The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Today I would like to make a few aphoristic remarks on various pedagogical questions which we discussed in our first course and which I have since added to as I feel necessary at the present time. The Christmas course that I gave in Dornach, which in many ways complements the other explanations on pedagogy, I have not yet been able to print after the postscripts. I hope that this will happen some day. But for the time being it has been appearing continuously in the lectures of Steffen at the "Goetheanum". This reprint in the "Goetheanum" will now also be published in book form, so that at least these lectures by Steffen on this Christmas course, which I consider to be especially important for study by those interested in pedagogy, will be available.

Today I would like to point out some feelings that the teacher, the educator, should always have, and that he should also repeatedly, I would like to say meditatively, call into consciousness. The basic feeling must be what I have expressed in various ways: respect for the individuality of the child. We must be aware that there is a spiritual individuality embodied in every child, and that what we have before us as a physical child is not actually a true expression of the child's individuality. The regularity, the structure of the human organism, as you have seen from much that has come before our souls since the first Teacher's Course, is an extraordinarily complicated one. And for a variety of reasons, that which is the true individuality of a child is prevented from fully expressing itself by obstacles in the physical and also in the etheric organism, so that we actually always have before us in the child the more or less unknown true individuality and that which is actually concealed by the physical of the child. It is also possible to express the same truth in the other form that I tried to say in the public lectures in Vienna: We must be aware that in a certain individuality of a child, if we characterize it radically, there could be a genius, and it could also be that we ourselves as teachers and educators would not be a genius. If this relationship exists, that the child is a genius and the teacher is not a genius, it is a completely justified relationship, because not all teachers can be geniuses, and pedagogy has to deal with the general laws. But, of course, it would be quite wrong if the teacher then wanted to inculcate his own individuality or even his own sympathies and antipathies into the child, if he wanted to teach the child as right, as desirable, etc., what he himself thinks is right and desirable. Of course, he would hold the child back on his level, and we must not do that under any circumstances. We can help ourselves tremendously if we, I would say, once again meditate and become very deeply aware that all education basically has nothing to do with the real individuality of the human being, that we, as educators and teachers, actually have the main task, It is our duty as educators and teachers to stand before individuality with reverence, to offer it the possibility to follow its own laws of development, and to remove only those obstacles to development which lie in the physical-emotional and in the body-emotional, that is, in the physical body and in the etheric body. We are only called upon to remove those inhibitions which lie in the physical-emotional and in the body-emotional and to let the individuality develop freely; so that we should basically use what we teach the child in terms of knowledge only to bring the body, both the physical-emotional and the etheric-emotional, so far forward that the human being can just develop freely.

My dear friends, this seems abstract, but it is the most concrete thing in education, and at the same time it points to where one makes the most mistakes. Many people say that it is necessary to develop the individuality of the child. This is as true as it is empty. For if the physical and etheric inhibitions were not there, the individuality of each child would develop properly in life. But we have to remove these physical and etheric inhibitions. Just think of the terrible things we do when we teach six, seven, eight year old children to read and write. It is not often enough that this is brought home to us in all its gravity. For when the child grows up to be six, seven, eight years old, he really brings nothing with him to point out or even to imitate those little demonic things that appear before him on paper. There is no human relationship to the letter forms of today. Therefore, we must be aware of the fact that there is a terrible gap between what has developed in the later course of human civilization and what the child in his 7th year is. Today we have to teach the child something that it certainly does not want, so that it can grow into today's civilization. And if we don't want to spoil the child, we have to proceed in such a way that we treat the child in these years as it needs to be treated, so that the obstacles to its development are removed and it is gradually led, after the obstacles to its development are removed, to the point of view of the soul, to the state of the soul, where the adult people stood in that period of culture when the present forms of writing came into being. The nature of the child itself gives cause for this, of course.

You see, today experiments are being conducted on the tiredness of children. The fact that such figures have been found should not be the end of the research, but the beginning. We should ask ourselves: Why are children so tired? - We are looking at a system, we are looking at the head system, and probably also at the metabolic system and the limb system, which are tired, while the rhythmic system, which is in the highest flower of its development from the change of teeth to sexual maturity, is not really tired. For the heart beats even when it is tired, and the respiratory rhythm and all rhythms go on unharmed by any fatigue, so that the present figures of experimental psychology say something different from what is usually assumed today. They say that the rhythmic system is not taken into account enough in the education of children. But the rhythmic system is stimulated directly from the soul when the whole teaching is artistic, plastic-artistic or musical-artistic. Then you will find that the child will hardly get tired to a great extent because of this kind of teaching. And the teacher should indeed acquire a watchful eye to see whether his children tire too much; he should acquire a certain instinct to see whether the fatigue is much greater than it should be according to the mere external conditions, whether the air in the classroom is somewhat worse than it should be, whether the children have to sit for hours on end, that is, the purely physical things that occupy the metabolic-limb organism. On the other hand, the child has to think. If the thoughts echo in a quiet rhythm, they are not too tired. They get a little tired, but not too tired. The rhythmic system is the physical organ of education and teaching that must be used especially by the child. Now, in the subjects that are not directly artistic, we must try to make the teaching as artistic as possible. This must be taken very seriously, for this is the only real means of education: the artistic between the change of teeth and sexual maturity.

Yesterday I said that what is very important for this age of life is that we transform everything into the image, either into the musical image or into the plastic image. Now, of course, you may find how extraordinarily difficult it is in some subjects to work through the image. It will be relatively easy to work through the image in history, where you can make an image of what you are describing; it will be relatively easy in this or that subject, for example, in natural history, where you should also make an image of what you want to teach the child. In other subjects it will be more difficult. In languages, for example, it will not be so difficult to bring things into the picture, if one attaches any importance at all to taking the pictorial aspect of language into account in teaching. One should not miss any opportunity to look at how sentences are structured, for example, a three-part sentence structure consisting of the main clause, the relative clause and the conditional clause, even with ten, eleven, twelve-year-old children. Not true, the grammatical aspect is not the main thing; it should be treated by us only as a means to get the picture, but we should not neglect to give the child, I would say, even a spatial-visual idea of a main clause and a relative clause. Of course, this can be done in many different ways. You can make the main proposition a large circle, the relative proposition a small circle, perhaps placed eccentrically - without theorizing, by staying in the picture - and you can make the conditional proposition, the if proposition, so vivid that you introduce, say, rays against the circle as the conditional factors. It is not necessary to exaggerate these things, but it is really necessary to come back to these things again and again after a good preparation of the subject. And even with ten-, eleven-, twelve-year-old children, one should pay attention to what I would call the moral-characterological aspects of pictorial style. Not that you should have style lessons at that age. We discussed yesterday where that should be in the class. Rather, the matter should be grasped more from the inner intuitive. You can go very far. For example, you can treat the individual reading piece, not the pedantic reading pieces that are in our reading books, but what you really prepare carefully, you can treat it according to your temperament. You can talk about a melancholic style or a choleric style, not about the content. So please leave out the content completely, even the poetic content, I mean the sentence structure. There is no need to take things apart, which should be avoided; but the transformation into the image, which should be cultivated, when I say: into the moral-characterological. One can find the possibility to have a stimulating effect on the children already in the 10th, 11th, 12th, 13th years, if one restrains oneself in an appropriate way to make the necessary studies..

You see, my dear friends, I do not want to mend anybody's things, I only want to characterize something. Again, at our Vienna Congress, I was able to make quite meaningful studies, meaningful for me, when I compared the attitude, the stylistic attitude of those who spoke, let us say, from Northern Germany, and those who spoke as our Viennese, who were called here. I always thought to myself, when Baravalle or Stein or another Viennese comes again, will he again begin his lecture with "if"? That is so characteristic of the Austrian, it is infinitely meaningful to begin with a conditional sentence, it immediately leads into the moral-characterological. I think you yourself are hardly aware of how you begin your lectures with "If"! The North Germans and the Swiss do not begin with "if," they immediately blurt out an unconditional, affirmative sentence. This is so characteristic, and this is how one should learn to approach things, first of all, so that one can become free, if I may say so, from one's own conditions, and so that in this becoming free one can also achieve an artistic treatment, which is not pedantic, an artistic treatment of any teaching material. If you learn to pay attention to such things, you can achieve an artistic treatment of any subject. And I would like to point out that it is extremely important to feel oneself in artistic things in such a way that one pays attention to details in artistic things, if one wants to be a good teacher for children from the change of teeth to sexual maturity. Again, look at the photographs*; look at how Dr. Kolisko and Walleen are standing, and do not look at them with an interpretive, commenting sense, but look at them with an artistic sense, and you will see how much they give you. It is very important not to force things like that; of course, if you make a judgment with your mind, that someone always holds a folder in a certain hand position and things like that, it comes out immediately as nonsense. But if you grasp it with an artistic sense, something comes out that cannot be completely put into words, but which pours the artistic into your limbs in a tremendously significant way, which is exactly what you need as an educator. It is very important to be able to transform things into a picture, because the picture brings the things that we want to teach the child closer to the human being.

With what we, after our own scientific education, what we have taken up and what we are always confronted with when we prepare ourselves - the books we prepare ourselves from contain nothing but abominations - we burden ourselves with something that is scientific systematics, and when we do not have enough time to get rid of the whole thing - when we prepare ourselves for a lesson, we have to take a contemporary book in which things are arranged scientifically - then this haunts our minds. When we bring this to the children, it is something that is not possible. And we have to realize that this causes us great difficulties, that today scientific systematics, not human systematics, have crept into the preparation books that we can use. So we have to get rid of it absolutely. We have to get everything that we bring into the school for this age absolutely free of all scientific systematics.

And here it is good to remember times when older children, older young people were taught in such a way that it was taken for granted that the appeal was not to the head, but to the whole person. One only has to remember the medieval education: grammar, rhetoric, dialectic, where it was not important to teach this or that, but to get the child to be able to express himself in a sentence that was grammatically correct. There, grammar was not taught, but the child was given the opportunity to think in such a pictorial way that his sentences had a pictorial character. Then, not true, rhetoric: the child should be accustomed to feel the beauty of the word in its formation; dialectic: the child should be accustomed to let the thought free in itself, and so on; there it was a matter of ability. And basically it must also come to ability in the most spiritual things, from the change of teeth to sexual maturity. But the ability is reached only at that age when everything is brought into the picture.

Well, that's where the trivialities sometimes play an extraordinarily large role. For example, when presenting mathematics, it really makes a difference whether you put one line of letters that is wider and then another that is shorter, whether you put it at the beginning or in the middle. You can make a picture out of what is an arithmetic operation at the end, which the students have in front of them, and put a certain value on something like that, so that even what you write on the blackboard becomes a picture; that even in the trivialities these things are thoroughly taken into account. Sometimes there are opportunities to bring out the picture from a very special corner of life, I would say. Mathematical formulas or sequences of formulas can sometimes be described by figures that are immediately perceived as beautiful. We should not miss such opportunities. It would be a sin and a pity if we missed such an opportunity to make something descriptive, which might be a kind of unnecessary tendril for those who can only think in a philistine way. We should gradually inoculate the philistro-logical way out of our souls for this age, if I may say so. Today we inoculate it much too much more and more. We should inoculate it out; we should work with all our might towards the imaginative or towards the musical, and then actually come close to rhythm for this age of life.

And now we should not close our minds to the realization that truly imponderables play a great role in the totality of teaching. You see, in our very first pedagogical courses, we spoke of a pedagogical relationship between the four temperaments. The task of the educator is to study these four temperaments in the child continuously, to study them in such a way that he can take them into account continuously. This is because, as I say, the right karma of a class is created through the right treatment of the temperaments of the children in the class. After all, such a class is together; they are souls that are together. As they work with the teacher and with each other, a part of their life karma is played out. All kinds of threads of life are being spun, but a piece of karma is being played out; especially between the 7th and 14th years, a piece of karma is being played out very strongly. And how the individual temperaments work into that karma is what we should look at. In this respect, the class can be a constant subject of inner apercus, if we let this be the quiet undertone of our pedagogical work. And above all, one should not let it happen that in any class there are sleeping, co-sleeping students. By sleeping students I mean those who, during the course of the lesson, give only half or three-quarters or a quarter of their whole being. It can happen that the few gifted ones, as they are usually called - they are not always - show up and the others remain asleep. Then the lesson will be really lively with a few, and the others will always be a kind of extras, and this is what must be avoided at all costs. Because, of course, this becoming an extra or being a chatterbox - I don't mean that in a bad way - is also based on other moments. But it is also based on the contrast of temperaments. Of course, among the students there are those who have, let's say, a sanguine or even a choleric temperament, and they will always show off, and you will always have to deal with them if you don't pay special pedagogical attention to them; and there are others, the more melancholic, phlegmatic ones, who then become the extras. This must be avoided at all costs, because the best thing we can do for the students who think more quickly and speak more easily is to make those who think more slowly and do not open their mouths so readily take part in everything, speak, cooperate, and so on. It is absolutely necessary that we go along with this inconvenience. Then we will feel that for a short time we may make less progress than if we left the extras to themselves, but in the long run it will be different. In the long run it will turn out that we have a tremendous effect on the memory retention of the children by not allowing the extras. What is justified in memory is essentially supported by the fact that we do not allow extras.

And so I would say that the possibility of working quite pictorially depends also on the effectiveness of these imponderables. We will see from experience that if we allow all the temperaments, all the possible dispositions of a class to really live themselves out, that for the age from the change of teeth to sexual maturity we are much more likely to arrive at a pictoriality seated in the soul than if we do not. Of course, a certain, I would say, strong devotion to the lesson is necessary if the things to be taught are really always to be taught with the consideration that they will become pictorial; but nevertheless, one should never end a lesson for this age without giving the child something pictorial. Those who are able to draw with the children from the very beginning have an easier time in this respect; but those who, let us say, give the children something pictorial, for example in languages or arithmetic, have all the more effect on them. And, in fact, there is no other real preparation for the educator for this pictorial work than that which I have indicated: to sharpen our sense of observation of life in such a way that we can respond objectively to what life reveals, especially in the human being. A healthy artistic physiognomics, not only human physiognomics, but also, for example, animal physiognomics, should indeed be revived among educators, a healthy, not the sentimental physiognomics of Lavater and the like, but a healthy physiognomics in which the pictorial is sought, without going so far as to close the concept, staying in the picture, being satisfied with it, when one has brought things into the picture, such a healthy physiognomy should be revived, and it will then pass over of itself into all kinds of actions, into all kinds of processes that the teacher develops during the lesson. Nowhere should we pay so much attention to the how and not so much to the what as in teaching and education. It is not the what that is important, but the fact that the what appears in a certain way, in a certain way in the lesson. And there is no greater enemy for the teacher than an incomplete preparation, because it always makes him stop at the "what," whereas a complete preparation always makes him go from the "what" to the "how," makes him rejoice to see how he can prepare it for the child, how he can form it before the child, because the forming itself has become like an inspiration and the like. We should not shrink back when we ourselves often bring incomprehensible things to the children in this respect. Incomprehensible things which the children accept on our authority - and for the children, between the change of teeth and sexual maturity, authority decides - are better taught to the children than trivial things which are comprehensible to them and which they grasp out of their own intellect.

These are quite, I would say, finer nuances of what the teacher, the educator, should do with his own soul life. You will notice, if you perhaps look again at the Christmas course on education, that there is actually everywhere an emphasis on answering the question: How do we form the shell of the human being, the physical body, the etheric body? - Not, how do we form the individuality? That will form itself. If you say, "How do we form the physical body? -...people today, in this materialistic age, have no idea that it is only through the spiritual-mental processes, the spiritual-mental processes that you develop during the teaching, that you form the physical body.

For example, suppose a child stumbles over its own words, cannot find the next word. You see, in the child, before he has reached sexual maturity, this stumbling over his own words is a trait that is still based in physical corporeality in the Upper Man. The upper man is the man in physical relationship, who undergoes his main development in the first and even in the infantile period of life. If you find the possibility to find out the right tempo for what you make the child sing, tell, to get the right tempo for such a person who makes us wait there when he has to look for the transition from one word to the other, then you are in a position to cure this in the child up to sexual maturity absolutely from the spiritual. You are removing a physical inhibition. If you have not removed it from the physical up to sexual maturity, then you have formed its counterpart in the metabolic limb system, then it has become a property of the intestines, then you cannot get it out. Then whatever you do in the ordinary sense as spiritual practices will not help you. They have to be done in such a way that they affect the digestive system, and of course it is not always possible to introduce this, I would say, in a general way. That would lead to the abuse of certain exercises. But with the child, we have to watch carefully to see if he goes from one word to another, from one thought to another, subnormally slowly. And in the child we can still make the body healthy. We make the digestive system sick if we do not cure such waiting from one word to another in youth. This is our duty, and it is more important than any content - which we need, because we have to teach, and therefore we have to have content - to teach the child. This is simply how the mind works in the whole physical organism. In order to learn to control the physical organism in the right way, we have to know the spiritual science, because it is the spirit that works in the physical organism. Therefore, we need to bring healthy medical thinking closer to educational thinking in a certain way. So that we really know how to take such a thing seriously, let us say that when it is said in the Old Testament that someone was tormented by bad dreams, the expression is not used: My brain has done something special, God has afflicted me through my brain. - No one who was active in the Old Testament would have said that. But he said: God is afflicting me through my kidneys. - And why? For the simple reason that it is true. People today are proud to know that spiritual things come from the brain, and they arrogantly disregard what is written in the Old Testament. Not only the brain is spiritualized, but the whole organism is spiritualized. Dreams, for example, come from the kidneys; the expression in the Old Testament is very serious. Just as it is clever in the modern sense to say that compassion also comes from the brain; but in the deeper sense it is nonsense, and the Old Testament form, that compassion comes from the bowels, is the correct one.

And so we must know that when we approach the child with the soul-spiritual, we are treating its whole body. We are the very ones who, with medical wisdom, take care of the physical-spiritual of the child when we do this or that in the construction of sentences, in the treatment of colors, in the treatment of sounds, in the treatment of this or that object. We are influencing the whole physical; for in the physical is the spirit, and we are influencing this spirit, not only the spirit which is only directly in the brain, for there, strangely enough, is the most ineffective thing. And so we must see ourselves as educators, either as people who are constantly bringing up in children something that nourishes and shapes life, or something that is poisonous and destroys the body. If we exaggerate a little in the direction of formalism, if we make the children think until they are tired, then we condemn them between the ages of 7 and 14 to relatively early sclerosis. We just have to be aware that we are working on the whole life when we develop this or that in the child's environment in education and teaching. And if we are not aware of this, we will certainly not approach pedagogical issues in the right way: We are really entitled to remove only the obstacles and hindrances that arise from the physical and etheric nature of man.

As for the rest, today's man, who is much more selfish than he thinks, will naturally say - this seems right to me, that seems wrong to me - and will then bring up the child to feel and think as much as possible like himself. That, of course, is wrong. What is right in all matters is life - not the individual teacher - whom we must ask. Today, of course, we have to teach a child to write. I must confess that I cannot find in myself any judgment of taste that would give me an answer directly from human nature as to whether a child should learn to write or not; it arises only from consideration of the development of civilization. Mankind has now come to the point where a certain content of civilization has an effect on the way of writing and reading. In order to educate the child not for another world but for this world, we must teach him to read and write. This is something we must accept as a condition of civilization, and we must remove the obstacles to development that come with living in a certain age. We have an enormous amount of work to do if we want to answer the question: How can we make the objects that are already given for the human development of the child as harmless as possible? - Because we can always assume that by giving the child a certain material, we are doing the child more harm than good. So we must always ask ourselves: How can we avoid the harm that must always be done when we teach the child something? Well, of course, this is all the less true the more artistic the material is, and all the more true the more cognitive the material is. But this fact must always be before our minds. And now we should be very clear about this: the right authoritative relationship that should exist between the change of teeth and sexual maturity between the educator and the child, this right authoritative relationship is brought about under no other circumstances than when we make an effort to make the teaching artistic-pictorial. If we can do that, then the authoritative relationship will certainly develop. You see, what undermines the authoritative relationship is one-sided intellectuality. Of course, it is easiest to cultivate one-sided intellectuality in the fields of arithmetic, science, and so on. But it is there that we should work into the pictorial. Often we are too unimaginative in language teaching. Let us be clear about this: when we create figuratively, there is a certain selflessness involved. It is much easier to think cleverly, it is much more selfish to think cleverly, than to create pictorially; and we face the child unselfishly when we create pictorially in our teaching. When the child has reached sexual maturity, and knowledge is to pass into cognition, then, because its intellect is now awakened, it simply rejects the judgment of the teacher, the educator, of its own accord. Then nothing is achieved by mere authority, then we have to be able to compete, then we really have to compete with the child, because actually at the age of 17 one is as clever as at the age of 35 in terms of the ability to judge. There are certain nuances, but basically you are as smart at 17 as you are at 35 in terms of formal logic. So you really have to compete with the child as soon as they reach sexual maturity. And therefore, what I said yesterday, that one must not show oneself in any way, must come true. Of course, this will be easy for the younger child if you devote yourself to an artistic organization of the lessons. And a great deal will be achieved if one gets a feeling for how different parts of one or the other can be formed artistically in different ways. Let's say you take the children through a series of plants. You talk about the blossoms; now you try to describe the blossoms in the whole tone, I would say, up to the tone of voice, in such a way that the whole words and ideas are something flowing, that they are light. Now, when you develop this, you try to appeal to the sanguine children in particular, so that the sanguine children contribute to the whole class what they have especially in the ability to perceive, in the easy ability to perceive, let us say, for such ideas as an artistic person develops when he describes blossoms. If you turn to the leaves, you may find that you strike such a tone that the melancholy children are more interested in the leaves; the dialog with the class now passes to the melancholy children. If you describe the roots, which are not usually seen, but which you can describe in such a way that their power can be felt in the flowers, if you describe what is usually invisible, then you must no longer describe statically, but dynamically, and then the choleric children help you to have a real dialog. In this way the whole class can be used for mutual stimulation, if only one develops the sense for it, which can become instinctive. Only, isn't it, it is necessary to pay attention to such things.

Well, actually the thing is that you imagine it to be much more difficult than it actually is. Because once you have brought yourself a quarter in such a direction, then you yourself have the need to bring yourself in 'such a direction'. But there is a catch. You start with great desire. You say to yourself: I want to do this now, I really want to create a picture, I want to create a picture for the lessons, tomorrow I will start. - Now it goes on for eight days, but after that you get lazy, and that is the catch. You have to persevere for a quarter of a year, and then you have to persevere longer. Eight days won't do it, but a quarter of a year will do it, if you are serious about training yourself for a quarter of a year.

And now today, my dear friends, I do not want to have given you one rule or another for one thing or another in class. Perhaps we will always organize pedagogical lectures at future meetings, so that we always move forward. But I would have liked to give you something today that would have made you meditate and put you in a pedagogical and pedagogical mood. I would have liked to see an arm move differently here and there in a class, so that it would create a different image in front of the students. Sometimes I wish that the always unimaginative bumpiness, for example, would not be one of the first things in the classroom. Sometimes I wish that this or that ungraceful wiping of the blackboard would be replaced by a more graceful one. All this comes naturally. It is worked out from the unartistic to the artistic when the general sense for it is there, and the general sense is actually much more important for the pedagogue than the individual dogmatic rule. I would like you to have taken up this today, which draws your attention to the importance of the heartbeat with which one is in pedagogy.

If today we think of the education of the young, we must bear in mind that we are concerned with feelings, the ideas, the will impulses of the next generation; we must be clear that our present work is to prepare this next generation for definite tasks which will be accomplished, at some time in the future of mankind. When a thing of this kind is said, the question at once arises; Why is it then that humanity has reached the widespread misery in which it is today? Humanity has entered into this misery because it has really in essential things made itself dependent, through and through dependent, on the kind of thinking and feeling peculiar to the western man. It is true to say that when today someone in Central Europe speaks about, e.g., Fichte, Herder or even Goethe, if he belongs to external public life, either as a journalist, book-wright or the like, he is much further from the true spiritual impulse living in Fichte, Herder or Goethe when he is thinking and active in Berlin or Vienna, than he is from what is felt and thought today in London, Paris, New York or Chicago. Things have worked out gradually In such a way that speaking generally our whole civilization has been flooded by the impulses proceeding from the philosophy of the western nations and our whole public life is lived in the impulses proceeding from the philosophy of these nations.

It must also be admitted that this is particularly true where the art of education is concerned. For from the last third of the 19th century European nations, speaking generally, have learned from the western nations in all such educational matters, and today it is taken for granted by those men who discuss or dispute among other things about questions of education, that they should make use of the habits of thought which come from the west. If you trace back all the educational ideas which are considered reasonable in Central Europe today, you will find their source in the views of Herbert Spencer or similar men. People do not trace out the numerous paths by which the views of Spencer and others like him have entered the heads of those who have to decide about spiritual questions in Central Europe, but these paths exist—they are to be found. And if you (I will not lay special stress on the details) take the spirit of the educational line such as is to be found, e.g., in Fichte, it is now not only absolutely different from that which is generally looked upon today as sensible pedagogy, but the fact is that modern men are hardly in a position to think and feel along the lines which would enable then to understand what was meant by Fichte and Herder that they could find a way of continuing it. Thus, our experience today in the realm of pedagogy, especially in the art of pedagogy, is that the principles that have arisen are exactly the opposite of what they ought to be. Here I would like to point out to you something which Spencer has written.

Spencer was of the opinion that the way of giving object lessons should be such that they would lead over into the experience of the naturalist, into the research work of the men of science. What then would have to be done in the school? According to that, we should have to teach the children in school in such a way that when they are grown up and have the opportunity, they can continue what they have learned in the school about plants, minerals, animals, etc., so that they can become regular scientists or natural philosophers. It is true that this kind of idea is frequently attacked, but at the same time people really put this principle into practice. And for this reason; Our textbooks are composed with this in view, and no one thinks of altering or doing away with our textbooks. Today the fact is that, e.g., the textbooks on botany are composed for future botanists rather than for human beings in general. In the same way textbooks on zoology are written for future zoologists, not for human beings in general.

Now the remarkable thing is that we ought to strive for the exact opposite of that which Spencer has laid down as a true educational principle. When we are teaching the children about plants and animals in our Volkschule lessons, we could hardly imagine a greater mistake in our method of education than to treat the subject as an introduction to the studies which would be required to enable the child later to become a botanist or zoologist. If, on the contrary, you could have arranged your lessons so that your way of teaching about plants and animals would hinder the child in question from becoming a botanist or zoologist, then you would have acted more wisely than by following Spencer's principle, for no one should become a botanist or zoologist through what he learns in the Volkschule; that he can only become through his special gifts which are revealed by his choice of vocation and which would be sure to appear during his life if there is a true art of education. Through his gifts! That is, if he has the gifts necessary for a botanist, he can become a botanist; and if he has the gifts necessary for a zoologist, he can become a zoologist. That can only be the result of the gifts of the child in question, i.e., of his predetermined Karma. This must come about through the fact that we recognise this child has the makings of a botanist, that child has the makings of a zoologist. It must never be the result of making our Volkschule lessons in any way a preparation for special scientific activity. Just think what has happened of late. It has come about that unfortunately our “scientists” have been our educationalists; people who have definitely trained themselves to think scientifically have been engaged in pedagogy, have taken a most important part in deciding educational questions. That is to say, it has been thought that the teacher as such has something to do with the scientist; a scientific training has actually been taken as a teacher's training, whereas the two should be completely and absolutely different. If the teacher is a scientist, if he makes it his business to think scientifically in a narrow sense (that he can do as a private man, but not as a teacher), then there comes about something which does often happen. The teacher cuts rather a comical figure in his class and among his pupils or among his colleagues; jokes are made at his expense. Goethe's “Baccalaureus” in the upper classes is not such a rarity as is usually supposed.

And as a matter of fact, if you are asked today whether you would be more on the side of the teacher when his pupils make jokes about him or on the side of the scholars, you would under present educational conditions be more on the side of the scholars. For it is in our universities that you can best see whence this has arisen. What are our universities, properly speaking? Are they institutions for teaching young men and women or are they institutions for research? They would like to be both and that is why they have become the caricatures which they are today. It is usually even held up as a special feature of our universities that they are at the same time institutions for teaching and for research. But it is in this way that the bad methods, which come into our education when it is carried out by scientists, work their way first of all into our highest educational centres. Later these bad methods find their way down into the Mittelschule, and then finally also into the Volkschule. And it is this which cannot sufficiently be borne in mind, that the art of education must proceed from life and that it cannot proceed from abstract scientific thought.

Now the remarkable thing is that there is now arising, chiefly out of the western culture, just what can be called a pedagogy with a scientific, even a natural scientific, bent and that when we remember what was to be found in Herder, in Fichte, what was to be found in Jean Paul, in Schiller and similar minds, we know that here is really a pedagogy, which has been forgotten, taken from life, a pedagogy drawn directly from life. And now there lies before us the calling of the Central European nations, that calling which has its place in the history of the world, to cherish and develop this pedagogy, to make it their esoteric task to develop this pedagogy. For many things can be common to humanity and many things must be common to humanity if an improvement in social affairs is to come in the future; but the western nations will not be able to understand what will arise out of the whole concrete Central European spiritual culture with regard to the art of education; on the contrary, it will annoy them, and it really ought not to be told them in its original form. It could only have an undesirable effect upon them. It will only be possible to speak of it to them when they have made up their minds to take their stand on the esoteric foundation of Spiritual Science. With regard to all those things which have been looked upon in Germany during the last forty years with such pride, with regard to all those things which have been considered such a great advance, Germany has lost. All this will pass over to the dominion of the western nations. In this respect there is nothing to be done, and we can only hope to awaken so much understanding for the threefold social organism that the western nations will take part in it. But with regard to what has to be given for the art of education, we have something to give the world from Central Europe which no one else can give, not an oriental and not a western man. But we must know how to keep this among those who are able to understand it; we must understand how to guard it with a certain sense of trust, and we must know that it is this guardianship which will make our work effectual. You must know exactly about what things you have to be silent before certain people if you want to obtain a result. Then we must above all things be clear that there is nothing to hope from anything that might come to us from the kind of thought which, proceeding from the west, is indispensable in many branches of modern civilization; we must know that there is absolutely nothing to be expected from this direction for the educational art we have to develop.

