The Rudolf Steiner Archive

I think that it may after all be necessary to introduce into our medical and biological study what we might term an inquiry into tho real origins of pathological conditions. Of late there has been a cumulative tendency to disregard the origins proper, and to fix attention on superficial appearances and events. And with this superficiality is bound up the habit in current medicine and pathology of beginning the description of a disease by stating what bacillus caused the disease by invading the human organism. Of course it is very easy to refute arguments and objections against the invasion of micro-organisms, for the simple reason that we no longer need to point out that these micro-organisms really exist. And since they have different characteristics in different diseases, it is again quite comprehensible that stress is laid on these differences, and specific diseases linked with specific types of micro-organisms.

Now an obvious error enters this whole point of view, namely, that attention is diverted from the primary element. Suppose that in the course of an illness, bacteria appear in considerable numbers in some bodily area. It is only natural that they should cause symptoms such as are the result of any foreign body in the organism, and that from the presence of these bacteria all manner of inflammations arise. But if all these results are ascribed wholly to the action of the bacteria, attention is actually directed only to the activity of these micro-organisms. Attention is thus drawn away from the true origin of the disease, for whenever lower organisms find suitable soil in the human frame for development, that soil has been made suitable by the real primary causes of the disease. And attention must be directed to the region of these primary causes. We must therefore return to the paths of thought we have already traversed and for a short time give them our attention.

Consider the stratum of plant life that covers the earth's soil, i.e. the entire content of vegetation. We must understand that this flora which grows outwards from the soil towards cosmic space, is not only sent out from the earth, but is also drawn outwards by forces that are in continuous operation, and as essential to the growth of plants as the forces working from the earth itself. There is a constant interaction between the forces passing into the plant from the earth, and those acting on the plant from the cosmos outside the earth. What is the essential factor in this interaction that permeates our whole environment? Should these cosmic forces attain their full expression and take full possession of the plant, and should the planets not ensure that these forces can withdraw again, then the plant in its growth from the stalk to the blossom and seed would have the perpetual tendency to become animal. There is a tendency towards animalisation. But this tendency, which expresses Cosmic forces passing into the plant, is counteracted and balanced by the opposite tendency towards suppression of the plant-nature in mineralisation.

I would thus emphasise the essential nature of plants: it holds the balance between the tendency to salification, to the deposit of mineral constituents within the vegetable substance, i.e., to mineralisation; and on the other hand to self-ignition, to animalisation. This is what is perpetually at work in external nature.

This same counteraction, however, goes on, interiorised and centralised, in the human organism itself. By virtue of its lungs the human organism is a genuine earth in miniature, and all the pulmonary processes work downwards in the same manner as the forces of earth work upwards into the plant, passing from the earth to the plant's organisation. All that comes to meet the inner metabolism of the lungs, from the breathing and heart activity, has the same method of operation as the external cosmic forces.

Now there is a special requirement of the human organism: all that is focused from out of the organism, in the heart's action, must be held apart from the forces that organise and concentrate themselves in the internal metabolism of the lungs. These two sets of activities may only interact through the barrier—if I may so express myself—of an etheric or even an astral diaphragm. They must be kept separate from one another. And so we come to the question: Does this diaphragm—and I only use the term in order to give a picture—really exist? Is there such a diaphragm, which prevents the activities of head, throat and lungs from blending with those of abdomen and breast, except through the external rhythm of the breath? Yes—there is such a diaphragm, and it is nothing less than the rhythm of breathing itself. Here you find the attunement of the upper with the lower sphere in man. What is termed rhythmic activity in man, the rhythmic pulsation, whose external physical manifestation is in the rhythm of the breathing, continues into the etheric and astral activities and holds apart the telluric forces of the upper human being, which centre in the lung, and the cosmic forces of the lower human being. The latter forces, with their expression ultimately in the heart, work upwards from below, just as cosmically they work from the periphery inwards, towards the earth's centre.

Suppose now that this rhythm is disturbed and does not work normally. In that case, the symbolic diaphragm, to which I have referred—which has no physical existence, but which results from the interplay of the rhythms—is not in order. Then there may ensue a process analogous to excessive action of the earth on vegetation. If the earth's saline action on plants became excessive, the plants would become too mineral. And the result is that the etheric plant inserted into the lung, that grows out of the lung so to speak as the physical plant springs from the soil becomes the cause of pulmonary sclerosis. Thus we find that the trend of the plant towards mineralisation may become excessive even in the organism of man.

