would have to take something else, namely Quendel; otherwise one would not have the possibility to get to the disease with Viscum. Quendel is what provides the possibility.

Did the man know this on his own initiative?

Dr. Köller: I got to know him because he had performed a remarkable healing. A girl who was almost blind came to see him. He is an eye diagnostician. It is not clear how he does it. He has 750 kinds of tea. It is so difficult to have a conversation with these people. They are all very optimistic. He said that everything can be cured, even cancer. He didn't ask how we do it, he just said it was through mistletoe. He told me that he and a few friends had once been walking through a landscape and had come across a cherry tree with mistletoe on it; the tree was stunted and had cancer. The man said to himself that there was a great healing power in mistletoe.

Viscum is the specific for carcinoma. There is nothing to be done about it. Of course, because basically every disease is treated differently, since every organism is in a certain condition, the remedies are sometimes supported by the addition of something else. It is possible that he has cured with mistletoe. He does not use it as an injection. In that case, it is possible that something else would be needed as an addition. But when Viscum is used as an injection, it is the specific remedy. You just have to pay attention to the differences in the individual case, whether you have the mistletoe from an oak tree, a cherry tree or another tree, such as an apple tree. The essential thing is that the use of mistletoe juice really depends on the fact that we actually have to enhance its effect. I don't know if you have seen that we are not seeking to use Viscum in such a simple way, but that we need an apparatus to do so. First we bring the mistletoe juices into a vertical movement, and then we let a horizontally rotating movement penetrate them. The aim is to make the mistletoe juice drip and to circulate it in drops, combining it again with mistletoe juice in horizontal circles, so that a special structure is created right down to the smallest circles. This is actually only the healing effect of the viscum, which arises. Of course, it is an effective remedy in itself; but the absolutely specific remedy only arises in this complicated way. The only thing that can be said is that when the disease occurs in a complicated way, quendel is used. Because the pure carcinoma, which is a self-contained disease, is not like influenza or flu, for example, where all sorts of things can be added. It is a self-contained disease that is treated with a self-contained remedy.

It is interesting that a person comes up with something like this just because of what he has told you and what you have said, but it is only a mask, not a mask known to him; because the knowledge can only come to such a person in his sleep. The Lord gives to his own in his sleep, truly. There is a prophetic foresight in his sleep that he is looking for mistletoe. Then he remembers this unconscious prophetic experience just as he comes to the mistletoe. A conversation takes place that is quite insignificant for the matter itself. It must be clear that a certain foreknowledge is possible, especially in cases of illness. You can rely on that. I remind you of the case of Schleichs: the person concerned knew that he would die the next night.

Dr. Köller: Basically, it turned out that he also cures in other ways. He said that he had not been at rest; he did not believe that I would get anywhere.

He does not inject. If you give the remedy mistletoe as an internal medicine, you cannot hit the cancer. You hit more of his soul. But you are hitting a malformation in the etheric body, which expresses itself through an impairment of the sensory. You cannot heal internally with mistletoe, only through injection. I understand what he is saying to you; he doesn't dare to approach the matter.

Is the cause of cancer the same in women and men? Is the cause different in the upper and lower human being? I believe I have noticed that the remedy satisfied in the case of stomach cancer but did not satisfy in the case of uterine cancer. Success was clear in the case of stomach cancer in men. In contrast, the matter drags on in the case of uterine cancer. In some cases we cannot get at it; we always injected into the periphery, even in the case of uterine cancer.

It is of course the case that you have to decide whether to inject further away from the site of the cancer or to get very close. If you can get very close to the site, you will achieve results more quickly than if the cancer is in a place where you cannot get close.

With the uterus, you can get close all around, while with stomach cancer you are much further away.

That is quite right. But on the other hand, there is much more communication between the surface and the stomach than between the surface and the uterus. The uterus is a more internal organ. However, the different success is not justified by the fact that there is a difference between men and women. There must be other conditions. All sources of error must be excluded. It is definitely the case that some of our remedies have gained a reputation for being less effective because the remedies in the way they used to be prepared were not as stable. Now, I believe, this no longer occurs in the same way; when they have aged, they will no longer work less well.

For some of the remedies, we are still in the experimental stage.

It has become much more apparent to me that the carcinoma remedy, as it has been manufactured so far, loses a great deal when it is one year old, while it is absolutely effective when it is not particularly old. So this matter would also have to be excluded, excluded as a source of error, and included. Possibly a considerably larger dose would also have to be used for uterine cancer.

A participant would like to ask about a girl who is now 29 years old and who went insane between the ages of 18 and 19. As a child, she was always unruly and naughty; now she has become completely dull. Especially during her period, she became wild. During the time when she became more and more dull, she also became increasingly fat; she now weighs 97 kilograms. So before she was what you might call a naughty girl; then between the ages of 18 and 19, a great increase in this naughtiness, dullness, stupidity, non-reaction, raging during the period, so that the straitjacket had to be applied; then she became more and more dull, less and less responsive, fatter and fatter, with regular periods. She was treated with thyroid extract with the result that the dullness and fattening subsided.

These symptoms all indicate that she had a very weak ego organization. And it is very likely that in such a case, a strengthening of the ego organization can be achieved by a silica cure, a silicon cure, whereby one would have to advise taking the cure twice, i.e. taking silica and taking silica baths. Also Equisetum, that is a good thing. It is likely that one can achieve something for her in this way.

She received silicic acid for a while, but not baths, two years ago; but everything has remained the same.

I would emphasize the effect of silicic acid through baths, especially because this, if it were to be effective, would already have a specific effect. The peculiar rhythmic states that occur through silicic acid would hold back this fat formation, would also combat dullness, and would make her more sociable. It could also be that she is in a state where she does not absorb silicic acid. In this case, an experiment should be made with a very highly potentized phosphoric acid salt, with phosphoric acid potassium. One would have to bring the matter to effectiveness again.

On further question:

The silicic acid to about the sixth decimal place. But really use quartz for internal administration, and equisetum for baths.

Question about a neurasthenic patient. The matter responded very well to formic acid injections, but came back this year and did not go away despite formic acid injections. Eventually, I went down the wrong track by taking out an ingrown toenail, after which the matter got even worse. I tried formic acid again, reinforced with silicon; but I couldn't get through. The pain became unbearable, radiating from the foot to the calf. It was a variety of pains, sometimes rhythmic. I had to give him morphine injections, which I had to increase a lot; I barely touched him to keep the pain within tolerable levels. He couldn't sleep anymore. He would sit holding his foot, complaining of terrible pain; I tried alternating foot baths. The foot had to be amputated halfway up the calf. I ask because unfortunately the process also wants to appear on the other leg. What can be done?

In such a case, it is important to determine what the primary cause is.

He traces it back to his time in the military, when he usually didn't have very good shoes. He is 47 years old and often had to lie in the wet.

But could the pain have occurred first not in the leg but perhaps in the abdomen? It is quite possible that the whole case originates from a deformation at some point in the intestine, that he received a splinter, fell off the horse, pushed himself up, and that this caused an intestinal deformation. This intestinal deformation has the peculiarity of migrating downward and causing such conditions as you have described in the legs, first in one, but then jumping over to the other. Usually this ends in bone tuberculosis. But if the case is as likely as it is, you can achieve something with the remedy that works against the deformation: tobacco. In such a case with tobacco enemas (see note 5. 326).

He smokes quite a lot.

That has nothing to do with it. Tobacco smoke does not affect the organism in the same way as when you use tobacco by injection or as enemas. You only need very diluted enemas if you use them. It has a completely different effect on the organism. When smoking, the tobacco does not have time to exert its re-deforming effect.

A boy who is now eleven years old learned to walk when he was one, and could also speak a little. When he was two years old, he was standing a little too close during a shooting exercise with cannons. It is said that he has been deaf and dumb ever since. His speech is an incomprehensible babble, and he hears absolutely nothing. Is there anything that can be done? He can walk; he even looks very intelligent.

Otherwise, there are no disorders except for not hearing and speaking? What happens if you somehow make an impression on the eye?

Then he reacts just like a normal person; only in the ear and in speaking is there a change.

How was the second teething?

Quite normal at seven and a half.

One would have to assume that in some way the vitality of the auditory nerve has been broken. Now, after all, we have had quite considerable success with edelweiss, especially in the 10th decimal; or first in the 6th, then in the 10th, to revive the auditory nerve. There have been failures, but basically these have been observed in fairly old people; not really in younger people. I do think you can try this. It is indeed extremely difficult to treat these devitalized nerves; but one can certainly be successful with edelweiss under certain circumstances.

During the war, a female patient had suffered some kind of shock. She believed that her fiancé was dead. She was alone at home and had no one to talk to about it. Since then, she has become epileptic. The attacks always occur before her period. The attacks occur with tongue biting and so on, very typical. As soon as the period begins, it is over. She is in an institution for epileptics, even though the seizures only occur before her period.

How is she treated?

(Answer missing)

In such a case, you start with belladonna. If that doesn't help, you move on to reindeer moss in 6 decimal, and finally you administer fly agaric. It is very difficult to say anything specific in this case without seeing the patient. There could be any number of underlying causes.

A fifty-year-old man had a very hard time in his earlier years. For eleven years he had rheumatoid arthritis, which killed a brother of his. Now there is still a change in the left knee. Until two years ago, he had episodes of blood rushing to his head. Two years ago, a clear change occurred. He gained weight, and the rush of blood to the head disappeared. But what occurred was what he briefly describes as asthma. He has breathing difficulties, he has to gasp for breath when he talks. I have the impression that the problem is now in the bronchial tubes.

At 48 years old. Just as the rush used to be to the head, now it's to the chest. Now it happens that the man sometimes turns a little blue; it just needs to be quiet for him to turn a little blue.

It's possible.

It is very likely that this man is able to convert too much of the oxygen he has taken in into carbonic acid, so that he always has too much carbonic acid in his blood. You can test whether the man does not feel relieved when given air with more oxygen. If that is the case, then it is quite clear. Then the man produces too much carbonic acid, and it is necessary to give this man - what is he? —

- engineer —

to add silicon in the first decimal place, i.e. five percent, and he should be encouraged to do so, if he has taken it, for about half an hour after taking the silicon, to make some kind of mental effort. Then he can get better. He then manages to reduce the excessive carbonic acid production capacity.

We must now conclude, and continue tomorrow in the same vein.

I don't find these types of questions fruitful. The individual gets a lot out of them, but the others don't get much out of them. One should ask more general questions, something more interesting. Tomorrow it should be done a little differently. Don't you agree, Doctor?

I am prepared to answer anything that is asked. You can give a whole lecture on each question. I could have talked about the subject until now, when the first one asked; but then only one person would have had their turn. I think it was quite good to hear something varied. It's not important that we are satisfied, but that the audience is.

I think that something is being done here, as in the way clinics are held at the university, because the way of asking the question does not allow for the other question of how one can develop understanding within oneself.

That would come immediately if a question were asked about it. So tomorrow, ask a question about it, then it can come about. I don't think it's completely useless to go into this question. But other answers come up. We just evaluate them in such a way that the audience can be satisfied.

What about deepening the diagnosis? We can think about a patient in many ways. A lot of questions arise, and one often faces the difficulty of deciding what to do. Intellectually you cannot; you have to make a volitional decision. I would like to ask: Is it not possible to push back this intellectual volitional impulse at that moment, so that what you have to do comes to you? Perhaps you could say something about that?

You mean how one can make the diagnosis more transparent?

In treatment, you are faced with various possibilities. You can't decide whether to use herbal or mineral remedies; you have to decide on something. You should be able to approach the patient from deeper grounds and to merge all these ideas together so that you arrive at knowing that this is the right thing to do.

We will make something up tomorrow and then develop an idealized diagnosis.

In connection with the question raised by Dr. Husemann yesterday, we have decided to read out two cases from the book that Dr. Wegman will soon be publishing. We can then build on the presentation of these cases to address the issues that arise from your question as a need for further knowledge.

Of course, I will ask that these cases be treated with the utmost discretion at first, because they will be an integral part of the forthcoming book.

These cases are intended to show how to arrive at a therapy, especially by means of diagnosis. This is to be made clear, and it is to be done on the basis of anthroposophy. In this book we will not be embarrassed to speak entirely in anthroposophical terms.

Dr. Wegman reads the “Fourth Case” described in the book “Fundamentals of an Expansion of Medicine Based on Spiritual Science” on pages 97ff. [pp. 107ff. in GA 27, 1984]: “A child who was brought to the clinic twice, first at four years old, then at five and a half years old. In addition, the mother and the sister of the mother were present.

It is important that the mother and sister were present, and you will see why in a moment.

"The diagnosis led from the child's illness to that of the mother and sister. We were able to determine the following for the child: it is a twin child, born six weeks prematurely. The other child died in the last embryonic stage. At six weeks the child became ill, screamed an extraordinary amount and was taken to hospital. There the diagnosis was pylorospasm. The child was partially breastfed and partially bottle-fed. At eight months it was discharged from hospital. On arriving home, it had a seizure on the first day, which repeated daily for the first two months. During the attack, the child became stiff and rolled his eyes. Before the attack, the child was anxious and cried. The child also squinted with his right eye and vomited before the attack occurred. At two and a half years of age, another attack occurred that lasted five hours. The child became stiff again and lay there as if dead. At four years of age, an attack occurred that lasted half an hour. For the first time, we were informed that this seizure was accompanied by fever. After the convulsions that occurred after the child was brought back from the hospital, the parents noticed paralysis in the right arm and right leg. At two and a half years old, the child made his first attempt at walking, which turned out that only the left leg could step and the right one was dragged. The right arm also remained without will. The same condition was still present when the child was brought to us. The task was to determine the state of the child's organizational limbs. This was attempted independently of the symptom complex. It turned out that there was a strong atrophy of the etheric body, which in certain parts took up only a very slight influence of the astral body.

That is essentially the finding. We are dealing with an etheric body that is atrophied in the most diverse places and does not absorb the effect of the astral body in the atrophied places. There are such gaps in the etheric body (see drawing). The astral body does not penetrate into the areas where the etheric body is atrophied. This was the case in various parts of the organism.

“The area of the right side of the chest was paralyzed in the etheric body. In contrast, there was something like a hypertrophy of the astral body in the stomach area.”

One must use unusual expressions here, just as the term “hypertrophy” is used for places that are too active, too lively.

"Now the task was to harmonize the symptom complex with these findings. There is undoubtedly a heavy demand on the stomach during digestion due to the astral body, but this is blocked due to the paralysis of the ether body at the transition from the intestines to the lymph vessels. As a result, the blood is malnourished. We must therefore take the nausea symptoms as particularly important symptoms. Cramps always occur when the etheric body becomes atrophic and the astral body gains direct influence on the physical body without the mediation of the etheric body.

This is something important in principle. The occurrence of spasms is based on the fact that the regular connection between the astral body, the etheric body and the physical body is not there. One has to imagine this in such a way that the astral body only acts on the physical body with the help of the etheric body. If there are such atrophic areas, then the astral body takes hold of the physical body to the exclusion of the ether body. Spasm occurs everywhere where this is the case. We know that where spasm occurs, the ether body does not mediate properly between the astral body and the physical body.

"This was present to a high degree in the child. If this condition becomes permanent during the growth period, as was the case here, then those processes that make the motor system suitable for the normal absorption of the will are lost. This was evident in the child in the unusability of the right side. We now had to relate the child's condition to that of the mother. She is 37 years old when she comes to us. She states that she was already as tall as she is now at the age of 13. She had bad teeth early on.

I ask you to note this in particular. She has not grown any more from the age of thirteen until now, so that all her growth up to sexual maturity was complete.

"She had bad teeth early on, suffered from articular rheumatism as a child, claims to have had rickets. Menstruation started relatively early. The patient reports having had a kidney disease at the age of sixteen and also speaks of convulsive conditions she has had. At twenty-five years of age, obstipation due to spasm of the anal sphincter, which had to be stretched. Now she also has spasms during defecation. The findings, established without any conclusion from the complex of symptoms in direct observation, show an extraordinary similarity to those of the child. Only everything appears in a much milder form. It must be borne in mind that the etheric body of a person undergoes a special development between the change of teeth and sexual maturity. In the case of our patient, this is expressed in the fact that the available forces of the etheric body, which are not very strong, only allow for growth up to sexual maturity. With this, the special development of the astral body begins, which, with its hypertrophy, now overgrows the etheric body and intervenes too strongly in the physical organization.

This was the case with both mother and child: the astral body intruded too strongly into the physical body.

"This becomes evident in the arrested growth at the age of thirteen. The patient is by no means dwarfish, but very tall, which is due to the fact that the growth forces of the etheric body, although weak, caused a strong expansion of the physical body when uninhibited by the astral body. These forces were not yet able to intervene regularly in the functions of the physical body. This manifested itself in the occurrence of articular rheumatism and later in convulsive states.

Joint rheumatism is also connected with the fact that the astral body directly engages with the joints of the physical body. This engagement can also cause inflammation where it can occur. So either we are dealing with spasms or with inflammation.

"Due to the weakness of the etheric body, the effect of the astral body on the physical body is particularly strong. This effect is destructive. In the normal course of life, this is balanced out by the anabolic forces at work during sleep when the astral body is separated from the physical and etheric bodies. If the etheric body is too weak, as in the case of our patient, there is an excess of catabolism, which in her case was indicated by the fact that her teeth needed their first filling at the age of 12.