There is a publication about education by Herbert Spencer which is extraordinarily Interesting. He gives there a whole number of maxims, of “Principles,” as he calls them, about the intellectual education of the child. Among these principles there is one which he especially emphasizes. In teaching you should never proceed from the abstract, but always from the concrete; you should always work your subject out from an individual case. Now in his book about education, before anything concrete is approached, there is the worst possible abstract litter, really abstract chaff, and he does not notice that he is himself carrying out the opposite of those principles which he sets forth as indispensable. Thus, we have an illustration of how an eminent, leading philosopher of the present day absolutely contradicts what he himself advocates.

Now you saw last year that our pedagogy has not to be built up on abstract principles of education, for it was said that we should not bring things to the child from the outside, but rather develop the individuality of the child. You know that our educational art should be built upon a real sympathy with the child's being, that it should be built up, in the widest sense, on a knowledge of the growing child, and in our first course of lectures and then later in our conferences we have collected sufficient facts about the being of the growing child. If as teachers we can enter into the child's being, then, out of our knowledge of the child, there will spring up a perception of the way in which we should act. In this respect we must as teachers become artists. Just as it is impossible for an artist to take a book on aesthetics in his hand in order to paint or model according to the principles laid down by the writer, so it should be quite impossible for a teacher to use an “educational guide” in order to teach, but what he needs is a real insight into what the child really is, what he will become as he works his way through childhood. It is above all necessary that we should be clear about the following: we teach, let us say, to begin with in the first class, the 6-7 year old children; now our teaching will always be bad, will have failed to fulfil its purpose if after we have worked with this first class for a year we do not say to ourselves; Who then has really learned the most? It is I, the teacher! If we say to ourselves, “At the beginning of the school year I had excellent educational principles, I have followed the best educational authorities, have done everything to carry out these principles;”—If you really had done this, you really would have taught badly. You would however certainly have taught best if each morning you had gone into your class in fear and trembling without over much confidence in yourself and then had said at the end of the year, you yourself have really learned the most during this time! For whether you can say: you, yourself have learned the most depends on how you have acted; it depends upon what you have really done, depends upon your constantly having had the feeling: you are growing while you are helping the children to grow, you are experimenting in the highest sense of the word, you are not really able to do so very much, but by working with the children there grows in you a certain power. Sometimes you will have the feeling: there is not much to be done with this kind of child, but you will have taken trouble with them. From other children, owing to their special gifts, you will have had certain experiences. In short, you have become quite a different person from what you were before you began, and you have taught what you would not have been able to teach a year earlier. At the end of the school year you say: yes, now for the first time you can do what you ought to have been doing. This is quite a religious feeling! And here there lies hidden a certain secret. If at the beginning of the school year you had really been able to do all you can do at the end, you would have taught badly. You have given good lessons because you had to work them out as you went along! I must put the following paradox before you. You taught well when you did not know at the beginning what you had learned by the end of the year, and it would have been harmful if you had already known at the beginning of the year what you had learned by the end. A remarkable paradox!

It is important for many people that they should know this, but it is most important of all that teachers should know it. For this is a special case of universal comprehensive understanding; a knowledge, no matter what the subject is, which can be comprehended in abstract principles, which can be represented by ideas in the mind, can be of no practical value; it is only what leads to this knowledge, only what is found on the way to this knowledge that is of any practical value. For this knowledge which is ours after we have taught for a year, receives its first value after our death. It is not until after the death of a man that this knowledge becomes such a reality that it can further his development, that it can further the development of the real individual man. In life it is not the ready knowledge that is of value, but the work which leads to the knowledge and particularly in the art of education this work has its own particular value. It is the same in education as in the arts, I do not think that an artist has the right attitude of mind if, when he has finished a work, he does not say to himself; it is only now that you could really do it. I do not think that an artist has the right attitude of mind If he is satisfied with any work he has done. He may have a certain natural egoistic feeling for what he has done, but he cannot really be satisfied with it. A work of art when it is finished really loses for the artist a large part of its interest, and this loss of interest is owing to the peculiar nature of the knowledge which is acquired while the work is being done. And on the other hand, the living element in a work of art, the life that springs from it, owes its being to the fact that it has not yet been transmuted into knowledge.

The same thing is indeed true with regard to the whole human organism. Our head is as “finished” as anything can be finished, for it is formed out of the forces of our last incarnation; it is over mature. Human heads are all over mature, even the immature ones. But the rest of the organism is only at the stage of furnishing the seed for the head in our next incarnation; it is full of life and energy, but it is incomplete. It will not be until our death that the rest of our organization will really show its true form, namely the form of the forces which are at work in it. The constitution of the rest of our organism shows that there is flowing life in it; ossification is reduced to the minimum in this part of our organism while in our head it reaches the maximum.

This peculiar kind of real heartfelt modesty, this feeling that we ourselves are still only becoming, is something which will give the teachers strength, for more arises out of this feeling than out of any abstract principles. If when we are in our class we are conscious that we are doing everything imperfectly, then we shall teach well. If on the other hand we are constantly smacking our lips with satisfaction over the perfection of our teaching, then it is quite certain that we shall teach badly.

But now imagine the following: to begin with you have charge of the teaching of the first class and so on, so that you have gone through everything that has to be gone through, of excitements, disappointments, successes too, if you will. Imagine that you have gone through all the classes of the Volkschule; at the end of each year you have spoken to yourself somewhat after the fashion that I have just described, and now you go down again from the eighth to the first class. Yes, now it might be supposed that you must say to yourself; now I am beginning with what I have learned, now I shall be able to do it well, I shall be an excellent teacher! But it will not be like that. The course of your new class will bring something quite different before your mind. At the end of the second third of each school year, you will say just the same out of a really right feeling. I have now learned what it was possible to learn about seven, eight and nine-year old children by working with them; at the end of each school year I know what I ought to have done. But when you have reached the fourth or fifth, school year, you will again not know how you really ought to have taught. For now, you will correct what you thought to be right after you have taught for a year. And so, after you have finished the eighth school year and have corrected everything, if you really have the good fortune to begin again at the first school year, you will be in the same position, only you will teach in a different spirit. But if you go through your teaching with true, noble, not with mock scepticism, you will find that your diffidence has brought you an imponderable power which will make you peculiarly fitted to accomplish more with the children that are entrusted to you. That is doubtless true. The effect however in life will really then only be a different one, not one that is so much better, but a different effect. I might say that the quality which you bring about in the children will not be much better than the first time; the effect will only be a different one. You will attain something different in quality but not much more in quantity. You will attain something that is different in quality and that is sufficient, for everything which we acquire in the way described with the necessary, noble diffidence and heartfelt humility has the effect that we are able to make individualities out of the children; on the whole they become individualities. We cannot have the same class twice over and send out into the world the same copies of a cut and dried educational pattern.

We can however give the world figures which are individually different. We bring about many-sidedness in life. This does not depend on the working out of abstract principles, but rather this many-sidedness in life depends on a deeper understanding of life such as has been put before you.

Thus, you can see that what matters more than anything else in a teacher is the way in which he regards his holy calling. That is not without significance, for the most Important things In teaching and in education are those which are imponderable. A teacher who enters his classroom with this feeling in his heart achieves something different from another. Just as, even in everyday life, it is not always the largest thing physically that determines our standard but something quite small, so also it is not always what we do with the largest number of words which carries most weight, but sometimes it is that perception, that feeling which we have built up in our hearts before we enter the classroom. There is one thing especially which is of great importance. That is that we must quickly strip off our narrower, personal self like a snake skin when we go into the class. A teacher may in certain circumstances, because he, as is sometimes said with such self-satisfaction, is also only human, go through all sorts of experiences between the end of a class one day and beginning again on the next. It may be that he has been warned by his creditors, or he may have had a quarrel with his wife, as does happen in life.

These are things which bring disharmonies. Disharmonies of this kind give a man's frame of mind a certain tendency; so also do happy joyous feelings. The father of one of your pupils, if he particularly likes you, may have sent you a hare after he has been out hunting, or a bunch of flowers perhaps, if you are a lady teacher. What I mean is that it is quite a natural thing in life to have moods of this kind. As teachers we must train ourselves to lay aside these moods and to give ourselves up entirely to the content of the subject we are going to teach, so that we are really able in presenting one subject to speak tragically, taking our mood from our subject and then to pass over into a humorous mood as we proceed with our lesson, in this way entering completely into our subject. The important thing however is that we should now be able to perceive the whole reaction of the class to tragedy or sentimentality or humour. Then, when we are in a position to do this, we shall be aware that tragedy, sentimentality and humour are of extraordinary significance for the souls of children. And if we allow our lessons to be carried along by an alternation between humour, sentimentality and tragedy, if we pass from the one mood into the other and back again, if we are really able, after presenting something for which we needed a certain heaviness, to pass over into a certain lightness, not a forced lightness, but one that arises because we are living in our lesson, then we are bringing about in the soul something akin to the in and outbreathing in the bodily organism. In teaching, our object is not to teach merely intellectually or intellectualistically, but to be able to really take these various moods into consideration. For what is tragedy, what is sentimentality, what is a “melancholic” mood? It is just the same as an inbreathing in the organism, the same as filling the organism with air. Tragedy signifies that we are trying harder and harder to draw our physical body together so that in our drawing together of the physical body we are aware how the astral body comes ever more and more out of the physical body owing to the drawing together of the physical body. A humorous mood signifies that we paralyze the physical body, but with the astral body we do just the opposite of what we did before; we stretch it out as far as possible, stretch it out over its surroundings so that we are aware, if we, e.g., do not merely see redness but grow into it, how we stretch out our astral body beyond this redness, pass over into it. Laughing simply means that we drive the astral body out of our face; laughing is simply nothing else but an outbreathing. Only, if we want to apply all this, we must have a certain feeling for the force there is in these things. It is not always advisable to go straight over into something humorous when we have just had something serious or melancholy, but if we can always have in our lessons the means of preventing the childish soul from being imprisoned by the serious, the tragic, and of freeing it so that it can really experience this breathing in and out between the two frames of mind.

I have now told you something of the variety of moods which should be taken into consideration by the teacher, for this is just as necessary as any other part of special pedagogy.

It is impossible to educate or teach without a spiritual grasp of the whole human being, for this whole human being comes into consideration even far more prominently during the time of a child's development than later on. As we know, this whole human being comprises within itself the ego, the astral body, the etheric body, and the physical body. These four members of the nature of man are by no means going through a symmetrical development, but rather they develop in very different ways; and we must distinguish accurately between the development of the physical and of the etheric body, and that of the astral body and of the ego. The outer manifestations of this differentiated development express themselves—as you know from the various elucidations—in the change of teeth and in that change which in the male appears as the change of voice at puberty, but which also proclaims itself clearly in the female, though in a different way. The essence of the phenomenon is the same as with the male in the change of his voice, only in the female organism it appears in a more diffused form, so that it is not merely observable in one organ as in the case of the male organism, but it extends more over the entire organism.

You know that between the change of teeth and the change of voice, or puberty, lies that period of teaching with which we have principally to do in the grade-schools; but the careful educator, in teaching and educating, must pay close attention as well to the years following the change of voice, or its analogy in the female organism.

Let us call to mind what the change of teeth signifies. Before the change of teeth—that is, between birth and the change of teeth—the physical body and the etheric body in the child's organism are strongly influenced by the nervous-sensory system, that is, from above downward. Up to about the seventh year the physical body and the etheric body are most active from the head. In the head are concentrated, as it were, the forces that are particularly active in these years—that is, in the years when imitation plays so important a role. And what takes place in the formative process in the remaining organism of trunk and limbs is achieved through the emanation of rays from the head to this remaining organism, to the trunk and the limb organism, from the physical body and the etheric body. That which here radiates from the head into the physical and etheric bodies of the whole child, right into the tips of his fingers and toes—this that radiates from the head into the whole child is soul-activity, even though it has its inception in the physical body: the same soul-activity that is later active in the soul as mind and memory. Later on this soul-activity appears in such a form that after the change of teeth the child begins to think, and that his memories become more conscious. The whole change that takes place in the soul-life of the child shows that certain psychic powers previously active in the organism become active as soul-forces after the seventh year. The whole period up to the change of teeth, while the child is growing, is a result of the same forces which after the seventh year appear as mental forces, intellectual forces.

There you have a case of actual co-operation between soul and body, when you realize how the soul emancipates itself in the seventh year and begins to function—no longer in the body but independently. Now those forces which in the body itself come newly into being as soul-forces begin to be active with the seventh year; and from then on, they operate through into the next incarnation. Now that which is radiated forth from the body is repulsed, whereas the forces that shoot downward from the head are checked. Thus, at this time of the change of teeth the hardest battle is fought between the forces tending downward from above and those shooting upward from below. The physical change of teeth is the physical expression of this conflict between those two kinds of forces: the forces that later appear in the child as the reasoning and intellectual powers, and those that must be employed particularly in drawing, painting, and writing. All these forces that shoot up, arising out of the conflict, we employ when we develop writing out of drawing; for these forces really tend to pass over into plastic creation, drawing, and so forth. Those are the forces that come to an end with the change of teeth, that previously had modelled the body of the child: the sculpture-forces. We work with them later, when the change of teeth is completed, to lead the child to drawing, to painting, and so on. These are in the main the forces in which the child's soul lived in the spiritual world before conception; at first their activity lies in forming the body, and then from the seventh year on they function as soul- forces. Thus, in the educational period following the seventh year, during which we must work with the forces of authority, we simply see that manifesting itself in the child which formerly he practiced unconsciously as imitation, when these forces still influenced the body unconsciously. If later the child becomes a sculptor, a draftsman, or an architect—but a real architect who works out of the forms—this is because such a person has the capacity for retaining in his organism, in his head, a little more of those forces that radiate downward into the organism, so that later on as well these forces of childhood can radiate downward. But if they are entirely used up, if with the change of teeth everything passes over into the psychic, children result who have no talent for architecture, who could never become sculptors.

These forces are related to the experiences between death and a new birth; and the reverence that is needed in educational activity, and that takes on a religious character, arises if one is conscious that when, around the seventh year, one calls forth from the child's soul these forces that are applied in learning to draw and to write, it is actually the spiritual world that sends down these forces. And the child is the mediator, and you are in reality working with forces sent down from the spiritual world. When this reverence permeates the instruction it truly works miracles. And if you have this reverence, if you have the feeling that by means of this telephone which transcends time you are in contact with the forces developed in the spiritual world during the time before birth—if you have this feeling that engenders a deep reverence, then you will see that through the reality of such a feeling you can accomplish more than through any amount of intellectual theorizing about what should be done. The teacher's feelings are the most important means of education there is, for this reverence can have an immeasurable formative influence upon the child.

Thus, we find in the change of teeth, when the child is entrusted to us, a process that directly represents a transfer through the child of spiritual forces out of the spiritual world into the physical world.

Another process takes place in the years of puberty, but it is prepared gradually through the whole cycle from the seventh to the fourteenth or fifteenth year. During this period something comes to light in those regions of the soul-life not yet illuminated by consciousness—for consciousness is still being formed, and something of the outer world which remains unconscious is constantly radiating into those regions not yet illuminated by consciousness—that only gradually becomes conscious, but that from birth has permeated the child from the outer world, that has co-operated in building the child's body, and that has entered into the plastic forces.

Those, again, are different forces. While the plastic forces enter the head from within, these forces now come from without. They are dammed up by the plastic forces and then descend into the organism. They co-operate in what takes place, beginning with the seventh year, in connection with the building of the child's body. I can characterize these forces in no other way than as those active in speech and in music. These forces are derived from the world.

The musical forces derive more from the outer world, the extra-human world, from the observation of processes in nature, particularly their regularities and irregularities. For all that takes place in nature is permeated by a mysterious music: I In- earthly projection of the “music of the spheres.” In every plant, in every animal, there is really incorporated a tone of the music of the spheres. That is also the case with reference to the human body, but it no longer lives in what is human speech—that is, in expressions of the soul—but it does live in the body, in its forms and so forth. All this the child absorbs unconsciously, and that is why children are musical to such a high degree. They take all that into their organism. While that which the child experiences as forms of movement, lines and plastic elements in his surroundings is absorbed by him and then acts from within, from the head, all that is absorbed by the child as tone-texture, as speech-content, comes from without. And this again, that which comes from without, is opposed by the gradually developing spiritual element of music and speech—only somewhat later: around the fourteenth year. This also is dammed up again now, in the woman in the whole organism, in the man more in the region of the larynx, where it causes the change of voice. The whole process, then, is brought about by the fact that here an element of the nature of will expresses itself from within in conflict with a similar element coming from without; and in this conflict is manifested that which at puberty appears as the change of voice. That is a conflict between inner music-speech forces and outer music-speech forces. Up to the seventh year, man is essentially permeated more by plastic and less by musical forces—that is, less by the music and speech forces that glow through the organism. But beginning with the seventh year what proceeds from music-speech becomes particularly active in the etheric body. Then this condition is opposed by the ego and the astral body: an element of the nature of will struggles from with-out against the similar one from within, and this appears at puberty. It is manifest even externally by the pitch of the voice that a difference exists between the male and the female. Only partially do the pitches of the voices of men and of women over lap: the woman's voice reaches higher, the man's goes lower—down to the bass. That corresponds with absolute accuracy to the structure of the remaining organism that forms itself out of the conflict of these forces.

These things show that in our soul-life we are concerned with something which at certain definite times co-operates also in the up-building of the organism. All the abstract discussions you find in modern scientific books on psychology, all the talk about psycho-physical parallelism, are merely testimony to the inability to grasp the connection between the psychic and the physical. For the psychic is not connected with the physical in the manner set forth in the senseless theories thought out by the psycho-physical parallelists; but rather we have to do with the recognition of this wholly concrete action of the psychic in the body, and then in turn with the reaction. Up to the seventh year what is plastic-architectonic works together with what is active in music-speech; only this changes in the seventh year, so that from then on the relation between music-speech on the one hand and the plastic-architectonic on the other is merely a different one. But through the whole period up to puberty this co-operation takes place between the plastic-architectonic, which emanates from the head and has its seat there, and speech-music, which comes from without, uses the head as a passage, and spreads itself into the organism.

From this we see that human language as well, but particularly music, co-operates in the formation of man. First it forms him, then it is dammed up as it halts at the larynx; now it does not enter the gate as it did before. For before, you see, it is speech that changes our organs, even down into the bony system; and anyone who observes a human skeleton from a psycho-physical thoughts of our present-day philosophers--and considers the differentiation between the male and the female skeleton sees in the skeleton an embodied musical achievement performed in the reciprocal action between the human organism and the outer world. Were we to take a sonata, and could we preserve its structure through some spiritual process of crystallization, we would have, as it were, the principal forms, the scheme of arrangement, of the human skeleton. And that will incidentally attest the difference between man and the animals. Whatever the animal absorbs of the music-speech element—very little of the speech, but very much of the musical—passes through the animal, because in a sense the animal lacks man's isolation that later leads to mutation. In the shape of an animal skeleton we find a musical image too, but only in the sense that a composite picture of the different animal skeletons, such as one can gain, for instance, in a museum, is needed to yield a musical coherence. An animal invariably manifests a one-sidedness in its structure.

Such things we should consider carefully in forming our picture of man: they will show us what feelings we should develop. As our reverence grows through feeling our connection, through fostering our feeling of contact, with pre-natal conditions, we acquire greater enthusiasm for teaching, by occupying ourselves intensely with the other forces of man. A Dionysian element, as it were, irradiates the music-speech instruction, while we have more of an Apollonian element in teaching the plastic arts, painting and drawing. The instruction that has to do with music and speech we impart with enthusiasm, the other with reverence.

The plastic forces offer the stronger opposition, hence they are held up as early as the seventh year; the others act less vigorously, so they are held up only in the fourteenth year. You must not interpret that to mean physical strength and weakness: it refers rather to the counter-pressure that is exerted. Since the plastic forces, being stronger, would overrun the human organism, the counter-pressure is stronger. Therefore, they must be held up earlier, whereas the music-forces are permitted by cosmic guidance to remain longer in the organism. The human being is permeated longer by the music forces than by the plastic ones.

If you let this thought ripen within you and bring the requisite enthusiasm to bear, conscious that by developing an appreciation for speech and music precisely during the grade-school period, when that battle is still raging and when you are still influencing the corporeality—not just the soul—then you are preparing that which man carries with him even beyond death. To this we contribute essentially with everything we teach the child of music and speech during the grade-school period. And that gives us a certain enthusiasm, because we know that thereby we are working for the future. On the other hand, by working with the plastic forces we make contact with what lived in man before birth or conception, and that gives us reverence. In that which reaches into the future we infuse our own forces, and we know that we are fructifying the germ of music-speech with something that will operate into the future after the physical has been stripped off. Music itself is a reflection of what is spheric in the air—only thus does it become physical. The air is in a sense the medium that renders tones physical, just as it is the air in the larynx that renders speech physical. That which has its being as non-physical in the speech-air, and as non-physical in the music-air unfolds its true activity only after death. That gives us the right enthusiasm for our teaching, because we know that when working with music and speech we are working for the future. And I believe that in the pedagogy of the future, teachers will no longer be addressed as they usually are today, but rather in ideas and concepts that can transform themselves into feelings, into the future. For nothing is more important than that we be able, as teachers, to develop the necessary reverence, the necessary enthusiasm. Reverence and enthusiasm—those are two fundamental forces by which the teacher-soul must be permeated.

To make you understand the matter still better I should like to mention that music has its being principally in the human astral body. After death man still carries his astral body fur a time; and as long as he does so, until he lays it aside completely—you are familiar with this from my book Theosophy — there still exists in man after death a sort of memory—it is only a sort of memory—of earthly music. Thus, it comes about that whatever in life we receive of music continues to act like a memory of music after death—until about the time the astral body is laid aside. Then the earthly music is transformed in the life after death into the “music of the spheres,” and it remains as such until some time previous to the new birth. The matter will be more comprehensible for you if you know that what man here on earth receives in the way of music plays a very important role in the shaping of his soul-organism after death. That organism is molded there during this period. This is, of course, the kamaloka time; and that is also the comforting feature of the kamaloka time: we can render easier this existence, which the Roman Catholics call purgatory, for human beings if we know that. Not, to be sure, by relieving them of their perception: that they must have; for they would remain imperfect if they could not observe the imperfect things they have done. But we furnish the possibility that the human being will be better formed in his next life if during that time after death, when he still has his astral body, he can have many memories of things musical. This can be studied on a comparatively low plane of spiritual knowledge. You need only, after having heard a concert, wake up in the night, and you will become aware that you have experienced the whole concert again before waking. You even experience it much better by thus awaking in the night after a concert. You experience it very accurately. The point is that music imprints itself upon the astral body, it remains there, it still vibrates; it remains for about thirty years after death. What comes from music continues to vibrate much longer than what comes from speech: we lose the latter as such comparatively quickly after death, and there remains only its spiritual extract. What is musical is as long as the astral body. What comes from speech can be a great boon to us after death, especially if we have often absorbed it in the form which I now frequently describe as the art of recitation. When I describe the latter in this way I naturally have every reason to point out that these things cannot be rightly interpreted without keeping in view the peculiar course the astral body takes after death: then the matters must be described somewhat as I have described them in my lectures on eurythmy. Here, you see, we must talk to people in the most primitive language, so to speak; and it is really true that, seen from the point of view beyond the Threshold, people are actually all primitive: only beyond the Threshold are they real human beings. And we can only work ourselves out of this primitive-man state by working ourselves into spiritual reality. This is also the reason for the constantly increasing fury against the endeavors of Anthroposophy to show the path to a spiritual reality.

Now I would call your attention to something that is very much in the foreground in the art of pedagogy and that can be pedagogically employed—namely, that in the first conflict which I described in connection with the adolescent child, the outer expression of which is the change of teeth, and in that later struggle whose equivalent is the change of voice, there is to be considered something peculiar that gives to each its special character: everything that up to the seventh year descends from the head appears as an attack in relation to that which meets it from within and which builds up. And everything is a warding off that acts from within toward the head, that rises upward and opposes the current emanating from the head and descending.

In the case of music in turn the conditions are similar; but here that which comes from within appears as an attack, and that which descends from above through the head-organism appears as the warding off. If we had not music, frightful forces really would rise up in man. I am completely convinced that up to the sixteenth or seventeenth century traditions deriving from the old Mysteries were active, and that even then people still wrote and spoke under the influence of this after-effect of the Mysteries. They no longer knew, to be sure, the whole meaning of this effect, but in much that still appears in comparatively recent times we simply have reminiscences of the old Mystery-wisdom. Hence, I have always been deeply impressed by the passage in Shakespeare :*

“The man that hath no music in himself,
Is fit for treason, murder and deceit!
Let no such man be trusted.”

Merchant of Venice, V, 1.

“The man that hath no music in himself,
Nor is not moved with concord of sweet sounds,
Is fit for treasons, stratagems and spoils;
The motions of his spirit are dull as night,
And his affections dark as Erebus:
Let no such man be trusted.”

Translator's Note: The third line of the German translation of this passage reads: “Is fit for treason, murder and deceit”, and thus it is quoted by Dr. Steiner. Thus, must be kept in mind to understand what follows.

In the old Mystery-schools the pupils were told: that which acts in man as an attack from within and which must be continually warded off, which is dammed back for the nature of man, is “treason, murder and deceit,” and the music that is active in man is that which opposes the former. Music is the means of defense against the Luciferic forces rising up out of the inner man: treason, murder and deceit. We all have treason, murder and deceit within us, and it is not for nothing that the world contains what comes to us from music-speech quite aside from the pleasure it affords. Its purpose is to make people into human beings. One must, of course, keep in mind that the old Mystery- teachers expressed themselves somewhat differently: they expressed things more concretely. They would not have said “treason, murder and deceit” (it is already toned down in Shakespeare) but would have said something like “serpent, wolf and fox.” The serpent, the wolf and the fox are warded off from the inner nature of the human being through music. The old Mystery-teachers would always have used animal forms to depict that which rises out of the human being, but which must then be transformed into what is human. Thus, we can achieve the right enthusiasm when we see the treacherous serpent rising out of the child and combat it with music-speech instruction, and in like manner contend with the murderous wolf and the tricky fox or the cat. That is what can then permeate us with the intelligent, the true sort of enthusiasm—not the burning, Luciferic sort that alone is acknowledged today. We must recognize, then: attack and warding off.

Man has within him two levels where the warding off occurs. First, within himself, where the warding off appears in the change of teeth in the seventh year; and then again, in what he has received from music and speech, through which is warded off that which tends to rise up within him. But both battlefields are within man himself, what comes from music-speech more toward the periphery, toward the outer world, the architectonic- plastic more toward the inner world. But there is still a third battlefield, and that lies at the border between the etheric body and the outer world. The etheric body is always larger than the physical body; it extends beyond it in all directions; and here also there is such a battlefield. Here the battle is fought more under the influence of consciousness, whereas the other two proceed more in the subconscious. And the third conflict manifests itself when everything has worked itself to the surface that is a transformation of what takes place on the one hand between the human being and what is plastic-architectonic, and on the other between him and what is music-speech, when this amalgamates with the etheric body, thereby taking hold of the astral body, and is thus moved more toward the periphery, toward the outer border.

Through this originates everything that shoots through the fingers in drawing, painting, and so on. This makes of painting an art functioning more in the environs of man. The draftsman, the sculptor, must work more out of his inner faculties, the musician more out of his devotion to the world. That which lias ils being in painting and drawing, to which we lead the child when we have it make forms and lines, that is a battle that lakes place wholly on the surface, a battle that is fought principally between two forces, one of which acts inward from without, the other on I ward from within. The force that acts outward from within really tends constantly to disperse the human being, tends to continue the forming of man—not violently but in a delicate way. This force—it is not so powerful as that, but I must express il more radically so that you will see what I mean—this force, acting outward from within, tends to make our eyes swell up, to raise a goiter for us, to make the nose grow big and to make the ears bigger: everything tends to swell outward. Another force is the one we absorb from the outer world, through which this swelling up is warded off. And even if we only make a stroke—draw something—this is an effort to divert, through the force acting from the outer world inward, that inner force which tends to deform us. It is a complicated reflex action, then, that we as men execute in painting, in drawing, in graphic activity. In drawing or in having the canvas before us, the feeling actually glimmers in our consciousness that we are excluding something that is out there, that in the forms and strokes we are setting up thick walls, barbed wire. In drawing we really have such barbed wire by means of which we quickly catch something that tends to destroy us from within and prevent its action from becoming too strong. Therefore, instruction in drawing works best if we begin its study from the human being. If you study what motions the hand tends to make—if, say, in eurythmy instruction you have the child hold these motions, these forms that he wants to execute—then you have arrested the motion, the line, that tends to destroy, and then it does not act destructively. So when you begin to have the eurythmic forms drawn, and then see that drawing and also writing are formed out of the will that lives there, you have something which the nature of man really wants, something linked with the development and essence of human nature.

And in connection with eurythmy we should know this, that in our etheric body we constantly have the tendency to practice eurythmy: that is something the etheric body simply does of its own accord; for eurythmy is nothing but motions gleaned from what the etheric body tends to do of itself. It is really the etheric body that makes these motions, and it is only prevented from doing so when we cause the physical body to execute them. When we cause them to be executed by the physical body these movements are held back in the etheric body, react upon us, and have a health-giving effect on man.