And the contrary trend towards animalisation may also exceed normality. When this happens, a region is created in the upper portion of the organism which should not exist. In this region the affected organs are embedded as in an etheric sphere, and this favours the multiplication of what should not multiply in our organism, namely the minute forms of life between animal and plant. We need not trouble to inquire whence they come. We need only interest ourselves in the factors which create a favourable sphere of life for them. This favourable sphere of life should not exist for them. It should not arise as a specially enclosed sphere; it should permeate and operate throughout the whole organism. If it does so, it sustains the life of the whole organism. If it works only within a small enclosure, it becomes the appropriate medium for the presence and multiplication of little plant-animals, of microscopic forms of life, which can be detected in much—if not in all—that causes illness in man's upper organic sphere.

So in going back to the rhythmic activity and its disturbance we must trace the emergence of a special area within the organism, and thus solve the riddle of the working of bacilli in it. But unless we go back to the spiritual causes, we shall not reach the solution of the riddle.

Just the same processes as work on the life of plants—in the external sphere of the earth that is to say—are also at work in the same region on the external life of animals and of man. These forces here (see Diagram 27—orange) at work on animal and man, come from the extra-telluric cosmos, and are met and opposed by forces that come from within. The latter, coming from the interior of the earth, are localised in man in certain organs of the upper bodily sphere; whilst the forces that pour on to the earth from outside are localised in man in organs belonging to the lower bodily sphere, again, if I may so express myself, a dividing wall must be set up between the two forms of action. The regulation of this separation is normally achieved through the activity of the spleen, and in this connection we again find rhythm active in the human organism, but a rhythm different from that of respiration. The rhythm of the breath is in short pulsations, and it continues throughout life; it must be in order, if illnesses of the upper sphere—or such diseases as can affect that upper sphere only—are not to develop. Bear in mind that there may be illnesses which affect the upper sphere yet have their original in the lower—for the process of digestion extends both above and below. This we must clearly realise. We cannot picture man divided diagrammatically into compartments, but the various members interpenetrating one another. At the same time, there must be a barrier between that which works from above as though coming from the earth, and that which works upwards from below, as though from celestial space. For we do indeed send the forces of our lower sphere out against those of our upper, and there must be a regulated rhythm for each human individuality between these two sets of forces; a rhythm manifesting in a proper alternation between waking and sleeping. Every time we wake, there is in a certain way the one beat of this rhythm, and every time we sleep, there is the other beat. And this rhythm of waking-sleeping waking-sleeping, is intersected with other minor rhythmic oscillations which are due to the fact that in the waking state, we wake in our upper sphere but sleep in our lower. There is a continuous rhythmic systole interplay, between the upper and lower man, which is only captured so to speak in major rhythms through the alternation of waking and sleeping.

Now suppose that the barrier set up by this rhythm between the upper and lower man is broken through. What happens in such a case? As a general rule, what happens is that the activities of the upper sphere break through into the lower. This means that an etheric breach takes place. The forces that should only act etherically in the upper organic sphere of man penetrate downward into the lower. It is a breaking through of more subtle forces; but by this fact a special area is created in the abdomen, which should not be localised there, but should permeate the whole body. The result is a species of poisoning, a toxication of the lower abdominal regions. The functions proper to the lower abdominal sphere can no longer be adequately performed under this intrusion of the upper sphere. Moreover, this new sphere creates a favourable condition for lower organisms of the type intermediate between animal and plant. So you may sum up as follows: Through the downward escape of forces from the upper sphere, something is provoked in man that becomes abdominal typhus. The creation of this atmosphere provides, as a by-product, the suitable soil for the typhus bacilli.