Due to the excessive intervention of the astral body, too much breakdown occurs. The physical body and etheric body build up; the astral body and ego organization break down. If there is now an excess of degrading activity, this is indicated by the fact that she has to wear fillings at the age of twelve. Each time she has become pregnant, her teeth have become worse.

"If the etheric body is particularly stressed, as in pregnancy, the teeth deteriorate each time. The weakness of the etheric body in relation to its connection with the astral body is still particularly evident in the frequency of dreams and in the healthy sleep that the patient has, despite all the irregularity.

If there is complete regularity in the connection between the astral body, etheric body and physical body, there is no excess of dreams. The moment the astral body can predominate because the etheric body is weakened, frequent and vivid dreams occur. And because the astral body is strong, it can easily come out and the sleep still remains healthy.

"The weakness of the etheric body is also evident from the fact that foreign processes take place in the physical body that are not mastered by the etheric body, and these show up in the urine as protein, isolated hyaline cylinders and salts.

These are the decomposition products that form due to the hypertrophy of the astral body. They must always be sought when one is dealing with a hypertrophy of the astral body.

"The relationship of these disease processes to those of the mother's sister is remarkable. The findings regarding the composition of the parts of the human being are almost exactly the same. Weak etheric body, hence predominance of the astral body. Only the astral body itself is weaker than in the sister. Therefore, just as in the sister, the menses begin early, but instead of inflammations, she experiences mere pains that arise from irritation of the organs, for example, the joints.

This is really very interesting. The mother and child have almost the same disease constitution. The sister, who is walking at the same time, only has weaker symptoms, everything to a lesser extent, everything, I would say, en miniature, in hints.

"The etheric body must be particularly active in the joints if vitality is to be normal. If the activity of the aetheric body is weak, the activity of the physical body becomes predominant, which is evident here in swelling and chronic arthritis. The weakness of the astral body, which has too little effect on subjective feeling, is indicated by a preference for sweet foods, which increase the astral body's sensitivity.

This is very interesting. In order to arrive at a diagnosis, one must actually ask what the person concerned likes to eat: sweet or bitter things, a preference for these or those sensory impressions. Some have a peculiar weakness with regard to olfactory impressions. All this shows that the astral body is to be engaged somehow. This preference of the astral body shows that it is not engaged; it is engaged immediately when it has sweets.

"If the weak astral body is still worn out by daytime life, then, if the weakness persists, the pains become more significant. The patient complains of increased pain in the evenings. The connection between the conditions of the three patients points in the ascension to the generation preceding the two sisters, in particular to the grandmother of the child. The cause must be sought in the latter. The disturbed equilibrium between the astral and etheric bodies in all three patients can only be explained by an equivalent disturbance in the grandmother of the child. This irregularity must be due to the defective formation of the embryonic organs of nourishment, especially of the allantois, in the grandmother's astral and etheric bodies.

This case is particularly interesting because it can be seen that the cause really lies in the inadequate development of the allantois of the grandmother. The whole condition of this astral body, which of course manifests itself more strongly in one person, the mother, and to a lesser extent in the other, can be traced back to the grandmother. It is not bound to one part, but constitutionally goes through the whole astral body and can only go back to that peculiar formation, the allantois, the embryonic period.

We have here an occult finding that must be taken up. But once we have come across it, the individual phenomena are quite suitable for verification. We must definitely get into the habit of verifying the causes from the causes. The composition of the symptoms actually only gives an unclear picture.

“This defective formation of the allantois must be sought in all three patients. We first established it in a purely spiritual scientific way. The physical allantois metamorphoses, passing over into the spiritual, into the efficiency of the forces of the astral body.”

What is more, we could only hint at this as a principle, in the physical allantois, which can only be embryonic as well; the entire organs that are present in the embryo are present in the born human being as the higher limbs. What is a physical accessory organ is, spiritually, in the adult state, so that we only have to see the physical correlate of the embryonic period in the allantois.

"A degenerated allantois produces a diminished efficiency of the astral body, which manifests itself particularly in all motor organs. All this is the case with the three patients. One can really recognize the nature of the allantois from that of the astral body.

It is important to know that the amnion is the physical correlate of the etheric body, the allantois is the physical correlate of the astral body, and the chorion is the physical correlate of the I organization of the adult.

"It will be seen from this that our reference to the ascendants does not come from a daring fantasy conclusion, but from a real spiritual scientific observation.

To those who may be disturbed by this truth, we would say that our statements are not motivated by a desire for paradox, but by a desire to share this knowledge with everyone. The mystical concepts of inheritance will always remain obscure if we are afraid to recognize the metamorphosis from the physical to the spiritual and vice versa in the succession of generations.

In therapeutic terms, such an insight can only lead to a view of the point at which the healing process is to be applied.

Now it moves into the therapeutic.

"If one had not been referred to the hereditary in such a way, but had simply noticed the irregularities in the connection between the etheric and astral bodies, one would have applied remedies that would have worked on these two parts of the person. But these would have remained ineffective in our case because the damage, which goes back generations, lies too deep to be balanced out in these links of the human organization itself.

It is particularly important that we consider this case. What is presented here ties in with yesterday's question. If one simply had the finding that the astral body and the etheric body are not in intimate harmony, one would have to take this or that remedy — then one would hardly achieve any particular effect. If one goes strictly further to the cause, then the therapy also becomes clearer. By being led away from direct observation into the succession of generations, the way was pointed to strict exactness.

"In such a case one must work upon the ego-organization and bring to bear in it everything that has to do with the harmonizing and strengthening of the etheric and astral bodies. This can be achieved by acting on the ego organization with, so to speak, intensified sensory stimuli (sensory stimuli act on the ego organization). In the case of the child, this was attempted in the following way: a bandage of the right hand was applied with a five percent pyrite ointment and at the same time the left half of the head was rubbed with emperor's sponge ointment.

And now we have the therapy: we work directly on the hand with pyrite, iron sulphide. This enables us to influence the astral body and the etheric body at the same time, thereby bringing about harmonization. We must work to bring the etheric body and the astral body closer together. This is the basis for healing. And for that we must apply means that go beyond the immediate, because it has been going on for generations.

"Pyrite, a compound of iron and sulfur, when applied externally, stimulates the I-organization to make the astral body more lively and to increase its affinity to the ether body. The substance of the Emperor's mushroom, with its special content of organized nitrogen, works in such a way that an effect emanates from the head, which, through the ego organization, makes the ether body more lively and increases its affinity to the astral body. The healing process was supported by eurythmy therapy, which sets the ego organization itself in lively activity. Thus, what is applied externally is guided into the depths of the organization. The healing process thus initiated was then further strengthened by means of measures that were intended to make the astral and etheric bodies particularly sensitive to the effect of the ego organization. In a rhythmic daily sequence, the following treatments were applied: baths with a decoction of Solidago, back rubs with a decoction of Stellaria media, and internally, tea made from willow bark (which particularly affects the receptivity of the astral body) and Stannum 0.001 (which particularly makes the etheric body receptive). We also gave poppy juice in a weak dosage to make the damaged self-organization recede in the face of the healing effects.

The mother received more the last therapy because, as a generation older, the forces of heredity had less effect. The same applies to the mother's sister. While the child was still in the clinic, we were able to see that it was easier to direct and that it was in a better mental state. For example, it became more obedient; and the movements it otherwise made very awkwardly, it now made more skillfully. Afterwards, the aunt told us that a great change had taken place with the child. It has become calmer, the excess of involuntary movements has decreased; it has become so skilled that it can play alone; and in terms of the soul, the former stubbornness has disappeared."

Perhaps you would like to say something? In this way, the diagnosis leads to the therapy. This is where the higher aspects of human nature come into play. The starting point is the clinical picture. In this case, the starting point is as follows: the sick organism was subject to a process that takes a certain course. This process must be reversed. By properly understanding the process, one arrives at the point of reversing the process by realizing how not only an organ, but the entire human interior is related to what is happening in the world.

So let us say you want to recognize how to treat some kind of damage, say to the gall bladder. Then you have to study the opposite process in the outside world; at least take this opposite process as an aid. If you recognize one of them, say, as the incoming process, you recognize the other as the outgoing process and thus have the closed circuit. Is there perhaps another question?

Sometimes with adults, sometimes with those who are psychically agile, one can arrive at a diagnosis. I have also tried this with children; but I have the impression that I have gone too far in this kind of diagnosis.

That you did not achieve what you intended by penetrating the soul? This is something that may be true or may be false. It depends entirely on how far one is able to coax the things one wants out of the child, and also on whether the child is communicative or not. It also depends on the memory effect; and on whether the right things from the soul are elicited. In principle, the child can give really great things, especially when there are condensed soul phenomena. If you expect the childish and it tells what it has seen of condensed soul phenomena, you can look very deeply into irregularities; these are always the correlate of this. You have to look at the case individually.

With adults, of course, it is fairly easy to penetrate the soul if you know the soul organism as such, if you know that people tell you anything. Now you move forward. Most of the time what they tell is not true. First of all, the patient does not say how it is. Now you have to find something to latch onto. You come across something that is mostly true. Once you have grasped that, you can move on. You have to distinguish whether one thing is true in relation to the other. An animal that has the beak of an eagle cannot at the same time have the feet of an ostrich. In the same way, things in the soul fit together. You have to guide the patient towards this. Until you have found the right point, you believe everything, that is, you believe nothing, but you make him understand that you believe everything. Once you have hooked on a point where the matter must be true, you then draw his attention very sharply to what cannot be. You then get a kind of soul organism that points very strongly to the physical organism. So it is useful to be based on a mental diagnosis.

A participant comments.

The direction you indicated yesterday is this: I make a diagnosis and then have the diagnosis before me. I know that when this turns out, these remedies are available to me. I can choose from among them. Now you wanted to know: how can one actually choose? The answer can only be given by saying: If I can choose between several remedies, I must assume that I have not yet completed the diagnosis and must continue the diagnosis until I arrive at a definite remedy. There is no such thing as an arbitrary choice. This was truly a happy case, and I was amazed. The fact that one goes from the condition of the child to the allantois of the grandmother is something that does not otherwise occur in the diagnosis. I was extremely astonished that this was the motif; on the other hand, the result shows that one must try to penetrate to the last cause.

Dr. Wegman reads the “Fifth Case” described in the book mentioned at the beginning on pages 114-116:

"A 26-year-old female patient came to our clinic with the severe consequences of influenza, which she had suffered through in 1918 with lung catarrh, and which had followed a pleurisy that had occurred in 1917. Since the flu, the patient had been unable to fully recover. In 1920, she was very emaciated, weak, and had a slight fever and night sweats. Soon after the flu, she developed lower back pain that continued to worsen until late 1920; and then, with severe pain, a curvature appeared in the lower back. There was also swelling of the right index finger. A rest cure supposedly brought improvement of the back pain. When she came to us as a patient, she had a suppurative abscess on the right thigh, distended abdomen with some ascites and catarrhal noises over the lung tips, both on the right and left. Digestion and appetite are good. Urine is concentrated, showing traces of protein. The spiritual scientific examination showed: hypersensitivity of the astral body and the ego organization; such an abnormality initially expresses itself in the ether body in that it does not develop the actual ether functions, but an etheric imprint of the astral functions.

This is very interesting when, as in this case, the etheric body is so weak that it does not perform its own functions but acts as a matrix, like wax, into which the astral body imprints its own functions. We have an etheric body that actually acts as a masked astral body. This is the case here.

"The astral functions are destructive. Therefore, vitality and the normal process in the physical organs must show signs of atrophy. This is always connected with processes that are, as it were, not human, but which take place in the human organism.

We must be strict about this. When something enters the human organism, whether it is from some aggregate state or warm air and so on, it must undergo a change in the human organism – roughly speaking, within the human skin. Nothing is the same outside of and within the human organism. The human organism has to work through everything that comes from outside. No heating process may take place in the body as it does in stone, where a temperature simply passes through and warms the stone. If we are warmed from the outside, like an inorganic body, we process the warmth that approaches us so deeply that it is completely revitalized. If a cold occurs, even if it is an internal cold of the internal organs, it does not come from within, but from an external imposition of heat.

This goes all the way down to the metabolic states. When a substance enters, it must be transformed in the human organism, right down to its most intimate processes. If we have ingested something – let's say a carbohydrate – another process takes place in the organism. The carbon-hydrogen-oxygen process, which takes place outside of human nature, must not be there in the same way. There is a process in the human being that is foreign to human nature. This is the basis for all disease states that are based on metabolic deposits. All of them are basically based on the fact that heat processes do not occur through the human being himself, but rather processes that arise as actual processes of matter because the human organization is not strong enough in some part. If, for example, the ego organization is too weak, one will find that the fat taken in is not processed in the right way. If the astral organization is too weak, one will find that carbohydrates are not processed properly. If the aether organization is too weak, one will find that the protein taken in is not processed in the right way. This is something to be aware of.

"The abscess, back pain, bloating, catarrhal phenomena in the lungs and also the inadequate processing of protein are caused by this. The aim of the therapy is to reduce the sensitivity of the astral body and the ego organization. This is achieved by administering silicic acid, which always strengthens the power of self-healing in the face of sensitivity.

So silicic acid always strengthens the power of self-healing in the face of sensitivity.

“We did this by adding powdered silicic acid to food and giving it as enemas. We also reduced sensitivity by placing mustard plasters on the lower back. Its effect is based on the fact that it causes sensitivity on its own and thus reduces it for the astral body and the ego organization.”

You see how one helps oneself: one applies mustard plasters to the lower back; this causes artificial sensitivity. This artificial sensitivity takes away the inner sensitivity of the astral body, thus creating an intimation. This is often the case when something is wrong in the human limbs, creating an intimation; in this case, a strong intimation of the astral body downwards. If it becomes strong enough, the sensitivity is no longer there. The sensitivity of the astral body decreases downwards. If the sensitivity moves upwards, it is increased.

"Through a process that dampens the hypersensitivity of the astral body in the digestive tract, we achieve a diversion of this astral activity to the etheric body, where it normally belongs. We achieved this by administering small doses of copper and carbo animalis. We counteract the possibility that the etheric body withdraws from the normal digestive activity to which it is unaccustomed by administering pancreatic juice.

This is only a help, a last resort.

"The abscess was punctured a few times. Large quantities of pus were drained off by aspiration. The abscess shrank and the swelling of the abdomen decreased as the pus formation steadily diminished and finally disappeared. While the pus was still flowing, we were surprised one day by a renewed rise in temperature. This did not seem inexplicable to us, since, given the constitution of the astral body described above, even slight psychic agitation can cause such fever. However, one must distinguish between the explicability of the fever in such cases and its severely damaging effect. For under the given conditions, such fever is virtually the mediator for a profound intervention of the catabolic processes in the organism. And one must immediately ensure a strengthening of the etheric body so that it paralyzes the damaging effect of the astral body. We used highly potentized silver injections and achieved a decrease in fever. The patient left the clinic with a 20-pound weight gain and in a strengthened condition. We are under no illusion that in this case, a follow-up treatment is still needed to consolidate the healing."

So the case is intended to show how one can really come to use therapeutically what is otherwise said more theoretically about the astral body and the etheric body. One can now be faced with the question that has always been raised by “well-meaning” people: Should one use the terms that have been used here as the naked truth and reality, or should one conceal them? “Well-meaning” people have said that one should not speak of the etheric body, but of functional processes or something similar. You can't get as far as the astral body that way. The fact of the matter is that most illnesses are not grasped in their essence if one does not go up to the astral body. The damage caused by the organization of the ego, that is, the severe damage caused by metabolic deposits: here the situation is such that this damage is already clearly present. On the other hand, the more insidious damage is the catabolic damage caused by the astral body. One really has to be very careful when talking about this.

Now the situation will be such that one can simply say – yes, that is what many people will say – one should not come to people with the astral body and the etheric body. But if you don't approach people with that, there is no reason at all to believe that something new is being presented here. People think that only a little of one or the other has been changed here, that it is done here just as it is done elsewhere, that at most there is a little progress. It is not like that! And that must be made clear to people with all the radical clarity. If one shows that these are not abstract things, but rather, in these many very concrete individual cases, points out how the individual cases are constituted, and then shows how the diagnosis leads into the therapy, and how, as soon as the therapy is applied, the healing progresses: it is indeed the case that this must be understood, otherwise one would have to despair of humanity's ability to understand at all. I am completely convinced that only this method can help us: to say things very boldly and courageously.

The question is how the scientific picture presents itself in the intimate study of carcinoma.

In the case of carcinoma, we are dealing with the fact that a sense organ is evoked at a point in the organization where there is no reason to evoke a sense organ. Take, I would like to say, the most radical sensory organization – just to understand the matter – take the eye. How does the eye come about? You know that it is actually formed partly from the outside; it is incorporated into the organism. Roughly speaking, the organism leaves out the eye socket. Then the eye is embedded. This indicates that essentially extra-human processes are at work in the formation of the eye. The eye is only embraced by the human being. When we have such a striking sensory organ as the eye, we can say that a foreign body is incorporated into the human organism. This is a radical concept because it is so unusual. Nothing like the shape of the lens or vitreous humor, or the substantial composition of the lens or vitreous humor, would ever arise from the human organism. Now, all that is deposited, which is partly even in the eye ethereal, not merely physical, is embraced by the astral body and the ego organization, which are actually as emancipated as possible from the physical and etheric in the eye. In the eye, the connection between the I, the astral body, the etheric body and the physical body is quite different than, let us say, in a piece of muscle. In a piece of calf muscle, you see a very intimate connection between the ego, the astral body, the aetheric body and the physical body. This is the normal constitution in this respect. If I were to write a chemical formula to describe the eye, I would say that the ego and the astral body are closely connected (see drawing I and A), and the other two are also closely connected! There is only a loose affinity between the etheric body and the astral body. This is only the case with the eye.