That is what affects the human being in a certain hygienic- therapeutic as well as didactic-pedagogic way, and which outwardly gives the impression of beauty. Such things will be understood only when we know that something which is trying to manifest itself in the etheric organization of man must be stopped at the periphery by the movements of the physical body. In one case, that of eurythmy, an element more connected with the will is stopped; in the other, in drawing and painting, an element more closely allied with the intellect. But fundamentally both processes are but the two poles of one and the same thing.

If we now follow this process too with our feeling and incorporate it in our sensitive teaching ability, we have the third feeling that we need. That is the feeling which should really always penetrate us especially in grade-school instruction: that, when a human being is placed in the world, he is really exposed to things from which we must protect him through our teaching. Otherwise he would become one with the world too much. Man really always has the tendency to become psychically rickety, to make his limbs rickety, to become a gnome. And in teaching and educating him we work at forming him. We best obtain a feeling for this forming if we observe the child making a drawing, then smooth this out a bit so that the result is not what the child wants, but not what we want either, but a result of both. If I succeed, while smoothing out what the child wants to scribble, in merging my feelings with those of the child, the best results obtain. And if I transform all that into feeling and let it permeate me, the feeling arises that I must protect the child from an over-strong coalescence with the outer world. We must see that the child grows slowly into the outer world and not let him do so too rapidly. That is the third feeling that we as educators must cherish within us: we constantly hold a protecting hand over the child.

Reverence, enthusiasm, and the feeling of protection, these three are actually the panacea, as it were, the magic formula in the soul of the educator and teacher. And if one wished to represent, externally, artistically, something like an embodiment of art and pedagogy in a group, one would have to represent this:

Reverence for what precedes the child's existence (before birth);

Enthusiastic looking forward to what follows it (after death);

Protecting gesture for what the child experiences (during life).

Rudolf Steiner accompanied each of these three sentences with a gesture.

This work of art would also best represent the external manifestation of the teacher-character.

When one says something thus derived out of the intimacies of the world-mysteries one always feels it as unsatisfactory when uttered in conventional speech. But if one must say such things by means of external speech one always has the feeling that a supplement is necessary. What is spoken rather abstractly always feels the urge to pass over into the artistic. That is why I wanted to give you that hint in closing.

The fact is, we must learn to bear something of mankind's future frame of mind within us, consisting of the knowledge that the possession of mere science makes the human being into something which will cause him to regard himself as a psycho-spiritual monster. He who is a scientist pure and simple will not have the impulse—not even in the forming of his thoughts—to transform the scientific into the artistic. But only through the artistic can one comprehend the world. Goethe's saying always remains true:

“He to whom Nature begins to reveal her manifest secret feels an irresistible longing for her most worthy exponent — Art.”

As educators we should have the feeling: as far as you are a scientist only, you are in soul and spirit a monster. Not until you have transformed your psycho-spiritual-physical organism, when your knowledge takes on artistic form, will you become a human being. Future development will in the main lead from science to artistic grasp, from the monster to the complete human being. And in this it is the pedagogue's duty to co-operate.

When children come to the age of puberty, it is necessary to awaken within them an extraordinarily great interest in the world outside of themselves. Through the whole way in which they are educated, they must be led to look out into the world around them and into all its laws, its course, causes and effects, into men's intentions and goals—not only into human beings, but into everything, even into a piece of music, for instance. All this must be brought to them in such a way that it can resound on and on within them—so that questions about nature, about the cosmos and the entire world, about the human soul, questions of history—so that riddles arise in their youthful souls.

When the astral body¹ becomes free at puberty, forces are freed which can now be used for formulating these riddles. But when these riddles of the world and its manifestations do not arise in young souls, then these same forces are changed into something else.

When such forces become free, and it has not been possible to awaken the most intensive interest in such world-riddles, then these energies transform themselves into what they become in most young people today. They change in two directions into urges of an instinctive kind: first into delight in power, and second into eroticism.

Unfortunately pedagogy does not now consider this delight in power and the eroticism of young people to be the secondary results of changes in things that, until the age of 20 or 21, really ought to go in an altogether different direction, but considers them to be natural elements in the human organism at puberty. If young people are rightly educated, there should be no need whatsoever to speak about love of power and eroticism to them at this age. If such things have to be spoken about during these years, this is in itself something that smacks of illness. Our entire pedagogical art and science is becoming ill because again and again the highest value is attributed to these questions. A high value is put upon them for no other reason than that people are powerless today—have grown more and more powerless in the age of a materialistic world-conception—to inspire true interest in the world, the world in the widest sense ...

When we do not have enough interest in the world around us, then we are thrown back into ourselves. Taken all in all, we have to say that if we look at the chief damages created by modern civilization, they arise primarily because people are far too concerned with themselves and do not usually spend the larger part of their leisure time in concern for the world but busy themselves with how they feel and what gives them pain ... And the least favorable time of life to be self-occupied in this way is during the ages between 14, 15 and 21 years old.

The capacity for forming judgments is blossoming at this time and should be directed toward world-interrelationships in every field. The world must become so all-engrossing to young people that they simply do not turn their attention away from it long enough to be constantly occupied with themselves. For, as everyone knows, as far as subjective feelings are concerned, pain only becomes greater the more we think about it. It is not the objective damage but the pain of it that increases as we think more about it. In certain respects, the very best remedy for the overcoming of pain is to bring yourself, if you can, not to think about it. Now there develops in young people just between 15, 16 and 20, 21, something not altogether unlike pain. This adaptation to the conditions brought about through the freeing of the astral body from the physical is really a continual experience of gentle pain. And this kind of experience immediately makes us tend towards self-preoccupation, unless we are sufficiently directed away from it and toward the world outside ourselves ...

If a teacher makes a mistake while teaching a 10 or 12 year old, then, as far as the mutual relationship between pupil and teacher is concerned, this does not really make such a very great difference. By this I do not mean that you should make as many mistakes as possible with children of this age ...

The feeling for the teacher's authority will flag perhaps for a while, but such things will be forgotten comparatively quickly, in any case much sooner than certain injustices are forgotten at this age. On the other hand, when you stand in front of students between 14, 15 and 20, 21, you simply must not expose your latent inadequacies and so make a fool of yourself ...

If a student is unable to formulate a question which he experiences inwardly, the teacher must be capable of doing this himself, so that he can bring about such a formulation in class, and he must be able to satisfy the feeling that then arises in the students when the question comes to expression. For if he does not do this, then when all that is mirrored there in the souls of these young people goes over into the world of sleep, into the sleeping condition, a body of detrimental, poisonous substances is produced by the unformulated questions. These poisons are developed only during the night, just when poisons ought really to be broken down and transformed instead of created. Poisons are produced that burden the brains of the young people when they go to class, and gradually everything in them stagnates, becomes “stopped up.” This must and can be avoided. But it can only be avoided if the feeling is not aroused in the students: “Now again the teacher has failed to give us the right answer. He really hasn't answered us at all. We can't get a satisfying answer out of him.” Those are the latent inadequacies, the self-exposures that occur when the children have the feeling: “The teacher just isn't up to giving us the answers we need.” And for this inability, the personal capacities and incapacities of the teacher are not the only determining factors, but rather the pedagogical method.

If we spend too much time pouring a mass of information over young people at this age, or if we teach in such a way that they never come to lift their doubts and questions into consciousness, then the teacher—even though he is the more objective party—exposes, even if indirectly, his latent in-adequacies ...

You see the teacher must, in full consciousness, be permeated through and through with all this when he deals with the transition from the ninth to the tenth grades, for it is just with the entire transformation of the courses one gives that the pedagogy must concern itself. If we have children of six or seven, then the course is already set through the fact that they are entering school, and we do not need to understand any other relationship to life. But when we lead young people over from the ninth to the tenth grade, then we must put ourselves into quite another life-condition. When this happens, the children must say to themselves: “Great thunder and lightning! What's happened to the teacher! Up to now we've thought of him as a pretty bright light who has plenty to say, but now he's beginning to talk like more than a man. Why, the whole world speaks out of him!”

And when they feel the most intensive interest in particular world questions and are put into the fortunate position of being able to impart this to other young people, then the world speaks out of them also. Out of a mood of this kind, verve (Schwung) must arise. Verve is what teachers must bring to young people at this age, verve which above all is directed towards imagination; for although the students are developing the capacity to make judgments, judgment is actually borne out of the powers of imagination. And if you deal with the intellect intellectually, if you are not able to deal with the intellect with a certain imagination, then you have “mis-played,” you have missed the boat with them.

Young people demand imaginative powers; you must approach them with verve, and with verve of a kind that convinces them. Scepticism is something that you may not bring to them at this age, that is in the first half of this life-period. The most damaging judgment for the time between 14, 15 and 18 is one that implies in a pessimistically knowledgeable way: “That is something that cannot be known.” This crushes the soul of a child or a young person. It is more possible after 18 to pass over to what is more or less in doubt. But between 14 and 18 it is soul-crushing, soul-debilitating, to introduce them to a certain scepticism. What subject you deal with is much less important than that you do not bring this debilitating pessimism to young people.

It is important for oneself as a teacher to exercise a certain amount of self-observation and not give in to any illusions; for it is fatal if, just at this age, young people feel cleverer than the teacher during class, especially in secondary matters. It should be—and it can be achieved, even if not right in the first lesson—that they are so gripped by what they hear that their attention will really be diverted from all the teacher's little mannerisms. Here, too, the teacher's latent inadequacies are the most fatal.

Now if you think, my dear friends, that neglect of these matters unloads its consequences into the channels of instinctive love of power and eroticism, then you will see from the beginning how tremendously significant it is to take the education of these young people in hand in a bold and generous way. You can much more easily make mistakes with older students, let us say with those at medical school. For what you do at this earlier age works into their later life in an extraordinarily devastating way. It works destructively, for instance, upon the relationships between people. The right kind of interest in other human beings is not possible if the right sort of world-interest is not aroused in the 15 or 16 year old. If they learn only the Kant-Laplace theory of the creation of the solar system and what one learns through astronomy and astrophysics today, if they cram into their skulls only this idea of the cosmos, then in social relationships they will be just such men and women as those of our modern civilization who, out of anti-social impulses, shout about every kind of social reform but within their souls actually bring anti-social powers to expression. I have often said that the reason people make such an outcry about social matters is because men are antisocial beings.

It cannot be said often enough that in the years between 14 and 18 we must build in the most careful way upon the fundamentally basic moral relationship between pupil and teacher. And here morality is to be understood in its broadest sense: that, for instance, a teacher calls up in his soul the very deepest sense of responsibility for his task. This moral attitude must show itself in that we do not give all too much acknowledgement to this deflection toward subjectivity and one's own personality. In such matters, imponderables really pass over from teacher to pupil. Mournful teachers, un-alterably morose teachers, who are immensely fond of their lower selves, produce in children of just this age a faithful mirror picture, or if they do not, kindle a terrible revolution. More important than any approved method is that we do not expose our latent inadequacies and that we approach the children with an attitude that is inwardly moral through and through ...

This sickly eroticism which has grown up—also in people's minds—to such a terrible extent appears for the most part only in city dwellers, city dwellers who have become teachers and doctors. And only as urban life triumphs altogether in our civilization will these things come to such a terrible—I do not want to say “blossoming” but to such a frightful—degeneracy. Naturally we must look not at appearances but at reality. It is certainly quite unnecessary to begin to organize educational homes in the country immediately. If teachers and pupils carry these same detrimental feelings out into the country and are really permeated by urban conceptions, you can call a school a country educational home as long as you like, you will still have a blossoming of city life to deal with ...

What we have spoken about here today is of the utmost pedagogical importance and, in considering the high school years, should be taken into the most earnest consideration.

• 1. A term used to designate all that is sentient in man and in animals.

I must ask my audience to be considerate with me to-day, because I have only just arrived after a very tiring journey and shall probably not feel able to speak to you adequately until tomorrow.

I want this first lecture to be a kind of introduction to the series I am to deliver here. I had not really intended to speak during the Conference, because I think the stimulus given by anthroposophical research to medicine and to scientific thought ought to be worked out by those who are specialists in the various domains. Indeed, all that comes from anthroposophical investigation in regard to medicine and, for instance, physiology, can be nothing more than a stimulus which must then be worked out empirically. Only on the basis of this empirical study can there arise valid and convincing judgments of the matters in question—and this is the kind of judgment that is needed in the domain of therapy.

These lectures, however, are given at the request of doctors who are working with us and I shall try to deal with just those points where Anthroposophy can throw light into the realm of medicine. I shall endeavour to show, first of all, that an understanding of the human being in health and disease can be enriched and deepened through anthroposophical conceptions.

By way of introduction, I may perhaps be permitted to speak of the sense in which the anthroposophical mode of thought should be understood to-day, in our own age. People so readily confuse what is here called Anthroposophy with older traditional ideas. I have no wish to waste words about the value of these old conceptions, or to criticise them in any way. But it must be emphasised that the conceptions put forward by me are founded on a basis quite different from that of the various mystical, theosophical and so-called gnostic ideas which have arisen traditionally in the course of human history. In order to make myself clear, I need mention only the main points of difference between the conceptions which will be put forward here and those of earlier times. Those earlier conceptions arose in human thought at a time when there was no science in our sense; mine have been developed in an age when science has not only come into being but has reached a certain—albeit provisional—perfection. This must always be remembered if we would understand the meaning and significance of our studies, for it applies to all that may be said and discovered by Anthroposophy in regard to the different domains of human knowledge and capacity.

You all know—there is no need to enlarge upon it—that in those earlier times man had a real but non-scientific conception of the super-sensible world. Medicine, too, was permeated with conceptions of the human being that did not originate, as is the case to-day, from empirical research. We need go back only to the age shortly before that of Galen, and, if we are open-minded enough, we shall everywhere find traces of spiritual conceptions of the being of man on which medical thought, too, was based. Permeating these conceptions of the form of man, of his organs and organic functions, were thoughts of the Supersensible. According to the modern empirical way of thinking, there are no grounds for connecting anything super-sensible with the nature and constitution of man, but in those older conceptions the super-sensible was as much a part of man as colours, forms and inorganic forces now seem to us part and parcel of the objects in the outer world.

Only prejudice will speak of those earlier ages in the development of medicine as if its ideas were merely childish, compared with those that have been evolved to-day. Nothing could be more inadequate than what history has to tell in this connection, and anyone who has the slightest understanding of the historical evolution of mankind, who does not take the point of view that perfection has been reached and that everything earlier is mere foolishness, will realise that even now we have arrived only at relative perfection and that there is no need to look back upon what went before with a supercilious eye. Indeed, this is patent when we consider the results that were achieved. On the other hand, a man concerned with any branch of knowledge to-day must never overlook all that science has accomplished for humanity in this age. And when—to use the Goethean expression—a spiritual conception of the human being in sickness and health strives to express itself to-day, it must work with and not against modern scientific research.

After what I have said, you will not accuse me of any desire to rail against the concepts of modern science. Indeed, I must emphasise at the outset that such a thing is out of the question and for a very fundamental reason. When we consider the medical views that were held in an earlier period of civilisation, we find that although they were by no means so childish as many people imagine nowadays, they did lack what modern science has been able to give us, for the simple reason that man's faculty of cognition was not then adapted to the study of objects as we approach them with modern empirical thought, which is assisted, moreover, by all kinds of scientific instruments. The doctor, or I might just as well say the physiologist or biologist of olden times, had an entirely different outlook from the outlook of modern man. In the ages that really came to an end with Galen, medical consciousness had quite another orientation. What Galen saw in his four elements of the human organism, in the black and yellow gall, in the phlegm and in the blood, was utterly different from the modern conception.

When Galen describes all this and we understand the terminology—as a rule, of course, words handed down by tradition are not understood—we get the impression of something vague and nebulous. To Galen, it was a reality; in what he called phlegm he did not see the substance we call phlegm. To him, phlegm was not only a state of fluidity permeated with life, but a state of fluidity permeated with soul. This was as clear a perception to him as our perception of the red or blue colour of some object in front of us. But precisely because he was able to perceive something outside the range of modern scientific perception, Galen was not able to see many things that are brought to light to-day by our scientific consciousness. Suppose, for example, a man with not so very abnormal sight looks through spectacles, and by this means the contours of objects become more definite. As the result of modern empiricism, all that was once seen in a cloud, but none the less permeated by Spirit and soul, has disappeared and given place to the sharp contours of empirical observation. The sharp contours were not there in olden times. Healings were performed out of a kind of instinct which was bound up with a highly developed sensitiveness to one's fellow-men. A sort of participation in the patient's disease, which could even be painful, arose in the doctor of olden times, and on the basis of this he set about his cure.

Now for the reason that the advance to objective empiricism is rooted in the evolutionary process of man, we cannot merely brush it aside and return to the old. Only if we develop certain atavistic faculties shall we perceive Nature as the ancients perceived her, in all domains of knowledge, including that of medicine. When we pass out into modern culture, equipped with the kind of training given in our elementary schools—not to speak of higher education—it is simply impossible to see things as the ancients saw them. It is impossible, and moreover, if such a thing were to happen, a man would be regarded as being if not gravely, at any rate mildly pathological, not quite ‘normal’—and, indeed, not altogether unjustly. For there is something pathological to-day in all instinctive ‘clairvoyance,’ as it is called. Upon that point we must be quite clear. But what lies in our power is to work our way up to a perception of the spiritual by developing inner faculties otherwise latent in our being, just as in the course of generations the eye has worked itself up from indefinite vision to clear, concrete vision.

To-day, then, it is possible to develop faculties of spiritual perception. I have described this development in my book, Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and How to Attain It, and in other writings. When these faculties have developed in a man he perceives, to begin with, a world not previously visible to him, a world embracing a spiritual Cosmos as well as the Cosmos revealed to sense-perception to-day, including all the discoveries and calculations of astronomy. To the material Cosmos that is permeated with natural law, a spiritual Cosmos is added. And when we seek to discover what exists in this spiritual Cosmos, we also find man. We contact a spiritual universe, a universe permeated with soul, where man has his rightful place.

If we pursue ordinary science, we begin either with the simplest living being or with the simplest form of life—the cell—and then trace the simple on into the more complex, ascending thus from what most resembles purely physically organised substance to the highly intricate organism of man. If we seriously pursue Spiritual Science, we begin really at the other end. We descend from a comprehension of the spiritual in the universe, regarding this as complex, and the cell as the simplest thing in the organism. Viewed in the light of Spiritual Science, the universe is the summit of complexity, and just as we elaborate our own act of cognition in order, let us say, to pass from the cell to the human being, so do we progressively simplify what the Cosmos reveals and then come to man. We go an opposite way—that is to say, we begin at exactly the opposite starting-point—but when to-day we thus pursue Spiritual Science, we are not led all the way into the regions embraced by material empiricism. I lay great stress upon this point and hope there will be no misunderstanding. That is why I must ask you to-day to forgive certain pedantic ideas.

It is quite conceivable that someone might think it useless to adopt the methods of empirical thought in physiology or biology. What need is there for any specialised branch of science?—he might ask. One develops spiritual sight, looks into the spiritual world, arrives at a conception of man, of the being of man in health and disease, and then it is possible to found a kind of spiritualised medicine. As a matter of fact that is just the kind of thing many people do, but it leads nowhere. They abuse empirical medicine but they are, after all, abusing something which they do not understand in the very least. There can be no question of writing off empirical science as worthless and taking refuge in a spiritualised science brought down from the clouds. That is quite the wrong attitude to adopt.

Now it must be remembered that spiritual-scientific investigation does not lead to the same things that can be examined under the microscope. If anyone tries to pretend that with the methods of Spiritual Science he has found exactly the same things as he finds under a microscope, he may safely be summed up as a charlatan. The results of modern empirical investigation are there and must be reckoned with. Those who seriously pursue Spiritual Science must concern themselves with the phenomena of the world in the sense of ordinary empiricism. From Spiritual Science we discover certain guiding lines for empirical research, certain ruling principles, showing us, for instance, that what exists at some particular place in the organism, must also be studied in reference to its position.

Many people will say: ‘Yes, but a cell is a cell, and purely empirical observation must determine the distinguishing feature of this cell—whether it is a liver-cell or a brain-cell and so on.’ Now that is not correct. Suppose, for example, I walk past a Bank at 9 o'clock in the morning and see two men sitting there side by side. I look at them and form certain ideas about them. At 3 o'clock in the afternoon it happens that I again walk past the Bank. There are the two men, sitting just as before. The empirical state of affairs is exactly the same—allowing for very slight differences. But now, think of it: one of the men may have remained sitting there for the whole six hours. The other may have been sent out on quite a journey directly after I first passed the Bank, and may have only just returned. This changes the picture fundamentally and has nothing to do with what I actually perceive with my senses. So far as my senses are concerned, the same state of things presents itself at 9 o'clock in the morning and 3 o'clock in the afternoon, but the objective fact must be judged from its connections, its attendant circumstances.

In this sense our conception of a liver-cell must differ essentially from our conception of a cell in the brain or the blood. For only if it were correct to say, for the sake of example, that the basis of everything is a primeval germ-cell which has been fertilised and that the whole organism can be explained by a process of simple fission and differentiation of this primeval germ-cell—only then could we proceed to treat a liver-cell exactly the same as a brain-cell in accordance with the purely empirical facts. Yes, but now suppose that this is by no means correct; that by virtue of its very position in the organism the relation of a liver-cell to forces outside man, outside the bounds of the skin, is not at all the same as the relation of a brain-cell to these forces. In that case it will not be correct to look on what is happening merely as a continuation of the process of fission and subsequent location in the body. We must rather assume that the relation of the brain-cell to the universe outside is quite different from that of the liver-cell.

Suppose a man looks at the needle of a compass, finds it pointing from South to North, from North to South, and then decides that the forces which set the needle in this direction lie in the needle itself. He would certainly not be considered a physicist to-day. A physicist brings the needle of the compass into connection with what is called terrestrial magnetism. No matter what theories may be evolved, it is simply impossible to attribute the direction of the needle to forces lying within the needle itself. It must be brought into relation with the universe.

In the study of organic life to-day, its relations to the universe are usually regarded as quite secondary. But suppose it were indeed true that merely on account of their different positions the liver and the brain are actually related quite differently to cosmic forces outside man. In that case we could never arrive at an explanation of the being of man by way of purely empirical thought. An explanation is possible only if we are able to say what part the whole universe plays in the moulding of the brain and again of the liver, in the same sense as the Earth plays its part in the direction taken by the needle in the compass.

Suppose we are tracing back the stream of heredity. We go to the forefathers, pass on to the present generation and then to the progeny, both in the case of animals and of human beings. We take account of what we find—as naturally we must—but we reckon merely with processes observed to lie immediately within the human being. It hardly ever occurs to us to ask whether under certain conditions it is possible for cosmic forces to work in the most varied ways upon the fertilised germ. Neither do we ask: Is it perhaps, impossible to explain the formation of the fertilised germ-cell if we remain within the confines of the human being himself? Must we not relate this germ-cell to the whole universe? In orthodox science to-day, the forces that work in from the Cosmos are secondary. To a certain limited extent they are taken into consideration, but they are always secondary. And now you may say: ‘Yes, but modern science leads us to a point where such questions no longer arise. It is antiquated to relate the human organs to the Cosmos!’ In the way in which this is often done, it is antiquated. The fact that as a rule such questions do not arise to-day is due entirely to our scientific education. Our education in science confines us to this purely objective and empirical mode of research, and we never come to the point of raising such questions as I have indicated by way of introduction. But the extent to which man is able to advance in knowledge and action in every sphere of life depends upon the raising of questions. If questions never arise, it means that a man is living in a kind of fog. He himself is dimming his free outlook upon reality, and it is only when things will no longer fit into his scheme of thought that he begins to realise the limitations of his conceptions.

Now I think that in the domain of modern medicine there may be a feeling that the processes taking place in the being of man are not wholly reconcilable with the simple, straightforward theories upon which most cures are based. There is a certain feeling that it must somehow be possible to approach the whole subject from another angle. And I think that what I shall have to say in this connection will mean something to those who are specialists in their particular branches of science, who have practical experience of the processes of health and disease and have realised that current conceptions and theories are too limited to grapple with the intricate organism of man.

Let us be quite honest with ourselves. During the nineteenth century a kind of axiom was put forward by nearly every branch of scientific thought. With a persistence that was enough to drive one to despair, it was constantly being said: ‘Explanations must be absolutely simple.’ And indeed they were! Yes, but if facts and processes are complicated it is prejudging the issue to say that the explanations must be simple. The thing is to accustom ourselves to deal with their complexities. Unspeakable harm has been done in the realms of science and art by the insistent demand for simplification. In all her manifestations, small and great, Nature is highly complicated, never simple. We can really grapple with Nature only if we realise from the outset that the most seemingly comprehensive ideas are related to the reality just as photographs of a tree, taken from one side only, are related to the tree. I can photograph the tree from every side and the photographs may be very different. The more photographs I have, the more nearly will my idea approximate to the reality of the tree.

The prevalent opinion to-day is this: such and such a theory is correct. Therefore some other theory—one with which we do not happen to agree—must be wrong. But that is just as if a man were to photograph a tree from one side only. He has his particular photograph. Somebody else takes a photograph from another side and says to the first man: ‘Your photograph is absolutely false; mine, and mine alone, represents the truth. In short, my particular view is correct.’ All controversies about materialism, idealism, realism and the like, have really taken this form. They are by no means dissimilar to the seemingly trivial example I have given. At the very outset of our studies I ask you not to take what I have to say as if it were meant to tend in the direction of materialism, idealism, or mysticism, but merely as an attempt to go straight for reality to the extent which the capacity of human thought permits. Materialistic conceptions often achieve great results when it is a question of mastering reality, but the spiritual aspect must be introduced as well. If it is impossible to keep the various aspects separate, our ideas will appear rather as if one took many different photographs all on the same plate. Indeed, many things are like this to-day. It is as if photographs from many different aspects had been taken on one plate.

Now when the forces lying latent in the soul of man are energised by the methods outlined in my book Knowledge of the Higher Worlds, we rise above the ordinary condition of knowledge—to which the latest phase in biology pays special devotion—and reach what I have described as Imaginative Cognition. A still higher level is that of ‘Knowledge by Inspiration,’ and the highest—if I may use this expression—is that of true Intuition, Intuitive Knowledge. In Imaginative Knowledge one comes to pictures of reality, knowing very well that they are pictures, but also that they are pictures of reality, and not merely dream-pictures. The pictures arising in Imaginative Cognition are true pictures but not the reality itself. At the stage of Knowledge by Inspiration reality begins to stream into these pictures, something lives within them; they tell us more than the picture alone. They themselves bear witness to a spiritual reality. And in acts of Intuitive Knowledge we live within the spiritual reality itself.—These are the three stages described in Knowledge of the Higher Worlds.

Now these three modes of higher knowledge give us, to begin with, an understanding of spiritual worlds, of a spiritual universe and of man as a being of Spirit and soul; they do not, in the early stages, reveal to us the findings of empirical research in the realm, say of, biology. When Imagination, or Inspiration, or Intuition, is used for gaining understanding of the being of man, a different way is followed.

Take, for instance, the structure of the human brain. It does not perhaps strike physiologists and doctors as very extraordinary, but to those who call themselves psychologists it is remarkable in the extreme. Psychologists are a strange phenomenon in our civilisation because they have managed to develop a science without subject-matter—a psychology without a soul! Think for a moment of a psychologist who takes his start purely from empirical science. In recent times people have really been at a loss to know what to make of philosophy, because it has been impossible to know whether philosophers know anything or not. Scientists, however, are supposed to know something, and so certain scientists who dabble in philosophy have been given Chairs of Philosophy. Current opinion has been this: the scientists must have some knowledge, because although it is quite possible in philosophy to talk round and round a subject, it is not possible in science to talk hot air about something that has been observed under a microscope, through a telescope, or by means of Röntgen rays. All these things can be tested and proved, but in philosophy it is not so easy to prove whether or not a man is talking out of the clouds.

And now, think of how Theodor Ziehen speaks of the structure of the brain. In this connection I once had a very interesting experience, and perhaps I can make the point more concrete by telling you a certain anecdote. Many years ago I once attended a meeting where an eminent doctor was speaking about the structure of the brain. He analysed the structure of the brain in relation to the soul-life of man from a point of view which might justly be called materialistic. He was an out-and-out materialist, one who had analysed the structure of the brain quite well to the extent to which it has been investigated in our times, and he then proceeded to explain the life of soul in connection with the brain and its structure. The chairman of the meeting was a follower of Herbart, and he, therefore, was not concerned with analysing the structure of the brain but the life of conception and ideation, as Herbart, the philosopher, had once done. He—the chairman—then said the following: ‘Here we have something very remarkable. The physiologist or the doctor makes diagrams and figures of the structure of the brain. If I, as a Herbartian, make drawings of the complicated associations of ideas—I mean a picture of the ideas which associate and not of the nerve fibres connecting one nerve-cell with another—if I, as a genuine Herbartian who does not concern himself with the brain as a structure, make symbolic diagrams of what I conceive to be the process underlying the concatenation of ideas, my drawings look exactly the same as the physiologist's sketches of the structure of the brain!’

This comparison is not unjustified. Science has taught us more and more about the structure of the brain. It has been proved in ever greater measure that the physical structure of the brain does, indeed, correspond in a marvelous way with the organisation of our life of ideation. Everything in the life of ideation can be found again in the structure of the brain. It is as if Nature herself had intended to create in the brain a plastic image of man's life of ideation. Something of the kind strikes us forcibly when we read statements like those of Meynert—nowadays they are already considered rather out-of-date. Meynert was a materialist, but an excellent brain-physiologist and psychologist. What he, as a materialist, tells us is a wonderful contribution to what is discovered when the actual brain is left out of account and we deal only with the way in which ideas unite, separate, etc., and then draw figures and diagrams. In short, if anything could make a man a materialist it is the structure of the human brain. At all events this much must be admitted: If, indeed, the Spirit and soul exist, they have in the human brain so perfect an expression that one is almost tempted to ask why the Spirit and soul in themselves are necessary for the life of ideation, even if people still hanker after a soul that can at least think. The brain is such a true mirror-image of the Spirit and soul—why should the brain itself not be able to think?