In this way you have a clear-cut distinction between what is primary and what is secondary. You will realise that it is necessary to distinguish between the original causes of such illness and the secondary phenomena, which are simply inflammatory and due to the proliferation of legions of intestinal fauna—or flora, especially in the smaller intestine. All the physical manifestations include the working of the bacilli whether vegetable or animal—we need not trouble ourselves with their precise origin—for they could neither in the smaller intestine represent the reaction to this escape of the upper activities of the human organism into the lower activities. These physical manifestations include the working of the bacilli whether vegetable or animal—we need not trouble ourselves with their precise origin—for they could neither vegetate nor “animalise” if an atmosphere had not been suitably prepared. All this is a result, a secondary phenomenon. And the curative effect must be sought not in the treatment of the secondary manifestations but of the primary. We shall discuss this later, for it is only possible to speak about these things if one is in a position to trace their true causes. This is hardly possible within the boundaries of the official medicine of today for current medicine excludes a point of view that passes from the material process to that of the spirit. But beneath and behind all material existence, there is spirit. And you will easily envisage the symptomatology of typhus abdominalis if you keep in mind what has just been put before you. Remember that this particular disease is very often accompanied by disturbances of consciousness. The symptoms of pulmonary catarrh appear because the upper sphere is deprived of what emerges in the lower. In the same way, the organs mediating consciousness in the upper human sphere, can no longer work properly if what should be mediator to their activity has broken through into the lower sphere. If you once grasp this primary causation, you will have the whole picture of typhus abdominalis before you.

The whole series of external and apparently independent symptoms, which otherwise are only perceived from without, so to speak, become so clearly evident that they might almost be painted in their inner relationships. And in certain circumstances, the human consciousness may be so strongly impressed that there arises an urge to objectify prophetically this picture before it portrays itself in the organism. In such cases, a person will feel compelled to depict or symbolise the elements of which his upper organic sphere is deprived, by painting blue spots of colour on the wall, and to represent the elements of which the lower sphere is deprived by spots of red. In the case of an individual with a belief that his vocation is art, as distinct from tailoring or shoemaking, but with little knowledge of the craftsmanship of painting, you may find that if at the same time he is robust enough to repress the constantly arising tendency to diseases of the lower abdomen, these diseased conditions are exteriorised and “thrown off” on wall or canvas, instead of developing internally. The paintings of the expressionist school supply examples of this remarkable activity. Examine much of what comes to light in these paintings, in the red and yellow colors; there you can trace the painter's condition in the lower abdominal sphere. And in the blue and blue-violet parts you can find a clue to his condition in the upper bodily sphere, in the lungs, and all that moves rhythmically upwards towards the head. If you study such things carefully, they will lead you to discover a remarkable harmony between the general type of action of a given individual and his internal organisation. You will be in a position to form a certain intuitive impression of the functional conditions of his body from his way of living and behaving. For as a matter of fact it is wholly erroneous to believe that the soul activity of a man in the external world, through actions and behaviour, is only connected with his nervous system. It is connected with the whole man, and is an image of the whole man. We can grasp intuitively in children how man's intellectual part behaves and how it strives towards the later age. We only have to consider, e.g., how somebody may be doomed in later life to cope with all the embarrassments of an arrested growth; and how in childhood he showed plainly that the forces that did not allow him to complete his growth make him clumsy and rough in his behaviour. From the way in which the child behaves, as for instance whether he puts his feet lightly on the ground or strongly, you may form an intuitive picture of the way of its growth. Numerous other manifestations suggest that the whole gesture and behaviour of the individual is nothing else than the interplay of internal organic parts, transferred into movement.

It would indeed seem wise to include these subjects in the medical curriculum. When a medical student is about twenty the most favourable conditions obtain for this kind of knowledge. In the thirties one loses this gift; it becomes harder to enter into these things. But it is possible to educate and train oneself to enter into such intuitive knowledge. In spite of the devastating routine of the intermediate and later states of our university education, it is possible (by means of a return to the forces active in childhood) to train this insight into the human being. But if organised medical study attached due weight to the more intimate aspects of plastic anatomy and physiology, it would be of immense assistance in the whole treatment of mankind.

So too must those diseases which can appear as epidemics be studied according to their primary causes. To take an example: in all persons with a disposition to disturbance and damage of the head and breast rhythms, which find their crudest expression in the respiratory rhythm, there is a tendency to be much affected by a certain atmospheric and extra-telluric conditions. Others again, in whom the respiratory system is congenitally sound, are able to resist such influences. Of course we must make allowances for additional influences, and other factors of a complicated kind, but this brief and bare outline may make the principle understood.