With other sense organs, for example with the ear, it is not so, there it cannot be so pronounced. There is actually a loose affinity between the ego organization and the astral body and again between the physical body and the ether body. It is somewhat different for each sense.

If there is a tendency towards a sense organization somewhere in the human organism where there should be no sense organization - and the tendency can arise in any part of the human organism; what should happen in another place, the tendency for it can arise in any other place - then you can see how the physical body and ether body on the one hand, and the astral body and I on the other, fall apart.

Take a very specific case. In the case of a severe physical insult, say to the mammary gland, the impact continues inwards in such a way that it shows, roughly speaking, a line of action within the skin that originates from the outside – in other words, a mechanical insult that continues inwards. In most cases of breast cancer, this will be the real origin. It could only be a prolonged process of overheating or burning. In the sense I am describing here, it will always be an insult that brings this about, speaking externally. Now, in this case, something occurs that strongly suggests the astral body at this point, which is otherwise absorbed by the etheric body. When the astral body suddenly appears at this point, it shows itself in, I would say, dim light; it appears as if it were burning. When it becomes so noticeable, then there is a tendency at this point towards the formation of a sensory effect, a carcinoma develops. There it is not a question of at least starting with the first seven vaccinations.

The connections there become particularly interesting when you see how one is connected with the other. Suppose you have someone who is no longer quite young. You are obliged to remove the carcinoma. But the thing that is present in a fairly strongly developed carcinoma manifests itself in such a way that actually in the whole body, because the organism is one entity, there is a tendency to allow non-human processes to take place. The carcinoma changes in its course in a very strange way. After a while, the localized carcinoma becomes a valve for concentrating the carcinomatous development. If you cut out the carcinoma, the valve is suddenly gone. But if you are dealing with an older person, this tendency to have something non-human in the person leads to the valve being in the lungs, which is the organ that most absorbs the inorganic, non-human. Therefore, especially in the case of carcinoma present in old age, you will dissolve the process into pneumonia. If the organism is sclerotic, the process in old age ends in pneumonia. This is because the old organism takes in the extra-human even more and more easily than the younger one. The organ that most easily takes in extra-human processes is the lung; it is damaged in the process. There is an organ that can easily absorb extra-human processes and is not damaged by them; that is the liver. It is very thick-skinned against extra-human processes. The lungs absorb them, but are damaged by them. That is the essential thing, that the lungs absorb easily and are damaged by it.

Question about the heritability of the predisposition to carcinomas.

This is connected with acquired ideas. In itself, there is no inclination in humans to fear carcinoma. This can be seen from the fact that this fear actually only exists among civilized people of educated classes. Country folk have no fear. They carry the carcinoma, die of it, without having had any knowledge of it. This is something that depends on education, and one must work against it.

To what extent is supersensible vision necessary in these two cases, and how is it applied?

The processes must be as follows: First of all, in order to get started at all, one must have complete mastery of spiritual scientific observation – this becomes apparent over time – and see how what can be established spiritually is connected with outward symptoms. If nothing else is indicated, then the purely spiritual finding is always apparent.

How does it express itself outwardly?

On the other hand, one could just as well say that it should, of course, be meditative. You can meditate on rheumatoid arthritis, you can meditate on diabetes. But that would only drive you back. Meditating on a disease process according to the symptoms is a very good way to arrive at spiritual scientific observation. It is just not easy to go the other way around. You can even do it like the homeopaths, who put together the symptom complex and then do the therapy. Only there it happens – I don't even say it can, I know it is so – again and again that symptoms are overestimated and underestimated, that they are put together wrongly, so that sometimes a symptom complex put together by homeopaths is a caricature of reality. When you meditate on this, you meditate on caricatures. If you have a real spiritual cause, that is decisive for the complex of symptoms, then you do not overestimate or underestimate any of the symptoms. You will have noticed that the symptoms we have presented are not caricatures, but well-formed complexes of symptoms. When you meditate, you come to the impossibility of making spiritual findings. And if someone says that is not possible, I must say: try it, but not with a randomly composed complex of symptoms, but with one that has been established by spiritual science.

What is eurythmy based on?

In the human organism everything is based on the fact that a conscious element goes back to an unconscious one. Eurythmy is based on the fact that when a human being comes into the world and wants to express himself, he does not lack a language as such, but the expression in the use of the movements of the limbs. This is rejected, he is not allowed to do it and cannot do it. Today this is not noticed, because it has already been beaten back by inheritance. All this integrates itself, metamorphoses itself, comes out bound to the air and lives itself into language. If one knows how this has lived itself into language, one knows that this is the origin of language, then one goes back from the movements to the language, in reverse order of consciousness. Here too it is the same: spiritual scientific diagnosis illuminates the symptom complex. If one forms it and meditates on it, one comes back to spiritual scientific diagnosis. I have to leave it at these three hours; I hope that we will meet again. But if you come more often, the little social being will become the key to future work.

In any case, it was nice to be able to talk about things again.

Automated Translation

This is the 1st of 15 lectures given by Rudolf Steiner at Dornach in 1920. The series of lectures is entitled: Physiological Therapy Based on Spiritual Science. Another name of this lecture is: Health Care as a Social Issue.

It is never doubted that the Social Question is one of the problems that is looming largest in the thought of the present age. Wherever there is any understanding at all of the events that occur in the course of the evolution of human history, of the sinister or incipiently fruitful impulses for the future—all these matters are included under the “Social Question.” It must, however, be said that the point of view from which these social problems are regarded and the way in which they are handled at the present time, suffers from the basic evil inherent in so many spheres of our mental and moral life—I mean the intellectualism obtaining in our age. For these problems are indeed so often limited by the angle of intellectualistic study. No matter whether the social question is approached from the “left” or “right” wing, the purely intellectualistic nature of the different conceptions is revealed in the fact that people start from certain theories: this or that ought to be done, this or that ought to be stamped out.

Little account is taken of the human being himself. Human beings are treated just as if there were one generality—“Man.” No attention is paid to the personal and distinctive qualities of individual human beings. And this is why our whole conception of the social question has become abstract, so seldom grasping the social feelings and sentiments playing between man and man. This lack of social observation becomes most clearly evident when we turn to a special domain like that of hygiene—a domain which possibly is more prone than many others to be the subject of sociological study, inasmuch as it is a public affair, concerning not the individual human being alone but the whole of society.

True, there is no lack of advice on the subject of hygiene, no lack of treatises and writings on the subject of the care of health as a public concern. Yet one cannot help asking: What is the real attitude of social life to all these injunctions and regulations about hygiene? And the answer is, that when the conclusions reached by medical or physiological science on this matter are made public either by the written or by the spoken word, it is the trust reposed by man in a “profession,” the inner nature of which he is not able to put to the test, which is supposed to be the basis upon which such precepts may be accepted. Wide circles of people whose concern it is—as indeed it is the concern of everyone—accept simply on authority all that finds its way on the subject of hygiene, from medical laboratories to the outside world. But those who are convinced that in the course of modern history during the last four centuries a longing has arisen among mankind for a democratic ordering of affairs, find themselves faced with the entirely undemocratic nature of this “trust in authority” that is demanded in the sphere of hygiene. In short, this undemocratic attitude confronts the longing for democracy which has reached its height to-day, although frequently in a highly contradictory form.

I know that what I have just said may seem paradoxical, for people do not place the unquestioning acceptance of everything related to the care of health side by side with the democratic demand that affairs of public interest concerning every mature man and woman shall be arbitrated by the people in general, either directly or indirectly through their representatives. True, it may be impossible to apply essentially democratic principles in the sphere of public hygiene, because these things depend on the judgment of specialists. But on the other hand one cannot help asking: ought not an attempt be made to apply such democratic principles as are possible in modern conditions to a sphere like that of public health which so intimately concerns both the individual and the community?

A great deal is said to-day about the necessity for proper air, light, nourishment, sanitation, and so forth, but the regulations laid down in regard to these things cannot, as a rule, be tested by those to whom they apply. Now please do not misunderstand me. I do not want to be accused in this lecture of taking any particular side. I have no desire to uphold ancient superstitions of devils and demons passing in and out of human beings in the form of disease, nor to support the modern superstitions that bacilli and bacteria cause the different diseases. We need not consider to-day whether we are really faced with the results of the spiritualistic superstitions of earlier times, or with the superstitions of materialism. I want rather to consider something that permeates the whole culture of our age, especially in so far as this culture is determined by the convictions of modern science. We are assured to-day that the materialism of the middle and last third of the nineteenth century has been overcome, but this statement does not pass muster with those who really know the nature of materialism and of its opposite. The most one can say is that materialism has been overcome by a few people here and there. These people realise that the facts of modern science no longer justify the general explanation that everything in existence is merely a mechanical, physical or chemical process taking place in matter. But the fact that a few people here or there have come to this conclusion does not mean that materialism has been overcome, for it is equally true that when it is a question of concrete explanation or concrete thought, even these people—and the others as a matter of course--still reveal a materialistic tendency. True, it is said that atoms and molecules are only convenient units of calculation (and here what is implied is that atoms and molecules are made of the substance of thought)—but the mode of observation is nevertheless atomistic and molecular in character. When we are explaining world-phenomena from the behaviour and relations of atomic and molecular processes, the point is not whether we conceive any thought, feeling or activity to be inseparable from material processes in atoms or molecules. The point is the orientation of the attitude of our soul and Spirit when our explanation is based upon the atomic theory—the theory of smallest entities. The point is not whether verbally or mentally a man is convinced that there is something more than the material action of atoms, but whether his mind and spirit can give explanations other than the atomic basis of phenomena. In short, the essential thing is not what we believe, but how we explain—in a word, our attitude of soul. And here it must be said that only a true Anthroposophical Spiritual Science can help to get rid of the evil of which I have spoken.

I want to prove concretely that this is so. There is hardly anything more confusing than the distinctions which are so often emphasised to-day between man's bodily nature and his nature of soul and Spirit, between physical diseases and so-called psychical or mental diseases. The concrete distinctions and relations between such facts of human life as a diseased body and an apparently diseased soul, suffer from the materialistic, atomistic mode of thought. For what is the real essence of the materialism that has gradually come to be the world-conception of so many modern men, and that far from being overcome, is to-day in its prime? The essence of this materialism is not that people observe the material processes in the body and reverently study the marvellous structure and functions of the nerves and other organs, but that the Spirit has departed from the study of these material processes. People look into the world of matter and see only matter and material processes.

What Spiritual Science must emphasise, however, is briefly this: Wherever material processes are presented to the senses—and these are the only processes which modern science will admit as valid and exact—they are but the outer manifestation, the outer revelation of active spiritual forces lying behind and within them. Now it is not typical of Spiritual Science to observe a human being and say: “There is his physical body—a sum-total of material processes—but he does not consist of this alone. Independently of this he has an immortal soul.” It is far from being characteristic of a spiritual conception of the world to speak like this and then build up all manner of abstract, mystical theories about this immortal soul that is independent of the body.

We can only be spiritual scientists in the true sense when we realise that this material body, with its material processes, is a creation of the Spirit and soul. We must learn to understand in every detail the way in which the soul and Spirit—which were there before birth, or rather, before conception—are fashioning and moulding the structure and the “material” processes of the human body. We must be able to perceive the immediate unity of the body and the soul-and-Spirit, and realise that through the working of these principles the body as such is gradually destroyed. The body undergoes a partial death with every moment that passes, but it is only at actual death that there is a radical expression of what has been happening to the body all the time, as a result of the working of the soul-and-Spirit. We are not spiritual scientists in the true sense until we have concrete realisation of this living interplay, this living interaction between the soul and every single part of the body, and are able to say: The soul and Spirit descend into concrete processes, into the functions of liver, breathing, the action of heart, brain and so forth. In short, when we are describing the material part of man, we must know how to portray the body as the direct offspring of Spirit. Spiritual Science is able to place a true value on matter because, in the different concrete processes, it does not merely observe what is there before the eye or conjectured by the abstract concepts of modern science, but because it shows how the Spirit works in matter, and it looks with reverence at the material workings of the Spirit.

That is one essential point. The other is that such a conception guards man against all the abstract tittle-tattle about a soul independent of the bodily nature—for so far as the life between birth and death is concerned, man can only spin fantasies about this. Between birth and death (with the exception of the time of sleep), the being of soul and Spirit is so utterly given up to the bodily activities that it lives in them, manifests in them. We must be able to observe the being of soul and Spirit outside the range of earthly life, realising that existence between birth and death is but the outcome of the soul and Spirit. Then we can behold the actual unity of the soul and Spirit with the physical elements of the body. This is Anthroposophical Spiritual Science, for we know in very truth that the human being as we perceive him with all his organs and structures has been created by the soul and Spirit. Mystical and theosophical ideas may evolve all manner of high-sounding theories about a spirituality that is free of the body, but such ideas can never serve the concrete sciences of life. They can only pander to an intellectualistic or psychic craving which would like to be rid of outer life and then weave fantasies about the soul and Spirit in order to induce a state of inner satisfaction.

In this Anthroposophical Movement of ours it behoves us to work earnestly and sincerely to develop a Spiritual Science which will be able to bring life into physics, mathematics, chemistry, physiology, biology, anthropology. No purpose is served by making statements in a religious or philosophical sense to the effect that man bears an immortal soul within him, and then working in the different branches of science just as if we were concerned merely with material processes. Knowledge of the soul and Spirit must be applied to the very details of life, to the marvellous structure of the body itself. You will come across many mystics and theosophists who love to chatter about man being composed of physical body, etheric body, astral body and Ego. And yet they have no idea what a wonderful manifestation of soul-life it is when one blows one's nose! The point is that we must see in matter a manifestation of the Spiritual. Then we have healthy ideas of the Spirit—ideas that are full of content, and with them a Spiritual Science that may be fruitful for all the ordinary sciences of life.

This again will make it possible to overcome elements which, on account of the materialistic trend of scientific knowledge, have led to specialisation in the various branches of science. Now I have no desire whatever to deliver a philippic against specialisation, for I am well aware of its usefulness. Certain domains of life must be dealt with by specialists simply because they need a specialised technique. The point I would make is that a man who holds fast to the material can never reach a conception of the world applicable to the practical details of life when he becomes a specialist in the ordinary sense. For the range of material processes is infinite, both outside in Nature and within the human being. We may devote a long time—as long at any rate as professional people devote to their training to the study of the nervous system in man, for instance, but if material processes are all that we see in the working of the nervous system—processes which are then described according to the abstract concepts of modern science—we shall never be led to any universal principle or to anything upon which a conception of the world can be based. Directly we begin to study the nervous system in the sense of Spiritual Science we shall inevitably find that the Spirit we see active there, leads us to the soul and Spirit underlying the systems of muscles, bones and senses and so forth. For the Spirit does not “separate off” into single parts as does the material. Very briefly expressed, the Spirit unfolds like an organism. Just as we cannot truly study a human being if we merely look at his five fingers and cover the rest of him up, so in Spiritual Science we cannot observe a single detail without being led by the soul and Spirit within this detail, to a Whole. If we should happen to become brain or nerve specialists, we should then still be able, in observing the single part, to form a picture of the human being as a whole. We should reach a universal principle able to form part of a conception of the world, and then we could begin to speak of specialised subjects in a way intelligible to every healthy-minded, reasonable human being.

This is the great difference between the way in which Spiritual Science is able to speak about the human being and the way in which materialistic science is bound, by its very nature, to speak. If as men and women who in the ordinary course of things do not know very much about the nervous system, you try to read a scientific text-book on the subject, you will probably soon lay it aside. At all events you will not learn much that will help you to realise the worth and dignity of the being of man. If, however, you listen to what Spiritual Science has to say about the nervous system you are everywhere led to the whole being of man. Such illumination is cast on the nature of man that the idea arising within you suggests the worth, the essence and the dignity of the human being.

We realise the truth of this not so much when we are observing merely a single part of the healthy human being, but when we are observing the man who is ill—where there are so many deviations from the so-called normal condition. Now if we can observe the whole human being under the influence of some disease, all that Nature reveals to us in the sick man leads us deeply into cosmic connections. We understand the particular constitution of this human being, how the atmospheric and extra-earthly influences are working on him as the result of his particular constitution, and we are then able to relate his organisation to the various substances of Nature that will have a remedial effect. When we add to our understanding of the healthy man all we learn from observation of the sick man, profound insight into the deeper connections and meaning of life will arise.

And such insight becomes in turn the foundation for a knowledge of man that is intelligible to everyone. True, we have not as yet accomplished very much in this direction, for Spiritual Science as we intend it, has only been in existence for a short time. The lectures given here therefore must only be thought of as a beginning.¹ But, by its very nature, Spiritual Science is able to work upon and develop what is contained in the several sciences in such a way that a knowledge which everyone ought to possess of the being of man, can really be offered to the world.