All these things must of course be taken with reservations. To-day I only want to indicate the tenor of our studies as a whole. The human brain, especially when we begin to make detailed research, is well calculated to make us materialists. The mystery that really underlies all this clears up only when we reach the stage of Imaginative Knowledge, where pictures arise—pictures of the spiritual world not previously visible. The pictures actually remind us of the configurations in the human brain formed by the nerve-fibres and nerve-cells.

What, then, is this Imaginative Knowledge, which functions, of course, entirely in the super-sensible world? If I were to attempt to give you a concrete picture of what Imaginative Knowledge is, in the way that a mathematician uses figures to illustrate a mathematical problem, I should say the following: Imagine that a man, living in the world, knows more than sense-cognition can tell him because he can rise to a world of pictures which express a reality, just as the human brain expresses the life of soul. In the brain, Nature has given us as a real Imagination, an Imagination that is real in the concrete sense, something that is attained in Imaginative Knowledge at a higher level.

This, you see, leads us more deeply into the mysteries of the constitution of man. As we shall find later on, this marvelous structure of the human brain is not an isolated formation. Through Imagination we behold a super-sensible world, and it is as though a part of this world had become real in a lower world; in the human brain a world of Imagination lies there, in concrete fact, before us. I do not believe that anyone can speak adequately about the human brain unless he sees in its structure an Imaginative replica of the life of soul. It is just this that leads us into difficulties when we take our start from ordinary brain-physiology and try to pass to an understanding of the life of soul. If we confine ourselves to the brain itself, a life of soul over and above this does not seem to be necessary. The only persons with a right to speak of a life of soul over and above the brain are those who have a knowledge of it other than that which is acquired by customary methods. For when, in the act of spiritual knowledge, we come to know this life of soul, we realise that it has its complete reflection in the structure of the human brain, and that the brain, moreover, can do everything that the super-sensible organ of soul can do by way of conceptual activity. Down to its very functions the brain is a mirror-image. With brain-physiology, therefore, no one can prove or disprove materialism. It simply cannot be done. If man were merely a being of brain, he would never need to say to himself: ‘Over and above this brain of mine, I possess a soul.’

In contrast to this—and I shall now describe in an introductory way something that will be developed in the subsequent lectures—let us consider a different function of the human organism, not the life of ideation, but the process or function of breathing. Think of the breathing process and of what passes into consciousness with regard to it. When we say to ourselves: ‘I have an idea which reminds me of another idea I had three years ago and I link the one to the other’—we may well be able to make diagrams, especially if we take a series of ideas. Such diagrams will bear a great resemblance, for instance, to Meynert's sketches of the structure of the brain. Now this cannot be done when we try to find an expression in the organism of man of what is contained in the breathing-processes. We can find no adequate expression of the breathing process in the structures and formations of the physical organs. The breathing process is something for which there is no adequate expression in the human organism, in the same sense as the structure of the brain is an adequate expression for the life of ideation and perception.

In Imaginative Knowledge pictures arise before us, but if we rise to knowledge by Inspiration, reality streams through the pictures from behind, as it were. If, then, we rise to Inspiration and gaze into the super-sensible world in such a way that the Imaginations teem with spiritual reality, we suddenly find ourselves standing in a super-sensible process which has its complete analogy in the connection between the breathing process, the structure of lungs and arachnoidal cavity, central canal of the spinal cord and the continuous flow of the breath into the brain. In short, if we rise to Inspiration, we learn to understand the whole meaning of the breathing process, just as Imaginative Knowledge leads to an understanding of the structure of the brain. The brain is an Imagination made concrete; everything connected with the breathing process is an Inspiration made real, an Inspiration brought down into the world of sense. A man who strives to reach the stage of Knowledge by Inspiration enters a world of Spirit and soul, but this world lies there tangibly before him when he observes the whole breathing process and its significance in the human organism.

Imaginative Knowledge, then, is necessary to an understanding of the structure of the brain; Knowledge by Inspiration is necessary before we can understand the rhythm of breathing and everything connected with it. The relation of the breathing process to the Cosmos is quite different from that of the brain. The outer, plastic structure of the brain is so completely a mirror-image of the Spiritual that it is possible to understand this structure without penetrating very deeply into the super-sensible world. Indeed, we need only rise to Imagination, which lies quite near the boundaries of ordinary cognition. The breathing process cannot be understood by means of Imagination; here we must have Inspiration, we must rise higher in the super-sensible world.

To understand the metabolic process we must rise higher still. The metabolic process is really the most mysterious of all processes in the human being. The following lectures will show that we must think of the metabolic process quite differently from the way in which it is thought of in empirical physiology. The changes undergone by the substances as they pass from the tongue to the point where they bring about something in the brain cells, for instance, cannot, unfortunately, be followed by means of purely empirical research, but only by means of Intuition. Intuition leads us beyond the mere perception of the object into the very object itself. In the brain, the Spirit and soul create for themselves an actual mirror-image, but they remain, in essence, outside this image. As Spirit and soul they influence and pass into the breath-rhythm but constantly withdraw. In the metabolism, however, the Spirit and soul submerge themselves completely; as Spirit and soul they disappear in the actual process. They are not to be found—neither are they to be found by empirical research.

And now think of Theodor Ziehen's subtle descriptions of the structure of the human brain. It is, indeed, also possible to make symbolic pictures of the memory in such a way that the existence in the brain of physiological-anatomical mirror-images of the faculty of memory can be proved. But when Ziehen comes to the sentient processes, there is already a hitch, and that is why he does not speak of feelings as independent entities, but only of mental conceptions coloured with feeling. And of the will, modern physiologists have ceased to speak I Why? Very naturally they say nothing. Now when I want to raise my arm—that is to say, to accomplish an act of will—I have, first of all, the idea. Something then descends into the region that, according to current opinion, is wholly ‘unconscious.’ Everything that cannot be actually observed in the life of soul, but is none the less believed to be there, is thrown into the reservoir of the ‘unconscious.’ And then I observe how I move my hand. Between the intention and the accomplished fact lies the will, which plays right down into the material nature of the physical organism.

This process can be followed in detail by Intuitive Knowledge; the will passes down into the innermost being of the organism. The act of will enters right into the metabolism. There is no act of will performed by physical man which cannot be traced by Intuitive Knowledge to a corresponding metabolic process. Nor is there any process of will which does not find its expression in demolition, dissolution—call it what you will—within the metabolic processes. The will first demolishes what exists somewhere or other in the organism, in order that it may act. It is just as if I had to burn up something in my arm before being able to use this limb for the expression of my will. Something must first be done away with, as we shall see in the following lectures.

I know that this would be considered a fearful heresy in science to-day, but nevertheless it will reveal itself to us as a truth. Something that is of the nature of substance must be destroyed before the will can come into play. Spirit and soul must establish themselves where substance existed. Understanding of this belongs to the very essence of Intuitive Knowledge, and we shall never be able to explain the metabolic processes in the human being unless we investigate them by its means.

These three processes—the nerve-sensory process, the rhythmic processes (breathing and blood circulation) and the metabolic processes—include, fundamentally speaking, every function in the human organism. Man is really objective knowledge, knowledge made actual—no matter whether we merely observe him from outside or dissect him. Take the human head. We understand what is going on in the head when we realise that there is such a thing as Imaginative Knowledge; the processes in the rhythmic system become clear when we know of the existence of Knowledge by Inspiration; we understand the metabolic processes when we know of the existence of Intuition. Thus do the principles of reality interpenetrate in the being of man. Take, for example, the specific organs of the will—they can be understood only by an act of Intuitive Knowledge.

As long as we apply a rigidly objective mode of cognition to the being of man, we shall not realise that he is, in fact, not at all as he is usually supposed to be. Modern physiology knows, of course, that to a great extent the human being is a column of fluid. But now ask yourselves quite honestly whether physiology does in fact reckon with man as a column of fluid, or whether it does not proceed merely as if he were a being consisting of solid forms. You will probably have to admit that little account is taken of the fact that he is essentially a fluidic being and that the solids have merely been inserted into this fluid. But, as a matter of fact, man is also an airy, gaseous being, and a being of warmth as well. The solid part of man can well be understood by means of ordinary objective cognition. Just as in the laboratory I can become familiar with the nature of sulphide of mercury, so by chemical and physical investigation of the human organism I can acquaint myself with all that is solid. It is different with the fluids in the being of man. The fluids live in a state of perpetual integration and disintegration and cannot be observed in the same way as the stomach or heart are observed and then drawn. If I make drawings of these organs as if they were solid objects, a great deal can be said about them. But it is not the same if we take this watery being of man as something real. In the fluids something is always coming into being and disappearing again. It is as if we were to conceive of the heart as continually coming into being and disappearing—although the process there is not a very rapid one. The watery being of man must be approached with Imaginative Knowledge.

The importance of the organic functions in the human organism, and their connection with the circulation, are of course well known, but how these functions play into one another—that follows precisely the pattern of Inspiration. Only through Inspiration can the airy part of man be understood.

And now let us pass to the warmth in the human being. Try to realise that man is something very special by virtue of the fact that he is a being of warmth; that in the most various parts of his structure warmth and cold are found present in the most manifold ways. Before we can realise how the Ego lives in the warmth in man, we must ourselves live in the process. There must be an act of Intuitive Knowledge.

Before man can be known in his whole being—not as if he were simply a mass of solid organs with sharp contours—we must penetrate into the organism from many different angles. Just as we feel the need to exercise Imagination, Inspiration and Intuition as we pass from the brain to the other organic phenomena, so it is when we study the aggregate states of matter within him. The solid part of man, his solid bodily nature, hardly differs at all from the state in which substances exist outside the human organism. There is an essential difference in the case of the fluids and gases, and above all in the case of the warmth. This will have to be considered in the next lecture. But it is, indeed, a fact that only when our observation of man widens out in this way do we realise the full significance of the organs and systems of organs.

Empirical physiology hardly enables us to follow up the functions of the human organism further than the point where the chyle passes from the intestines into the lymphatic vessels. What follows is merely a matter of conjecture. All ideas about the subsequent processes in the substances we take in from the outside world, for instance the processes in the blood stream, are really nothing but fantasy on the part of modern physiology. The part played by the kidneys in the organism can be understood only if we observe the katabolic processes side by side with the anabolic processes, which today are almost invariably regarded as the only processes of significance. A long time ago I once said to a friend: ‘It is just as important to study those organs which are grouped around the germ of the human embryo, and which are later discarded, as to study the development of the germ itself from conception to birth.’ The picture is complete only when we observe the division of the cells and the structure arising from this, and also trace the katabolic processes which take their course side by side with the anabolic processes. For we not only have this katabolic process around us in the embryonic period; we bear it within us continually in later life. And we must know in the case of each single organ, to what extent it contains anabolic and to what extent katabolic processes. The latter are, as a general rule, bound up with an increase of consciousness. Clear consciousness is dependent on katabolic processes, on the demolition of matter.

The same must be said of the excretory processes. The kidneys are organs of excretion. But now the question arises: Although from the point of view of material empiricism the kidneys are primarily excretory organs, have they no other purpose in the constitution of man beyond this? Do they not, perhaps, play a more important part in building up the human being virtue of something other than their excretory functions? If we then follow the functions still further, passing from the kidneys to the liver, for example, we find this interesting phenomenon:—The kidneys secrete in the last resort, outwards; the liver, inwards. And the question arises: How is the relation of the kidney process to the liver process affected by the fact that the kidneys send their excretory products outwards and the liver inwards? Is the human being at one time communing, as it were, with the outer world and at another with himself?

Thus we are led gradually to penetrate the mysteries of the human organism, but we must bring to our aid matters that are approached in the ways of which I have to-day given only preliminary hints. I will proceed from this point in the following lectures, showing how these things lead to a true understanding of pathology and therapy, and how far they may become guiding principles in orthodox empirical research. No attack on this kind of research is implied. The only object is to show that guiding principles are necessary.

I am not out to attack scientific research or scientific medicine in any sense. My aim is to show that in this scientific medicine there is a mine of opportunity for a much wider knowledge than can be attained by modern methods, and above all by the current outlook on the world.~ We have no wish to scoff at the scientific mode of observation but on the contrary to give it a true foundation. When it is founded upon the Spirit, then, and only then, does it assume its full significance.

To-morrow I will speak further on this subject.

If I were asked to map out a course of medical study to cover a certain period of time, I should begin—after the necessary scientific knowledge had been acquired—by distinguishing the various functions in the organism of man. I should feel bound to advise a study, both in the anatomical and physiological sense, of the transformation of the foodstuffs from the stage where they are worked upon by the ptyalin and pepsin to the point where they are taken up into the blood. Then, after considering the whole alimentary canal concerned with digestion in the narrower sense, I should pass on to the system of heart and lungs and all that is connected with it. This would be followed by a study of the kidneys and, later on, their relation to the system of nerves and senses—a relation not properly recognised by orthodox science to-day. Then I should lead on to the system of liver, gall and spleen, and this cycle of study would gradually open up a vista of the human organism, leading to the knowledge which it is the task of Spiritual Science to develop. Then, with the illumination which would have been shed upon the results of empirical research, one would be able to pass on to therapy.

In the few days at our disposal, it is of course possible for me to give only a few hints about this wide and all-embracing domain. A great deal, therefore, of what I have to say will be based upon an unusual conception of empirical facts, but I think it will be quite comprehensible to anyone who possesses the requisite physiological and therapeutic knowledge. I shall have to use somewhat unfamiliar terms, but there will really be nothing that cannot in some way be brought into harmony with the data of modern empirical knowledge—if these data are studied in all their connections. Everything I say will be aphoristic, merely hinting at ultimate conclusions. Our starting point, however, must be the objective and empirical investigations of modern times, and the intermediate stages will have to be mastered by the work of our doctors. This intermediate path is exceedingly long but it is absolutely essential, for the reason that, as things are to-day, nothing of what I shall bring before you will be whole-heartedly accepted if these intermediate steps are not taken—at all events in regard to certain outstanding phenomena. I do not believe that this will prove to be as difficult as it appears at present, if people will only condescend to bring the preliminary work that has already been done into line with the general conceptions I am trying to indicate here. This preliminary work is excellent in many respects, but its goal still lies ahead.

In the last lecture I tried to show you how a widening out of ordinary knowledge can give us insight into the being of man. And now, bearing in mind what I have just said, let me add the following. It may, to begin with, be a stumbling-block to hear it said in Anthroposophy that man, as he stands before us in the physical world, consists of a physical organisation, an etheric organisation, an astral organisation and an Ego-organisation. These expressions need not be an obstacle. They are used merely because some kind of terminology is necessary. By virtue of this Ego-organisation, the point where his inner experiences are focused and unified, man is able to unfold that inner cohesion of soul-life which is not present in the animal. The Ego is really the focus whence the whole organic activity of man proceeds, in waking consciousness at all events. A further expression of the Ego is the fact that during earthly life the relation of man to sexual development is not the same as that of the animal. Essentially—though of course exceptions are always possible—the constitution of the animal is such that sexual maturity represents a certain point of culmination. After this, deterioration sets in. This organic deterioration may not begin in a very radical sense after the first occurrence of sexual activity, but to a certain extent it is there. On the other hand, the physical development of the human being receives a certain stimulus at puberty. So that even in the outer empirical sense—if we take all the factors into account—there is already a difference here between the human being and the animal.

You may say that it is really an abstraction to speak of physical, etheric, astral and Ego organisations. The objection has in fact often been made, especially from the side of philosophy, that this is an abstract classification, that we take the functions of the organism, distinguish between them, and—since distinctions do not necessarily point back to any objective causes—people think that it is all an abstraction. Now that is not so. In the course of these lectures we shall see what really lies behind this classification and division, but I assure you they are not merely the outcome of a desire to divide things into categories.

When we speak of the physical organisation of man, this includes everything in the organism that can be dealt with by the same methods that we adopt when we are making experiments and investigations in the laboratory. All this is included when we think or speak of the physical organisation of man. In regard to the etheric organisation that is woven into the physical, however, our mode of thought can no longer confine itself to the ideas and laws obtaining when we are making experiments and observations in the laboratory. Whatever we may think of the etheric organisation of man as revealed by super-sensible knowledge, and without having to enter into mechanistic or vitalistic theory in any way, it is apparent to direct perception (and this is a question which would be the subject of lengthy study in my suggested curriculum) that the etheric organisation as a whole is involved—functionally—in everything of a fluid, watery nature in the human organism. The purely physical mode of thought, therefore, must confine itself to what is solid in the organism, to the solid structures and aggregations of matter. We understand the organism of man aright only when we conceive of its fluids as being permeated through and through with life, as living fluids—not merely as the fluids of outer Nature. This is the sense in which we say that man has an etheric body. It is not necessary to enter into hypotheses about the nature of life, but merely to understand what is implied by saying that the cell is permeated with life. Whatever views we may hold—mechanistic, idealistic, animistic or the like—when we say, as the crass empiricist also says, that the cell has life, this direct perception to which I am referring shows that the fluid nature of man is likewise permeated with life. But this is the same as saying: Man has an etheric body. We must think of everything solid as being embedded in the fluid nature. And here already we have a contrast, in that we apply the ideas and laws obtaining in the inorganic world to the solid parts of man's being, whereas we think not only of the cells—the smallest organisms present in man—as living, but of the fluid nature in its totality as permeated with life.

Further, when we come to the airy nature of man, it appears that the gases in his being are in a state of perpetual permutation. In the course of these lectures we shall have to show that this is neither an inorganic permutation nor merely a process of permutation negotiated by the solid organs, but that an individual complex of law controls the inner permutation of the gases in man. Just as there is an inner law in the solid substances, expressing itself, among other things, in the relationship between the kidneys and the heart, so we must postulate the existence of a law within the airy or gaseous organism—a law that is not confined to the physical, solid organs. Anthroposophy describes this complex of law, which underlies the gaseous organism, as astral law, as the astral organisation. These astral laws would not be there in man if his airy organisation had not permeated the solid and the fluid organisations. The astral organisation does not penetrate directly into the solids and the fluids. It does, however, directly penetrate the airy organisation. This airy organisation penetrates the solids and the fluids, but only because the presence of an organised astral nature gives it definite, though fluctuating, inner form. A study of the aggregate conditions thus brings us to the following conclusions: In the case of the solid substances in man we need assume nothing more than a physical organisation; in the case of the living fluidity which permeates the solid, physical organisation, we must assume the existence of something that is not exhausted in the forces of physical law, and here we come to the etheric organism—a system that is self-contained and complete in itself. In the same sense I give the name of astral organisation to that which does not directly penetrate into the solids and fluids but first of all into the airy organisation. I prefer to call this the astral organism because it again is a self-contained system.

And now we come to the Ego-organisation, which penetrates directly only into the differentiations of warmth in the human organism. We can therefore speak of a warmth organism, a warmth ‘being.’ The Ego-organisation penetrates directly into this warmth being. The Ego-organisation is a super-sensible principle and brings about the various differentiations of the warmth. In these differentiations of warmth the Ego-organisation has its immediate life. It also has an indirect life in so far as the warmth works upon the airy fluid and solid organisations.

In this way we gradually gain insight into the human organism. Now all that I have been describing expresses itself in physical man as he lives on the earth. The most intangible organisation of all—the Ego-warmth-organisation—works down indirectly upon the gaseous, fluid and solid organisations; and the same is true of the others. So that the way in which this whole configuration penetrates the constitution of man, as known to empirical observation, will find expression in any solid system of organs, verifiable by anatomy. Hence, taking the various organ-systems, we find that only the physical

—I mean the physically solid system—is directly related to its corresponding (physical) system of laws; the fluid is less directly related, the gaseous still less directly, and the element of warmth least directly of all, although even here there is still a certain relation.

Now all these things—and I can indicate them here only in the form of ultimate conclusions—can be confirmed by an extended empiricism merely from the phenomena themselves. As I say, on account of the short time at our disposal I can only give you certain ultimate conclusions.

In the anatomy and physiology of the human organism we can observe, to begin with, the course taken by the foodstuff. It reaches the intestines and the other intricate organs in that region, and is absorbed into the lymph and blood. We can follow the process of digestion or nourishment in the widest sense, up to that point. If we limit ourselves to this, we can get on quite well with the mode of observation (and it is not entirely mechanistic) that is adopted by natural science to-day. An entirely mechanistic mode of observation will not lead to the final goal in this domain, because the complex of laws observed externally in the laboratory, and characterised by natural science as inorganic law, is here functioning in the digestive tract: that is to say, already within the living organism. From the outset, the whole process is involved in life, even at the stage of the ptyalin-process.

If we merely pay heed to the fact that the complex of outer, inorganic law is involved in the life of the digestive tract, we can get on well quite, so far as this limited sphere is concerned, by confining ourselves merely to what can be observed within the physical organisation of man. But then we must realise that something of the digestive activity still remains, that the process of nourishment is still not quite complete when the intestinal tract has been passed, and that the subsequent processes must be studied from a different point of view. So far as the limited sphere is concerned, we can get on quite well if, to begin with, we study all the transformations of substance by means of analogies, just as we study things in the outer world. But then we find something that modern science cannot readily acknowledge but which is none the less a truth, following indeed from science itself. It will be the task of our doctors to investigate these matters scientifically and then to show from the empirical facts themselves that as a result of the action of the ptyalin and pepsin on the food-stuff, the latter is divested of every trace of its former condition in the outer world.

We take in foodstuff—you may demur at the expression ‘foodstuff’ but I think we understand each other—we take in foodstuff from the mineral, plant and animal kingdoms. It belongs originally to these three realms. The substance most nearly akin to the human realm is, of course, the mother's milk; the babe receives the milk immediately it has left the womb. The process enacted within the human organism during the process of nourishment is this: When the foodstuff is received into the realm of the various glandular secretions, every trace of its origin is eliminated. It is really true to say that the human organisation itself conduces to the purely scientific, inorganic mode of observation. In effect, the product of the assimilation of foodstuffs in man comes nearest of all to the outer physical processes in the moment when it is passing as chyle from the intestines into the lymph and blood-streams. The human being finally obliterates the external properties which the foodstuff, until this moment, still possessed. He wants to have it as like as possible to the inorganic state. He needs it thus, and this again distinguishes him from the animal kingdom.

The anatomy and physiology of the animal kingdom reveal that the animal does not eliminate the nature of the substances introduced to its body to the same extent, although we cannot say quite the same of the products of excretion. The substances that pass into the body of the animal retain a greater resemblance to their constitution in the outer world than is the case with man. They retain more of the vegetable and animal nature and proceed on into the blood-stream still in their external form and with their own inner laws. The human organisation has advanced so far that when the chyle passes through the intestinal wall, it has become practically inorganic. The purely physical nature comes to expression in the region where the chyle passes from the intestines into the sphere of the activity of heart and lungs.

It is really only at this point that our way of looking at things becomes heretical as regards orthodox science. The system connected with the heart and the lungs—the vascular system—is the means whereby the foodstuffs (which have now entered the inorganic realm) are led over into the realm of life. The human organisation could not exist if it did not provide its own life. In a wider sense, what happens here resembles the process occurring when the inorganic particles of albumen, let us say, are transformed into organic, living albumen, when dead albumen becomes living albumen. Here again we need not enter into the question of the inner being of man, but only into what is continually being said in physiology. On account of the shortness of time we cannot speak of the scientific theories as to how the plant produces living albumen, but in the human being it is the system of heart and lungs, with all that belongs to it, which is responsible for the transformation of the albumen into living substance after the chyle has become almost inorganic.

We can therefore say: The system of heart and lungs is there in order that the physical system may be drawn up into the etheric organisation. The system of heart and lungs brings about a vitalising process whereby inorganic substance is raised to the organic stage, is drawn into the sphere of life. (In the animal it is not quite the same, the process being less definite.) Now it would be absolutely impossible for this process to take place in the physical world if certain conditions were not fulfilled in the human organism. The raising and transformation of the chyle into an etheric organisation could not take place within the sphere of earthly law unless other factors were present. The process is possible in the physical world only because the whole etheric system pours down, as it were, into the physical, is membered into the physical. This comes to pass as a result of the absorption of oxygen in the breath. And so man is a being who can walk physically upon the Earth because his etheric nature is made physical by the absorption of oxygen. The etheric organisation is projected into the physical world as a physical system; in effect, that which otherwise could only be super-sensible expresses itself as a physical system, as the system of heart and lungs. And so we begin to realise that just as carbon is the basis of the organisms of animal, plant and man (only in the latter case in a less solid form) and ‘fixes’ the physical organisation as such, so is oxygen related to the etheric organisation when this expresses itself in the physical domain.

Here we have the two substances of which living albumen is essentially composed. But this mode of observation can be applied equally well to the albuminous cell, the cell itself. Only we widen out the kind of observation that is usually applied to the cell by substituting a macroscopic perception for the microscopic perception of the cell in the human being. We observe the processes which constitute the connection between the digestive tract and the system of heart and lungs. We observe them in an inner sense, seeing the relation between them, perceiving how an etheric organisation comes into play and is ‘fixed’ into the physical as the result of the absorption of oxygen.

But you see, if this were all, we should have a being in the physical world possessed merely of a digestive system and a system of heart and lungs. Such a being would not be possessed of an inner life of soul; the element of soul could have its life in only the super-sensible; and it is still our task to show how that which makes man a sentient being inserts itself into his solid and fluid constitution, permeating the solids and fluids and making him a sentient being, a being of soul. The etheric organisation in the physical world, remember, is bound up with the oxygen.

Now the organisation of soul cannot come into action unless there is a point d'appui, as it were, for the airy being, with a possibility of access to the physical organisation. Here we have something that lies very far indeed from modern habits of thought. I have told you that oxygen passes into the etheric organisation through the system of heart and lungs; the astral nature makes its way into the organisation of man through another system of organs. This astral nature, too, needs a physical system of organs. I am referring here to something that does not take its start from the physical organs but from the airy nature (not only the fluid nature) that is connected with these particular organs—that is to say from the airy organisation that is bound up with the solid substance. The astral-organic forces radiate out from this gaseous organisation into the human organism. Indeed, the corresponding physical organ itself is first formed by this very radiation, on its backward course. To begin with, the gaseous organisation radiates out, makes man into an organism permeated with soul, permeates all his organs with soul and then streams back again by an indirect path, so that a physical organ comes into being and plays its part in the physical organisation. This is the kidney system, which is regarded in the main as an organ of excretion. The excretory functions, however, are secondary. I will return to this later on, for I have yet to speak of the relation between the excretions and the higher function of the kidneys. As physical organs the kidneys are excretory organs (they too, of course, have entered the sphere of vitality), but besides this, in their underlying airy nature, they radiate the astral forces which now permeate the airy nature and from thence work directly into the fluids and the solids.

The kidney system, therefore, is that which from an organic basis imbues man with sentient faculties, with qualities of soul and the like—in short with an astral organism. Empirical science has a great deal to say about the functions of the kidneys, but if you will apply a certain instinctive inner perception to these functions, you will be able to discover the relations between inner sentient experience and the functions of the kidneys—remembering always that the excretions are only secondary indications of that from which they have been excreted. In so far as the functions of the kidneys underlie the sentient faculties, this is expressed even in the nature of the excretions.

If you want to extend scientific knowledge in this field, I recommend you to make investigations with a man of the more sensitive type and try to find out the essential change that takes place in the renal excretions when he is thinking in a cold or in a hot room. Even purely empirical tests like this, suitably varied in the usual scientific way, will show you what happens. If you make absolutely systematic investigations, you will discover what difference there is in the renal excretions when a man is thinking either in a cold or a warm room. You can also make the experiment by asking someone to think concentratedly and putting a warm cloth round his head. (The conditions for the experiment must of course be carefully prepared.) Then examine the renal excretions, and examine them again when he is thinking about the same thing and cold compresses have been put on his feet.

The reason why there is so little concern with such inquiries to-day is because people are averse from entering into these matters. In embryological research into cell-fission, science does not study the allantois and the amnion. True, the discarded organs have been investigated, but to understand the whole process of embryonic development the accessory organs must be studied much more exactly even than the processes which arise from the division of the germ-cell. Our task here, therefore, is to establish starting-points for true investigation. This is of the greatest significance, for only so shall we find the way, as we must do, towards seeing man, not as a visible but as an invisible “giant” cell.

To-day, science does not speak of the cell as it speaks of the human being, because microscopy does not lead so far. The curious thing is that if one studies the realm of the microscopic with the methods I am here describing, wonderful things come to light—as for instance the results achieved by the Hertwig school. The cell can be investigated up to a certain point in the microscope, but then there is no possibility of, further research into the more complicated life-processes. Ordinary empiricism comes to a standstill here, but with Spiritual Science we can follow the facts further. We now look at man in his totality, and the tiny point represented by the cell grows out, as it were, into the whole being of man.