Let us suppose a winter season, in which there is a powerful influence on the solar activity—and note please, not the operation of light, but the solar action—through the outer planets, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. A constellation of that description in the winter operates quite differently from the unimpeded action of the Sun, when Mars, Jupiter and Saturn are at a greater distance. In such a winter the atmospheric conditions will differ from the norm; and there will be a remarkable influence (on persons constitutionally so disposed) upon the rhythmical activity between chest and head, of which the most conspicuous is the act of breathing itself. We may state, however, that such cosmic conditions considerably strengthen the inclination to make this rhythm regular in people who have been born from sound conditions, and who are inwardly robust—though their external appearance may be very slight and delicate. In the case of such persons the respiratory rhythm is very well regulated and so also is the whole rhythm between chest and head. Such a stabilised inner rhythm is not easily disturbed from outside; serious injuries are required to affect it. But on persons with an irregularity of this rhythm, the external influences referred to work very strongly to disturb still more the already disturbed rhythm. Thus everyone with this disposition and resident in those parts of the earth under the special influence of the constellation in question, become liable to the complaints grouped as influenza and grippe. These conditions and factors must be in operation, in order to create favourable soil for such ailments as influenza.

The following example is of a more complex nature. The whole rhythmic activity within man is a unity; although the one continuous rhythm which has its crudest expression in breathing, and that other and wider rhythm determined by the alternation of sleep and waking, form a separate unity in themselves. It may come to pass that owing to a weakness of the upper rhythm in breathing, that other and wider rhythm determined by the alternation of sleep and waking, form a separate unity in themselves. It may come to pass that owing to a weakness of the upper rhythm (between chest and head), the lower rhythm becomes relatively too pronounced. It follows that the upper process, already enfeebled and out of gear, is made more so by the powerful impact of the lower, which is focused in the splenetic function, as well as in others of which we shall treat later. If this lower rhythm is working too strongly upwards, it causes a tendency to a kind of hypertrophy of the upper digestive process, with all its sequelæ. Again a most favourable sphere is created for certain lower organisms. There ensue phenomena of inflammation and paralysis in the upper organisation, even rudiments of organic malformation, new organic formations; in short we have the picture of diphtheria. Diphtheria might be termed a sort of break through from below upwards, an inversion of the typhus breaking through from above downwards, and its main origin is as I have described. Of course, in all these conditions, the age of the individual must be taken into account.

You need only keep in mind that during childhood the whole interaction of the upper and lower spheres, and of the rhythmic action that links the two, must differ widely from that of later life; e.g., during childhood there must be much more powerful and pronounced action of the upper human being upon the lower than in maturity. Actually the child “thinks” very much more than does the adult. This may sound strange but it is true; only, the thoughts of the child are not conscious thoughts, they are absorbed into the organism, manifesting in its growth and formation. Especially in the earliest years of life, thinking activity is used mainly for the formative processes of the growing body. Then there comes a stage wherein the body does not need to use up so much of the formative forces, and thus they are, as it were, dammed back, and become the fundamental forces of memory. So memory emerges only when the organism requires less formative force for itself. The forces which supply the organic foundation of memory are the transformed growth forces and formative forces plastically at work at the beginning of life. Everything is fundamentally based on metamorphosis. That which we observe as a spiritual element, is only the re-spiritualisation of what worked in a more bodily way when the spirit incarnated into the material. So it can be understood that there must be strong defensive forces in the child to cope with particular processes of the lower abdominal sphere. This sphere is the special scene of action for cosmic-celestial forces, that is to say, for extra-terrestrial forces.

Now turn again to the regions outside the earth; let us assume that a special constellation results from the position of Sun and planets, which gives rise to a powerful reflection in the lower abdominal organs of man. What will be the result? It will be relatively unimportant in adults, for in them the upper and lower organic rhythms have reached a certain equipoise. But in children there will of necessity be a vigorous resistance to the cosmic conditions that seek a mirror and replica in the abdominal parts. So if the cosmic configurations act forcibly on the lower abdominal sphere in the child, the upper bodily sphere must defend itself with all its powers. From the convulsive exertion of powers which should not be used so much in the immature upper organic sphere, Cerebral Meningitis can result—Meningitis cerebro-spinalis epidemica. Here, then, you have an illustrative example of the influx of such diseases into man from extra-human nature. If you keep these origins in the background of your thought, as it were, you will be able to reconstruct the whole clinical picture of meningitis, including the typical rigidity of the muscles in the nape of the neck. For this strain and effort of the upper organic sphere in the child, is bound to lead to inflammatory states of the upper organs in the membranes of the brain and spinal cord, and these acute inflammations provoke the other symptoms typical of meningitis.