And now think what it will mean if Spiritual Science succeeds in transforming science in this way—succeeds in developing forms of knowledge relating to men in health and disease that are accessible to ordinary human consciousness. If Spiritual Science succeeds in this, how different will be the relations of one human being to another in social life! There will be far greater understanding in the relation of human beings to each other than there is to-day when men pass each other by without either having the slightest understanding of the individuality of the other. The social question will be lifted away from its intellectualistic character when the several branches of life are based upon objective knowledge and concrete experience. This applies very specially to the domain of health and the care of health. Think of the effect which a true understanding of health and disease in our fellow-men would have in social life. Think what it would mean if the care of health were taken in hand by the whole of humanity with understanding! Of course there must be no scientific or medical dilettantism—most emphatically not. But if understanding for the health and ill-health of our fellow-beings can be awakened—understanding that grows from a true conception of man think of the effect it would have in social life. Then indeed it would be realised that social reform and reconstruction must proceed in their different branches from real knowledge and not from Marxian theories and the like. Such theories lose sight of the human being as such, and want to organise the world on the basis of purely abstract concepts. Healing can never spring from abstract concepts, but only from a true knowledge of the different spheres of life. And hygiene, the care of health, is a very important domain, for it leads us immediately to all the joy that falls to the lot of our fellow-men when their mode of life is healthy and to their sufferings and limitations when the elements of disease lie within them.

When those who are concerned in developing a knowledge of man in health and disease, and those who actually become doctors, have this attitude towards social life, they will be able to shed light on its problems, for they will have true understanding. The position of the doctor nowadays is that those who are not his personal friends or relatives go to his surgery to fetch him when someone is in pain or has broken a leg. When men have knowledge of the kind I have described, the doctor will be a teacher who is continually giving instruction and indicating means for prophylactic hygiene. The doctor will not only be called in to heal when disease has reached a point where men realise they are ill, but he will always be working to keep them healthy—so far as this is possible. In short there will be a living, social relationship between the doctors and the rest of the community. And, moreover, this healthy influence will make itself felt in the domain of Medicine itself.

For the very reason that materialism has also spread into the medical conception of life, we have developed extraordinary ideas about illness. On the one side we are faced with all the physical diseases. They are investigated by observing the different organs, or the various processes which are thought to be of a physical nature and are to be found within the confines of the human skin. Then the goal is to seek to rectify what is wrong. In this case, thought about the body of men in its normal and abnormal conditions is wholly materialistic.

Then there are so-called psychical or mental diseases. As a result of materialistic thinking these are considered to be diseases of the brain or nervous system, although efforts have been made to find the causes in other organic systems of the human being. But because people are quite ignorant of the way in which the Spirit and soul work in the healthy body, they are unable to connect these diseases of the Spirit and soul in a rational way with what is actually taking place in the human organism.

Spiritual Science is able to show in every detail how all so-called mental and psychical disease has its source in disturbances of the organs, in enlargements and contractions of the organs in man. A so-called mental or psychical disease is always the result of some irregularity in an organ, in the heart, the liver, the lungs and so on. A Spiritual Science that has developed to the point of knowing how the Spirit acts in a normal heart, is also able to discover in the deterioration or irregularity of the heart, the cause of a diseased life of Spirit or soul.

The greatest fault of materialism is not that it denies the existence of the Spirit. Religion can see to it that due recognition is paid to the Spirit. The greatest sin of materialism is that it gives us no knowledge of matter because, in effect, it only observes the outer side of matter. What is lacking in materialism is that it has no insight into matter! Take, for instance, psycho-analytical treatments, where attention is wholly directed to something that has taken place in the soul and is described as a “complex”—a pure abstraction. Whereas the right way to proceed is to study how certain impressions which have been made on the soul of the human being at some period of his life and which are normally bound up with a healthy organism, have come into contact with defective organs, with a diseased instead of a healthy liver, for example. And it must be remembered that this may have happened a very long time before the moment when the defect becomes organically perceptible.

There is no need for Spiritual Science to be afraid of showing how so-called mental or psychical disease is invariably connected with some organic phenomenon or other in the body of man. Spiritual Science must show with all emphasis that when a “soul-complex”—a deviation from the so-called “normal life of soul”—is studied, the most that can be achieved is a one-sided diagnosis. Psycho-analysis, therefore, can never lead to anything more than a diagnosis, never to a real therapy in this domain. In mental or spiritual diseases therapy must proceed to administer a cure for the body and for this reason there must be exact knowledge of the ramifications of the Spiritual in the material. We must know where to take hold of the material body (which is permeated with Spirit) in order to cure the disease of which abnormal conditions of soul are but the symptoms. Again and again it must be emphasised by Spiritual Science that the root of so-called mental or psychical diseases lies in the organic system of the human being. But it is only possible to understand abnormal organology when the Spirit can be traced in the most minute parts of matter.

And again: phenomena of life which seemingly affect or function in the element of soul, all that is expressed in the different temperaments, for instance, and the activity of the temperaments in the human being, in the way in which the tiny child acts, plays, walks—all this is to-day merely studied from a “psychological” point of view, but it also has its bodily aspect. Faulty education of the child may come to expression in later life in the form of some familiar physical disease. In certain cases of mental trouble we must often study the bodily constitution and look for the cause there, and again in certain cases of physical diseases, we must study the Spiritual before we can find the cause. The whole essence of Spiritual Science is that it does not speak in abstractions of a nebulous Spirit, like people of a mystical or theosophical turn of mind, but traces the Spirit right down into its material workings. Spiritual Science never conceives of the material in the sense of modern science but always presses on to the Spirit, and so it realises that an abnormal soul-life must inevitably express itself in an abnormal bodily life, although the abnormality may, to begin with, be hidden from external observation. On all sides to-day people form entirely false ideas of true Anthroposophical Spiritual Science and there may be a certain justification for this when they listen to speeches of those who do not seriously penetrate to the heart of the teaching but give utterance to abstract theories—man consists of such and such, there are repeated earthly lives, and so forth. All these things are of course full of significance and beauty, but the point is that we must penetrate to the heart of the particular subjects and the various spheres of life of which we speak.

In the very widest sense, the Spiritual-Scientific mode of thinking leads to a social, communal consciousness among men. For when people are able to perceive, on the one hand, how a soul that is sick sends its impulses into the organism, when they really understand the connection between the organism and the soul that is sick, and when they know how the general ordering of life affects the health of human beings—then the position of each individual in the community will be quite different. A true understanding of his fellow-creatures will arise in man and he will treat them quite differently. He will make allowances for the particular characters of those around him, knowing that the one possesses certain qualities and the other quite different qualities. He will learn how to respond to all the variations, how to make the best use of the different temperaments in human society and above all how to unfold and develop them in the true sense.

One domain of life in particular will be healthily influenced by such a knowledge of human nature—I refer to the domain of education. Without a comprehensive knowledge of the human being we simply cannot, for instance, measure the consequences of allowing our children to sit in school with bent backs so that they never breathe properly, or never teaching them to utter the vowel and consonant sounds clearly and definitely. As a matter of fact, the whole of later life depends on whether the child at school breathes in the right way and whether it is taught to articulate clearly and consciously. This is merely said by way of example, for the same thing applies in other domains. It is, however, an illustration of the application of general hygienic principles in the sphere of education. The whole social significance of hygiene is revealed in this example.

It is also apparent that instead of further specialisation, life is calling out for the specialised branches of knowledge to be brought together to form a comprehensive conception of life. We need something more than educational rules according to which the teacher is supposed to instruct the child. We need something that makes the teacher realise what it means if he helps the child to speak articulately and clearly, or the consequences that will ensue if he allows the child to catch its breath after only half a sentence or line has been spoken, and does not see to it that all the air is used up while the sentence is being uttered.

There are of course many such principles. A right appreciation and practice of them will only develop when we are able to measure their full significance for human life and social health—for only then will they give rise to a social impulse.

We need teachers who are able to educate children on the basis of a conception of the world that understands the true being of man. This was the thought underlying the Course I gave to the teachers when the Waldorf School at Stuttgart was founded. All the principles of the art of education as expounded in that Course strive in the direction of making men and women out of the children who are being educated—men and women in whom lungs, liver, heart, stomach, will be healthy in later life because, in childhood, they were helped to develop their life-functions in the right way, because, in effect, the soul worked in the right way. This conception of the world will never give a materialistic interpretation of the old saying, Mens sana in corpore sano. Interpreted in the materialistic sense this means: If the body is healthy, if it has been made healthy by all kinds of physical methods, then it will of itself be the bearer of a healthy soul. Now this is pure nonsense. The only real meaning of the phrase is this: a healthy body bears witness to the fact that the force of healthy soul has built it up, moulded it, made it healthy. A healthy body proves that a healthy soul has worked within it. That is the right interpretation of the phrase—and only in this sense can it be a principle of true hygiene.

In other words: it is not enough to have, as well as the school teachers who are working merely from an abstract science of education, a school doctor who turns up perhaps once a fortnight, goes through the school and has no idea how really to help. No, what we need is a living connection between medical science and the art of education. We need an art of education that teaches and instructs the children in a way conducive to real health. This is the element that makes hygiene a social question. For the social question is essentially an educational question, and this in turn a medical question—but only in the sense of a medicine, of a hygiene permeated with Spiritual Science.

These things lead us on to something else of extraordinary significance in our theme. For when we really enter Spiritual Science, when it becomes concrete in us, we know that we receive from it something more than the intellectualism of natural science, history or jurisprudence. (All sciences to-day are intellectualistic; even if they claim to be based on practical experience this simply means that they interpret intellectually the results of the experiences of the senses.) Now the content of Spiritual Science differs essentially from these intellectualistic results of natural science and other branches of modern culture. We should be in a sorry plight if all that lives in our intellectualistic culture were not merely a picture but an actual power working deeply into human beings. Intellectualism remains merely on the surface of man's being—and I use this phrase in its comprehensive sense. There are people who only study Spiritual Science intellectually, who make mental notes—there is a physical body, etheric body, astral body, Ego, reincarnation, karma and the like. They put it all into pigeon holes as is the custom in modern natural or social science but they are not sincerely devoting themselves to Spiritual Science when they think like this. They are simply carrying over their ordinary mode of thought to what they find in Spiritual Science. The essential thing about Spiritual Science is that it must be conceived, felt and experienced not in an intellectualistic way, but quite differently. It is for this reason that by its very nature Spiritual Science has a living, vital relation to the human being in health and disease, but a relation altogether different from what is often imagined.

People must by now have realised to their cost the powerlessness of purely intellectual culture to deal with those who are suffering from so-called mental disease. The sufferer will tell you, for instance, that he hears voices speaking to him. No matter what intellectual reasoning you use with him—it is all useless, for he will know how to make all manner of objections. You may be sure of that! Even this might be an indication that in such a case one has to do, not with a disease of the conscious or unconscious life of soul but with a disease of the organism. Spiritual Science teaches, moreover, that one cannot get to grips with these so-called mental and psychical diseases by the kinds of methods that have recourse, for instance, to hypnotism, suggestion and the like, but that one must approach mental disease by “physical” means—by healing the organs of man, and this is exactly where a spiritual knowledge of the human being is all-essential, Spiritual knowledge recognises that so-called mental diseases cannot be affected by methods that are of a “spiritual” or “psychical” nature, because, in effect, this kind of illness arises from the fact that the spiritual member of man's being has been pressed outwards (as is otherwise the case only in sleep). As a consequence, the spiritual member is weak and we must proceed to cure the bodily organ in order that the soul and Spirit may be received into it again in a healthy way.

Now Imagination, Inspiration and Intuition which proceed, not from the intellect alone but from the whole being of man as the outcome of Spiritual Science—penetrate into the whole organism. In short, true Spiritual Science penetrates with health-bringing force into the physical organisation of man.

The fact that certain dreamy people feel ill or showsigns of the reverse of health in their spiritual-scientificactivities is no proof that this statement is false. There are so many who are not really spiritual scientists at all but who simply amass with their intellects collectionsof notes upon the results of Spiritual Science. The promulgation of the real substance of Spiritual Science is in itself a social hygiene, for it works upon the whole being of man and regularises his organic functions when they show signs of deviating from the normal either to the side of morbid dreaming or the reverse. Here we have the essential difference between the content of Spiritual Science and that of merely intellectualistic science. The concepts arising in the domain of intellectualism are muchtoo “bloodless”—because they are merely analogies to get to grips with the being of man and work healthily upon him. The concepts of Spiritual Science, on the other hand, have themselves arisen from a knowledge of the whole being of man. Lungs, heart, liver the whole being and not the brain alone—have collaborated in the building up of spiritual-scientific concepts. Inherentwithin them, penetrating them with a plastic formativeforce, are elements which proceed from the whole beingof man. And this is the sense in which Spiritual Sciencecan enter and give direction to hygiene as a social concern.

In many other ways too—for I can only indicate certain examples—Spiritual Science will be able, when it gains a firm footing in the world, to lay down guiding lines for the life of humanity in the sphere of health.

Let me here give just one brief indication. The great difference between the human organisation in waking and sleeping life is one of the subjects to which Spiritual Science has again and again to return. Howthe Spirit and soul act in waking life, how and when they permeate each other in the body, soul and Spirit of man—how they act when they are temporarily separated fromeach other in sleep—all these things are conscientiously studied by Spiritual Science. Here I can do no more than refer to a certain principle, but it is nevertheless a well-founded deduction of Spiritual Science.

Certain epidemics appear in life—illnesses that affect whole masses of the population and are therefore essentially a social concern. Ordinary materialistic science studies these illnesses by examining the physical organism of man. It knows nothing of the tremendous effect which the abnormal attitude of human beings to waking and sleeping life has upon epidemics and the susceptibility to epidemic diseases. Certain things take place in the organism during sleep and if they run to excess, they strongly predispose the human being to so-called epidemic diseases. Men and women who set organic processes in action as the result of too much sleep—I mean processes that ought not to take place, because waking life must not be broken up by such lengthy periods of sleep—these people have a much stronger predisposition to epidemic diseases and are less able to resist them.

Now you can well realise what it would mean to explain the right proportions of sleeping and waking life. These things cannot be dictated. You can of course tell people that they must not send children with scarlatina to school, but you cannot tell them in the same way that they ought to get, say, seven hours of sleep. And yet it is much more important than any prescription, that people who need it should have seven hours of sleep and others for whom this is not necessary, should sleep much less—and so forth.

These matters, which are so intimately connected with the personal life of human beings, have a very great bearing and effect upon social life. How the social effects come about, whether a larger or smaller number of people are obliged owing to illness to be absent from their work, whether or not a whole region is affected—all these things depend upon the most intimate details of man's life. Hygiene here plays an immeasurably important part in social life. No matter what people may think about infection or non-infection—this element is none the less a factor in epidemics. And here external regulations are of no avail; the only thing that will avail is to educate, within human society, men and women who are able to meet the doctors who are trying to explain prophylactic measures, with understanding. This can give rise to an active co-operation for the preservation of health between the doctors who understand the technique of their profession, and the laity who understand the nature of the human being. ... It is, of course, not the laity nor the amateurs who will do the healing, but reasonable human beings will bring understanding to meet the professional medical men who tell them this or that. If he understands the human being—and this understanding can be developed in social life in collaboration with the doctor—the layman can form an intelligent idea of technical science and then, in democratic Parliaments he can say “Aye” with a certain understanding and not because of the pressure of authority. The sphere of hygiene can become a social concern in the true sense if it is made fruitful by a science of medicine enriched by Spiritual Science. In short, hygiene can become in the real sense, and to a high degree, an affair of the people, of the democracy.

• 1. Dr. Steiner is referring to a number of lectures given by various scientists during the Medical Course at the Goetheanum.

In these afternoon hours I wish to present the first seeds of a curative eurythmy. Today we will have a sort of introduction, and what we gain from it we will develop into definite forms in the days following. First of all I want to draw attention to some basic matters. What has been practised up until now is eurythmy as art; and as such it should be concomitantly accepted as the eurythmy pedagogically and didactically suited for children, since what has been developed until now as eurythmy is in every way drawn out of the formation of the healthy human being. We will see that certain points of contact appear, by means of which it will be possible to distil a hygienic-therapeutic discipline from the eurythmic, and how certain artistic forms transform themselves in one direction or another to become what can be called a sort of curative eurythmy.

It will, of course, be essential to emphasize that artistic eurythmy—which is in essence the expression of that element inherent in the formation and in the tendencies to movement of the human body—is that which must be adjudged correct for the development of the human organism as soul, spirit and body, even as it is appropriate for visual presentation. However, one can also work towards a curative eurythmy which will be of extensive use in the treatment of various chronic and acute conditions, but which will prove to be especially important and to the point in those cases specifically where we attempt to treat impending sicknesses and tendencies to sickness, prophylactically through eurythmy. Here is the point at which the didactic-pedagogical element in eurythmy flows gradually over into the hygienic-therapeutic.

However, for those who wish to practise artistic eurythmy, I want to specifically emphasize that they will have to forget in the most thorough fashion what they have acquired in these hours when they do artistic eurythmy. Then precisely in this area one must maintain a strict separation between those goals which one pursues in hygiene and therapeutics and that artistic quality which one must strive to attain in eurythmy. And anyone who persists in mixing the two will first of all ruin his artistic ability in eurythmy and secondly find himself unable to achieve anything of importance in respect to its hygienic-therapeutic element. Apart from this it will be necessary to acquire certain physiological knowledge—which will transform itself into a sort of feeling for the processes forming the human organism—in order to apply the hygienic-therapeutic side of eurythmy practically, as we will see in the following lectures.