From this we can proceed to learn how the purely physical organisation is connected with the structure of carbon, just as the transition to the etheric organisation is connected with the structure of oxygen. If, next, we make exact investigations into the kidney system, we find a similar connection with nitrogen. Thus we have carbon, oxygen, nitrogen; and in order to trace the part played by nitrogen in the astral permeation of the organism, you need only follow, through a series of accurate experiments, the metamorphoses of uric acid and urea. Careful study of the secondary excretions of uric acid and urea will give definite evidence that the astral permeation of man proceeds from the kidney system. This will also be shown by other things connected with the activity of the kidneys, even to the point where pathological conditions are present—when, let us say, we find blood corpuscles in the urine. In short, the kidney system radiates the astral organisation into the human organism. Here we must not think of the physical organisation, but of the airy organisation that is bound up with it. If nitrogen were not present, the whole process would remain in the domain of the super-sensible, just as man would be merely an etheric being if oxygen were not to play its part. The outcome of the nitrogen process is that man can live on earth as an earthly being. Nitrogen is the third element that comes into play.

There is thus a continual need to widen the methods adopted in anatomy and physiology by applying the principles of Spiritual Science. It is not in any sense a matter of fantasy. We ask you to study the kidney system, to make your investigations as accurately as you possibly can, to examine the urea and the excretions of uric acid under different astral conditions, and step by step you will find confirmation of what I have said. Only in this way will the mysteries of the human organism reveal themselves to you.

All that enters into man through the absorption of foodstuff is carried into the astral organism by the kidney system. There still remains the Ego-organisation. The products of digestion are received into the Ego-organisation primarily as a result of the working of liver and gall. The warmth and the warmth-organisation in the system of liver and gall radiate out in such a way that man is permeated with the Ego-organisation, and this is bound up with the differentiations of warmth in the organism as a whole.

Now it is quite possible to make absolutely exact investigations into this. Take certain lower animals where there is no trace at all of an Ego-organisation in the psychological sense, and you will find no developed liver, and still less any bile. These develop in the phylogeny of the animal kingdom only when the animal begins to show traces of an Ego-organisation. The development of liver and gall runs absolutely parallel with the degree to which the Ego-organisation unfolds in a living being. Here, too, you have an indication for a series of physiological investigations in connection with the human being, only of course they must cover the different periods of his life. You will gradually discover the relation of the Ego-organisation to the functions of the liver.

In certain diseases of children you will find, for instance, that a number of psychical phenomena, tending not towards the life of feeling but towards the Ego-activities, are connected with the secretion of gall. This might form the basis for an exceedingly fruitful series of investigations. The Ego-organisation is connected with hydrogen, just as the physical organisation is connected with carbon, the etheric organisation with oxygen and the astral organisation with nitrogen. It is, moreover, possible to relate all the differentiations of warmth—I can only hint at this—to the specific function carried out in the human organism by hydrogen in combination with other substances. And so, as we ascend from the material to the super-sensible and make the super-sensible a concrete experience by recognising its physical expressions, we come to the point of being able to conceive the whole being of man as a highly complicated cell, a cell that is permeated with soul and Spirit.

It is really only a matter of taking the trouble to examine and develop the marvelous results achieved by natural science and not simply leaving them where they are. My understanding and practical experience of life convince me that if you will set yourselves to an exhaustive study of the results of the most orthodox empirical science, if you will relate the most obvious with the most remote, and really study the connections between them, you will constantly be led to what I am telling you here. I am also convinced that the so-called ‘occultists’ whom you may consult—especially ‘occultists’ of the modern type—will not help you in the least. What will be of far more help is a genuine examination of the empirical data offered by orthodox science. Science itself leads you to recognise truths which can be actually perceived only in the super-sensible world, but which indicate, nevertheless, that the empirical data must be followed up in this or that direction. You can certainly discover the methods on your own account; they will be imposed by the facts before you. There is no need to complain that such guiding principles create prejudice or that they influence by suggestion. The conclusions arise out of the things themselves, but the facts and conditions prove to be highly complicated, and if further progress is to be made, all that has been learned in this way about the human being must now be investigated in connection with the outer world.

I want you now to follow me in a brief line of thought. I give it merely by way of example, but it will show you the path that must be followed. Take the annual plant which grows out of the earth in spring and passes through its yearly cycle. And now relate the phenomena which you observe in the annual plant with other things—above all with the custom of peasants who, when they want to keep their potatoes through the winter, dig pits of a certain depth and put the potatoes into them so that they may keep for the following year. If the potatoes were kept in an ordinary open cellar, they would not be fit to eat. Investigations have proved that the forces originating from the interplay between the sunshine and the earth are contained within the earth during the subsequent winter months. The dynamic forces of warmth and the forces of the light are at work under the surface of the earth during the winter, so that in winter the after-effects of summer are contained within the earth. The summer itself is around us, above the surface of the Earth. In winter, the after-effects of summer work under the earth's surface. And the consequence is that the plant, growing out of the earth in its yearly cycle, is impelled to grow, first and foremost, by the forces that have been poured into the earth by the sun of the previous year. The plant derives its dynamic force from the soil. This dynamic force that is drawn out of the soil can be traced up into the ovary and on into the developing seed. So you see, we arrive at a botany which really corresponds to the whole physiological process, only if we do not confine ourselves to a study of the dynamic forces of warmth and light during the year when the plant grows. We must take our start from the root, and so from the dynamic forces of light and warmth of at least the year before. These forces can be traced right up into the ovary, so that in the ovary we have something that really is brought into being by the forces of the previous year.

Now examine the leaves of a plant, and, still more, the petals. You will find that in the leaves there is a compromise between the dynamic forces of the previous year and those of the present year. The leaves contain the elements that are thrust out from the earth and those which work in from the environment. It is in the petals that the forces of the present year are represented in their purest form. The colouring and so forth of the petals represents nothing that is old—it all comes from the present year.

You cannot follow the processes in an annual plant if you take only the immediate conditions into consideration. Examine the structural formations which follow one another in two consecutive years—all that the sun imparts to the earth, however, has a much longer life. Make a series of experiments into the way in which the plants continue to be relished by creatures such as the grub of the cockchafer, and you will realise that what you first thought to be an element belonging to the present year must be related to the sun-forces of the previous year.—You know what a prolonged larval stage the cockchafer passes through, devouring the plant with relish all the time.

These matters must be the subject of exact research; only the guiding principles can be given from the spiritual world. Research will show that the nature of the substances in the petals and leaves, for instance, is essentially different from that of the substances in the root or even the seed. There is a great difference between a decoct ion prepared from the petals or leaves of plants and an extract of substances found in roots or seeds. The effect of a decoction prepared from petals or leaves upon the digestive system is quite different from that of an extract prepared from roots or seeds. In this way you relate the organisation of man to the surrounding world, and all that you discover can be verified in a purely material sense. You will find, for instance, that disturbances in the process of the transition of the chyle into the etheric organisation, which is brought about by the system of heart and lungs, will be influenced by a preparation decocted from the petals of plants. An extract of roots or seeds influences the wider activity that works on into the vascular system and even into the nervous system. Along these lines we shall discover the rational connection between what is going on within the human organism and the substances from which our store of remedies may be derived.

In the next lecture I shall have to continue this subject, showing that there is an inner connection between the different structures of the plants and the systems of nerves and senses and digestion in man.

As we begin more and more to view the human organism in the way which I have unfortunately been able to indicate only very briefly, many things not otherwise appreciated in their full significance assume great importance. Very little heed is paid nowadays to what I have called in the appendix to my book, Riddles of the Soul, the threefold organisation of the physical being of man. Yet a right understanding of this threefold organisation is of the greatest significance for pathology and therapy. According to this threefold organisation of physical man, the system of nerves and senses is to be conceived of as being localised mainly in the head, only of course in this sense the head-organisation really extends over the whole being. The nervous and sensory functions of the skin, and also those within the organism, must be included. We cannot, however, arrive at a well-founded conception of the modes of activity in the organism unless—theoretically in the first place—we differentiate the system of nerves and senses from the rest of the organism as a whole.

The second, or rhythmic, system includes, in the functional sense, all that is subject to rhythm—primarily, therefore, the breathing system and its connection with the blood circulation. In the wider sense, too, there is the rhythm that is essentially present in the life of man, although he can break through it in many ways—I mean the rhythm of day and night, of sleeping and waking. Then there are other rhythms, the rhythmic assimilation of foodstuffs and the like. These latter rhythms are constantly broken by man, but the consequences have to be brought into equilibrium by certain regulative factors which are present in the organism. As a second member of the human organisation, then, we have the rhythmic system; and, as a third member, the metabolic organism, in which I include the limb-formations because the functional processes that arise as a result of the movements of the limbs are inwardly connected with the metabolism in general.

When we consider this threefold nature of man, we find that the organisation described in the last lecture as being mainly connected with the Ego has a definite relation to the metabolism in so far as the metabolic system extends over the whole being. Again, the rhythmic system has a definite connection with the system of heart and lungs. The functions of the kidneys, the forces that go out from the kidney system, are related to the astral organisation of the human being. In short, in his threefold physical nature man is related to the different members of his super-sensible being and also to the several organic systems—as I showed yesterday. But these relationships must be studied in more precise detail if they are to prove of practical value for an understanding of man in health and disease. And here we shall do best to start from a consideration of the rhythmic being of man.

This rhythmic organisation is very frequently misunderstood in respect of a very definite characteristic, namely the relation that is set up between the rhythm of the blood circulation and the rhythm of the breath. In the grown-up person, this relationship is approximately in the ratio of four to one. This, of course, is only the average, approximate ratio, and its variations in individuals are an expression of the measure of health and disease in the organism. Now, that which reveals itself in the rhythmic man as a ratio of four to one, continues in the organism as a whole. We have again a ratio of four to one in the relationship of the processes of the metabolic system (including the limbs) to the system of nerves and senses. This again can be verified by empirical data as in the case of other things mentioned in these lectures. Indeed, so far-reaching is this relationship that we may say: All the processes connected with metabolism in man take their course four times more quickly than the work done by the nervous and sensory activities for the growth of the human being.

The second teeth which appear in the child are an expression of what is proceeding in the metabolic system as a result of its coming continually into contact with the system of nerves and senses. All that flows from the metabolic system towards the middle, rhythmic system, set against that which flows from the nerves and senses system into the rhythmic system, is in the ratio of four to one. To speak precisely, we may take the breathing system to be the rhythmic continuation of the system of nerves and senses, and the circulatory system to be the rhythmic continuation of the metabolic system. The metabolic system sends its workings, as it were, up into the rhythmic man. In other words, the third member works into the second, and this expresses itself through the rhythm of blood circulation in daily life. The system of nerves and senses, again, sends its workings into the breathing system and this is expressed through the rhythm of the breath. In the rhythmic being of man we can perceive the ratio of four to one—for there are some seventy pulse-beats or so to eighteen breaths. In the relationships of the rhythms, the rhythmic being of man represents the contact between the system of nerves and senses and the metabolic system; and this can again be observed in any given life-period of man by studying the relation of all that proceeds from the metabolism in the general organic processes to all that goes out from the head system—the system of nerves and senses. This is a relationship of great significance.

In the child's second teeth there is an upward thrust of the metabolic system into the head, but the point about this meeting between the metabolic system and the system of nerves and senses is that the latter, to begin with, gets the upper hand. The following will make this clear to you. The second dentition at about the age of seven represents a contact between the metabolic system and the system of nerves and senses, but the nervous and sensory action dominates. The outcome of this contact of forces—which proceed from the nerves and senses on the one hand and the metabolic system on the other—is the development of the second teeth.

Again, in the period when the human being reaches puberty, a new contact occurs between the metabolic system and the system of nerves and senses, but this time the metabolic system dominates. This is expressed in the male sex by the change in the voice itself, which up to this period of life has been, essentially, a form of expression of the system of nerves and senses. The metabolic system pulses upwards and makes the voice deeper.

We can understand these workings by observing the extent to which they embrace the radiations in the human organism which originate in the kidney system and the liver-gall system on the one hand, and in the head and skin organisations on the other. This is an exceedingly interesting connection, and one which leads us into the deepest depths of the organisation of man. We can envisage the building and moulding of the organism thus: Radiations go out from the system of kidneys and liver, and they are met by the plastic, formative forces proceeding from the head. The forces from the system of kidneys and liver (naturally they do not only stream upwards but to all sides) have the tendency to work in a semi-radial direction, but they are everywhere thwarted by the plastic, formative forces which proceed from the head. We can thus understand the form of the lungs by thinking of it as being organised by the forces of the liver and kidneys, which are then met by the rounding-off forces proceeding from the head. The whole structure of man comes into being in this way: radiation from the systems of kidneys and liver, and then the rounding off of what has been radiated out by the forces proceeding from the head.

In this way we arrive at a fact of the greatest importance and one which can be confirmed empirically in every detail. In the process of man's development, in his growth, two sets of forces are at work: (1) forces that proceed from the systems of liver and kidneys, and (2) forces that proceed from the system of nerves and senses, which round off the forms and give them their surfaces. Both components play into each other, but not with the same rhythm. All that takes its start from the systems of liver and gall has the rhythm of metabolic man. All that proceeds from the head system has the rhythm of the man of nerves and senses. So that when the organism is ready for the coming of the second teeth, at about the seventh year of life, the metabolic system, with all that proceeds from the liver and kidneys (which is met by the rhythm of the heart), is subject to a rhythm that is related to the other rhythm, proceeding from the head, in the ratio of four to one. Thus not until the twenty-eighth year of life is the head organisation of man developed to the point reached by the metabolic organisation at the age of seven. The plastic principle in man, therefore, develops more slowly than the radiating, principle—in effect, four times as slowly. Connected with this is the fact that at the end of the seventh year of life, in respect of what proceeds from the metabolic activities, we have developed to the point reached by growth in general (in so far as this is subject to the system of nerves and senses) only at the twenty-eighth year.

Man is thus a complicated being. Two streams of movement subject to a different rhythm are at work in him. And so we can say: The coming of the second teeth is due in the first place to the fact that everything connected with the metabolism comes into contact with the slower, but more intense plastic principle, and in the teeth the plastic element dominates. At the time of puberty, the metabolic element preponderates the plastic influences withdraw more into the background, and the whole process is expressed in the male sex by the familiar phenomenon of the deepened voice.

Many other things in the being of man are connected with this: for instance the fact that the greatest possibility of illness occurs, fundamentally speaking, during the period of life before the coming of the second teeth—the first seven years of life. When the second teeth appear, the inner tendency of the human being to disease ceases to a very great extent. The system of education which it was our task to build up compelled me to make a detailed study of this matter, for it is impossible to found a rational system of education without these principles which concern the human being in health and disease. In his inner being, man is in the healthiest state during the second period of life, from the change of teeth to puberty. After puberty, an epoch begins again when it is easy for him to fall a prey to illness. Now the tendency to illness in the first period of life is of quite a different nature from the tendency to illness after puberty. These two possibilities of illness are as different, shall I say, as the phenomena of the second dentition and the change in the male voice.

During the first period of life, up to the change of teeth, everything goes out from the child's organisation of nerves and senses to the outermost periphery of the organism. The system of nerves and senses still has the upper hand at the change of teeth. You will be able to form a general conception of pathological phenomena during the first seven years of life if you say to yourselves: It is quite evident here that the radiations from the system of liver and kidneys are rounded off, stultified in a sense, by the plastic principle working from the system of nerves and senses. This plastic element is the main field of action of everything which I have described in these lectures as being connected with the Ego-organisation and astral organisation of man.

Now it may seem strange that I previously spoke of the Ego-organisation as going out from the system of liver and gall and the astral organisation from the kidney system, and that I now say: everything connected with the Ego and astral organisations emanates from the head. But we shall never understand the human organism with all its complexities if we say baldly that the Ego-organisation proceeds from the system of liver and gall and the astral organisation from the system of kidneys. We must realise that in the first life-period, up to the change of teeth, these radiations from the system of liver and kidneys are worn down by the action of nerves and senses. This rounding-off process is the essential thing. Strange to say, the forces supplied to the Ego and astral organisations by the systems of liver, gall and kidneys reveal themselves as a counter-radiation, not in their direct course from below upwards, but from above downwards. Thus we have to conceive of the child's organisation as follows: The astral nature radiates from the kidney system, and the Ego-organisation from the liver system, but these radiations have no direct significance. Both the liver system and the kidney system are, as it were, reflected back from the head system and the reflection in the organism is alone the active principle.

How, then, are we to think of the astral organisation of the child? We must think of the workings of the kidneys as being radiated back from the head system. What of the Ego-organisation in the child? The workings of the system of liver and gall also are radiated back from the head system. The physical system proper and the etheric system work from below upwards, the physical organisation having its point of departure in the digestive system and the etheric organisation in the system of heart and lungs. These organisations work from below upwards and the others from above downwards during the first epoch of life. And in the radiation from below upwards works the rhythm which is related as four to one to the radiation working from above downwards.

It is a pity that the indications here have to be so brief, but they really are the key to the processes of childhood. If you want to study the most typical diseases of children, you may divide them into two classes. On the one side you will find that the forces streaming from below upwards meet the forces streaming from above downwards with a rhythm of four to one, but that there is no co-ordination. If it is the upward-streaming forces with their rhythm of four that refuse to incorporate themselves into the individuality, while the inherited rhythm of the head system (representing the one) is in order, then we find all those organic diseases of childhood which are diseases of the metabolism, arising from a kind of congestion between the system of nerves and senses and the metabolic system. I mean that the metabolism is not quite able to adapt itself to that which radiates out from the system of nerves and senses. Then we get, for example, that strange disease in children which leads to the formation of a kind of purulent blood. All other children's diseases which may be described as diseases of the metabolism arise in this way.

On the other hand, suppose the metabolic organism is able to adapt itself to the individuality of the child, and the hygienic conditions are such that the child lives healthily in its environment—if, for example, we give the proper kind of food. But if, as a result of some inherited tendency, the system of nerves and senses working from above downwards does not rightly harmonise with the radiations from liver, gall and kidneys, diseases accompanied by fits or cramp-like conditions arise, the cause of them being that the Ego and astral organisations are not coming down properly into the physical and etheric organisation.

Diseases of children, therefore, arise from two opposite sides. But it is always true that we can understand these diseases of the child's organism only by directing our attention to the head and the system of nerves and senses. The metabolic processes in the child must not only be brought into harmony with outer conditions but also with the system of nerves and senses. In the first period of life, up to the change of teeth, a practical and fundamental knowledge of the system of nerves and senses is necessary, and we must observe that while in the child everything radiates from the head organisation, it is none the less possible for the metabolism to press too far forward, if it so be that the metabolism is normal, while the head organisation through hereditary circumstances is too feeble.

Now when the second life-period, from the change of teeth to puberty, sets in, it is the rhythmic organism which is the centre of activity. The astral and etheric organisations are essentially active here. Into the astral and etheric organisations between the change of teeth and puberty, streams everything that arises from the functions of the breathing and circulatory systems. The reason why the organism itself can afford the human being the greatest possibility of health during this period of life is that these systems of breathing and circulation can be regulated from outside. The health of school-children of this age is very dependent on hygienic and sanitary conditions, whereas during the first period of life external conditions cannot affect it to the same extent.

The tremendous responsibility resting upon us in regard to the medical aspect of education is that a true knowledge of man tells us that we may have dealt wrongly with the tendencies to disease which make their appearance between the seventh and fourteenth years of life. During this period the human being is not really dependent on himself; he is adjusting himself to his environment by breathing in the air and by means of all that arises in his blood circulation as a result of the metabolic processes. Metabolism is bound up with the limb-organisation. If children are given the wrong kind of drilling or are allowed to move wrongly, outer causes of disease are set up. Education during the Elementary School age should be based upon these principles. They should be taken into strictest account through all the teaching.

This is never done in our days. Experimental psychology—as it is called—has a certain significance which I well appreciate, but among other errors it makes the mistake of speaking like this: Such and such a lesson causes certain symptoms of fatigue in the child; such and such a lesson gives rise to different symptoms of fatigue, and so forth. And according to the conditions of fatigue thus ascertained, conclusions are drawn as to the right kind of curriculum. Yes—but, you see, the question is wrongly put. From the seventh to the fourteenth years, all that really concerns us is the rhythmic system, which does not tire. If it were to tire, the heart, for instance, could not continue to act during sleep through the whole of earthly life. Neither does the action of breathing cause fatigue. So when it is said: heed must be paid to the degree of fatigue arising from an experiment—the conclusion should be that if there is fatigue at all, something is amiss. Between the seventh and fourteenth years our ideal must be to work upon the rhythmic system of the child and not, primarily, upon the head system. In effect, education must be imbued with the quality of art. Then we shall be working upon the rhythmic system, and it will be quite possible to correct all the conditions of fatigue arising from false methods of teaching. Excessive strain on the memory, for example, will always affect the breathing action, even though it be in a mild way, and the results will appear only in later life.

At puberty and afterwards, the opposite holds good. Causes of disease may then again arise in the organism itself, in the metabolic-limb-system. This is because the food substances assert their own inherent laws, and then we are faced with an excessively strong working of the physical and etheric organisms.

In the organism of the very young child, therefore, we are essentially concerned with the Ego-organisation and the astral organisation working by way of the system of nerves and senses; in the period between the change of teeth and puberty we are concerned mainly with the activity of the astral and etheric organisations arising from the rhythmic system; after puberty we have to do with the predominance of the physical and etheric organisations arising from the metabolic system. Pathology confirms this, and I need only call your attention to certain typical diseases of women; metabolic diseases proper arise from out of the inner being after puberty—metabolism has the upper hand. The products of metabolism get the better of the system of nerves and senses instead of duly harmonising with its activities. In diseases of children before the change of teeth there is a wrongful predominance on the part of the system of nerves and senses. The healthy period lies between the change of teeth and puberty; and after puberty the metabolic organism, with its quicker rhythm, begins to dominate. This quicker rhythm then expresses itself in all that is connected with metabolic deposits which form because the plastic forces from the head do not make a right contact with them. The result of this is that the metabolism invariably gets the upper hand.

I am very sorry that I can speak of these things only in a cursory, aphoristic way, but my aim is to indicate at least the final conclusion, which is that the functional activities in the human being are the primary factors, and that formations and deformations must be regarded as proceeding from these functional activities. In the outer sense this means that up to the seventh year of the child's life the plastic, rounding-off forces work with particular strength. The plastic structure of the organs is brought to such a point by the forces arising from the system of nerves and senses that the plastic moulding of the teeth, for example, up to the time of the second dentition, is an activity that never occurs again. As against this, the permeation of the organism with forces coming from the metabolism enters upon an entirely new phase when—as happens at puberty—some of the metabolic activities are given over to the sex organs. This leads to an essential change in the metabolic processes.

It is all-important to make a methodical and detailed study of the matters I have indicated to you. The results thus obtained can then be co-ordinated in the truly scientific sense if they are brought into line with what I told you at the end of the last lecture, and related to the working of the Cosmos outside man.

How then can we approach therapeutically all that radiates out so complicatedly from the kidney system, from the liver system? We have simply to call forth changes by working on it from outside. We can approach it if we hold fast to what is observable in the plant—I mean, the contrast between the principle of growth which is derived rather from the preceding year or years, and, on the other hand, those principles of growth which come from the immediate present. Let us return once more to the plant. In the root and up to the ovary and seed-forming process we have that which is old in the plant, belonging essentially to the previous year. In all that develops around the corona we have that which belongs to the present. And in the formation of the green leaves there is a working together of the present and the past. Past and present, as two component factors, have united to produce the leaves.

Now everything in Nature is interrelated, just as everything is interrelated in the human organism, in the intricate way I have described. The point is to understand the relationships. Everything in Nature is interrelated, and by a simpler classification of what is revealed in the plant we come to the following.

In the terminology of an older, more instinctive conception of medicine we find constant mention of the sulphurous or the phosphoric. These sulphurous or phosphoric elements exist in those parts of the plant which represent in the blossom—not in the ovary and stigma—the forces of the present year. When, therefore, you make a decoction from these particular organs of the plant (thereby extracting also what is minerally active in them) you obtain the phosphoric or sulphurous principle. It is quite incorrect to imagine that the doctors of olden times thought of phosphorus and sulphur in the sense of modern chemistry. They conceived of them in the way I have indicated. According to older medicine, a decoction prepared from the petals of the red poppy, for instance, would have been “phosphoric” or “sulphurous.”

On the other hand, in a preparation derived from a treatment of the leaves of a plant, we get the mercurial principle, as it was called in ancient terminology. This, of course, means the mercurial nature, not the substance of quicksilver in our sense. (To use pine-needles, for example, is quite a different thing from using, say, the leaves of cabbages).

Everything connected with root, stem or seed was called the salt-like in older medical terminology. I am saying these things only for the sake of clarity, for with our modern scientific knowledge we cannot go back to older conceptions. A series of investigations should be made to show, let us say, the effects of an extract prepared from the roots of some plant on the head organisation, and hence on certain diseases common to childhood.

A highly significant principle will come to light if we investigate the effects of substances drawn from the roots and seeds of plants on the organisation of the child before the change of teeth. Again, for illnesses of the kind that come from outside—and, fundamentally speaking, all illnesses between the change of teeth and puberty are of this kind—we obtain remedies, or at least preparations which have an effect upon such illnesses, from leaves and everything akin to the nature of leaves in the plant. I am speaking in the old sense here of the mercurial principle, which we meet in a stronger form in quicksilver itself. The fact that mercury is a specific remedy for certain sexual diseases, externally acquired, is connected with this. Sexual diseases are really nothing but the intensification of illnesses that may arise in an extremely mild form in the second period of life, from the seventh to the fourteenth years. They do not then develop into sexual diseases proper because the human being is not yet sexually mature. If it were otherwise, a great many diseases would attack the sexual organs. Those who can really perceive this transition from the eleventh, twelfth and thirteenth years, on into the fourteenth, fifteenth and sixteenth years, will realise that at this age symptoms that arise in earlier life in quite another form express themselves as abnormalities of the sexual life.

Further, there are diseases which have their origin in the metabolism. In so far as the metabolism is bound up with the physical and etheric systems of man, we find diseases which must be considered in connection with the workings of the petal nature of plants.

The cursory way of dealing with these matters which is necessary here may make a great deal appear fantastic. Everything can, nevertheless, be verified in detail. The obstacles that make it so difficult to approach orthodox medicine are really due to the fact that, to begin with, it all seems beyond the range of verification. We have to reckon with such intricate phenomena in the human organism as the particularly striking example of which I spoke at the beginning of this lecture, describing it in such a way that it was apparently irreconcilable with what I said yesterday. It clears up, however, when we realise that what goes out from the system of liver and kidneys emerges first in the reactions it calls forth, and in this sense it represents something quite essential for the Ego-organisation and astral organisation of man. In this case it is especially evident. But there is a similar principle of immediate co-operation and counter-action between the rhythms of the blood and of the breathing. Here, too, many an influence that proceeds from the rhythm of the blood must first be looked for in the counter-beat of the breathing rhythm, and vice versa.

And now connect this with the fact that the Ego-organisation really lives in the inner warmth of man, and that this warmth permeates the airy, gaseous being. In the forces proceeding from the Ego and astral organisms, we have, from a physical point of view, something that is working primarily from the warmth organisation and the airy, gaseous organisation. This is what we have to observe in the organism of the very young child. We must seek the cause of children's diseases by studying the warmth and airy organisations in the human being. The effects that appear when we work upon the warmth and airy organisations with preparations derived from roots or seeds, are caused by the fact that two polaric forces come into contact, the one stimulating the other. Substances taken from seeds or roots and introduced into the organism stimulate all that goes out from the warmth organisation and the airy organisation of the human being.

Now in the influences working, so to speak, from above downwards, we can discern in the human being, from the very outset, a warmth and air vibration which is strongest of all in childhood, although in reality it is not a vibration but a time-structure of a living kind—an organic structure in the flow of time. And on the other hand we have that in the physical-etheric organism which goes from below upwards—that is to say, the solid and fluid organisation of man. Moreover these two are in mutual interaction, inasmuch as the fluid and gaseous organisations permeate one another in the middle, bringing forth an intermediate phase by their mutual penetration, just as there exists in the human organism the well-known intermediate stage between the solid and the fluid. So likewise in the living and sentient organism we must look for an intermediate phase between the fluid and the gaseous, and again a phase between the gaseous and the element of warmth.

Please note that everything I am saying here in a physiological sense is of importance for pathology and therapy. When we observe this intricate organism of man we find, of course, that one system of organs is perpetually pouring out its influences into another system of organs. If we now observe the whole organic action expressed in one of the sense-organs, in the ear, for example, we find the following: Ego-organisation astral organisation, etheric and physical organisations are all working together in a definite way. The metabolism permeates the nerves and senses; rhythm is brought into this by the processes of breathing in so far as they work into the ear, and by the blood circulation. All that I have thus tried to make plain to you in diverse ways, threefold and fourfold (in the three members of the human being and in the fourfold organisations which I explained)—all this finds expression in definite relationships in every single organ. And in the long run, all things in man are in constant metamorphosis.

For instance—that which occurs normally in the region of the ear, why do we call it normal? Because it appears precisely as it does in order that the human being as a whole, even as he lives and moves on earth, may come into existence. We have no other reason to call it normal. But consider now the special circumstances, the special formative forces that work here in the ear by virtue of the ear's position, notably by virtue of the fact that the ear is at the periphery of the organism. Suppose that these circumstances are working in such a way that a similar relationship arises by metamorphosis at some other place in the interior of the body. Instead of the relationship which is proper to that place in the body, there arises a relationship among the various members similar to what is normal in the region of the ear. Then there will grow at this place in the body something that really tends to become an ear—forgive this very sketchy way of hinting at the facts. I cannot express what I want to say in any other way, as I am obliged to say it in the briefest outline. For instance, this something may grow in the region of the pylorus, in place of what should arise there. In a pathological metamorphosis of this kind we have to see the origin of tumours and similar formations. All tumour formations, up to carcinoma, are really misplaced attempts at the formation of sense-organs.