We need above all to sharpen our perception for seeing and as a whole both as regards the interactions of his organic parts, and as regards the interactions of human functions with the external world, and even with the extra-terrestrial world. These hints are not meant to increase the meddling with horoscopes and so on, which I consider the greatest nonsense in the form it takes today; but we should realise the origin of the forces in question; such knowledge is necessary for the healing art. It is not so important to be able to trace this or that condition to the quartile aspect of such and such stars—that knowledge can sometimes help towards a cosmic diagnosis, but the main matter for us is to be able to cure. So tomorrow I propose to pass from our present inquiry to the consideration of substances in external nature that are defensive, i.e., contain defensive powers against the extra-telluric influences pouring into the human organism. It would seem necessary that this distinction between the upper and lower organic spheres in man should receive recognition in medicine, for I suggest that such recognition would promote greater co-operation within the profession in the interests of human health. Too often, a physician loses interest in man as a whole, if he specialises in one direction. Far be it from me to suggest that physicians should not specialise; the manifold technique evolved in the course of time, necessitates a certain amount of specialisation. But if specialisation has occurred, then, as an equipoise, the socialisation, the co-operation of the specialising experts should steadily increase.

This becomes obvious if we study a condition on which a question has been put: Pyorrhœa alveolaris, the inflammation of the alveolar rim. If pyorrhœa develops, it is not solely owing to some local cause, as many suppose, but it is due to a tendency of the whole organism, a tendency localised only in the mouth and teeth. If it were accepted as part of the professional routine that dentists who observed the onset of this condition were somehow to suggest to physicians that the patient suffering from this particular alveolar inflammation was very probably also liable to diabetes, much good could be done. For that same process—already outlined in these lectures—which manifests as diabetes, is also (while it remains localised in the upper sphere and amenable to treatment) the germ of Pyorrhœa alveolaris. It is far too little realised that the lower sphere can, as it were, seize or invade the upper; and in consequence there is either an impoverishment or an undue augmentation of the one sphere or of the other. If the inflammatory tendency is first manifest in the upper sphere, one form of disease ensues; if first manifest in the lower sphere, there ensues its polar opposite. So very much depends on this knowledge.

It will therefore also be readily understood that the whole etheric body, containing the forces of growth in man, must work differently in childhood and in maturity. In childhood, the etheric body must intervene much more in the physical functions; and must have organs as its direct points of attack, so to say. It is especially necessary in the foetal stage that the etheric body should have these points for direct working upon the physical; but the need persists in early childhood, when there is not only organic formation, but growth as well, and during growth the plastic activity must be exercised. Hence the need for organs such as the thymus gland, for instance (and even to some extent the thyroid as well); these have their greatest task in childhood, and then enter on a phase of regression, and if too much seized upon by the physical forces, degenerate during the retrogressive phase. During childhood, there must of necessity be a powerful chemism at work within the body, which is replaced, at a later stage, by the working of warmth. One might say that during the life of the individual, man passes through something of which the prismatic spectrum is a symbol: inasmuch as we observe the more strongly chemical extremity (blue and violet), and then the luminous portion (green and yellow), finally the other extremity, connected with heat (red). For man experiences constitutional changes of this nature and in this direction. (see Diagram 27). During childhood, the human being is more dependent on activities working chemically, then passes on to those which act through light, and those acting through warmth. The organs which enable the etheric body to promote the chemism in the physical body, are such glands as the thyroid and thymus. On the activity of these organs (to which in a certain sense the chemism is bound) there also depends the particular individual complexion and skin colouring—that is to say, on the etheric activity behind the physical organs. Among the functional offices of the adrenal glands is the determination of the complexion, and if the adrenals degenerate there must be changes in pigmentation in consequence. As an example you need only consider what is known as Addison's Disease, arising from degenerative conditions in the adrenal glands—when the whole skin becomes brown. All this strongly indicates a certain chemism in the human organism. It is at work more especially in the foetus, while the action of light has more importance after approximately fourteen years of age. And then appear the activities connected with the life of warmth. Here we have a most significant indication and gauge for the whole course of human life. The period of childhood, and before birth, especially the latter, the foetal stage, represents a certain predominance of the salt-process; early middle life is predominantly a mercurial process and later life and old age, in the relation referred to, represent a kind of sulphur process. This implies that in childhood most attention should be paid to the salt-process, in middle life to the mercurial, and in later life to the sulphuric or phosphoric, and these require regulation. Here again, if you realise this triad of organising chemism—organised light process, organised mercurial process and organised saline process at work in the human organism, you will gain a conception of the manner in which the whole of life works on man, organising him. The manner of life—not only the diet, but the whole habit and action of life—operates chemically on the child, impinging strongly upon the organism; the even more strong light process has such a great influence on the very young, that it sows a seed that may even manifest in disorders of the soul. In youth, man is most sensitively receptive to all the impressions of the external world. Whether at this stage of life we encounter an external world formed regardless of reason and logic, or one which is formed according to reason and logic, has a great significance for the whole constitution of the soul in later life. We shall go further into this in the next lecture, passing from the pathological aspects just considered, to the therapeutic.