Now, having given this preface, I would like to speak more specifically about what may be considered the basis for human eurythmy itself since it appears to me to be pertinent to the goals we wish to attain. If one wishes to understand what eurythmy in its most varied aspects is, one must first of all gain a certain understanding of the human larynx. We will come to know the other vocal organs of man precisely through the course of our exercises relating to it. But the first thing which we must obtain will be a certain knowledge of the human larynx and its importance for the human organization in general. There is much too strong a tendency to regard each human organ as a thing unto itself. That isn't the case, however. That is not how a human organ is. Every human organ is a member of the organization as a whole and, at the same time, a metamorphic variation of certain other organs. Basically, every self-contained human organ is a metamorphosis of other self-contained human organs. Nevertheless, the case is that certain human organs and groups of organs prove to carry this metamorphic character more exactly within them, more precisely, I would like to say, and others less precisely.

An example of an organ where one can penetrate through that one organ into the essence of the human organism solely through a properly understood metamorphosis is the larynx. Recall from your anatomical and physiological knowledge how peculiarly the human larynx is formed.

What I wish to convey can be grasped only through Goetheanistic contemplation of the human larynx. However, if you will make the effort to attain to this Goetheanistic contemplation of the organs involved to which we will now direct our attention, you will see that it is possible. If you take the larynx first of all as an upwards directed extension of the windpipe, you will discover when you study its forms that it may be characterized as a reversed, a from front-to-back reversed piece of the human organism; from another place, another piece of the human organization turned around. Picture to yourself the back of the human head, including the auricular parts, and think of what you are picturing to yourself as the back of the human head, including the auricular parts—insofar as these are localized in this part of man—excluding the frontal lobe¹ for the moment, and extending downwards so that it becomes the human ribcage with its vertebrae, including the beginnings of the ribs which have the much softer breast bone to the front that falls away altogether lower down. Picture to yourself, then, this less clearly defined—system of organs that I have presented to you: the posterior part of the head including the auditory parts, broadening out into the ribcage below.

And now think of this part somewhat transformed; imagine the diameter of the ribs greatly reduced. Imagine that which is very wide in the ribs, in the ribcage, here transformed into a pipe, the bony material being replaced by cartilage. That part which I isolated as the head, imagine that to be filled out in such a way that the less well filled out parts of the head, were poured out, and then that what is now filled in with thicker tissue were left out; think of that which in the head is actually filled with a liquid solid mass replaced. When you imagine this transformation of these parts of the human organism, then you have the metamorphosis of the larynx: the posterior head with the attached ribcage, reversed. The upwards extension into the larynx is truly a sort of posterior head, transformed. It is actually so: the etheric formative forces of the larynx bring about an inversion when we compare them with the formative forces of the aforementioned part of the posterior head with the attached ribcage. Considering the matter etherically, we carry in our breast, in the larynx, a second man, in a manner of speaking, who is, to be certain, in a way rudimentary, but who is in his dispositions, in his beginnings nevertheless at a certain stage of development.

If that which I have just described to you were to be turned around again to its former position so as to appear as the posterior head, then it would, in accordance with the formative forces, of necessity add on those parts of the brain lying further forwards. The tendency to build something similar on is also present in the larynx. The larynx has for this reason the thyroid gland in its neighborhood. What appears in more recent physiology as the peculiar conditions of the thyroid can be understood metamorphically, if you can see a sort of decadent frontal lobe in the thyroid which to a certain extent performs functions taken over from the frontal lobe in the speaking man. The thyroid must co-operate with the frontal lobe. If the thyroid is in any way diseased, you can easily imagine what sort of conditions arise; simply because he has the thyroid, man is organized to use it as an additional organ of thought related more to his breast being.

That which I have designated as etheric formative forces which are at work to bring this second man, who takes up an appositive position in us, into being:—these etheric formative forces are in fact very differentiated. When we breathe and this breathing expresses itself in speaking or singing, when this modified breathing (for from a certain point of view one must call it that) lives as speech or song, then that whole system of organs in man, which I have already indicated as the posterior head continuing down into the breast, is in such inner movement, that this movement experiences its reflexes in the organization of the larynx. So we must picture to our-selves that this whole system—that together with the ear is nothing other than a larynx, only metamorphosed—there is a frontal lobe—calls forth certain effects which are reflected. Thus our larynx performs backwards, in eurythmy, in the form of forces, what we think, feel and so on. This eurythmy really goes on within us. Our larynx eurythmizes; and we have then the assignment to turn around again that which arises sensibly-supersensibly through the reflex-reaction of the larynx, and to make it visible, so that our arms bring to expression that which has already been relayed forth and back again. Thus we have to do here with something which is taken directly from the human organism.

One must make it clear to oneself that we are drawing attention to that organ which like an additional head with a downward extension has been set into the rhythmic system. Our ordinary head, the more or less thoughtful head, has the peculiarity of quieting down what pulses up rhythmically into it through the arachnoidal cavity, which is an extension of the respiratory system. It is by means of the transformation of the movement from below in the rhythmic system into quiet; and by virtue of the fact that a state of balance is reached and stasis is developed out of elements in movement, reciprocally conditioning each other in motion, that thinking is conditioned: through statics arising in the head out of the dynamics.

The reverse is also true: what we develop in the quiet, in the stasis of the head, influences the dynamic of the rhythmic man, to begin with in a retardative manner. The fact is that an unnatural exertion of the soul-spiritual in connection with the head tends to slow down the circulation. A further consequence is that chaotic or sloppy thinking transforms the rhythmic into the arhythmic, changes the natural rhythm which should play in the human rhythmic system into arhythm, even into an antirhythm when it comes to full expression. And if one wishes to understand man, one must observe the connection between the circulatory and respiratory system, and careless, chaotic thought, as well as logical thought, Logical thinking as such carries within it the tendency to slow down the rhythm. Logical thought has the peculiarity of falling out of rhythm. Therefore, the soul-life that wishes to fall into rhythm will try to supercede logic and attempt to frame sentences and verses that follow not syntax, but rhythm in their course. By striving to return to rhythm in poetry, by resisting the enemy of poetry, that is prose (with the exception of rhythmical prose, of course), one tries to become more human. I am not claiming that through logic one's development will tend more towards the animalic; when you wish, you can always imagine that one evolves towards the angelic. But when one strives to turn back from the logical towards the human, one must try to bring into the succession of the syllables and their movement, into the movement of the sounds and into the sentence structure, not that which is demanded by the syntax, but that which the rhythm requires. We must pay heed to the rhythmic man when we want to return to the realm of poetry; we should listen to the head-man when we wish to enter into prose.

This will serve as an indication of the connection which in fact exists between that manifest part of man which I have described and that part which, as a metamorphosis of it, is somewhat concealed. He is there within us, however, this eurythmist who performs as the etheric body of the larynx a distinct eurythmy intimately connected with the normal development of our respiratory system, with our whole circulatory system and, naturally, through the intermediary of the circulatory system even with the metabolic system, as you can surmise from all that I have presented to you.

Now all possible sorts of occasions arise for this very complicated arrangement, this dove-tailing of a forwards- and a backwards-orientated system, to become disjointed. It would be accurate to say that they are properly articulated in only very few people of today's culture. It will be necessary to develop a certain ability to observe this since when the head system, for example, has been so dealt with in childhood that the transgression against the rhythmic system is too great everything possible can develop in later years simply through an irregularity in what I have described. This is precisely because in the case of the human organism, as in an avalanche, small provocations may build up to great effects.

In observing children from this aspect one will find that it is extremely significant to what degree their unconscious living in rhythm predominates in their soul-life over the quieting element of the head organization; for example if this is the case, if the rhythmic system predominates, one must ask oneself if something should not be introduced into the education of the child. If in time the condition appears to he habitual, then something must be clone. When, as a result of the anomaly to which I have drawn attention, the child becomes increasingly excited, ever more and more fluttery and one can do nothing with him, one must attempt to bring an iambic element into his whole organization. This can be done by having the child move in such a manner that, in full consciousness—and for that he must have your guidance—he moves first the left arm and the left hand forwards, thereafter the right arm, so that this becomes the more conscious. The child must be aware: that is the first and was the first. Throughout the entire exercise the consciousness must prevail: that was the first and remains the first; it began with the left. One can reinforce the whole affair by having the child walk, stepping out with the left leg and bringing the right leg up to it, so that the leg and foot exercise is added to the hand and arm exercise, but only as a reinforcement, however. The arm exercise is really the essential. If one has the child practise in this iambic manner, as one may call it, one will see that the exercises will calm the fluttery child, the excited child and so on provided they are continued over a sufficiently long period of time.

Out of your knowledge of eurythmy you could describe it thus:² You have the child make half an “A” with the left arm and then complete this half “A” to a whole “A” with the right arm, and so on, so that the child remains in motion and the “A” does not come into being all at once, but as the result of successive movements.

If on the other hand one has a child who is phlegmatic, who doesn't want to take things in—our Waldorf teacher know these children well, they can at times bring one to mild despair; they actually hear nothing of what one says to them, everything passes them by—in this case one would do well to treat this child trochaically, that is to say, in just the opposite manner. Naturally one cannot begin with everything all at once; this is an element which has yet to he brought into Waldorf education. One forms the “A” so that the child knows: first the right arm, then the left arm, right arm, left arm and then further that first the right leg is placed in front and the left leg brought up to it; thus one has the arm movements forming the “A” (one after the other) reinforced by the leg and foot movement. One must pay particular attention that these things are done in such a way that they live in the child's consciousness; so that the child is really aware: on one occasion the left arm was the first, on the other the right arm was the first.

You will find that these things present difficulties for an inner understanding if someone is in every way a physiologist in the modern sense and believes that man's whole soul-life is mediated through the nervous system, that is, if you do not know that feeling is mediated by the rhythmic system and the will by the metabolic system, and that only thought formation is mediated by the nervous system. If you do not know these things you will have great difficulty in grasping the significance of what happens in any part of the body, both in respect to the soul-spiritual part and the bodily part of man's being.

The person who has developed an ability to observe knows that when a person has clumsy hand and finger movements and so on, he will exhibit a particular manner of thinking as well which one can compare with what happens in the fingers. It is really extremely interesting to study the connection between the manner in which a person controls the mechanics of the arm and the finger-physiognomy with the way in which he thinks. Then the soul-spiritual qualities which a person portrays proceed from the whole human being, not solely from the brain and nervous tissue. One must learn to understand that one thinks not only with the brain but also with the little finger and the big toe. There is a certain significance in achieving lightness—particularly in the limbs—as this will bring lightness into the soul-life as well. These ideas will only become applicable—as we shall see in the following lectures—when one has the possibility of providing a truly complete school hygiene to accompany the other instruction. It can happen, for example, that a child has the peculiarity of being unable to comprehend geometric figures. He cannot understand a geometric figure by looking at it. However difficult it may be you will do this child a great service when you have him take a small pencil between the big toe and the next toe, hold it and write really proper letters. That is something which carries a certain significance and which points in a fully justified manner to an inter-relationship in man.

Especially in the case of children, one may notice that the three members of the human organization do not snap properly into one another. A really large part of the anomalies of life are due to this improper articulation. To begin with, the children have headaches and at the same time one notices that the digestion is disturbed and so on. The most varied conditions may appear. We will give further indications in this regard in conjunction with other exercises which will be shown in the next days. However, when one is confronted with a situation such as I have described one can achieve a great deal with the child or children through having them do the following exercise: a eurythmic I—as you already know—a eurythmic A and a eurythmic O; but so that the children make the “I” with the whole upper body. For our physician friends I want to emphasize particularly, that what is essential in eurythmy, and that through which one achieves what is essential in artistic eurythmy as well, is not the mere form of the limb in position seen from without, but that which comes into being when the stretching or the bending within the positioned limb is felt. What is felt in the limb is what is important. Assume that you make an “I” with both arms; this “I” will not appear as it should when seen from without if you observe only its line, its content as a form. You must feel concurrently and you can tell by looking at the person—that he feels the stretching power in the I as he does it. Similarly when a person makes an “E”, for example, the important thing is not that he does this (crosses the arms), but that he feels: here one limb comes to rest on the other. In this feeling of one limb on the other lies the “E” in reality. And that which one sees in the expression for this sensing of one limb through the other. Then what you do here is no different from what you do when you look. You are continually carrying out an “E” by crossing the axis of the right eye with the axis of the left in order to find a point and so arrive at a crossed line. That is actually “the primeval E”. What has been demonstrated here is basically an imitation of it; however, everything in man is a metamorphosis, and this is a perfectly justifiable imitation, as in speaking “E” the larynx carries out exactly the same form to the rear in the etheric.

When you practise this exercise with a child it is necessary that the “I” be done with the upper body, that is to say, the child stretches out his upper body. He feels the whole body stretched. He makes the “A” with his legs and the “O” by moving his arms so. have the child do the following as quickly as possible in sequence: stretch the upper body vertically, separate the legs, and make the “O” movement with the arms; release and repeat, release and repeat and so on. One can practise such a thing with the children in chorus, of course. However, in principle such exercises should not be practised with the children as a class. Artistic eurythmy and the eurythmy for pedagogic and didactic reasons should be done by a class as a whole, for here children of the same age belong together. In order to make the transition from the usual class eurythmy to these matters related to hygienic-therapeutic eurythmy, one must take those children out of various classes who, due to the peculiarities which I have described—the disharmony of the three members of the human organism—have need of such an exercise, in order to practise with them. One can take them out of the most varied classes and then practise this exercise with those particularly suited for it. That really must be done if one truly wishes to pursue hygienic eurythmy, therapeutic eurythmy, in the school. Thus we are already on the path which as we follow it further will lead us to study certain movements that are actually only metamorphoses of the usual eurythmic movements and to trace their effect on the human organization. The fact is that we have organs in our interior and these organs have certain forms. These forms may he subject to anomalies. The form of each organ stands in a certain relationship to a possible form of movement of the outer man. Therefore the following may be said. Let us assume that some organ, let us say the gall, has the tendency to deformation, a tendency to assume an abnormal form. A form of movement exists which will counteract this tendency. And such is the case with every organ.

It is in this direction that we intend to develop what will follow. What I have given today was meant as an introduction to guide you to the path leading into this subject.

• 1. Vorderhirn; literally, the frontal lobe of the brain
• 2. The sounds are given throughout the English text as they are written in German: German “a”, “ah” as in English “father”, German “e”, “a” as in English “say”; German “i”, “ee” as in English “feet”; German “ei”, “i” as in English “light”; German “au”, “ow” as in English “how”; German “eu”, “oi” as in English “joy”.

Today I intend to discuss matters related to the vowel element in eurythmy. We need only to recall—as it is known to us through spiritual science—that vowels express more that which lives inwardly in man as feelings, emotions and so on. Consonants describe more that which is outwardly objective. When we remain within the realm of speech, these two statements are valid: vowels, more expression, revelation of the inwardness of feeling; we reveal ourselves to an extent in the vowel, that is to say, we reveal what we feel towards an object. Through the movements which the tongue, the lips and the palate perform, the consonants conform themselves more plastically to the outward forms of objects—as they are spiritually experienced, naturally—and attempt to reconstruct them. And so basically all consonants are more reproductions of the outward form-nature of things. However, one can actually only speak of vowels and consonants in this manner when one has an earlier stage of human evolution in mind in which in fact the evolution of speech was given and in which—since the individual sounds were always to a degree connected with movements of the body—the movement of the whole body and of the limbs as well was self-evident. This connection has been loosened, however, in the course of man's development. Speech was removed more to the interior and the possibilities of movement, of expression through movement, ceased. Today in normal life we speak largely without accompanying our speech with the corresponding movements. In eurythmy we bring back what attended the vowels and consonants as movements and thus bring the body into movement again. Now we must realize that when we pronounce vowels we omit the movement and make the vowel inward, that previously joined in the outward movement to an extent. We take something away from it on its path to the interior. We take the movement away. Thus we restore to the vowel in outer movement what we have taken away from it on its inward-going path. In the case of the vowel, matters are such that the outward movement is of exceptional importance in the search for the transferal of the effect of the vowel, eurythmically expressed, onto the whole man. That is what we must take into account here.

In speaking of vowels today, we will speak purely of the meaning of that which is eurythmically vocalized in movement. Here it is very important that one develops a feeling for what flows into the movement. That one develops a perceptive consciousness which tells one whether that which is happening in the respective human limb is a stretching, a rounding, or such. One must decidedly acquire a specific consciousness for this. In what pertains to vowels it is extremely important that one feels the movement made or the position taken up. That is what is important. Starting from here, we will transpose each of the vowels from the eurythmic into the therapeutic.

Practically demonstrated (Mrs. Baumann): a distinct “I” made by stretching both arms. This stretching should be carried out in such a way that one then returns (to the rest position; the ed.) and performs the same movement somewhat lower, returns again, and does it with both (arms) horizontal. Now we go back and, if you had the right forward at first, now, as you go lower, you must take the right to the back, and now to the front, now a bit back again, and then somewhat deeper. Now I don't want to trouble you further with that, but if one wanted to carry it out, one could make it more complicated by taking more positions; one would then start with the “I”, return, do it a little further on, go hack, a bit further on, and so forth, so that one has as many “I”-positions as possible, carried out from above to below, always returning (to the rest position; the ed.). When these movements are performed, they are an expression for the human being as a person. The entire individual person is thereby expressed.