If, then, you bear in mind that the origin of a morbid growth is a misplaced attempt at the formation of a sense-organ, you will find what part is played in the child's constitution—even in embryonic existence—by the organisms of warmth and air in order that these sense-organs may come into being. These organs can indeed be brought into being only through the organisms of warmth and air by virtue of the resistance of the solid and fluid organisms, which results in a formation composed of both factors. This means that we must observe the relationship existing between the physical organism (in so far as this expresses itself in the metabolism, for example) and the formative, plastic organism (in so far as this expresses itself in the system of nerves and senses). We must, so to speak, perceive how the metabolic system radiates out the forces which bear the substance along with them, and how the substance is plastically moulded in the organs by the forces brought to meet it by the system of nerves and senses.

Bearing this in mind, we shall learn to understand what a tumour-formation really is. On the one side there is a false relationship between the physical-etheric organism in so far as it expresses itself in the radiating metabolic processes on the one side, and between the Ego-organisation and astral organism on the other (in so far as the Ego and astral organisations express themselves in the warmth and airy organisations respectively). Ultimately, therefore, we have above all to deal with the relation between the metabolism and the warmth organisation in man, and in the case of an internal tumour—although it is also possible with an external tumour—the best treatment is to envelop it in warmth. (I shall speak of these things tomorrow when we come to consider therapy). The point is to succeed in enveloping the tumour with warmth. This brings about a radical change in the whole organisation. If we succeed in surrounding the tumour with warmth, then—speaking crudely—we shall also succeed in dissolving it. This can actually be achieved by the proper use of certain remedies which are injected into the organism. We may be sure that in every case a preparation of viscum, applied in the way we advise around the abnormal organ—for instance around the carcinomatous growth—will generate a mantle of warmth, only we must first have ascertained its specific effect upon this or that system of organs. We cannot, of course, apply exactly the same preparation to carcinoma of the breast as to carcinoma of the uterus or of the pylorus. Further, we can be sure that no result will be achieved if we do not succeed in producing the right reaction—namely, a state of feverishness. The injection must be followed by a certain rise in the patient's temperature. You can at once expect failure if no condition of feverishness is produced.

I wanted to tell you this as a principle in order to make you understand that these things depend upon a ratio; but the ratio is merely a regulating principle. You will find that the statements based on this principle can be verified, as all such facts are verified by the methods of modern medicine. There is no question of asking you to accept these things before they have been tested, but it is really true that anyone who enters into them can make remarkable discoveries.

Although this brief exposition may be first be somewhat confusing, everything will clear up if you will go into the subject deeply.

To-morrow I propose to speak of certain matters in the realm of therapy, and then a great deal which seems to have been left rather in the air will be further explained.

In these lectures, of course, it can be a question only of describing certain ways of approach and therapeutic methods, as revealed by Spiritual Science. The short time at our disposal makes it impossible to enter into details. My own opinion, however, is that at the beginning of the work which it is the aim of Spiritual Science to carry through in the domain of medicine, the most important thing is for our point of view and our method of approach to be made quite clear. In certain specific details this point of view has been carefully followed in the preparation of our remedies. How we can proceed to form more general conceptions in special cases of illness will perhaps not be so immediately evident, but in describing certain principles of method to-day I will do my best to indicate matters which will help in this direction also.

The human organism in health and in disease—or rather in its state of health and in its approach towards health—is really unintelligible unless the so-called normal functions are regarded as being, fundamentally, metamorphoses of those functions which must be called into action in order to combat pathological conditions. And here we must always take account of the fact that the human organism is inwardly filled with processes which are not the same as those in the outer world. To begin with, let us remind ourselves that everything man takes into himself from the plant world, for instance, must be worked upon by the digestive system before it can be carried to a higher stage of life. The process of vitalization must be an activity of the human being himself; indeed, the human organism could not exist without it. Now it must be clear to us from the outset that the plant-covering of our earth is passing through the opposite process from that which takes its course within the organism of man. When we speak of a process of vitalisation along the path traversed by the foodstuffs in the organism—that is to say of a curve ascending, as it were, from the essentially inorganic to the state of vitalisation, from there to a condition which can be the bearer of feeling and finally to a condition which can be the bearer of the Ego-organisation—when we speak of the transformation of the foodstuff up to the point where it is received into the astral organism (the bearer of feeling), we are describing a process of increasing vitalisation of what is taken in through the food.

The reverse occurs in the plant. In all the peripheral organs of the plant, that is to say in the development of the plant from below upwards, in the production of the leaves and blossoms, we have, fundamentally speaking, a process of devitalisation. The vitality per se is preserved for the seed only. If we are speaking of the actual plant itself—for the seed in the ovary really represents the next plant that will come into being, that which is stored up for the future plant—if, as I say, we are speaking of the plant, it is not a process of vitalisation that is taking place from below upwards. The vitality is drawn from what is stored up by the earth out of the warmth and sunlight of the previous summer. The strongest life-force inheres in the root-nature, and there is a gradual process of devitalisation from below upwards.

In flower-petals which contain strong ethereal oils, we have an expression of the most powerful devitalising process of all. Such a process is, for instance, often connected with the actual production of sulphur. The sulphur is then contained, as substance, in the ethereal oil of the petals—or is at any rate closely akin to it and is responsible for the process whereby the plant is led over into the realm of the most delicate inorganic substance—which is still, however, on the borderline of the organic. It is essential to realise what it is that we are bringing into the human organism when we introduce plant-substances. The plant is engaged in the opposite process from that which occurs in the organism of man.

If we start from this and turn to consider illness and disease, we shall say to ourselves: Plant-substance—it is the same with other substances in outer Nature, and to a much higher degree with animal-substance—plant-substance is really opposed to that which unfolds in the human organism as a tendency to generate this or that process. So that when, without any kind of preconception, we study the process of nourishment in man, we must admit that all foodstuff introduced into the organism is something which this organism has utterly to transform. Fundamentally speaking, all nourishment is the beginning of a certain poisoning. Actual poisoning is only a radical metamorphosis of what arises in a mild form when any foodstuff is brought into touch, let us say, with the ptyalin. The further course of the digestive process, namely what is brought about by the activity of the kidneys which I described to you, is always a process of eliminating the poisoning. So that we pass through the rhythm of a mild poisoning and its elimination simply when we eat and digest our daily food. This represents the most delicate metamorphosis of the process which arises in greater intensity when a remedy is introduced into the organism. That is why in the nature of things it is nonsense to be fanatical about medicine that is ‘free from poison.’ It is nonsense because the only point at issue is this: In what way are we intensifying what already happens in ordinary digestion by introducing something into the organism that will give rise to a process more foreign to this organism than ordinary digestion?

A very profound understanding of the human organism is necessary before we can estimate the value for it of an external remedy. Let us begin with something that is always present as a remedial agent in the human organism—the iron in the blood. The iron in the blood unceasingly plays the role of a remedial agent, protecting man from his innate tendency to disease. I will describe it to you, to begin with, in a primitive way. You know that if the brain, with its weight of some 1,500 grammes, were to rest upon its base, the cerebral blood-vessels there would obviously be crushed. The brain does not rest upon its base but swims in the cerebral fluid, and in accordance with the principle of buoyancy, loses as much of its weight as the weight of the volume of fluid displaced. Thus the brain presses on its base with a weight of only about 20 grammes, instead of 1,500 grammes. This is a fact of fundamental importance because it shows us that the force of gravity is not the determining factor in that which underlies the functions of the brain, in Ego-activity, for instance. This Ego-activity and also, to a great extent, conceptual activity—in so far as it is not volitional but purely conceptual, ideative activity—is not dependent on the gravity of the substance in question but on the force of buoyancy. (I am speaking here entirely of the physical correlate, namely, the brain activity.) It is dependent on the force which strives to alienate the substance from the earth. In our Ego and our thoughts we do not live in the element of weight, but in the force of buoyancy.

The same thing holds good for much else in the human organism—above all, the iron-bearing corpuscles swimming in the blood. Each of these corpuscles loses as much of its weight as the weight of the volume of fluid displaced. And now, if our soul-being lives in the force of buoyancy, just think what this possession of iron-bearing blood corpuscles must mean for the whole life of feeling and perception, indeed for the whole life of the organism. In other words: If in a given case there is irregularity in what is going on in the blood simply as a result of the buoyancy of the iron-bearing corpuscles, we know that iron in some form or other must be introduced, but in such a way, of course, that the iron will unfold a right action in the blood, and not elsewhere.

In terms of Spiritual Science, this means that the relation of the etheric to the astral organism of man is bound up with the iron-content of the blood. And if we understand how the activities of heart and lungs lead over into the realm of life all that is taken up by the organism, and how the kidneys in turn lead this over into the astral organism, we shall not be far from the realisation that balance must reign here. If there is no balance, if either the etheric or the astral activity becomes too intense, the whole organism is bound to fall into disorder. The possibility, however, of promoting the corresponding balance, of enabling the organism to lead the necessary amount of foodstuff into the domain of the kidney activities, is provided by regulating the iron-content in the blood. And by imbuing the actual dynamic element in the blood either with weight or with the force of buoyancy—according to how we regulate the iron-content—we are thereby regulating the whole circulation of blood, which in turn reacts upon the kidney activities. In adding to or decreasing the iron-content we have brought about a fundamental regularisation of the blood circulation: that is, of the interplay between the etheric and astral parts of man.

And now let us take a concrete case. Suppose we have flatulence as a primary symptom. I am choosing a crude example for the sake of clarity. What does flatulence indicate to one who has insight into the human organism? It indicates the presence of aeriform organisations in which the astral organism is working with excessive strength and which are being dispersed too slowly. They are formations which have been brought about by the astral organism—which works, of course, in the gaseous being of man—and they conglomerate instead of forming and dissolving in the regular way. That is what is happening when flatulence is present. Now because the astral activity is excessively strong it influences the whole activity of the senses, especially the activity of the head. The astral activity congests and does not properly distribute itself in the organism; hence it does not work as it should into the metabolic processes, but turns back to the system of nerves and senses with which it is more closely related. And so we shall very soon find that something is amiss with the system of nerves and senses, too—or at all events we may assume that here is a complex of symptoms where the nerves and senses are not working in the right way. And now I must add something in connection with the irregular working of the nerves and senses.

Physiology really talks nonsense about the nerves and senses. Forgive me for saying this—I am expressing myself radically only in order that we may understand each other. You must take such statements with the familiar ‘grain of salt,’ for if I compromise too much in what I say we shall not find it so easy to understand these things.

Supersensible observation of the human organism reveals that any given function which can be demonstrated in the sense of objective empiricism, is, from the higher point of view, the material reflection of something spiritual. The whole human organism is the material reflection of Spirit. But the interaction between the Spirit and soul and the physical-organic nature of man is by no means so simple in the case of the system of nerves and senses as is generally imagined.

Take the physical organisation of man. It is not true—as many people would like to assume—that with the exception of the nervous system and the senses, the physical organisation constitutes one whole, and that the nervous system is inserted into this structure in order independently to serve the life of soul. That is putting it rather radically, of course, but if we come down to the practical considerations underlying the physiological theory, something of the sort comes to light. That is why it is almost impossible to-day to form any rational opinion of functional diseases, nerve-troubles and the like, as they are often called. There is nothing in the human organism that does not belong to the whole organism; that does not interact with other organs. It is not a question of the rest of the organism being left to its own devices and an independent nervous system being inserted, heaven knows by what divine power, in order that the organism may become soul! Look for evidence of this and you will not need to look far. The nervous system is primarily that from which the formative, rounding-off forces of the organism go out. The form of the nose, the form of the whole organism is shaped, fundamentally, by the influences proceeding from the nervous system. The kidney system radiates out the forces of matter, and the nervous system is there to give the organism its forms, both inwardly and outwardly. To begin with, the nervous system has nothing to do with the life of soul; it is the moulder, the form-giver of the human organism, inwardly and outwardly. In short, the nervous system is the sculptor.

In the early stages of individual development, a certain portion of nerve-activity which the organism does not use for formative functions separates off, as it were, and to this the being of soul adapts itself more and more. That, however, is secondary; we must observe this separation of a part of the nerve-process in very early childhood, and the adaptation of the soul-life to these formative principles, if we are to get down to the empirical facts. There is no question of the nervous system being laid into the human organism as the result of some kind of divine ordinance to form the basis for the life of volition, feeling and thought. The life of nerves and senses comes into being with a sort of hypertrophy, part of which is preserved, and to this the activity of the soul then adapts itself. The primary function of the system of nerves and senses is formative, form-giving. The forms of all the organs are sculptured by the system of nerves and senses.

If you want to verify this, begin by taking the senses that have their seat in the skin, are spread out over the whole skin—the senses of warmth and of touch—and try to envisage how the whole form of the human organism is plastically moulded by these senses, whereas the forms of the special organs are built up by other senses. Sight itself is due to the fact that something remains over from the formative force proceeding originally from the visual tract for the building of the cerebral organs, and then all the psychical elements developed in the faculty of sight adapt themselves to this “something” that has been left over.

We shall never have real insight into the being of man if we do not realise that as metabolism goes on unceasingly within us, day by day, year by year, our organs must first be provided for by all that radiates out from the kidneys, and then rounded off. The substance that is radiated out by the kidneys must continually be rounded off, worked upon plastically. Throughout the whole span of man's life this is done by the nerve-organs which extend from the senses towards the inner parts of the human organism. Higher sense-activity, image-building mental activity and the like, are simply the result of an adaptation of the being of soul to this particular tract of organs.

Now, if flatulence in the complex of symptoms confirms the fact that the astral organisation is working too strongly, this shows that the excessive astral activity is tending in the direction of the formative forces of the senses. In the upward direction and towards the periphery there is not only a congestion of astral activity, but these gas-bubbles, which are really striving to become organs, are rounded off still more completely. In other words, as the result of excessive activity on the part of the kidneys, a continual attempt is being made in the upper man to hold back the Ego-organisation above and not to allow what passes into the organism through the blood to return in the proper way. Hence, associated with the complex of symptoms of which I am now speaking, we shall often find cramp-like conditions, even fits, which are due to the fact that the astral forces are not passing rightly into the rest of the organism. If they are congested above, they do not pass into the other parts of the organism. In these other parts of the organism we notice cramp-like phenomena which are always due to the fact that the astral forces are being held back. In such cases the astral nature is being checked, and by studying a complex of symptoms of this kind in the light of the super-sensible, we can eventually relate the outer facts to their inner causes.

Think of it: the astral is held back above, and as a result the metabolism is drawn upwards; the astral body is not making proper provision for the kidneys, and even less for the stomach; the stomach which is receiving too little from the astral organism begins to fend for itself. Outwardly, there will be colic and cramp-like conditions of the stomach. Again, spasmodic conditions may arise in the sexual organs because they are not properly permeated by the astral organisation, or there may be stoppages of the periods, due to the fact that the Ego-organisation is held back above.

Now let us ask ourselves: How can we influence irregularities of this kind? The best thing, to begin with, is to realise that the magical names given to illnesses merely serve the purpose of conventional understanding; the essential point is to observe what really groups itself together and interweaves among the several symptoms. But we must be able to judge of the nature of these symptoms. Suppose we are considering the function attaching to a flower containing sulphur. If a flower contains a certain amount of sulphur, this means that an active process is on its way to an inorganic state which is still akin to the organic. If we introduce a remedy prepared from such a flower, or even the sulphur produced by the flower, into the human organism, the processes in the digestive tract will be roused to greater activity. The stomach, and subsequently the intestinal activity, will be stimulated by a decoction of flower-petals containing sulphur, because, as I have already said, a process of devitalisation which must be reversed is taking place in the plant. And again, indirectly, the irregularity which has appeared in the action of the kidneys is stimulated to a strong reaction, and we have, to begin with, the possibility of counteracting the congestion above by means of a strong counter-pressure from below. (The forces working here are for the most part only fleeting in their effect, but if we give temporary help to the organism it will usually begin to help itself.) The astral organisation will, as it were, again be drawn into the digestive tract, and the result will be a cessation of the attacks of colic and gastric convulsions. Such a remedy by itself, of course, will suffice only in the rarest cases. It will probably be adequate when the gastric trouble is slight. The organism must never be over-stimulated; whenever it is possible to use a weaker remedy we should avoid a stronger one.

Suppose we have before us a complex of symptoms such as I have just described. The disturbance being very severe, we will assume that demands are being made on the overactive astral body by an excessive activity on the part of the kidneys. The astral body works with undue strength into the sense-organisation, which is thereby weakened and undermined. As sense-organisation it is not really undermined, but the astral organism is working in it so strongly that the formative forces of the nerves and senses are, as it were, smothered by the activities of the astral organism. Neither the sense-organs nor the system of nerves and senses as a whole are in themselves less active, but they do not work in their own characteristic way. They take on, as it were, the organisation of the astral and become as active as the astral organism itself. This means that they are not rightly performing their form-giving functions. We must apply something whereby this astral activity is lifted out of the system of nerves and senses: namely, a remedy that works upon the system of nerves and senses which stands in closest connection with the outer world and which, as organisation, is nearest of all to the inorganic state.

The physiology of the senses is fortunate because in the sense-organs there are so many inorganic, so many purely physical and chemical elements. Think how much in the eye lies in the domain of pure optics. A great deal in the eye can be beautifully depicted if one treats it merely as a kind of photographic apparatus. In saying this I want only to indicate that we are co-ordinated with the outer world precisely through the sense-organs, and that the senses are channels through which the outer world flows into us by way of the inorganic.

Now when it is a question of giving support to this particular activity of the nerves and senses, we can do it very well by introducing silicic acid into the organism, for silicic acid has an affinity with these inorganic activities at the periphery. We drive the astral organisation out, as it were, by means of the forces inherent in everything that underlies the formation of silicic acid, for this inclines so very strongly, even in outer appearance, towards the inorganic state. When silicic acid is present in any flower you will invariably find that the flower is brittle or prickly, pressing on to the inorganic state. Thus we can relieve the sense-organs by administering silicic acid, and also by supplying the organism with more sugar than it has in the ordinary way. Sugar, too, is a substance that is so worked upon in the human organism that it finally comes very near to the inorganic. Thus everything we introduce by way of sugar relieves the sense-organs. If conditions allow, this process can also be strengthened by the administration of alkaline salts, which are well calculated to relieve the nervous system of astral activity. These are matters which should be verified by a series of empirical investigations.

Spiritual Science thus enables us to arrive at guiding principles. With the faculty developed by intuitive knowledge we can perceive, for instance, the after-effects of sugar, particularly in those parts of man's nervous system which run from the central nervous system to the senses; the after-effects of silicic acid tend towards the peripheral activities unfolding in the senses. These things can all be verified and proved. And so, when a severe complex of symptoms such as I have described, is present, we shall find the following of benefit: remedies composed simply of alkaline salts, which do much to relieve the nerve-activity of the astral nature; of sugar (not of course administered in the ordinary amount but in an unusual one); and of silicic acid.

The best remedial effects of these substances will be obtained simply by the administration of a proper preparation of the roots of chamomile. It may surprise you that I speak of a root, but the points of view intersect and we must realise that when the symptoms are severe, sulphur and blossom-products are not efficacious. What we do need is a substance that is contained still in a highly vitalised state in the plant, so that the long process it has to undergo will make the reaction vigorous enough. If we introduce a suitable dosage of these substances, as they are found in the root of the chamomile, into the digestive tract, the reaction in this case will not be strong enough to allow the vitalisation to take place at the point of transition from the intestines to the blood; what is contained particularly in the sugar and silicic acid, but also in the alkaline salts, will simply be forced through in an untransformed state. This gives the kidneys a chance to absorb it into their radiations, and the substances so absorbed are then impelled by the action of the kidneys towards the sphere of activity of the nerves and senses, which are thereby relieved of the astral functions.

If we really have insight into these matters, if we realise that this mode of therapeutic procedure leads to the best results, much can be learnt. Moreover, we can very easily be led to other things. We can see how what is absorbed is transformed in the human organisation: thereupon the activity of the kidneys sets to work, receiving what is supplied to it along the channels of the blood and radiating it out; the plastic activity then reacts in its turn. Then we begin to perceive that this plastic activity in its pure form is restored by the administration of silicic acid, sugar and alkaline salts. To super-sensible vision, silicic acid, alkaline salts and sugar, in the right proportions, form a kind of human phantom; something like a phantom is there before us if we think of these substances in regard to their form-building forces. They are pre-eminently sculptors; they bear the plastic principle within them—as is evident even in their outer formation.

The strong action of silicic acid is due, in the first place, to the fact that when the substance appears in the inorganic realm, it has the tendency to form itself into elongated crystals. The results obtainable with silicic acid could not be reached with substances which have the tendency to develop into rounder, less elongated crystals. With such substances it might conceivably be possible to cure a hedgehog but not a human being, whose very principle of growth shows tendencies to elongation.

Those who have no feeling for this artistry in Nature—an artistry with which the organism is moulded chiefly by the activity of nerves and senses-cannot discover in any rational sense the relations between substances in the outer world and what is taking place in the human organism. Yet there is indeed a rational therapy—a therapy which is able to perceive processes which run their course in the outer world, are broken down, as it were, in the human organism, and can then be radiated out by the kidneys and taken hold of, finally, by the plastic activity of the organisation of nerves and senses.

Let us take another example. Suppose that the radiating action of the kidneys, instead of being too strong, is too weak—that is to say, too little of the foodstuff is being drawn up into the astral organisation.

All that I described in the previous complex of symptoms is due to excessive working of the astral organism. The astral organism is active particularly in the upper man and holds itself aloof from the activities of digestion, heart and lungs; and as an accompanying phenomenon we shall find the formation of phlegm and the like, which is quite easy to understand. Thus in the previous case we have to do with an excessive astral activity.

Now suppose that the astral activity is too feeble. The radiating activity of the kidneys is unduly weak, so that the astral organism is not in a position to supply to the formative, plastic forces what it ought to give them when it enters their domain. The formative force cannot then work itself into the astral organism because the latter does not reach sufficiently to the periphery. The result is that no active contact is established between the formative force and the force proceeding from the circulation of the food-substances and their distribution. The substance is distributed without being taken in hand by the formative force. Insufficient plastic force is unfolded and the substance is abandoned to its own life; the activity of the astral body is too fleeting and does not work properly in the transformation of the substances.

Such a state of affairs may certainly be regarded as a complex of symptoms. How it will express itself? Above all, that which is coursing in the blood-vessels will not be taken up in the proper way by the feeble action of the kidneys; that is, by the astral organisation which is working with insufficient power. It collapses, as it were, resulting in hæmorrhoids or excessive menstruation. The contact fails and the metabolism lapses back into itself. In this condition of the organism it is specially easy for a state of ‘fever of occult origin’—as it is called—to arise, or a condition of intermittent fever.

And now the question is: How can we attack this complex of symptoms? The activity of the astral organism is too feeble. We must stimulate the action of the kidneys in order that sufficient material may be sent up into the astral organism. The best thing to do here is to restore the balance between the etheric and astral organisms. Then, simply on account of what passes from the digestive tract into the system of lungs and heart, we get the proper transition to the activity of the kidneys. We obtain a kind of balance, and in many cases we can control it precisely by regulating the iron-content in the organism which governs the circulation. This will now stimulate a strong, inner activity of the kidneys which will be demonstrated outwardly in a change in the excretions of urea through the kidneys, as well as through the perspiration. This will be quite evident. But of course in very many cases we must realise that this balance is always very delicately poised, and that only in the crudest cases will the remedial agent in question here, which man already bears within him, be of assistance.

Whereas in the digestive tract substances containing sulphur in some form are the most effective, and in the system of nerves and senses (the formative principle) substances such as silicic acid and alkaline salts, pure metals are the substances which regulate the balance between the forces of gravity and buoyancy. We need only try out how they must be applied in order to restore the disturbed balance in the most varied ways. We start from iron. According to the complex of symptoms, the most suitable metal may be gold, or perhaps copper. If the form of disease makes us sure of our ground, highly important results will be obtained from the pure metals. If the interplay between the functions of form-building and the breaking-down of form is such that there is too little form-building and this state of affairs becomes organic—if, therefore, the primary cause of the trouble is that the relation between the system of heart and lungs and the kidney system is upset—we shall achieve the best results with iron.

But if, as the result of lengthy disturbances in the processes, the organs themselves are impaired, and have already suffered from a lack of plastic activity because the plastic forces have not been able to reach them, we may have to apply quicksilver. Because quicksilver already has the forces of form, the durable metallic drop-form within itself, it has a definite effect upon the lower organs of man. In the same way we can discover definite connections between metals and the organs of the head that have been attacked and injured, for instance when the nervous system itself is involved. But here it will be a good thing not to confine ourselves to setting up a stable balance as against the vacillating balance. This is extraordinarily difficult. This balance is just like a very sensitive pair of scales. We try in every possible way to make the scales balance and it is almost impossible. We shall get at it more easily, however, if we do not merely concern ourselves with the balancing, but with the pans themselves. We can give support, for instance, to the working of the iron by introducing sulphur into the digestive tract, and providing a counter-action in the nerves and senses system by means of alkaline salts. Then in the middle, rhythmic system of man we shall have iron at work; potassium, calcium or alkaline salts in the nerves and senses, and sulphur in the rhythm of digestion. That is the better way to set about restoring the balance.

Now the remarkable thing is that we find the very opposite state of affairs in the leaves of certain plants. If, for instance, we prepare the leaf of urtica dioica, the ordinary stinging-nettle, in the right way, we have a remedy composed of sulphur, iron and certain salts. But we must really know how to relate the devitalising force that is present in the plant to the vitalising force that is present in the human organism. In the root of urtica dioica it is indeed true that the whole sulphur-process is tending gradually to the inorganic state. The human organism takes the opposite course, and so transforms the sulphur by way of the albumen that it gradually brings the digestion into order. The iron in urtica dioica works from the leaves in such a way that in the very seed, and thereby once more in next year's leaves, this plant thrusts apart the very thing that brings together the rhythmic process in the human organism. In fact, the stinging power of the nettle leaves is this destructive process that must be overcome if the rhythmic process in the human organism is to be regulated. Again, the alkaline salt content of the plant is least of all transformed into inorganic matter. Therefore it has the longest way to go. It goes right up to the nerves and senses organisation; goes up quite easily because, in any case, with the complex of symptoms we are now considering, the activity of the kidneys is asleep and suppressed. In the human organism we have actually the opposite of what is expressing itself outwardly in the formation of the plants. But there is no need to confine ourselves merely to plant-remedies; synthetic remedies may also be prepared and cures effected by combining the substances I have mentioned in a suitable dosage.

These are matters which will gradually transform therapy into a rational science, but a science that is really an art, for it can no more exclusively be science than a man who is not an artist can be a sculptor. He may have a splendid knowledge of how to guide his chisel and how to mould the clay, but there must always be an element leading over into the realm of art. Without this, true therapy is impossible. We must really get the right touch—in a spiritual sense, of course—for determining the dosage. This will not suit all those who would like to turn medicine into a pure science, but it is true, nevertheless.

And now let me indicate, merely by way of example, another state of affairs that may arise. There may be a disturbance of the interaction between what the organism produces by way of inorganic material, as a preliminary to leading it over into the realm of organic life, and the subsequent intervention of the etheric body and the action of heart and lungs. A disturbance may arise here. The greater the age of a man, the more apparent is the disturbance. The digestive tract and the vascular system are not working properly together. When this sets in, we must remember that the consequence will be an accumulation of the products of metabolism. If the substances are not being properly distributed in the organism, the natural result is an accumulation of the products of metabolism. And here we come to the whole domain of diseases of metabolism, from the very mild to the most severe forms. We must realise that in such cases something is amiss with the activity of the kidneys, too, for the reason that because of the antecedent congestion the kidneys are receiving nothing which they can radiate out.

This gives rise to highly complicated forms of disease. On the one hand the action of the digestion and the kidneys provides nothing by way of material upon which the plastic, form-giving activity can work, and on the other, as the result of a stultification of this plastic activity, we have a disturbance of the organic balance from the other side. The plastic force, too, gradually ceases to function. The products of metabolism spread themselves out in the organism but fail, little by little, to be received into the field of the plastic activities and used as modeling material. And then there arise certain metabolic diseases which are so highly resistant to treatment. The proper course is to stimulate in the digestive tract, and then also in the domain of heart and lungs, all that is akin to elements that are on their way to the inorganic state—akin, that is, to the sulphuric or phosphoric elements connected, in the blossoms of plants, with the ethereal oils. We attempt to stimulate this in the digestive system and in the system of heart and lungs; also we stimulate the activity of the kidneys and thereby help the plastic forces. In this type of disease it is of great importance to bring influence to bear on the digestive apparatus.

Now the activity of the kidneys and the excretion of sweat are in a certain sense polar opposites; in other words they are intimately related to one another. And if, as a consequence of what I have described, the kidneys are not acting properly, we shall always find that there is less perspiration. Great attention should be paid to this, for whenever there is a decrease in the perspiration, we may be sure that something is amiss with the action of the kidneys. What is happening, as a rule, when the perspiration decreases, is that the kidneys are like a machine which has nothing to work upon but continues to act, while the products of digestion are already congested and are spreading unduly over the organism. If by the outer or inner application of sulphur treatments (for we can work just as well from the skin as from the kidneys themselves) we succeed in stimulating the digestive tract to such an extent that it, in turn, stimulates the activity of heart and lungs so that material is again supplied to the kidneys, instead of lying fallow before it reaches them, we may also succeed in getting the better of these diseases of metabolism.

But in all these matters we must be quite clear that the human organism is something that does not want to be absolutely cured, but only stimulated to unfold the healing process. This is a fact of supreme importance. In the state of illness, the human organism wants to be stimulated to unfold the healing process. If the healing is to be permanent we must actually limit ourselves to giving a mere stimulus. For a cure which apparently happens at once leads much more readily to relapses than a cure which merely stimulates the healing process. The organism has first to accustom itself to the course of the healing process, and is then able to continue it by virtue of its own activity. In this way the organism binds itself much more intimately to the healing process, until such time as the reaction again sets in. If for a certain length of time the organism can be made to adjust itself to the healing process, that is the best possible cure, for then the organism actually absorbs what has been transmitted to it.

I have been able only to give you certain hints as to method, but you will realise that in what I call a spiritual-scientific enlightenment of physiology, pathology and therapy, it is a question of understanding that man is not an isolated being but that he belongs to the whole Cosmos, further, that in connection with any process taking place in the human being in an ascending curve, let us say, we must seek outside man, in Nature, for the descending curve. In this way we shall be able to modify curves that are ascending too abruptly. Medicine indeed demands in a certain respect a knowledge of the whole world. I have given only a tiny fragment, but it indicates that there must be an entirely different understanding of the nature of urtica dioica, colchicum autumnale, or indeed of any other plant. The plants themselves must tell us whither their descending tendency is leading.

Take the case of colchicum autumnale, the autumn crocus. First you must perceive when you approach this plant that the time of the year in which it appears is not without significance for its whole structure, for this brings about a certain relation to the devitalising process. That the devitalisation is very slight in colchicum autumnale, you can see from the very colour of its petals and the time of its flowering. If you then experiment with colchicum autumnale, you will find that the human organism must exert itself up to a very high level to bring about the opposite vitalisation, that is to say—if I may express it crudely—to get the plant dead and then alive again. Indeed, this whole process plays right up into the thyroid gland. And now you have the basis for a series of investigations with colchicum autumnale as a remedy for enlargements of the thyroid gland.

Let me assure you once again that there is no question of a profitless, amateurish abuse of modern scientific methods, but rather of giving guiding lines which will actually lead to more tangible results than mere experimentation. I do not by any means say that this cannot also be fruitful. It does indeed lead to certain goals, but a great deal passes us completely by, especially many things we can learn by observing Nature. Although it is not difficult to produce a synthetic preparation composed of iron, sulphur and alkali, it is a good thing to know how all these substances are brought together by Nature herself in a particular plant. Even in the production of synthetic remedies we can learn very much by understanding what is going on in Nature outside.

It would be fascinating to enter into many things in detail, and I think that some of our doctors will have done so in other lectures. A great deal, too, can be found in our literature, and there are many subjects which I hope will soon be dealt with there. I am convinced that as soon as these matters are presented in a clear, concise form and people are not afraid to go straight ahead, they will take this point of view: “Yes, I must above all heal if I want to be a doctor, and so I will turn to what, in the first place, seems rather against the grain. If it really helps, I cannot do otherwise than try to profit by it.”

In this sense I think it would be a good thing if as soon as possible we could produce literature of a kind that would be a bridge between Spiritual Science and modern material science. It would encourage the opinion that these things help and so they cannot after all be such utter nonsense! I am quite sure that when our work is properly in train, the verdict will be that it does indeed help.—And here I will conclude. Try it all out and you will find that it will help. That too, will not be without significance, for many things that are used in orthodox medicine do not help. And between what does and does not help there must play all that we would like to introduce from the side of Spiritual Science.

Lawrence Bros, Ltd.
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I must ask my audience to be considerate with me today, because I have just arrived after a very tiring journey and probably will not feel able to speak to you adequately until tomorrow.

I want this first lecture to be a kind of introduction to the series I am to deliver here. I had not really intended to speak during this medical conference, because I think the stimulus given by anthroposophical research to medicine and to natural scientific thinking ought to be worked out by those who are specialists in the various domains. Indeed, all that comes from anthroposophical investigation regarding medicine and, for instance, physiology, can be no more than a stimulus that must then be worked out empirically. Only on the basis of this empirical study can there arise valid and convincing judgments of the matters in question—and this is the kind of judgment that is needed in the domain of therapy.

These lectures, however, are given at the special request of our doctors here, and I shall try to deal with those points where anthroposophy can illuminate the realm of medicine. I shall endeavor to show, first of all, that an understanding of the human being in both health and disease can be enriched and deepened through the anthroposophical view.

By way of introduction perhaps you will permit me to speak of the sense in which the anthroposophical approach should be understood today, in our own age. People so readily confuse what is here called anthroposophy with older traditional ideas about humanity. I have no wish to waste words about the value of these old conceptions or to criticize them in any way, but it must be emphasized that the conceptions I am putting forward are founded on a very different basis from that of the various mystical, theosophical, and gnostic ideas that have arisen traditionally in the course of human history. In order to make myself clear, I need mention only the main points of difference between the conceptions that will be presented here and those of earlier times.

Those earlier conceptions arose in human thought at a time when there was no natural science in our sense; mine have been developed in an age when natural science has not only come into being but has reached a certain—albeit provisional—perfection. This must always be remembered if we wish to understand the meaning and significance of our studies, for it applies to everything that may be said and discovered by anthroposophy about the most varied branches of human knowledge and ability.

You all know—and I don't need to enlarge upon it for you—that in those earlier times man had a non-scientific (in our sense) conception of the super-sensible world. Medicine, too, was permeated with super-sensible conceptions, with conceptions of the human being that did not originate, as is the case today, from empirical research. We need go back only to the age shortly before that of Galen, and if we are open-minded enough we shall find everywhere spiritual conceptions of the being of man on which medical thought, too, was based. Permeating these conceptions of the form of the human being, the form of his organs and of human functions, were thoughts about the super-sensible. According to our modern empirical way of thinking, there are no grounds for connecting anything super-sensible with the nature and constitution of the human being, but in those older conceptions the super-sensible was as much a part of human nature as colors, forms, and inorganic forces now seem to us bound up with the objects in the outer world.

Only a person with preconceptions will speak of those earlier ages in the development of medicine as if its ideas were merely childish, compared with those that have evolved today. Nothing could be more inadequate than what history tells us in this connection, and anyone who has the slightest understanding of the historical evolution of humanity, who does not take the point of view that perfection has been reached and that everything earlier is mere foolishness, will realize that even now we have arrived only at relative perfection and that there is no need to look back with a supercilious eye upon what went before. Indeed, this is obvious when we consider the results that were achieved. On the other hand, an individual concerned with any branch of knowledge today must never overlook all that natural science has accomplished for humanity in this age. And when—to use the Goethean expression—a spiritual way of considering the human being in sickness and health wishes to become active today, it must work with and not against natural scientific research.

After what I have said I hope you will not accuse me of wishing to cast aspersions on the concepts of natural science. Indeed, I must emphasize at the beginning that such a thing is out of the question and for a very fundamental reason. When we consider the medical views that were held in an earlier period of civilization, we find that although they were by no means as foolish as many people believe nowadays, they did lack what we have gained through natural science, for the simple reason that man's faculty of cognition was not then adapted to see objects as we see them today by means of our senses and the products of empirical thought. The doctor (or I might just as well say the physiologist or biologist of ancient times) saw in an entirely different way from the way modern man sees. In the times that really come to an end with Galen, medical consciousness had quite another orientation. What Galen saw in his four elements of the human organism, in the black and yellow gall, in the phlegm and in the blood, was utterly different from what the human being sees today.

If we understand Galen's words—as a rule, of course words handed down from ancient times are not understood—then what he describes appears nebulous today. He saw as a reality what to us appears nebulous; in what he called phlegm he did not see the substance we call phlegm. To him phlegm was not only a fluidity permeated with life but a fluidity permeated with soul. He saw this. He saw this as clearly as we see something as red or blue. But precisely because he was able to see something outside the range of modern scientific consciousness, Galen was not able to see many things that are brought to light today by our scientific consciousness.

Suppose, for example, that a man with slightly abnormal vision looks through glasses, and by this means the contours of objects become sharper than they would otherwise appear to him. In the same way, as the result of modern empiricism all that was once seen hazily, but nonetheless permeated by spirit and soul, has disappeared and been replaced by the sharp contours of our modern empirical observation. The sharp contours were not there in ancient times. Healings were performed out of a kind of instinct that was bound up with an intense development of human compassion. A sort of participation in the patient's disease, which could even be painful, arose in the doctor of ancient times, and on the basis of this he set about his cure. The sharp boundaries that we perceive today through our empiricism based in the senses were not seen at all.

Because the advance to this sense-oriented empiricism is rooted in the evolution of man, we cannot merely brush it aside and return to the old. Only if we develop certain atavistic faculties will we perceive nature as the ancients perceived her, in all domains of knowledge, including that of medicine. In our modern civilization, when we grow up equipped with the kind of training given in our lower schools—not to speak of higher education—it is simply impossible to see things as the ancients saw them; moreover, if a person did see things in this way he would be regarded as being if not gravely, at any rate mildly psychopathic, not quite “normal.” Indeed, this would not be altogether unjust, for there is something psychopathic today in all instinctive “clairvoyance,” as it is called. We must be quite clear about this. What we are able to do, however, is to work our way up to a perception of the spiritual by developing inner faculties otherwise latent in the soul, just as in the course of evolution the eye has evolved itself from indefinite vision to sharply contoured vision.

Today, then, it is possible to develop faculties of spiritual perception. I have described this development in my book, Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and How to Attain It, and in my other writings. When an individual has developed these faculties, he sees, to begin with, a world not previously visible to him, a world encompassing a kind of spiritual cosmos beyond the cosmos revealed to sense perception today, including the discoveries and calculations of astronomy. To the sense-perceptible cosmos that is permeated by natural law, a spiritual cosmos is added. And when we seek to discover what exists in this spiritual cosmos, we also find the human being. We take hold of a spiritual universe, a universe permeated with soul and spirit, and we see the human being as a member of this universe.

If we pursue ordinary natural science, we begin either with the simplest living being or with the simplest form of life—the cell—and then trace the simple on into the more complex, ascending thus from what most resembles purely physically organized substance to the highly intricate human organism. If we are seriously pursuing spiritual science, we begin at the other end. We descend from a comprehension of the spiritual in the universe, regarding this as complex, and we look at the cell as the simplest thing in the organism. Viewed in the light of spiritual science, the universe is the summit of complexity, and just as we gradually elaborate the elements of our own cognition in order, let us say, to pass from the cell to the human being, so we progressively simplify what the cosmos reveals and then come to the human being. We follow an opposite path—that is to say, we begin at exactly the opposite starting point—but when we pursue spiritual science today in this way, we are not at first led all the way into the regions encompassed by modern material empiricism. I wish to stress this point strongly and hope that there will be no misunderstanding particularly regarding these fundamentals. This is why I must ask you today to forgive these somewhat pedantically formed concepts.

It is quite conceivable that someone might think it useless to adopt the methods of empirical thought in physiology or biology. “What need is there for any specialized branch of science?” he might ask. “One develops spiritual capacities, looks into the spiritual world, arrives at a view of man, of the being of man in health and disease, and then it is possible to found a kind of spiritualized medicine.” This is just the kind of thing many people do, but it leads nowhere. They abuse empirical medicine, but they are abusing something they do not understand in the least. We should not even consider writing off ordinary sense-oriented empirical science as worthless and taking refuge in a spiritualized science brought down from the clouds. That is quite the wrong attitude to adopt.

Spiritual scientific investigation does not lead to the same things that are examined under the microscope. If anyone tries to pretend that with the methods of spiritual science he has found exactly the same things he finds under a microscope, he may safely be summed up as a charlatan. The results of modern empirical investigation are there and must be reckoned with. Those who seriously pursue science also in the sense of spiritual scientific anthroposophy do not simply depart from sense-oriented empiricism; it is necessary to take such empiricism into account. One who might be called an expert in an anthroposophical spiritual science must first concern himself with the phenomena of the world in the sense of ordinary empiricism.

From spiritual science we discover at first certain guidelines for empirical research, certain ruling principles, showing us, for instance, that what exists at a particular place in the organism must be studied also in reference to its position. Many people will say, “Yes, but a cell is a cell, and purely empirical observation must determine the distinguishing feature of this cell—whether it is a liver cell or a brain cell and so on.” This is not the case. Suppose, for example, I walk past a bank at nine o'clock in the morning and see two men sitting there side by side. I look at them and form certain judgments about various things in relation to them. At three o'clock in the afternoon it happens that I again walk past the bank. There are the two men, sitting just as before. The empirical state of affairs is exactly the same in both cases, allowing for very slight differences. But now, think of it: one of the men may have remained sitting there for the whole six hours. The other may have been sent out on quite a journey right after I first passed the bank and may have just returned. This essentially alters the picture and has nothing to do with what I actually perceive with my senses. As far as my senses are concerned, the same state of affairs presents itself at nine o'clock in the morning and three o'clock in the afternoon, but the state of affairs determined by sense observation must be judged in accordance with its constituents.

In this sense our conception of a liver cell must differ essentially from our conception of a cell in the brain or the blood. Only if it were correct to say, for the sake of example, that the basis of everything is a primeval germ cell that has been fertilized and that the whole organism can be explained by a process of simple division and differentiation of this primeval germ cell—only then could we proceed to treat a liver cell exactly the same as a brain cell in accordance with the purely empirical facts. Yes, but now suppose that this is by no means correct, that by virtue of its very position in the organism the relation of a liver cell to forces outside man, outside the bounds of the skin, is not at all the same as the relation of a brain cell to these forces. In that case it will not be correct to look on what is happening merely as a continuation of the process of division and subsequent location in the body. We must rather assume that the relation of the brain cell to the universe outside is quite different from that of the liver cell.

Suppose someone looks at the needle of a compass, finds it pointing from South to North, from North to South, and then decides that the forces that set the needle in the North-South direction lie in the needle itself. He would certainly not be considered a physicist today. A physicist brings the needle of the compass into connection with what is called earthly magnetism. No matter what theories people evolve, it is simply impossible to attribute the direction of the needle to forces lying within the needle itself. It must be brought into relation with the universe.

In studying organic life today, the relationship of the organic to the universe is usually regarded as quite secondary. But suppose it were indeed true that merely on account of their different positions the liver and the brain are actually related quite differently to universal forces outside the human being. In that case we could never arrive at an explanation of the human being by way of pure empiricism. An explanation is possible only if we are able to say what part the whole universe plays in molding the brain and the liver, in the same sense as the earth plays its part in the direction taken by the needle in the compass.

Suppose we are tracing back the stream of heredity. We begin with the ancestors, pass on to the present generation, and then to the offspring, both in the case of animals and of human beings. We take into account what we find—as naturally we must—but we reckon merely with processes observed to lie immediately within the human being. It hardly ever occurs to us to ask whether under certain conditions in the human organism it is possible for universal forces to work in the most varied ways upon the fertilized germ. Nor do we ask: Is it perhaps impossible to explain the formation of the fertilized germ cell if we remain within the confines of the human being himself? Must we not relate this germ cell to the whole universe?

In orthodox science today, the forces that work in from the universe are considered secondary. To a certain limited extent they are taken into consideration, but they are always secondary. And now you may say: “Yes, but modern science leads us to a point where such questions no longer arise. It is antiquated to relate the human organs to the universe!” In the way in which this is often done, it is antiquated, but the fact that generally such questions do not arise today is due entirely to our scientific education. Our education in science confines us to this purely sense-oriented empirical mode of research, and we never come to the point of raising questions such as I have posed hypothetically by way of introduction. But the extent to which man is able to advance in knowledge and action in every sphere of life depends upon raising questions. Where questions never arise, a person is living in a kind of scientific fog. Such an individual is himself dimming his free outlook upon reality, and it is only when things no longer fit into his scheme of thought that he begins to realize the limitations of his conceptions.

I believe that in the domain of modern medicine there may be a feeling that the processes taking place in the human being are not wholly reconcilable with the simple, straightforward theories upon which most cures are based. There is a certain feeling that it must be possible to approach the whole subject from another angle. And I think that what I will have to say in this connection will mean something especially to those who are specialists in their particular branches of science, who have practical experience of the processes of health and disease and have realized that current conceptions and theories are everywhere too limited to grapple with the complexity of the facts.

Let us be quite honest with ourselves in this regard. During the entire nineteenth century a kind of axiom was put forward by nearly every branch of scientific and practical thought. With a persistence that was enough to drive one to despair, it was constantly being said, “Explanations must be as simple as possible.” And that is just what people tried to do. But if facts and processes are complicated, it is prejudging the issue to say that the explanations must be simple. We must accustom ourselves to deal with complexities. Unspeakable harm has been done in the realms of science and art by the insistent demand for simplification. In all her manifestations, small and great, nature is not simple but highly complicated. We can really grapple with nature itself only if we realize from the outset that the most seemingly comprehensive ideas are related to reality in the same way that photographs of a tree, taken from one side only, are related to the tree. I can photograph the tree from every side, and the photographs may be very different under different circumstances. The more photographs I have, the more nearly will my mental image approach the reality of the tree.

The prevalent opinion today is this: such and such a theory is correct. Therefore some other theory—one with which we do not happen to agree—must be wrong. But that is just as if a person were to photograph a tree from one side only. He has his particular photograph. Someone else takes a photograph from another side and says to the first person, “Your photograph is absolutely false; mine, and mine alone, represents the truth.” He claims his particular view to be the correct one. All controversies about materialism, idealism, realism, and the like have really taken this form. The squabbles in such realms are by no means different from the seemingly trivial example I have given as a comparison. At the very outset of our studies I ask you not to take what I have to say as if it were meant to tend in the direction of materialism, idealism, or spiritualism, but merely as an attempt to go straight for reality to the extent to which the capacity of human thought permits. If we wish to master what is real, we can occasionally achieve tremendous results with materialistic conceptions if we are then able to introduce the opposite aspect into our considerations. If it is impossible to keep the various aspects separate, our ideas will appear as if we took many different photographs all on the same piece of film. Indeed, many things are like this today. It is as if photographs from many different aspects had been taken on the same piece of film. Now when the forces lying latent in the soul of man are realized by the methods outlined in my book, Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and How to Attain It, we rise above the ordinary standpoint of knowledge—to which the latest phase in biology pays special attention—and reach what I have described as Imaginative cognition or knowing. A still wider standpoint is that of Inspired knowing, and the highest, if I may use this expression, is that of the Intuitive, of real Intuitive knowing. In Imaginative cognition, I receive pictures of reality, knowing very well that they are pictures, but also that they are pictures of reality and not merely dream-pictures. In Imaginative cognition I do not have reality yet, but I have pictures of a reality. At the stage of knowing by Inspiration, these pictures acquire a certain consistency, a viscosity, something lives within them; I know more through the pictures than the pictures alone yielded me. I know by means of the pictures that they are related to a spiritual reality. And in the acts of Intuitive knowing I stand within this spiritual reality itself. This is the ascent through the three stages described in Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and How to Attain It.

Now these three modes of higher knowledge give us, to begin with, knowledge of spiritual worlds, a knowledge that goes beyond ordinary, sense-oriented factual knowledge. They give knowledge of a spiritual universe and of man as a soul-spiritual being; they do not, in the early stages, reveal to us today's findings of empirical research in the realm of, say, biology. When Imagination, Inspiration, or Intuition is used to gain understanding of the being of man, a different approach is applied.

Take, for instance, the structure of the human brain. Perhaps it does not strike physiologists and doctors as very extraordinary, but to those who call themselves psychologists it is remarkable. Psychologists are a strange phenomenon in our civilization because they have managed to develop a science without subject matter—a psychology without a soul! For the psychologist this structure of the brain is very remarkable. Think for a moment of a psychologist who takes his start purely from empirical science. In recent times it has been impossible to distinguish whether a philosopher knows something or not. Natural scientists, however, are always supposed to know something, and so in modern times certain scientists who dabble in philosophy have been given Chairs of Philosophy. Current opinion has been this: natural scientists must have some knowledge, because although it is quite possible in philosophy to talk around and around a subject, it is not possible in natural science to spout hot air about something that has been observed under a microscope, through a telescope, or by means of x-rays. All these things can be tested and proven, but in philosophy it is not so easy to prove whether or not a man is speaking out of the clouds.

Think of how Theodor Ziehen speaks about the structure of the brain. In this connection I once had a very interesting experience, and perhaps I can make the point more concrete by telling you an anecdote. Many years ago I attended a meeting where an eminent doctor was lecturing about the life of soul in connection with the brain and its structure. The chairman of the meeting was a follower of Herbart, and he, therefore, was not concerned with analyzing the structure of the brain but the conceptual life, as Herbart, the philosopher, had once done. The chairman then said, “Here we have something very remarkable. The physiologist or the doctor makes diagrams and figures of the structure of the brain. If I, as a Herbartian, make drawings of the complicated association of ideas—I mean a picture of the ideas that associate and not of the nerve fibers connecting one nerve cell with another—if I, as a genuine Herbartian who does not concern himself with the brain as a structure, make symbolic diagrams of what I conceive to be the process underlying the linking together of ideas, my drawings look exactly the same as the physiologist's sketches of the physical structure of the brain.”

This comparison is not unjustified. Natural science has taught us more and more about the structure of the brain. It has been proven in ever greater measure that the outer structure of the brain does, indeed, correspond in a marvelous way with the organization of our conceptual life. Everything in the conceptual life can be found again in the structure of the brain. It is as if nature herself—please take this with a grain of salt—had intended to create in the brain a sculptural image of man's conceptual life. Something of the kind strikes us forcibly when we read statements like those of Meynert (which nowadays are already considered rather out of date). Meynert was a materialist but an excellent neurophysiologist and psychiatrist. As a materialist, he offers us a wonderful contribution to what is discovered when the actual human brain is left out of account and we deal only with the way in which mental images unite, separate, etc., and then sketch these symbols. In short, if anything could make a person a materialist it is the structure of the human brain. In any event it must be conceded that if the spirit and soul do indeed exist, they have an expression so perfect in the human brain that one is almost tempted to ask why the spirit and soul in themselves are necessary for the conceptual life, even if people do still long for a soul that can at least think. The brain is such a true mirror-image of the soul-spiritual—why should the brain itself not be able to think?

All these things must of course be taken with the well-known grain of salt. Today I only wish to indicate the tenor of our studies as a whole. The human brain, especially when we undertake detailed research, is well calculated to make us materialists. The mystery that really underlies all this clears up only when we reach the stage of Imaginative knowledge, where pictures arise, pictures of the real spiritual world not previously visible. These pictures actually remind us of the configurations in the human brain formed by the nerve fibers and nerve cells.

What, then, is this Imaginative cognition, which naturally functions entirely in the super-sensible world? If I attempted to give you a symbolic representation of what Imaginative knowledge is, in the way that a mathematician uses figures to illustrate a mathematical problem, I would say the following: imagine that a person living in the world knows more than sense-cognition can tell him because he can rise to pictures that yield a reality, just as the human brain yields the reality of the human soul. In the brain, nature itself has given us as a real Imagination, an Imagination perceptible to the senses, something that is attained in Imaginative knowledge at a higher level.

This, you see, leads us more deeply into the constitution of the human being. As we shall see in the next few days, this marvelous structure of the human brain is not an isolated formation. Through Imagination we behold a world, a super-sensible world, and it is as though a part of this world had become real in a lower world; in the human brain we behold a world of Imagination in concrete fact. I do not believe that anyone can speak adequately about the human brain unless he sees in its structure an Imaginative replica of the life of soul. It is just this that leads us into a dilemma when we take our start from ordinary neurophysiology and try to pass to an understanding of the life of soul. If we confine ourselves to the brain itself, a life of soul over and above this does not seem necessary. The only individuals with a right to speak of a life of soul over and above the structure of the human brain are those who have knowledge of it other than what is acquired by customary methods in this world. For when we come to know this life of soul in the spiritual world, we realize that it has its complete reflection in the structure of the human brain, and that the brain, moreover, can do everything that the super-sensible organ of soul can do by way of conceptual activity. Down to its very function the brain is a mirror-image. With neurophysiology, therefore, no one can prove or disprove materialism. It simply cannot be done. If the human being were merely a being of brain, he would never need to say to himself, “Over and above this brain of mine, I possess a soul.”

In contrast to this—and I shall now describe in an introductory way something that will be developed in the following lectures—let us turn to a different function of the human being, not the conceptual life but the process of breathing, considered functionally. Think of the breathing processes and what comes into human consciousness with regard to them; with these you will not come to something similar in the organism, as you did regarding the conceptual life. When you say to yourselves, “I have an idea that reminds me of another idea I had three years ago, and I link the one to the other,” you may well be able to make diagrams (especially if you take a series of ideas) that bear a great resemblance, for instance, to Meynert's sketches of the structure of the brain. Now this cannot be done when you try to find an expression in the human organism for what is contained in the breathing processes. You can find no adequate expression for the breathing processes in the structures and formations of the physical organs, as you were able to for the conceptual life in the brain. The breathing processes are something for which there is no adequate expression in the human organism, in the same sense as the structure of the brain is an adequate expression for the conceptual life, the perceptual life.

In Imaginative knowledge pictures arise before us, but if we rise to knowledge by Inspiration, reality streams through the pictures from behind, as it were. If, then, we rise to Inspiration and gaze into the super-sensible world in such a way that the Imaginations teem with spiritual reality, we suddenly find ourselves standing in something super-sensible that has its complete analogy in the connection between the breathing processes, the structure of the lungs, the structure of the arachnoidal space, the central canal of the spinal cord, and the penetration of the impulse of the breath into the brain. In short, if you rise to Inspiration, you learn to understand the whole meaning of the breathing process, just as Imaginative knowledge leads to an understanding of the meaning of the structure of the brain. The brain is an: Imagination made concrete; everything connected with breathing is an Inspiration made real, an Inspiration brought down into the world of the senses. One who strives to reach the stage of Inspired knowledge is transplanted into a world of spirit and soul, but this world lies there tangibly before him when he observes the whole breathing process and its significance in the human organism.

Imagination, then, is necessary for an understanding of the structure of the brain; Inspiration is necessary in order to understand the rhythm of breathing and everything connected with it. The relation of the breathing rhythm to the universe is quite different from that of the brain's structure. The outer, sculptural structure of the brain is so completely a mirror-image of the spiritual that it is possible to understand this structure without penetrating deeply into the super-sensible world. Indeed, we need only rise to Imagination, which borders quite closely on ordinary cognition. The breathing process cannot be understood by means of Imagination; here you must have Inspired knowledge, you must rise higher in the super-sensible world.

To understand the metabolic process one must rise still higher in the super-sensible world. The metabolic process is really the most mysterious of all processes in the human being. The following lectures will show that we must think of this metabolic process quite differently from the way in which it is thought of today in empirical physiology. The changes undergone by the substances as they pass from the tongue to the point where they bring about something in the brain cells, for instance, cannot, unfortunately, be followed by means of merely empirical research but only by means of Intuitive knowledge. This Intuitive knowledge leads us beyond the mere perception of the object into the object itself. In the brain, the spirit and soul of man create for themselves a mere image of themselves but otherwise remain outside this image. Spirit and soul permeate the breathing rhythm but constantly withdraw again. In the metabolism, however, the human spirit and soul immerse themselves completely so that as spirit and soul they even disappear. They are not to be found—nor are they to be found by empirical research.

And now think of Theodor Ziehen's subtle descriptions of the structure of the human brain. It is also possible, in fact, to make symbolic pictures of the memory in such a way that their physiological-anatomical counterparts in the brain can be pointed out. But when Ziehen comes to the sentient processes of feeling, there is already a hitch, and that is why he does not speak of feelings as independent entities but only of mental images colored with feeling. And modern physiologists no longer speak about the will at all. Why? Of course they say nothing! When I want to raise my arm—that is to say, to enact an act of will—I have, first of all, the mental image. Something then descends into the region that, according to current opinion, is wholly “unconscious.” Everything that cannot be actually observed in the life of soul, but is nonetheless believed to be there, is thrown into the reservoir of the “unconscious.” And then I observe how I move my hand. Between the intention and the accomplished fact lies the will, which plays right down into the material nature of the physical organism.

This process can be followed in detail by Intuition; the will passes down into the innermost being of the organism. The act of will enters right into the metabolism. There is no act of will performed by physical, earthly man that cannot be traced by Intuitive knowledge to a corresponding metabolic process. Nor is there any process of will that does not find its expression in disintegration or dissolution—call it what you will—within the metabolic processes. The will first removes what exists somewhere in the organism in order that it may unfold its own activity. It is just as if I were to burn up something in my arm before being able to use this limb for the expression of my will. Something must first be done away with, as we shall see in the following lectures. I know that this would be considered a terrible heresy in natural science today, but nevertheless it will reveal itself to us as a truth. Something substantial must be destroyed before the will can come into play. Spirit and soul must establish themselves where substance existed. This is the essence of Intuitive knowledge, and you will never be able to explain the metabolic processes in the human being unless you investigate them by means of this knowledge.

These three processes—the nerve-sense process, the rhythmic processes (processes of breathing and blood circulation), and the metabolic processes—encompass fundamentally every function in the human organism. Man is really objective knowledge, knowledge made real—regardless of whether we merely observe him from outside or dissect him. Take the human head. We understand what is going on in the head when we realize that it yields Imaginative knowledge; the processes in the rhythmic system become clear when we know that it yields knowledge by Inspiration; we understand the metabolic processes when we know what Intuitive knowledge is. Thus the principles of reality interpenetrate in the human being. Take, for example, the specific organs of the will—they can be understood only by Intuitive knowledge.

As long as we apply a uniformly objective mode of cognition to the human being, we shall not realize that, in fact, he is not at all as he is usually assumed to be. Modern physiology knows, of course, that to a great extent the human being is a column of fluid. But now ask yourselves quite honestly whether physiology does in fact reckon with the human being as a column of fluid, or whether it does not proceed merely as if he were a being consisting of sharply contoured solid forms. You will probably have to admit that little account is given to the fact that he is essentially a fluid being and that the solids have merely been inserted into this fluid. But the human being is also an airy, gaseous being, and a being of warmth as well.