Now we could notice for example that some child, for that matter a grown up person, cannot express himself properly as a person. He is somehow inhibited in the expression of himself as a complete individuality. He might be a dreamer in a certain sense or something similar. Or, if we think of a physical abnormality—in the case of a child, for example, that he doesn't learn to walk properly, he walks clumsily—or if in the case of an adult we notice that it would be desirable for hygienic or therapeutic reasons that the person learn to walk better, this particular exercise would be very good for this. When grown-ups step out too little in their stride, when they don't reach out properly with their steps, it always means that the circulation suffers under it. The circulation of the blood suffers under an insufficiently outreaching gait. So when people walk in this way (lightly tripping; the ed.), that has a consequence that the circulation becomes in some fashion slower than it should be in that person. Then one must attempt to have this person learn to step out again, and by having him do this exercise, one will be certain to attain one's goal. Then the person will have greater and more penetrating results in learning to walk properly. Thus one can say that in essence this modified “I”-exercise furthers those people who—I will express it somewhat radically—cannot walk properly. It can be summed up approximately so: for people who cannot walk properly.

You can extend the exercise further, and, with the addition of a sort of resumée of what Mrs. Baumann has done, it will be that much more effective Now try to do the whole exercise without bringing the arms back (to the rest position; the ed.) so that you reach the last position only by turning: turning in a plane, quick, quicker and quicker. The “I”-exercise as it was first demonstrated and described can be intensified in this way and will benefit those people who cannot walk properly. It will then be extraordinarily easy to bring them to walk properly. One can admonish them to walk properly and their efforts to walk in a different manner will bring suitable results as well.

Now Mrs. Baumann will demonstrate an “U”-exercise for us. The arms quite high up, and back to the starting position, now a bit lower, back again, a little lower, now horizontal, back again, now below, back again, and again below; that is the principle of it. And now do it straightaway so that you start above maintaining the “U” as you move downwards; and now do it increasingly quickly so that at last you reach quite a speed.

Please keep this in mind as the manner in which to execute the “U”-exercise. If I were to summarize again in the same fashion as earlier, I would call this the movement for children or adults who cannot stand. In the case of “I” we had those who cannot walk, with “U”, we have those who cannot stand.

Now not being able to stand is to have weak feet and to become very easily tired when standing. It would also mean, for example, that one could not stand long enough on tiptoe properly, or that one could not stand on one's heels long enough without immediately becoming clumsy. Standing on tiptoe or on the heels are no eurythmic exercises, but they should be practised by people who have weak legs, who tire easily while standing or who can't stand properly at all. To be unable to stand properly is to be easily tired in walking as well. That is a technical difference: to walk awkwardly and to tire in walking are two different things. When the person is tired by walking, one has to do with the “U”-exercise. When the person walks clumsily or when as a result of his whole constitution it would be desirable for him to learn to step out with his feet, that can be technically expressed as being unable to walk. However, to be tired by walking would be technically expressed as not being able to stand. And for such people the “U”-exercise is especially appropriate. This is interrelated with matters with which we must deal once we have come a bit further.

Now please do the “O”-movement: quite high up and back (to the rest position; the ed.) and now somewhat lower, back again, lower still, and so on. Now do it so that you make the “O”-movement above; feel distinctly the rounding of the arms within the movement as you glide down. When you glide down with the “O”-movement it must remain an “O”. Now increasingly faster.

You would see this exercise complete in its most brilliant application if you had here in front of you a really corpulent person. If a child or grown-up becomes unnaturally fat, then this is the exercise to be applied. By making the “O” so often and by extending it to this barrel-shaped body at the end—then it is really a barrel that one describes outside oneself—that which forms the opposite pole to those dynamic tendencies at work in making a person obese is in fact carried out. One can apply it very well hygienically and therapeutically, and you will be convinced that a tendency to become thinner actually appears when you have such people carry out this movement, especially when they practise other things as well which we have as yet to discuss. But at the same time it is of special significance in this exercise that you have the person practise only so long as he can without sweating heavily and becoming too warm. If one wishes to attain the desired effect, one must try to conduct the exercise so that the person can always rest in between.

Now Mrs. Baumann will make an “E”-movement, quite high above. It is a proper “E”-movement only when this hand lies on the other so that they touch. Now return (to the rest position; the ed.), then somewhat lower, the right hand over the left arm, and then, so that it is really effective, we will do it so that it lies increasingly further back and now again from above to below; then the “E” must be done so that it penetrates thoroughly. And now, in bringing it down, you must move (the crossing) further back, so far that you split the shoulder seam at the back. Now this is the exercise that will be especially advantageous for weaklings, that is to say, for thin people rather than fat people, for those people in whom the weakness comes distinctly from within, but is organically conditioned. It must be organically caused.

Another exercise which can be considered parallel to this should be applied with some caution as it affects the soul
more closely. It is the following: make an “E” to the rear as well as you can and as far up as you can. That really hurts. It is a movement that is in itself a bit painful and that is indeed the purpose. It should be practised with those children or adults in whom there are psychological grounds for becoming thin, such as being worn down and so on. Since one must in principle be careful in approaching from the outside with healing by such spiritual means, this too must of course be applied with caution. That means that one must inspire a child who has failed or who shows signs of depression so that he takes heart when one will have him do these exercises. If one concerns oneself with the child otherwise by comforting him and caring for his soul, then one can have him do these exercises as well.

You can see that in the case of all these things it is to a degree a matter of extending what comes to expression in artistic eurythmy in a certain manner. This is especially true in respect to the vowels.

Now it is very important that we make the following clear to ourselves. You know that the vowel element can be developed in this fashion, and that it is in essence the expression of the inward. One must only grasp through feeling and contemplation that which takes place. One must bear in mind that the person concerned, the person who carries out these things in order to be healed, must feel them; in “E” he feels that one arm covers the other. In the case of “O” however, something more comes into consideration. In “O” one should feel not only the closing of the circle, but the bending as well. One should feel that one is building a circle. One should feel the circle that runs through it. And in order to make the “O” particularly effective one should make the person doing it aware as well that he should feel as though he himself or someone else were to draw a line along his breastbone, thus by means of feeling, closing the whole to the rear in spirit; as if one were to experience something like having a line drawn on the breastbone by oneself or someone else.

Now we want to make an “A”: we return (to the rest position; the ed.), now we make an “A” somewhat lower, return again, make an “A” horizontally, back, make an “A” somewhat lowered, back, an “A” very deep, back, then to the rear; that you need to do only once, but return first (to the rest positon; the ed.). And now make the “A” above and without changing the angle bring it down, and, again without the feeling that you change the angle, to the back.

This exercise can he really effective only if one has it clone frequently. And when one has it repeated frequently, it is the exercise to be used with people who are greedy, in whom the animal nature comes particularly strongly to the fore. So if you have in school a child who is in every way a proper little animal, and in whom the condition has an organic cause, when you have him do this exercise, you will see that it has for him a very particular significance.

In the case of these exercises you can observe once again that if they are to be introduced into the school it will be necessary to organize the children into groups especially for them. You will soon become convinced that the children do these exercises much less gladly than the other eurythmic exercises. While they are eager to do the others, one will most likely have to persuade them to do these, as they will react at first as children often react to taking medicine: with resistance. They won't be particularly happy about it, but that is of no especial harm in the exercises having to do with “O”, “U”, “E”, and “A”; in the case of “I” it is somewhat harmful when the child doesn't enjoy it. One must try to reach the stage where the children delight in the “I”-exercise as we have clone it. In the case of the others, “U”, “O”, “E”, and “A”, it is not especially damaging if they carry out the exercise on authority, and knowing that it is their duty to do it. With “I” it is important that the children have pleasure in doing it as it affects the whole individual, as I have said
already.

You will profit further by coming to terms with the following: the “I” reveals man as a person, the “U” reveals man as man, the “O” reveals man as soul, the “E” fixes the ego in the etheric body, it permeates the etheric body, strongly with the ego. And the “A” counteracts the animal nature in man.

Now we will follow the various workings further. If you have a person with irregular breathing, who is in some fashion burdened clown by his breathing and such like, you will be able to bring this person to normal breathing by applying the vowels. You will be able to achieve in particular the distinct articulation of the consonants by means of these exercises, as that is greatly facilitated through the practice of the vowels. When you notice that certain children cannot manage to form certain consonants with the lips or the tongue—for the palatal sounds (Gaumenlaute) it is less applicable, although for the labial and lingual sounds exceptionally good—it will be of great help to the children with difficulties in this respect, when one tries to have them do such exercises as early as possible.

You will also notice that when people tend to chronic headaches, to migrane-like conditions, these can be appreciably alleviated through the practice of the vowels. So in the cases of chronic headaches and chronic migrane symptoms, as well as when people are foggy-headed, these things will be particularly applicable. Similarly, if you employ the exercises which we have done today for children who cannot pay attention, who are sleepy, you will awaken them in a certain sense to a state of awareness. That is a hygienic-didactic angle of a certain significance. It will be observed that sleepy-headed adults can definitely be awakened in this way as well. And then one will notice that when a person's digestion is too weak or too slow, that by means of these exercises this slow digestion and all that is known to be connected with it, can be changed for the better.

In certain forms of hygienic eurythmy it would be good to have the movements—which are carried out with the arms only in artistic eurythmy—done with the legs as well where possible, only somewhat less forcefully, as I am about to describe. Now you will ask how one can make an “I”, for example, with the legs? It's very easy. One must only stretch out the leg and feel the stretching in it. The “U” would be simply to stand with full awareness on both legs, so that one has a distinct stretching feeling in both. “O” with legs must be learned, however. One should really accustom the people with whom one finds it necessary to do the “O”-exercise ih the manner that I have described, to do the “O” with the legs as well. That consists in pointing the toes somewhat, but only very slightly, to the outside and then trying to stand in this manner and hold one's position. One must thereby stand on tiptoe, however, and bend outward, remain so standing a moment and then return to the normal position; then build it up again and so on.

It is necessary to take into account the relationship existing between the possibilities of organically determined inner movement in the middle man and the lower man. This is such that movement done for the lower man should be carried out at only one-third the strength. Thus when you have someone carry out the “O” movement as we have seen it, you must have the feeling that what is done later for the legs and feet requires only one-third of the time and thus only a third of the energy expended. It will be especially effective, however, when you place this in the middle, so that you have, let us say, A and then A again, with B, the foot movement, in the middle (see the table); it will be particularly effective to have them together.

 one-third one-third one-third A B A Arm Foot Arm 

It will also be especially effective to do the same in connection with the “E”-exercise for the feet, by really crossing the feet.

But one must stand on tiptoe and lay one leg over the other so that they touch. Again, one-third, and placed, if possible, in the middle. That is something which it would be particularly good to have done by children, and by adults as well, who are weaklings. They will naturally be hardly capable of doing it, but that is exactly why they must learn to do it. In precisely these matters one sees that that which it is most important for various people to learn is that which they are most incapable of doing. They must learn it because it is necessary to the recovery of their health.

“A” (with the legs; the ed.) is also necessary; I have already demonstrated it to you yesterday. It consists in assuming this spread position while standing insofar as it is possible on tiptoe. That should also be introduced into the A-movement and it will be particularly effective there.

Now one can also intensify all the exercises that we have just described by carrying them out in walking. And you will achieve a great deal for a weak child, for example, when you teach him to do the “E”-motion as we have just done it in walking; he should walk in such a manner that he always touches each leg alternately. In taking a step forward he crosses over first with one leg, then with the other, so that he always crosses one leg over the other, so that he places one leg at the hack and touches it with the other in front. Naturally he won't move ahead very well, but it is good to have this movement carried out while walking. You will say that complicated movements appear as a result; but it is good when complicated movements appear.

Now I want to bring it to your attention that what we have said about the vowel element should be sharply distinguished to begin with from what we will practice tomorrow in respect to the consonants. The consonantal element is such that it generally expresses the external, as we have already said. In speech as well the consonant is so formed that a reconstruction, an imitation of the outer form comes into being through the formative motions of lips and tongue. Now the consonants have, as we will see tomorrow, very special sorts of movements and it lies within these forms of movement to make the consonant inward again in a certain manner by giving it eurythmic form. It is internalized. That which it loses in the outward-going path of speech is restored to it. And, whether one is contemplating them in eurythmy as art or performing them for personal reasons, in the case of consonants it is particularly important to have, not a feeling in the way one does with a vowel, a feeling of stretching, of bending, or of widening and so on, but to imagine oneself simultaneously in the form that one carries out while making the consonants, as though one were to observe oneself.

Here you can see most clearly that one must admonish the artistic eurythmists not to mix the two things; the artistic eurythmists would not do well to observe themselves constantly as they would rob themselves of their ability to work unselfconsciously. On the contrary, when you have a child or a grown-up carry out something having to do with consonants, it is important that they photograph themselves inwardly in their thought as it were; then in this inward photographing of oneself lies that which is effective; the person must really see himself inwardly in the position that he is carrying out and it must be performed in such a manner that the person has an inner picture of what he does.

If you would be so good (Miss Wolfram) as to show us an “M” as a consonant, first with the right hand, now with the left, but taking it backwards, now taking the right hand back, and “M” with the left hand and now with both hands, that can be multiplied in various ways, of course. Now an “M”—we will start with this example; to begin with, what is it as speech? In speech “M” is an extraordinarily important sound. You will experience its importance in speech, and in speech physiology as well, if you contrast it with the “S”. Perhaps Mrs. Baumann will make a graceful “S” for us now, right, left, and now with both hands.

Now to begin with it appears that you have the feeling, or should have the feeling when the “S” is done that you encounter something within you—it is the etheric body namely (at this point Dr. Steiner made the corresponding movement; the ed.); so that you have a snake-like line. This serpentine may approach a straight line in the case of a particularly sharply pronounced “S” and can even be represented as a straight Iine. By contrast, when you look at the “M” that was just performed, you should have the feeling—even when the organic form is carried out inwardly—that it is really not the same thing. And so the “M” is that which counters the “S”-direction when laid against it and that is in essence the great polarity between an “S” and an “M”; they are two polar sounds. “S” is the truly Ahrimanic sound, if I may speak anthroposophically, and the “M” is that which mitigates the properties of the Ahrimanic, makes it mild; if I may express it so, it takes its Ahrimanic strength from it. So when we have a combination of sounds directly including “S” and “M”, for example “Samen” (seed) or “Summe” (sum), we have in this combination of sounds first the strong Ahrimanic being in “S”, whose sting is then taken from it by the “M”.

Perhaps you will make a “H” for us (Miss Wolfram). When you really look at the “H”, when you feel yourself really within this “H”, then, you will say to yourself: there is something in this “H” which reveals itself as unequivocally Luciferic. It is the Luciferic in the “H”, then, which comes to expression here. And now try to observe yourself—here the feeling is less important than the contemplation of it—try to observe yourself, when Mrs. Baumann does it for us now, how it is when one does the “H” and allows it to go over immediately into an “M”. Make the “H” first and let it carry over by and by into an “M”. Now take a look at it. In this movement you have the whole perception of the mitigation of the Luciferic, of its sting being taken from it, brought to expression. The movement is truly as if one would arrest Lucifer. And, one can also hear it if you simply think about it—today's civilized man can actually no longer reflect properly on these things. If someone wants to agree to something Luciferic, but immediately diminishes the actual Luciferic element, the eagerness of his assent, then he says, “Hm, hm”. There you have the “H” and the “M” placed really very close to one another and you have the whole charm of the diminished Luciferic directly within it.

From this you can see that as soon as one turns to the consonantal element, one must immediately turn to the observation of the form as well. That is the essential thing and tomorrow we will speak about it further.

In order to proceed in an appropriate manner, we will prepare the grounds today for certain matters to be deepened physiologically and psychologically tomorrow, considering the forms which consonants take in eurythmic movement. In what has been developed as the form involved in consonantal movement consideration has been truly given to everything which must be taken into account when man attempts to penetrate into the outer world through speech. The person who sets himself the task of observing speech will see that man's confrontation with the outer world must consist on the one hand of living into the world vigorously; of making himself selfless and living out into the world. In the vowels he comes to himself; in the vowels he goes within and unfolds his activity there. In the consonants he becomes in a way one with the outer world although to varying degrees. These varying degrees of unification with the world are manifest in certain practices within language as well. In the development of the consonantal element in eurythmy, particularly in reference to the sensible-super-sensible observation of which I so often speak in introducing eurythmy performances,—it is necessary to take into consideration whether the human being objectifies himself. To discover whether man extroverts himself completely in order to grasp the spiritual element in the things outside him in a spoken sound, or if, despite this objectification of himself, he remains more within and does not go completely out of himself but instead reproduces the external within himself. That is a major distinction, by reason of which I must ask Mrs. Baumann to be so good and show us first of all the movement for “H”. Now please disregard this H-movement altogether and Mrs. Baumann will demonstrate the F-movement. And now keep an eye on what you can observe here in these two different movements. You can observe what is present by virtue of the human instinct in the attempt to enunciate the sound in question. Consider the pronunciation of H: actually you say H-a, you follow up with a vowel. It is impossible to sound a consonant without it being tinged by a vowel, you follow it up with an “A”. The pure consonant is vocalized, combined with a vowel. If you consider the “F” you will find that man's linguistic instinct places an “E” in front of it: e-F. Here the opposite occurs: an E is set before it.