The solid part of the human being can well be understood by means of ordinary objective knowledge. Just as in the laboratory I can become familiar with the nature of sulphide of mercury, so by chemical and physical investigation of the human organism I can acquaint myself with all that is solid. It is different with the fluids in the human being. The fluids live in a state of continual integration and disintegration and cannot be observed in the same way as the stomach or heart are observed and then drawn. If I make drawings of these organs as if they were solid objects, a great deal can be said about them, but it is not the same if we really take seriously this watery being of man. In the fluids something is always coming into being and disappearing again. It is as if we were to conceive of the heart as continually coming into being and disappearing, although the process there is not a very rapid one. The watery being of man must be approached with Imagination.

We must also consider what is gaseous, what is aeriform in us. It is known, of course, how the functions that take place in the aeriform are greatly significant in the organism, it is known how to and from everywhere the aeriform substances in the human organism are in movement, how everything connected with the aeriform is in circulation. When one region of the aeriform interacts with another, however, it follows precisely the pattern of Inspiration. Only through Inspiration can the airy part of the human being be understood.

And now let us pass to the warmth realm in the human being. Try to realize that the human being is something very special by virtue of the fact that he is a structure of warmth, that in the most varied parts of his structure warmth and cold are found present in the most manifold ways. Before we can realize how the human being lives with his ego in his own warmth, we must ourselves live into the process. There must be an act of Intuitive knowledge.

Before you are able to know the whole human being, in his totality—not as if he were simply a mass of solid organs with sharp contours—you must penetrate into the human being from many different angles. Just as we are led from Imagination to Inspiration to Intuition as we pass from the brain to the other organic structures, so it is when we study the different aggregate states of matter within the human being. The solid part of the human being, his solid bodily nature, hardly differs at all within the human organism from the state in which substances exist outside the human organism. There is an essential difference, however, in the case of what is fluid and gaseous, and above all in the case of the warmth. This will have to be considered in the next lectures. But it is indeed a fact that only when our study of the human being widens in this way do we come to know the real significance for knowledge of the organs within human nature.

Sense-oriented, empirical physiology hardly enables you to follow the functions of the human organism further than the point where the chyle passes from the intestines into the lymphatic vessels. What follows is merely a matter of conjecture. All ideas about the subsequent processes that take place with the substances we take in from the outside world, for instance the processes in the bloodstream, are really nothing but fantasy on the part of modern physiology. The part played in the organization by the kidneys, for example, can be understood only if we observe the catabolic processes side by side with the anabolic processes, which today are almost invariably regarded as the only processes of significance for the human constitution. A long time ago I said to a friend, “It is just as important to study those organs which are grouped around the germ of the human embryo, and which are later discarded, as to study the development of the human germ itself from conception to birth.” The picture is complete only when we observe the division of the cells and the structure arising from this division, and also trace the catabolic processes that take their course side by side with the anabolic processes. For we do not have this catabolic process around us only in the embryonic period; we bear it within us continually in later life. And we must know in the case of each single organ to what extent it contains anabolic and to what extent catabolic processes. The latter are, as a general rule, bound up with an increase of consciousness. Clear consciousness is dependent on catabolic processes, on the disintegration, the destruction, the removal of matter.

The same must be said about the processes of elimination. The kidneys are organs of elimination. But now the question arises: although from the point of view of sense-oriented empiricism the kidneys are primarily organs of elimination, have they no other significance in the constitution of man beyond this? Do they not, perhaps, play a more important part in building up the human being by virtue of something other than their functions of elimination? If we then follow the functions still further, passing from the kidneys to the liver, for example, we find this interesting phenomenon: the kidneys ultimately excrete outward, the liver inward. And the question arises: How is the relation of the kidney process to the liver process affected by the fact that the kidneys send their products of elimination outward and the liver inward? Is the human being at one time communing with the outer world, as it were, and at another time with himself?

Thus we are led to a gradual penetration of the human organization, but to assist us in this penetration we need to consider matters that are approached in the ways of which I have given only hints today. I will proceed from this point in the next lecture, showing how these things lead to a real understanding of pathology and therapy, and to what extent they may become guiding principles in the empirical research acknowledged today. This does not imply an attack on such research. The only object is to show that guiding principles are necessary for it to attain its true value.

I am not out to attack natural scientific research or scientific medicine in any sense. My aim is simply to show that in this natural scientific medicine there is a mine of opportunity for a much wider knowledge than can be attained by modern methods and above all by the current outlook of the world. We have no wish to scoff at the natural scientific mode of observation but on the contrary to give it a true foundation. When it is founded upon the spirit, then, and only then, will it assume its full significance.

Tomorrow I will speak further on this subject.

If I were asked to map out a course of medical study for people who would want to approach this study immediately and finish it in a certain period of time, I would begin—after the necessary natural scientific background had been acquired—with a discussion of the various functions in the human organism. I would feel bound to begin with a kind of anatomical-physiological study of the foodstuffs as they are worked through from the stage where they are worked upon by the ptyalin to that of being worked on by the pepsin and then taken up into the blood. Then, after considering the general act of digestion in the narrower sense, I would pass on to discussion of the system of heart and lungs and all that is connected with it. I would then discuss everything connected with the human kidney system. The kidney system must then be discussed in relation to the entire nerve-sense apparatus—a relationship not recognized at all today. Then I would lead on to the system of liver, gall, and spleen, and this cycle of study would gradually open up a vista of how things are arranged in the human organism, a vista that would be needed in order to build up the knowledge that it is the task of an anthroposophical spiritual science to develop. Then, with the light that would have been shed upon the results of sense-perceptible empirical research, it would be possible to pass on to therapy.

In the few days at our disposal, it is only possible, of course, for me to give a few hints about this wide and all embracing domain. A great deal of what I have to say, therefore, will be based upon a treatment of empirical evidence that is not customary today, but I think it will be quite accessible to anyone who possesses the requisite physiological and therapeutic knowledge. I shall have to speak differently from the way people are accustomed to, but I will really present nothing that cannot in some way be brought into harmony with the data of modern sense-oriented empirical knowledge, if these data are studied in all their connections.

Everything I say will be aphoristic, merely hinting at ultimate conclusions. Our starting point, however, must be the sense-perceptible empirical investigations of modern times, and the intermediate stages will have to be mastered by the work of doctors everywhere. This intermediate path is exceedingly long, but it is absolutely essential because, as things are today, nothing of what I present to you will be fully acknowledged if these intermediate steps are not taken—at least in relation to the most important phenomena. I do not believe that this will prove as difficult as it appears at present, if people will only submit to bringing the preliminary work that has already been done into line with the general conceptions I am trying to indicate here. This preliminary work is excellent in many respects, but its goal still lies ahead.

In the last lecture I tried to show you how broadening ordinary knowledge can give us insight into the human being. And now, bearing in mind what I have just said, let me add the following. To begin with you may find it offensive to hear it said in anthroposophy that the human being, as he stands before us in the physical world, consists of a physically organized system, an etherically organized system, an astrally organized system, and what characterizes him as an ego organization. You do not need to take offense at these expressions. They are used merely because some kind of terminology is necessary. By virtue of this ego system, the human being is able to develop that inner soul cohesion, the inward soul life, that cannot be found in animals. This cohesion reveals itself on the one hand in the fact that the human being can unify his inner experience in an ego-point, if I may use that expression, from which all his general organic activity rays out in a certain sense, at least in the conscious state. It reveals itself on the other hand in the fact that during his earthly evolution the human being has a different relationship to sexual development from that of the animal organization. Though of course there are exceptions, the animal organization is such that sexual maturity represents a certain point of culmination. After this, deterioration sets in. This organic deterioration may not begin in a very radical sense after the first stage of sexual maturity, but there is a certain organic culmination. On the other hand, the physical development of the human being receives a certain impetus at puberty. Even in the outer empirical sense, then, if we take all the factors into account, there is already a difference between the human being and the animal.

You may say that it is really an abstract method of classification to speak of physical, etheric, astral, and ego organizations. This objection has been made by many people, especially from the side of philosophy. We take the functions of the human organism and differentiate them, and—since differentiations do not necessarily point back to any objective causes—people think that it is all an abstraction. This is not so. In the course of these lectures we will see what really lies behind this classification and division, but I assure you they are not merely the outcome of a desire to divide things into categories.

When we speak of man's physical organization, this encompasses everything in the human organism that can be dealt with by the same methods we adopt when we are doing experiments and investigations in the laboratory. We encompass all this when we speak about the physical organization of the human being.

Regarding the human etheric organization, however, which is incorporated into the physical, our mode of thinking can no longer confine itself to the ideas and laws that apply when we are doing experiments and making observations in the laboratory. Whatever we may think of the etheric organization of the human being as revealed by super-sensible knowledge—without needing to enter into mechanistic or vitalistic methods in any way—it is apparent to direct perception (and this is a question that would be the subject of lengthy study in the curriculum that I sketched earlier) that the etheric organization as a whole is involved in the fluid nature within the human organization. You need only think of this as a structure of functions that can be grasped directly in this fluid nature. The purely physical mode of thinking, therefore, must confine itself to what is solid in the human organization, to the solid state of aggregation. We understand the human organization properly only when we conceive of what is fluid in this organization as being permeated through and through with life, as living fluids—not merely as the fluids we have in outer, inorganic nature. This is the sense in which we say that the human being has an etheric body.

We do not need to enter into hypotheses about the nature of life but merely to understand what is implied, for example, by saying that the cell is permeated with life. Whatever views we may hold—mechanistic, idealistic, spiritualistic, or the like—when we say that the cell is permeated with life, as the crass empiricist also says, then what is revealed to direct perception yielded by the methods I have referred to here shows that the fluid nature in the human being is likewise permeated with life. But this is the same as saying that the human being has an etheric body. We must think of everything solid as being embedded in the fluid, and here we already have a contrast: we apply all the ideas and laws derived in the inorganic world to the solid parts of man's being, whereas we think not only of the cells—the smallest organisms present in the human being—as living but of the fluid nature in its totality as permeated with life.

Furthermore, when we come to the airy nature of the human being, it appears that the gases filling his being are in a state of perpetual interchange with each other. In the course of these lectures we shall have to show that this is neither an inorganic interchange nor merely a process of interchange mediated by the solid organs, but that an individual lawfulness controls the inner interchange of the gases in the human being, the vortex formed with the interworkings of the gases. Just as there is an inner lawfulness in the solid substances, expressing itself, among other things, in the relationship between the kidneys and the heart, so we must postulate the existence of a lawfulness within the airy or gaseous organism—if I may use this expression—a lawfulness that is not confined to the physical, solid organs. Anthroposophy designates this lawfulness that directly underlies the airy or gaseous organism as the astral lawfulness, the astral organization. This lawfulness would not be there in the human being if his airy organization had not permeated the solid and fluid organizations. The astral organization does not penetrate directly into the solid and the fluid. It does, however, directly lay hold of the airy organization. This airy organization directly takes hold of the solid and fluid, so that in the airy human being there is now an organized astral organization by which this airy organization has a definite inner form, which is naturally fluctuating.

By ascending through the aggregate states, we thus arrive at the following conclusions: when we consider the solid substances in the human being we do not need to assume anything other than a physical organization. In the case of the living fluidity that permeates the solid, physical organization, we must assume the existence of something that is not exhausted by the physical lawfulness, and here we come to the etheric organism, which is a self-contained system. In the same sense I give the name astral organization to that which does not directly lay hold of the solid and fluid but first of all penetrates the gaseous organization. I do not call this the astral lawfulness but rather the astral organism, because it is again a self-contained system.

And now we come to the ego organization, which penetrates directly only into the differentiations of warmth in the human organism. We can therefore speak of a warmth organism, a warmth man. The ego organization penetrates directly into this warmth man. The ego organization is, of course, something super-sensible and brings about the various differentiations of the warmth. In these differentiations of warmth the ego organization has its immediate life. It also has an indirect life in the rest of the organism through the warmth working upon the airy, fluid, and solid organizations.

In this way the human organism becomes more and more transparent. Everything that I have been describing expresses itself in the physical human being as he lives on the earth. What in a certain way can be called the most intangible organization of all—the ego-warmth organization—works down indirectly upon the gaseous, fluid, and solid organizations, and the same is true of the others. Thus the way in which this whole configuration penetrates the human organization, and known through sense-oriented empirical observations, will find expression in any solid system of organs verifiable by outer anatomy. Hence, taking the various organ systems, we find that only the physical organ system is directly related to its corresponding lawfulness, the physical-solid lawfulness; the fluid is less directly related, the gaseous still less directly, and the element of warmth most distantly of all, although even here there is still a certain relation through mediation.

All these things—and I can indicate them here only in the form of ultimate conclusions—can be confirmed by an extended empiricism simply from the phenomena themselves. Due to the short time at our disposal I can only give you certain ultimate conclusions.

In the anatomy and physiology of the human organization we can observe, to begin with, the course taken by food up to the point when it reaches the intestines and the other intricate organs in that region and is then absorbed into the lymph and blood. We can follow the process of digestion or nourishment in the widest sense up to this point of absorption into the blood and lymph. If we limit ourselves to this realm, we can get on quite well with the not entirely mechanistic mode of observation that is adopted by natural science today. An entirely mechanistic mode of perception will not lead to the final goal in this domain, because the lawfulness observed externally in the laboratory and characterized by natural science as inorganic lawfulness is always playing into the living organism in the digestive tract. From the outset, the whole process is involved in life, even at the stage of the ptyalin-process.

If we pay heed only to the fact that the outer, inorganic lawfulness is immersed in the life of the digestive tract, we can get on quite well, as far as this limited sphere is concerned, by confining ourselves to what can be observed merely within the physical organization of the human being. But then we must be absolutely clear that a remnant of the digestive activity still remains, that the process of nourishment is still not quite complete when the intestinal tract has been passed, and that the subsequent processes must be studied by a different means of observation. But as far as the limited sphere is concerned, the best we can do to begin with is to study all the transformations of substance by means of analogies, just as we study things in the outer world. Then we find something that modern science cannot readily acknowledge but that is nonetheless a truth, resulting indeed from modern science itself. It will be the task of our doctors to pursue these matters scientifically and then to show from the sense-perceptible empirical facts themselves that as a result of the action of the ptyalin and pepsin on the food the food is divested of every trace of its former condition in the outer world?

We take in food from the mineral kingdom—you may dispute the expression “food,” but I think we understand each other—we take in food from the mineral, plant, and animal kingdoms. What we take in as food belongs originally to the mineral, plant, and animal organizations. The substance most nearly akin to the human organization is, of course, the milk that the suckling baby receives from the mother. The child receives it as soon as it has left the human organization. The process enacted within the human organism during the absorption of nourishment is this: through the absorption of the food into the various glandular products, every trace of its origin is eliminated. It is really true to say that the human organization itself makes it possible to engage in the purely natural scientific, inorganic mode of observation. In fact, human chyle comes nearest of all to the outer physical processes in the moment when it is passing from the intestines into the lymph and bloodstream. The human being finally obliterates the external properties that the chyle still possessed until this moment. He wants to have it as similar as possible to the inorganic organization. He needs it thus, and this again distinguishes him from the animal kingdom.

The anatomy and physiology of the animal kingdom reveal that the animal does not eliminate the nature of the substances introduced to its body to the same extent; the excretory products are different for the animal. The substances that pass into the body of the animal retain a greater resemblance to the outer organization, to the vegetable and animal organizations, than is the case with the human being. They proceed on into the bloodstream still in accordance with their external form and with their own inner lawfulness. The human organization has advanced so far that when the chyle passes through the intestinal wall, it has become as close as possible to the inorganic. The purely physical human being actually exists in the region where the chyle passes from the intestines into the heart-lung organization, if I may express myself in this way.

It is at this point that our way of looking at things first becomes heretical to orthodox natural science. The entire heart-lung tract—the vascular system—is the means whereby the foods that have now become entirely inorganic so to speak, are led over into the realm of life. The human organization cannot exist without providing its own life. In a more encompassing sense, what happens here resembles the process occurring when the inorganic particles of protein, let us say, are transformed into organic; into living protein, when dead protein becomes living protein. Here again we do not need to enter into the question of the inner being of man but only into what is continually being said in physiology. Due to the shortness of time we cannot speak of the scientific theories about how the plant produces living protein, but in the human being it is the system of heart and lungs, with all that belongs to it, that is responsible for transformation of the protein into something living after the chyle has become as inorganic as possible.

We can therefore say that the system of heart and lungs is there so that the physical system may be drawn up into the etheric organization. The system of heart and lungs therefore brings about a vitalizing process whereby the inorganic is drawn into the organic, is drawn into the vital sphere through the process that takes place in the heart-lung system. (In the animal it is not quite the same, the process being less definite.) Now it would be absolutely impossible for this process to take place in our physical world if certain conditions were not fulfilled in the human organization. The chyle's being drawn into, transformed into an etheric organization could not take place within the sphere of earthly lawfulness unless other factors were present. Angels would be able to perform this, but if they did then they would fly around having merely a mouth, an esophagus, and then finally a gastrointestinal system, which would then stop and disappear into the etheric. Thus such digestive tracts would float around and would be carried by invisible etheric angel-beings.

What I am describing here could not take place in the physical world at all. That would be impossible. The process is possible in the physical world only because the whole etheric system is drawn down, as it were, into the physical, is incorporated into the physical. This happens as a result of the absorption of oxygen in the breathing. Therefore man is not an angel but can walk around physically on the earth, can walk around because his angelic aspect is physicalized through the absorption of oxygen. The entire etheric organization is projected—but projected as something real—into the physical world; the whole is then fulfilled as a physical system; that which otherwise could be only of a purely super-sensible nature comes to expression as the system of heart and lungs. And so we begin to realize that just as carbon is the basis of the animal, plant, and human organizations (though in the human organization in a less solid way than in the plant) and “fixes” the physical organization as such, so is oxygen related to the etheric organization in so far as this expresses itself in the physical domain.

Here we have the two substances of which the formed, the vitally formed protein is primarily composed. But this mode of observation can be applied equally well to the proteinaceous cell, the cell itself. We simply extend the kind of observation that is usually applied to the cell by substituting a macroscopic study for the microscopic study of the cell in the human being. We observe the processes that form the connection between the digestive tract and the heart-lung tract. We observe then in an inner sense, seeing the connection between them, perceiving how an etheric organization is drawn in and “fixed” into the physical as a result of the absorption of oxygen.

But you see, if this were all, we would have a being that existed in the physical world possessing merely a digestive organization and an organization of heart and lungs. Such a being would not yet be an ensouled being; the element of soul could occur only in the super-sensible, and it is still our task to show how what makes the human being a sentient being incorporates itself into his solid and fluid nature, permeating the solid and fluid organizations and making him a sentient being, a being of soul. Only when we are able to trace the ensouled aspect can we perceive man as an ensouled being. The entire organization in which oxygen plays a role is now within the human being due to the fact that we bind the etheric organization into the physical body by oxygen.

The ensouled organization cannot come into being unless there is a direct point of attack, as it were, for the airy man, with a further possibility of access to the physical organization. Here we have something that lies very far indeed from modern ways of thinking. I have told you that oxygen takes hold of the etheric through the organization of heart and lungs; the astral makes its way into the organization of man through another system of organs. This astral nature, too, needs a physical system of organs. I am referring here to something that does not take its start from the physical organs but from the airy nature (not only the fluid nature) that is connected with these particular organs—that is to say, from the airy organization that is bound up with these solid organs. The astral-organic forces radiate out from this gaseous organization in the human organism. Indeed, the corresponding physical organ itself is first formed by this very radiation, on its backward course. To begin with, the gaseous organization radiates out, makes man into an ensouled organism, permeates all his organs with soul, and then streams back again by an indirect path, so that a physical organ comes into being and plays its part in the physical organization of the human being. This is the kidney system, which is regarded primarily as an organ of excretion. Its excretory functions, however, are secondary. I will return to this later, for I have yet to speak of the relationship between the kidney excretions and the higher function of the kidneys. As physical organs the kidneys are excretory organs (they too, of course, have entered the sphere of vitality), but in addition to this, in their underlying airy nature, they are the radiating-organs for the astral organism which now permeates the airy nature and from there works directly into the fluids and the solids in the human organism.

The kidney system, therefore, is that which from an organic basis permeates us with sentient faculties, with qualities of soul and the like—in short it permeates us with an astral organism. Sense-perceptible, empirical science has a great deal to say about the functions of the kidneys, but if you penetrate what you can see and observe of these functions with a certain instinctive inner perception, you will be able to discover the relations between inner sentient experience and the functions of the kidneys—remembering always that the excretions are only secondary indications of that from which they have been excreted. What the kidneys excrete arises through the function of the kidneys. In so far as the functions of the kidneys underlie the sentient system, this is expressed even in the various kinds of excretions.

If you want to extend scientific knowledge in this field, I recommend that you do experiments with a more sensitive individual and try to find out the essential change that takes place in the renal excretions when he is thinking in a cold or in a hot room. Even purely empirical tests like this, suitably varied in the usual scientific way, will provide results. If you make absolutely systematic investigations, you will discover what a difference there is in the renal excretions of a person thinking either in a cold or a warm room. You can also do the experiment by asking someone to think objectively and putting a warm cloth around his head. (The conditions for the experiment must of course be prepared in an orderly way. ) Then examine the renal excretions, and examine them again when he is thinking about the same thing and cold compresses have been applied to his feet. You can conduct experiments that are entirely sense-perceptible and empirical that will provide you with evidence.

The reason that there is so little concern with such inquiries today is that people have an aversion to entering into these matters. In embryological research into cell division, the allantois and the amnion are not studied carefully. These discarded organs have been investigated, but to understand the whole process of human development the accessory organs in embryonic development must be studied much more exactly than the processes that arise from the division of the germ cell itself. Our underlying task here, therefore, is to establish starting points for rational research. This is of the greatest significance, for only in this way will we reach the point of having insight into the human being so that we have before us not a visible but an invisible giant cell.

Today we do not describe the cell as we describe the human being, because microscopy does not lead so far. The curious thing is that if one studies the realm of the microscopic with the methods I am describing here, wonderful things come to light, for instance the results achieved by the Hertwig school. The cell can be investigated up to a certain point with the microscope, but then there is no possibility of further research into the more complicated life processes. Ordinary, sense-oriented empiricism comes to a standstill here, but with spiritual science you can follow the facts further. You now look at the human being in his totality, and the tiny point represented by the cell grows out, as it were, into the whole being of man.

From this you can proceed to learn how the purely physical organization is in every way connected with the structure of the carbon, just as the transition to the etheric organization is connected with the structure of oxygen. If you now make exact investigations into the kidney system, you will find a similar connection with nitrogen. Thus you have to study carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, and in order to trace all the roles played by nitrogen in the astral permeation of the organism, you need only follow, through a series of very precise experiments, the metamorphoses of uric acid and urea. Precise study of the secondary excretions of uric acid and urea will provide definite evidence that the astral permeation of the human being proceeds from the kidney system. This will also be shown by other things connected with the activity of the kidneys, even to the point where pathological conditions play a role, for example if we find blood corpuscles in the urine. The kidney system radiates the astral organization into the human organism. Here we must not think of the physical organization but of the airy organization that is bound up with it. If nitrogen did not play a part, the whole process would remain in the domain of the super-sensible, just as we would be merely etheric beings if oxygen were not to play its part. The outcome of the nitrogen process is that the human being can live on earth as an earthly being. Nitrogen is the third element connected with this.

There is thus a continual need to widen the methods adopted in anatomy and physiology by applying the principles of spiritual science. This is not in any sense a matter of fantasy. You will see that this is so when you receive your first results. If you study the kidney system and do your experiments as accurately as you possibly can, examining the urea and uric acid excretions under different astral conditions, step by step you will find confirmation of what I have said. Only in this way will you be able to penetrate the constitution of the human organism.

We can therefore say that everything entering the human being through the absorption of food is carried into the astral organism by the kidney system. There still remains the ego organization. All this is received into the ego organization primarily as a result of the working of the liver-gall system. The warmth structure and the warmth structure in the system of liver and gall radiate out in such a way that the human being is permeated with the ego organization, and this is bound up with the differentiation of warmth in the organism as a whole.

Now it is quite possible to adapt your methods of investigation as precisely as possible to what I have said. Take certain lower animals where there is no trace at all of an ego organization in the psychological sense. With these you will not find a developed liver, and still less any bile. These things develop in the phylogeny of the animal kingdom only when the ego organization appears. The development of liver and gall runs absolutely parallel with the degree to which the ego organization unfolds in a living being. Here, too, you have an indication for a series of physiological investigations in connection with the human being, only of course they must cover the different periods of human life. You will gradually discover the connection of the ego organization to the functions of the liver in the human being.

You need only observe particular pathological conditions that are lethal—certain childhood illnesses, for example—in order to find out how certain psychological phenomena, tending not toward the life of feeling but toward the ego, are connected with the secretion of bile. This might form the basis of an exceedingly fruitful series of investigations that can be derived to some extent out of what our sense-oriented, empirical science provides. You will see that the ego organization is connected with hydrogen in the same way that the physical organization is connected with carbon, the etheric organization with oxygen, and the astral organization with nitrogen. You will be able to relate all the differentiations of warmth—I can only hint at this—to the specific function carried out in the human organism by hydrogen, in combination with other substances, of course. And so, as we ascend from the sense-perceptible to the super-sensible and make this super-sensible a concrete experience by recognizing its physical expressions, we come to the point of being able to conceive the whole human being as a highly complicated cell, a cell that is permeated with soul and spirit.

It is really only a matter of taking the trouble to examine and develop the marvelous results achieved by natural science and not simply leaving them where they are. My understanding and practical experience of life convince me that if you will set yourselves to an exhaustive study of the results of the most orthodox empirical science, if you will relate the most approachable with the most remote and really study the connections between them, you will constantly be led to what I am telling you here. I am also convinced that the so-called “occultists” of the modern type will not help you in the least. What will be of far more help is a genuine examination of the empirical data offered by orthodox natural science. Natural science itself leads you to recognize truths that can be perceived only supersensibly but that indicate, nevertheless, that the empirical data must be followed up in this or that direction. You yourselves can certainly discover the methods; they will be imposed by the facts before you. There is no need to complain that such guiding principles create prejudice or that they influence by suggestion. The conclusions arise out of the things themselves, but the facts and conditions prove to be highly complicated, and if further progress is to be made, all that has been learned in this way about the human being must now be investigated in connection with the outer world.

I want you now to follow me in a brief train of thought. I am giving it merely by way of example, but it will show you the path that must be followed. Take the annual plant that grows out of the earth in spring and passes through its yearly cycle. Now relate these phenomena that you observe in the annual plant with other things you can observe—above all the custom of peasants who, when they want to keep their potatoes through the winter, dig pits of a certain depth and put the potatoes into them so that they may keep for the following year. If the potatoes were kept in an ordinary open cellar, they would not remain fit to eat. Investigations have proven that what originates from the interplay between the sunshine and the earth is contained within the earth during the subsequent winter months. Warmth conditions and light conditions are at play dynamically under the surface of the earth during the winter, so that in winter the aftereffects of summer are actually contained within the earth. Summer surrounds us outside the earth's surface. In winter, the aftereffects of summer work under the earth's surface. And the consequence is that the plant, growing out of the earth in its yearly cycle, is impelled to grow, first and foremost, by the forces that have been poured into the earth by the sun of the previous year, for the plant derives its dynamic force from the soil. (I have to make rather large leaps, of course, but these things can all be verified easily through empirical observations.) This dynamic force that is drawn out of the soil can be traced up into the ovary and on into the developing seed. So you see, we can arrive at a botany that really corresponds to the whole physiological process only if we do not confine ourselves to the dynamic forces of warmth and light and the light conditions during the year when the plant is growing. We must rather take our start from the root, and so from the dynamic forces of light and warmth of at least the year before. These forces can be traced right up into the ovary, so that in the ovary we have something that really is brought into being by the forces of the previous year.

Now examine the leaves of a plant, and, still more, the petals. You will find that in the leaves there is a compromise between the dynamic forces of the previous year and those of the present year. The leaves contain elements that are thrust out from the earth and those that work in from the environment. It is in the petals that the forces of the present year are represented in their purest form. The coloring and so forth of the petals represents nothing that is old—it all comes from the present year.

You cannot follow the processes in an annual plant if you take only the immediate conditions into consideration. Examine the structural conditions that follow one another in two consecutive years. (What the sun imparts to the earth, however, has a much longer life.) Do a series of experiments concerning the way in which the plants continue to be relished by creatures such as the grub of the cockchafer, and you will see that what you first thought to be an element of the plant belonging to the present year must be related to the sun forces of the previous year. You know what a prolonged larval stage the cockchafer undergoes, devouring the plant the whole time.

These matters must be the subject of exact research; only the guiding principles can be given from the spiritual world. Research will show that the structure of the substances found in the petals and leaves, for instance, is of an essentially different character from the structure of the substances found in the root or even the seed itself. There is a tremendous difference, and this leads to the distinction between a tea prepared from the petals or leaves of plants and an extract of substances found in roots or seeds. You will find that this difference is the basis for the other differences, so that the effect of a tea prepared from petals or leaves upon the human digestive system is quite different from that of an extract prepared from roots or seeds. In this way you relate the organization of the human being to the surrounding world, and everything you discover can be verified through purely physical, sense-perceptible methods. You will find, for instance, that disturbances in the transition of the chyle into the etheric organization, as it is brought about by the system of heart and lungs, will be influenced by the leaves; everything connected with the digestive tract is influenced essentially by a tea derived from petals. An extract of roots and seeds influences the wider activity that works on into the vascular system and even into the nervous system. In this way you will discover rationally the connection between what is going on within the human organism and the substances from which our store of remedies may be derived.

In the next lecture I will have to continue this subject, showing you that there is an inner connection between the different structures of the plants and the human nerve-sense organization and the organization of his digestive tract.