Through the foregoing you will perceive that when man utters an “H” he makes a greater effort to uncover through speech the spiritual in the external object; when he utters an “F” his effort is directed more towards reexperiencing the spiritual within himself. Therefore the manner in which the consonant arises is entirely different, according to whether the vowel tinges the consonant from the front or from the back, if I may use this manner of expression in respect to the nature of consonantal articulation. This you will find conveyed in the form you have observed.

Perhaps Miss Wolfram will do the “H” once again. H: here you have an energetic unfolding in the outer world, one doesn't wish to remain in oneself, one wants to go out and live in the external. F: you see the decided effort to avoid entering into the outer world too sharply, to remain in the inner.

Now when one takes this into consideration, one can carry on from here to form a mental picture of various matters which, although they must become part of eurythmy, were, to begin with, unnecessary as far as we have been concerned with eurythmy as art, but which will become necessary the more this art is extended to other languages. The moment one says not “ef” but “fi”, in that moment it is a different matter; in that moment one attempts to embrace the external with the sound as well. This is indicative of an important historical fact: In ancient Greece people attempted to grasp the external even in those things in respect to which modern man has become inward. You see how one can follow into the outermost fringes of man's experience what I have expressed for example, in The Riddles of Philosophy:¹ this going out and taking hold in the external world of what man today already experiences entirely inwardly in his ego. The reason why spiritual science is not accepted on the grounds of such things is solely that the people of our civilization are in general too lazy. They have to take too many things into account in order to come to the truth, and they want to make it easier for themselves. But that just won't do. They want to make everything easier for themselves; and that won't do.

That, for the present, in respect to one element which flowed into the formation of the consonants. If we want to understand the formation of consonants in the field of eurythmy, then we should consider a second element which I believe people pay less attention to nowadays in teaching, even in physiology, speech physiology, than the third element which we will come to in a moment. In order to form an impression, I will ask you to compare once again. Here it is important that one form a contemplative picture. Naturally, one cannot penetrate to the very end of that which one has in such a picture, to the concept.

Perhaps Mrs. Baumann will be so good and make the H again, and once the tone has faded away, Mrs. Baumann will make a D for us. One must pay attention in this case to the following: When you contemplate the H, you will find the movement for it deviates greatly to begin with from what takes place in speaking it; since—in respect to the characteristic of which I am thinking at the moment—the eurythmic element must be polar to the actual process in speech. You know that the speech process as I presented it the day before yesterday is a reflecting back from the larynx. The eurythmic process must express this outwardly. It expresses it in movement. In certain instances one must go over to the exactly opposite pole. This is particularly characteristic of H and D; in the case of other consonants this element must be toned down. Now, what sort of a sound is H? H is esentially a breath sound. The H is actually brought into being through blowing. In the case of H you have a decided shoving thrust² in eurythmy where you have to blow. When you utter “D” you have this thrusting effect in the pronunciation. We must polarize this by transforming it into the characteristic movement that was present in D. Thus the thrusting quality of speech is lamed when one conveys the sound through movement.

So you see that precisely this characteristic must be taken into particular account, when one has either a breath sound or a plosive sound. Now sounds are not only either breath or plosive sounds. But by what reason are they one or the other? You see, when one has a decided breath sound, one expresses by means of the blowing the fact that one really wants to go out of oneself; in the thrusting, that this going out of oneself is difficult, that one would like to remain within. For this reason the eurythmic transposition of the sound must take place in the manner you have seen.

Now one also has sounds that carefully connect the inward with the outward; sounds that are actually physiologically so constituted that with them one states that one is bringing to a standstill, arresting, that in which one would like to be active in such a manner that the inward would immediately become outward, where one would enter into the movement immediately with the whole human being. This is decidedly evident in only one sound in our language: the R, which is, however, for this reason the most inclusive sound; one would like to run after the speech organism with every limb, as I would like to express it, when one says R. Actually with R one strives to bring this pursuit to rest. The lips want to follow when they pronounce the labial R, and bring this running-after to a halt, the tongue wants to follow when it speaks the lingual R, and finally the palate wants to follow when the palatal R sounds. These three R's are distinctly different from one another, but are nevertheless one; in eurythmy they are expressed thus (Mrs. Baumann: R). The bringing-in-swing of what one usually brings to a standstill is expressed. Thus it is precisely the running after the movement of the sound that comes to expression in the R. And when one wants to bring the other element to expression, one can express the labial R by carrying the movement further downwards; the lingual R can be made more in the horizontal and the palatal R rather more upwards. By this means one can modify the R-sound in the eurythmic movement. But you see that the form is determined by leaving the vibrations of the R in the background and bringing the “running-after” to expression.

A similar sound where one has, not a vibrating, but a sort of wave in the movement is the L (Miss Wolfram: L). You sec that there is something of the same movement in it as in the R; but the running-after is mild and comes to rest. It is a wave rather than a vibration that comes to expression.

That is what is connected innerly, physiologically, with the shading through the vowel element of the consonantal sound, and with the shading through feeling, which already leads to a greater extent into the physical. One arrives at the outermost division of the sounds by considering the organs; if we compare once again the respective movements we will arrive at the most extreme, the most external principles of division through our contemplative picture. (Mrs. Baumann: B) That is a B, and now we will continue directly perhaps with a T. (Mrs. Baumann: I). Now you can see from the position—which as the third element must be taken into account and which makes itself quite apparent to the sensible-super-sensible contemplation—that in the case of B we have to do with a labial sound and in the case of T with a dental sound. (Miss Wolfram: K) K: here one starts with the position and the essential lies in the movement. Isere we have to do with a palatal sound which in its pronounciation, in the tone in which it is spoken is the quietest, but which is transformed in movement into its polar opposite when performed outwardly in eurythmy. The consonants overlap in respect to their characteristics; one division extends into another. The following may serve as an aid.

Take the labial sounds—I'll write out only the most distinctive of them: V, B, P, F, M. You can determine to what extent the vowel colouring is involved by pronouncing the sounds; I don't need to indicate that. Let us take the dental sounds D, T, S, Sh, L, the English Th, and N. And now the palatal sounds: G, K, Ch, and the French Ng, more or less. We will have to write the R in everywhere, since it has its nuances everywhere:

 Labial sounds: V, B, P, F, M R Dental sounds: D, T, S, Sh, L, (Th), N R Palatal sounds: G, K, Ch, Ng R 

Considering the process of division from the other point of view now, I will underline with white where we have to do with a definite breath sound: V, F, S, Sh and Ch as well, more or less. These would be the decided breath sounds. I will underline in red where we have to do with what are clearly plosive sounds: B, P, M, D, T, N, and then perhaps G and K. The vibratory sound is R. We have to do with a distinct undulent sound—which, because of the soft transformation in the movement, must be in a sense of an inward character—fundamentally only in the case of L.

These three organizational principles—the vowel colouring, the blowing, thrusting, vibrating and undulating, and all that which has to do with the external division (into dental labial and palatal sounds; the ed.)—all this comes to expression in the forms given for eurythmy. It must be clear to you, of course, to what degree these principles of division affect each other, however. When we have to do with L, for example, we have to do with a distinct dental sound which must have all the characteristics of a dental sound, and then we have to do with a gliding sound, with an undulant sound, which must have the characteristics of a wave. Apart from that, it has a strong connection to the inward. We have to do with a colouring from within outwards, at least in our language. We don't say “le”, but “el”; here we have the transition from older forms in which people reached yearningly into the exterior world and where as a result a word was used in order to express such an event, in order to bring this going over into the external to proper expression. Thus in each of the letters we have to do with a likeness of that which is taking place inwardly.

Before we consider the consonants individually, let us contemplate the following. Yesterday we were able to show that A—which we also studied in its metamorphosis—has to do with all those forces in man that make him greedy, which organize him according to animal nature: the A in fact lies nearest to the animal nature in man, and in a certain sense one can say that when the A is pronounced it sounds out of the animality of man. And certainly as spiritual investigation confirms A is the sound which was the very earliest to appear in the course of both the phylogenetic evolution as well as the ontogenetic evolution of man. In ontogenetic evolution it is somewhat hidden of course; there is a false evolution as well, as you know. The A was the first sound to appear in the evolution of mankind, however, resounding to begin with entirely out of the animal nature. And when we tend towards A with the consonants, we are still calling on what are animal forces in man. As you could see yesterday, the whole sound is actually formed accordingly. If we use the sound therapeutically in the manner in which it presented itself to our souls yesterday we can combat that which makes children, and grown-ups too, into smaller and larger animals. With such exercises we can have very respectable results in the de-animalization of man.

And now let us go on to the sound U, for example. We said yesterday that this is the sound we use therapeutically when a person cannot stand. You saw hat yesterday. It is the sound which in a certain respect expresses its physiologic-pathologic connection already in the manner in which it is formed in speech. The U is spoken with the mouth and the openings between the teeth constricted to the greatest degree and with the lips somewhat extended, in such a way, however, that the mouth opening is narrowed and the lips can vibrate. You can see that in speaking one seeks an essentially outward movement with the U. In the pronounciation of U the attempt to characterize something moving predominates. Thus with the eurythmic U the physiologic opposite occurs: the ability to hold one's stand is called forth. This is present in the U in artistic eurythmy as well, at least as a suggestion.

If you now take a look at the other vowels you will find a progressive internalization. In the case of the O you have the lips pushed together towards the front and the opening of the mouth reduced in size—there is at least an attempt to reduce the size. This is transformed into the polar opposite in the encompassing gesture of the 0-movement in eurythmy. Precisely in such things the natural connections are to be perceived. In the manner in which O is employed in speech certain forces are present. And in languages in which O predominates one will find that the people have the greatest propensity to become obese. That may really be taken as a guideline for the study of the physiologic processes connected with speech. If one were to develop a language consisting principally of modifications of O, where people had to carry out the characteristic mouth and lip formation of the O continuously, they would all become pot-bellied. If with the O, on the one hand, one has this propensity to become big-bellied, as I would like to call it, it is easy to understand why when reversed the O represents on the other hand that which combats this obesity when it is carried out eurythmically and in the metamorphosis demonstrated yesterday.

The state of affairs is different with E, for example. A language that is rich in E will engender skinny people, weaklings. And that is related to what I said yesterday about the treatment of thin people, and thus of weaklings, in relation to the significance of E. You will remember that I said that in the case of weaklings particularly the E-movement with its given modification is to be applied.

Now in respect to all these matters it is necessary to take one thing into account, however: if one considers the forms outwardly one does not come to the truth of the matter; one must grasp them inwardly in the process of their becoming. One must concentrate less on what comes to outward expression and more on the tendency involved. The tendency to become fat can be combated by means of the O and the tendency to remain thin by the E. Attention must be drawn to these matters because when eurythmy is used for therapeutic purposes, it is necessary to take the forces that are present in the upper man and tend to a widening, and the forces present in the lower man tending to the linear, more into consideration. Thus I must say that when man utters the O he actually broadens the living element.

You see, when I draw it roughly, the head of man is in a way a sphere and spiritual-scientifically it is a proper reproduction of the earth sphere. It is a copy of all those forces that are centralized in the sphere of the earth and it is developed by that which lies in the forces of the moon. This latter builds it up in such a manner that it becomes a sort of earth-sphere. Of course, this is all actually connected with cosmology, cosmogeny. As the earth-phase proceeded out of the moon-phase, so out of the forces that are so powerfully at work in building up the human head—which of itself, of course, intends to become a sphere and is modified only by the breast and the other part of the body being attached to it and altering the spherical form—so out of the moon-building forces the head is formed. If it were left to itself the head would become a proper sphere. That is not the case because the other two parts of the human organism are connected with the head and influence its shape.

When one pronounces the O one tries to bring that which finds its expression in the spherical form of the head to expression in the entire etheric head. One makes the effort to form a second head for oneself (see the violet in the drawing) and one can really say that in uttering the O man puffs himself up like his head—he puffs himself up, he blows himself out and awakens thereby the forces that give him at the other pole the tendency to become fat. These things can really be taken pictorially as well. His inflating of his own head gives him the tendency to become fat. When one wants to counteract this tendency to become, etherically speaking, a fat-head—not really a fat-head, but etherically a fat head—to become a big head, then one must attempt to round it off from the other side, to take it back into oneself. And that is the protest of the fathead. Therefore an O is fanned at the opposite pole. All the individual sounds have a nuance of feeling, namely, which is deeply established in the organism, because it lies in the unconscious; hence the import of the inner being of the sound. For the person who looks at the matter in a super-sensible manner the frog who would like to blow himself up into an ox, you see, is the one from whom a cannon-like O tone would continuously proceed if he were able to fulfill his intention. That is the peculiarity of it—one must explain by means of such things if one wishes to understand these matters inwardly.

With the E it is distinctly the reverse. In E one wants to take hold of oneself inwardly, wants to contract together inwardly. For that reason there is the touching of oneself in the eurythmy, this becoming aware of oneself: you become aware of yourself, simply, when you place the right arm upon the left, just as when you feel an object outside yourself, when you take a hold of it, you become aware of yourself. It would be even more clearly expressed if you simply grasped the right arm with the left hand—in art only an indication of all these things can be given—when you grasp the right arm with the left hand you are feeling yourself. This contacting oneself has come to expression especially in the eurythmic E. And this touching oneself is carried out throughout the whole human organism. You can study this touching of oneself simply by studying the relationship of the nerve Process in the human back, those that ordinary physiology mistakenly call the motory nerves and those that are called sensory.

Here where the motor nerve, which is basically a sensory nerve too, comes together with the sensory nerve, a similar sort of clasping occurs. The fact is that the nerve-strands on the human back continually form an E. In this forming of the E lies the way in which man's inward perception of himself which is factually differentiated, in the brain, comes into being. Yesterday we attempted to reproduce this E-building which actually takes place in a plane; you will find that what we attempted to reproduce shows through the outward movement and the position of the movement how this inward E-making in man sums itself up into the vertical. As the head puffs itself out and wants to become a horn-blowing cherub, this E-process, this pulling-oneselftogether-in-points, sums itself up in the vertical, in the upright line. It is a continuous and successive fastening together of E's which stand one above another; that expresses clearly what one observes taking place in weaklings. They have the tendency to continuously stretch their etheric bodies. They want to extend the etheric body rather than to pull it together into a point, which would be the real antithesis to the activity of the head. That is not the case however: they try to stretch the etheric body thereby making a repetition of the point. And this extension which makes its appearance in people who are becoming weak—not the extension in the physical, but in the etheric body—will be counteracted by shaping that E of which we spoke yesterday.

So I believe you will see now how there is an inward connection between the eurythmic element involved and the human formative tendencies, how what is present in him as formative tendencies has been drawn out of the human being. The fact is that these formative tendencies which express themselves first in growth, in the forming of man, in his configuration, become specialized and localized once again in the development of the speech organism, this special organism. There these formative tendencies—which are otherwise spread out over the entire person—are to an ex-tent accumulated. In developing eurythmy we turn and go back again. We proceed from the localized tendency to the whole man, thus placing in opposition to the specialization of the human organization in the speech organism another specialization, the specialization in the will-organism. The whole human being is indeed an expression of his volitional nature insofar as he is metabolic and limb organism throughout. One can move this or that part of the head too, and therefore the head is also in a certain sense limb-organism. That can be demonstrated by those people who are capable in this respect of a hit more than others. People who can wiggle their ears and so on, they can show very clearly how the principle of movement of the limbs, how the limb-nature extends into the organization of the head. The whole human being is in this respect an expression of the volitional. When we go on to eurythmy we express that once again. Before we proceed to working out the sounds particularly, to the special manner of forming them and further to the combinations of sounds tomorrow, I would like to speak in closing of something historical.

The movement of the will and the movement of the intellect, you see, constitute two sorts of evolution of power which proceed in man at different velocities. Man's intellect develops quickly in our age, volition slowly, so that as part of the whole evolution of mankind we have already surpassed our will with our intellect. In our civilization it is generally manifest that the evolution of the intellect has overtaken the evolution of the will. The people of today are intensely intellectual, which precisely does not imply that they can do much with their intellect; they are strongly intellectual, but they hardly know what to do with their intellect; for that reason they know so little intellectually. But what they do know intellectually they treat in such a manner as though within it they could function with a certain certainty. Will develops slowly. And to practise eurythmy is, apart from everything else, an attempt to bring the will back into the whole evolution of mankind again. If eurythmy is to appear as a therapy the following must be pointed out: It must be said that the over-development of the intellect expresses itself particularly in the organic side effects of the evolution of speech as well. Our speech development today in our modern civilization is actually already something which is becoming inhuman through its superhuman qualities insofar as we learn languages today in such a manner that we have so little living feeling left for what lies in the words. The words are actually only signs. What sort of feeling do people still have for that which lies in words? I would like to know how many people go through the world and become aware in the course of learning the German language for example, that the rounded form which I have just drawn is expressed in the word “Kopf” (Head), which has a connection with “Kohl” (cabbage), and for which reason one also says “Kohlkopf” (cabbagehead), which is actually only a repetition; the rounding is metamorphosed according to the situation. That is what is expressed here. In the Romance languages, “testa, testieren”, is expressed more what comes from within, the working of the soul through the head. People have no more feeling for the distinctions within language; language has become abstract. When you walk, you walk with you feet. Why do we say “Füsse” (feet)? You see, that is a metamorphosis of the word “Furche” (furrow) which came about because it was seen that one traces something like a furrow when one walks. The pictorial element in language has been completely lost; if one wishes to bring this pictorial element back into language, then one must turn to eurythmy.

Every word that is experienced unpictorially is actually an inward cause of illness; I am speaking in coarse words now—but then we have only coarse words—of something which expresses itself in the finer human organism. Civilized mankind suffers chronically today from the effects which learning to speak abstractly, which the failure to experience words pictorially, has upon it. The results are so far-reaching that the accompanying organic side effects express themselves as a very strong tendency towards irregularities in the rhythmic system and a refusal to function of the metabolic system in those people who have made their language abstract. However, we can actually do something about what is being spoilt in man today through language, which he acquires of course in early childhood, and which, if it is acquired in an unpictorial way, really produces conditions leading later on to all kinds of illnesses. We can actually do something about overcoming this with the help of therapeutic eurythmy. Thus curative eurythmy may be introduced in a thoroughly organic manner into the course of therapy as a whole.

It is truly so: the person who understands that developing oneself spiritually has always something to do with becoming ill—we must take becoming ill in the course of spiritual development into the bargain—must also taken into consideration that one can fight, not alone through outward physical studies, but also by outward means, this process of becoming ill which is due to our civilization. We put soul and spirit into the movements of eurythmy and combat thereby what, on the other side, soul and spirit do themselves, though often in earliest childhood, in such a manner that the effect of their activity when it develops in later life must be felt to be the cause of illness.

• 1. Published by the Anthroposophic Press, Inc., New York, 1973.
• 2. stossige wirkung

As we have seen the vowels in eurythmy always work more or less directly on the rhythmic organism. With the consonantal eurythmic movements the case is that, although the rhythmic organism is, of course, also affected, this is accomplished by way of the limb-metabolic system. Naturally the first thing we must do today is simply to take a look at the details; here one can only arrive at a contemplative picture of what is involved when one can enter into the details. We will now go through the most important consonantal movements in eurythmy. Perhaps you would make a B for us, Miss Wolfram; and now this B in walking as well. Try to walk in such a manner, however, that one leg imitates the motion of the arm while moving; but repeat the B. Now imagine that done more and more quickly and repeated to begin with, let us say for four to five minutes. Perhaps Mrs. Baumann will now do the P for us in the same manner. The difference is not very great. Now you must attempt to do this with the legs as well. That brings about a complicated leg movement which is very similar to the movements of tone eurythmy. That must now be repeated frequently and in series by the person with whom one hopes to accomplish something by means of the P.

Now all of the movements that are connected with the eurythmic consonants have to do with that in the process of digestion which lies on the far side of the activity of the stomach and intestine. We will now ignore the actual intestinal space through which the food passes. When we consider the outer wall of the intestine, however, where the chyme passes through the intestinal villi and so on and then into the blood and the lymph—thus from the other side of that comprised in the first digestive activity—movement such as we have just made work back on the inward digestion, on all that which is digestive activity in the blood vessels, and moreover on what is digestive activity in the kidneys. Thus if you should be concerned with regulating the activity of the kidneys, you should have such movements carried out. Precisely the movements which we have just done, B and P, are those which work pre-eminently in the regulation of renal activity, for example in regulating the elimination of urine. These connections are certainly extraordinarily interesting for someone who remembers how the whole circulatory being of man is related to language, and how a connection thus arises between that which pushes itself into the circulatory system from the metabolic system and this particular manner of making sounds, of making consonants.

Let us try to make a D. Now attempt to make the same movement with the legs: you hop, and while hopping you bend the legs somewhat at the knee. Here one must try to get the patients to bend at the knee and hop more and more powerfully and have them jump. Perhaps Mrs. Baumann will demonstrate the T for us; here the corresponding movement will be a hop forwards with an attempt at making knock-knees.¹ Thus while stepping forward you make the attempt to hop forwards and form knock-knees. That is what must be carried out. Our first concern is to demonstrate these things. So we have D and T. When one carries out the so-called soft sound one can remedy milder conditions, and with the so-called hard sound, the more severe conditions of this sort. Of course one must have the patients repeat them for several minutes until they are quite tired—in these things it is really a matter of carrying the exercise out until one is tired. And when one carries them out to fatigue, the D- and the T-sounds in particular are a force which works to strengthen the intestinal activity, particularly that activity which comes to expression in constipation. In this manner one can counteract constipation in many cases. Such a matter is unquestionably evident to the person who knows the physiological connections between the speech organism—which takes up the movement in the course of learning to speak—and the metabolic-limb system.

Now perhaps you will be so good, Miss Wolfram, and demonstrate the G-sound for us. Here is a matter of trying again to move forward in a similar manner while forming knock-knees. It would be the same thing with the K sound (Mrs. Baumann). And now you must try to hop forwards with the legs spread out sharply, with the Q as well; but that is the same thing again. Here in the case of G, as well as of K and of Q we have a movement which stimulates the forward motion, the inner mechanization of the intestine, which thus promotes the movement of the intestine itself. The difference in the physiological effect of D and T, G, K, and Q, is that in the case of D and T the processing of the food itself is more affected while with G, K, and Q the effect is more on the forward motion of the food in the intestine when the intestine itself lags.

Particularly important and therapeutically fruitful is the S. When you do the S-sound it is necessary to hop, to hop forwards keeping the legs continuously in the O-form, and to make the S-sound. Because one continually sets the legs down in this 0-shape, namely, this actually has a very inward connection with the human digestive activity, and that is with the metabolic activity as it works back upon the entire human organism. In this movement one has something which one can have those children do who show an insufficent digestive activity and, who therefore, have headaches, since this movement regulates in particular the formation of gas in the intestine. When this is not in order, when it is either insufficient or too strong, this movement in particular will have a most important effect.

Then we have the F-sound. (Mrs. Baumann). One has to do here with something psychic. One must try to perform the jump in the following manner: one begins and tries to go forward; in landing one must come down hard on the tips of the toes, however, and now bring the heels down—once again, a jump onto the tips of the toes, then down on to the heels again. In the case of the V,² it would be just the same. Here we have a movement which should be practised when one finds that urination is not in order. It has a stimulative effect on the passing of urine. When it is necessary to animate this—for whatever reason—here is the movement to be performed.

It is, of course, entirely possible to combine the movements in the most varied manners; one will find in giving treatment that one will have to combine the one with the other—depending on the direction to be taken.

If we make an R (Miss Wolfram) I must ask you to please make it in such a way that in stepping forwards you always stretch distinctly, then with the left foot thus (here Dr. Steiner demonstrated the bending and stretching movement himself; the ed.), put the weight on the foot, stretch and as you step forwards—continuing in this manner to put the weight on the foot with the legs bent—you must try to make the R. That would have to be developed in this manner. If one were to practise this R with a person for a few minutes—one would have to practise it frequently during the day, however—it would regulate the rhythm of evacuation were that not in order. That is something which works directly over onto the rhythm of evacuation and regulates it.

Apart from its being necessary to do these movements not in a dilettantic fashion, but in a manner suitable to the matter at hand, in accordance with the diagnosis, it will be important for the observation of the whole dynamics of the human being to keep the connections which come thus to light in view.

Now an L, (Mrs. Baumann) here again together with the effort to place the legs in the knock-kneed position and hop forwards—draw together—now once again. It should be an effort to hop forwards, too. The forwards motion is entirely necessary in such a case. This movement works especially strongly on the peristalsis, on the movement of the intestine itself. With this movement one can also have the patient move backwards in the same manner. He will have much more difficulty in learning to do it, but it will have a significant effect in regulating the movement of the intestine itself, the peristalsis, as all these movements in fact work in a regulative manner out of the limb-metabolic system into what is in this connection a dependency of the limb-metabolic system (or at least adjacent to it) that is, into the circulation and into the respiratory movement as well.

A very interesting letter is the H, which actually has the most vowel nature attached to it. One should accompany the H in walking as follows: one tries to stand with the legs together, to hop forwards, and in the course of this hop forwards, to spread the legs and strike the floor with the legs apart; one should always be moving forwards. That is a movement which, I beg you to take notice, must be carried out thoroughly slowly, however. In the case of the other movements it is important to carry them out quickly; this movement, however, must be carried out slowly and there must be pauses for rest between each of the jumps as well. This must be taken into account with this movement as it has a very strong effect on the regulation of intestinal activity in the area of transition from the stomach into the intestine. Therefore, when one notices that someone eannot get his food from the stomach into the intestine, it will be greatly to his advantage to perform this movement, but, as I said, tranquilly and standing still after each separate hop.

Now we have the M. (Mrs. Baumann) This M must be made with the “peewit step”. It is good to do one step with one leg and the next with the other leg—forth and back. One can also do the peewit step backwards and then with the other leg forwards again. This technique of doing the peewit step backwards is something which one should really master. It is in fact a movement which it is important to study, then when the M is carried out in this form in movement it acts to regulate the entire metabolic system and limb system and it is extraordinarily important to practise it with the children during puberty. When this exercise with M is practised at the time of sexual maturity it will prove a strong regulator of over assertive sexuality. It will regulate over assertive sexuality when practised during puberty. One must only have developed an eye for whether it should be practised in this manner. It is not without reason the M was regarded as an especially important sound in the time when people still understood something of the inner content of the sounds; it is the sound which closes the OM syllable of the Orient. The OM syllable of the Orient is closed by M because the whole human being is in fact regulated through the metabolic-limb system by exactly this sound. Thus this movement is particularly regulatory. In the ancient culture it was customary to have the younger people perform such movements in order to educate them to be corporally complete human beings and, at the same time, reserved persons.

Then we have the N sound. The N-sound is accompanied by a jump in which the knees are bent from the beginning. So, one keeps the legs, the knees, bent and then jumps. That is a movement which strengthens the intestinal activity greatly and in such a manner that it can be applied where there is a tendency to diarrhoea. That can serve as a substantiation or as an indication of how one can see the effect of the system of movement on the metabolic system. That is something which one really only notices when one considers the connections between the system of movement and the metabolic system in the light of one's knowledge of the threefold order of the human organism. This threefold order of the human organism sheds light in fact on many things; in our present time where knowledge of the soul consists almost solely of words, one can think out at length all sorts of exercises in which one believes one has taken the soul element into account—or one can develop gymnastics in which one takes only the bodily physiology into consideration. One can talk at length around and about these matters; without knowledge of the threefold order of the human organism one will not attain to any clarity in them. It was mteresting, in fact, to have a physiologist of the present day here who listened to one of the introductions which I usually give at eurythmy performances and then saw eurythmy as well. Now I normally say that in education one will have to replace the sort of gymnastics that proceeds solely from physiology with this soul-filled sort of gymnastics. Thereupon the physiologist, who is also known as a very great authority in nutritional matters, said that for him it wasn't enough to say that one shouldn't overrate gymnastics; for him gymnastics was no method of education at all, but a barbarism.

Now, you see, behind something like this is hidden a very important Symptom of the times. It is, on the one hand, just as correct to say that the gymnastics of today is usually one¬sidedly conceived—since it is taken out of the physiology and anatomy of the organism alone—as it is at least one-sided on the other hand to say that gymnastics is a barbarism. Why? Because when one develops gymnastics out of the physiology of the body alone it becomes a barbarism. It is our materialistic education and civilization that first made a barbarism out of gymnastics. In the manner in which gymnastics is practised today, it is a barbarism. And this conception of gymnastics is connected with some completely false notions, is it not? For example, people believe—although the experts don't believe it anymore, still many people believe that if one has a person exert himself mentally (geistig) and then allows him to recover, as they believe, corporally thereafter, that constitutes a proper recuperation. But that isn't true at all! If a person does arithmetic or gymnastics for an hour he will become equally tired in reality; it makes no difference. That is known today, but people cannot properly judge how soul and Spirit should be brought into gymnastic movements, how the movements carried out are to proceed from the human being as a whole. Now one will have to develop gymnastics gradually in such a way that what we are developing as artistic eurythmy can unite with what is thus developed as physiological gymnastics. And one can make the transition from the eurythmic to the gymnastic quite well. It will only be necessary to see that this sort of eurythmy which actually takes the part of a sort of soul-filled gymnastics in the course of instruction is done with humour; before everything else it must give the children delight. It must give the children joy; that is a part of it. To teach eurythmy like a grumpy, dried-out school-master would be something which could really not be done at all.

Now we still have the Sh. (Miss Wolfram) When it is accompanied by a small jump, then a larger jump, a small jump, then again a larger jump, a smaller jump, a larger jump, then one has a movement with a strong effect in the Sh as well; however, it too must be carried out slowly. It is not necessary to slow the N-movement down particularly, but with the H and Sh movement it is essential to do them slowly and in the case of the latter to take a short rest after every three jumps, at the transition to the next set; thus a rhythm is brought into it as well: short, long, short—and now one rests—long, short, long—and now a rest—short, long, short,—now a rest. Thus one has in this a movement which in the appropriate cases—one can combine movements, of course—affects the beginning portions of the intestinal tract, which pertains to the stomach. When someone has what is in itself such a weck digestion that the food remains lying in the stomach—I have drawn attention to similar matters on other occasions—that will also be particularly the case where the H-movement is involved. with the Sh movement, however, one must notice, for example, whether stomach acid is easily produced and so on; then the Shmovement should be carried out.

So you see the consonants as they are performed eurythmically are connected with the formation of man in a totally different manner from the eurythmic vowels. As we considered the making of vowels in eurythmy I had to draw your attention to the manner in which the inward, that which lies more to the interior, is related to movement. Here we have to do with the effect on the third member of the threefold organism.

Now when applying that which we discussed the day before yesterday in regard to the vowels, it would be good to have the patient sound the vowel of the exercise to be done, slowly, before the exercise as such is begun. So that without singing—singing would be of less help in this case—he very simply entones the sound at length, and when he has done this for a time, when he has sounded it out loud, one would have him carry out the movement for the vowel in question. When he has done that one should try to call forth in him the impression that he hears the sound that he has just carried out. You will find that in the present day only very few people have the impression that they hear the sounds inwardly in a soul-spiritual manner. Thus one must tell him to enter into a state of soul such as if he were to hear the “I”. It is particularly important to understand this matter. Then, you see, when you have the patient speak the vowel, entone it, the organism as such feels as if the sound were being induced. If he then carries out the movement it appears to be the result of the spoken sound. And then one listens. One entones the “I”, then does the movement, and then in one's fantasy imagines that one hears the “I” sounding. Then we have: the calling forth of the “I”, that which arises through the movement of the “I”, the hearing of that which has moved, the hearing of the sound once again. This is something which brings a great deal of life into this human etheric body; and in precisely those directions we have pointed out it brings real life into the etheric body. In these matters, in these exercises the intention is to bring movement into the human etheric body, to bring an inwardly regulated movement into the etheric activity of the human organism. It is particularly interesting to see how the movement, which as a movement of the intestine progresses from the front to the hack, releases a movement in the etheric body which proceeds from back to front and then breaks on the abdominal wall—it does not actually break, but disappears. This latter movement is in most cases where the intestinal activity is not in order, in gross disorder as well. This activity which counters the physical movement will be aroused particularly by the R-movement, for example. Here there is a very lively vibrating from back to front and that is the element in the R-movement which affects the rhythm of elimination in a very specific manner.

It can also be used pedagogically as the whole human organism is a unity and everything in it works in a unitary fashion. If you were to survey children in school, for example, you would find amongst them some who can hardly pronounce an R, who are quite shocking in their pronunciation of the R. Of course, the factors can be crossed and the matter may not be self-evident—nevertheless, such children are always simultaneously candidates for constipation: one does them a kindness, in fact, by doing something such as I showed you yesterday with them: the R-movement, which affects the rhythm of evacuation positively. It is indeed possible to make use of these things pedagogically. One must only always have the indications and one must not go too far. The physician, however, can go much further as he will find that specific symptoms naturally appear when the exercise is practised for days and weeks. But he is, of course, in the position to counter these symptoms, which quite justifiably appear, by other means. I want to point out that if the effect of the N-movement were to become too predominant, one would only have to counteract it with the D-movement and one would nevertheless have achieved that which was to be achieved. Thus one can balance one by means of the other.

The only other thing I wish to say today is that I really do not want artistic eurythmy to be influenced in any way whatsoever by the discussion which must of course arise when eurythmy is considered as a hygienic-therapeutic discipline. I beg the artistic eurythmists to forget these things thoroughly when they practise artistic eurythmy so that they are not confused by their thoughts on digestive activity when they are involved in artistic eurythmy. That would be most troubling. One must nevertheless be entirely clear, however, that human art does have to do with the whole human being and does not proceed from the head alone. And especially in the case of an art of movement that must naturally be kept in view.

That is what I had as yet to tell you. In the following days we will discuss more what has to do with the evolution of man, with reference to what comes to the fore after certain intervals of time, that is to say, what occurs at a later age, as the consequence of an exercise affecting the organism of the child.

• 1. X-beine; literally, X-legs.
• 2. V is pronounced in the same way as F in German.