In these two final lectures I shall try to deal with as many as possible of the questions before us. In a preliminary outline, such as has been offered in this series, the main purpose is to learn more accurately, in the way that can be given by Spiritual Science, the path taken within the human organism by substances external to man, and also their counter-effects. If we have a complete bird's eye view, as it were, of the way in which any substance operates, we have at the same time an indication of its therapeutic value, and can use our own judgment. To use individual judgment is far better than to keep to prescriptions which say that is for this and the other for that. On this occasion, I shall again start from something apparently remote, in order to reach something very near to us all. Among the written questions put to me, one continually reappears, and it must, of course, be of interest to you all—the question of heredity in general. Both in judging healthy—or at least relatively healthy—persons and the sick, it plays an extremely important part.

In the materialistic biology of the present day this heredity is only studied in a very abstract manner. Certainly it is not studied in such a way as to provide much practical use in life. But if we give it earnest and careful study, we shall find it remarkable (at least to the exoteric student, whereas the esoterist knows it as an obvious law) that all that mankind needs to know about the world and its relations, reveals itself somewhere in an externally visible form. There is always something that reveals externally those secret but—for mankind—most effective forces of nature. And if we investigate heredity we must keep that very specially in mind for on the other hand all the factors associated with heredity are continually confused and concealed by illusions, so that sound judgment becomes most difficult. If a judgment is formed on a question of heredity, there are always other phenomena to which it does not apply. For indeed, the facts of heredity are wrapped in the most powerful illusions which spring from the character of its law. But the very nature of this law implies that its regularity does not always become obvious. The manifestations of heredity follow a pattern of law, but one very hard to regulate. Just as the horizontal position of the arms of a balance depends on a special law, but is upset by adding to the weight of one side or the other, so that the law is difficult to regulate—so is it also, we may say, with the operation of heredity. It is a similar to that of the horizontal tendency of the scales; but it is sealed through a wide range of varying manifestations. This is due to the fact that always in heredity different elements, male and female, play their parts. The male always transmits what man owes to earthly existence, what he owes to earth-forces; whereas the female organism is more apt to transmit the cosmic influence from beyond the earth. We might express this difference as follows. Earth makes continual demands on the man; the earth organises his forces. Earth is the cause from which the male sexuality originates. On woman the heavens, as it were, make continual demands; they cause her shape, and prevail in all the internal processes of her organisation. This contrast may remind you of something already touched upon in these discussions. Now there follows this result; suppose a female being comes into existence through conception, and develops; it is inclined to become more and more attuned to the extra-terrestrial processes, to be taken up as it were by the heavens. If a male being develops it becomes more and more inclined to be taken hold of by the earth. Thus heavens and earth actually co-operate, for neither acts exclusively nor on one sex alone, but in the female the arm of the scale rises towards the heavens and in the male it inclines to the terrestrial. It is a strict law but is subject to variation, and hence arises the following result. In woman, the organism includes internal tendencies which wage permanent contest with the terrestrial elements. But the strange thing is that this only holds good with regard to her own individual organism, and not in the terms of life and the seed. This contest between cosmic and telluric forces is restricted in woman to all the processes apart from the formation of the ovule, that is to say from the organs which serve the functions of reproduction. Thus woman continually withdraws her organisation from the inherent forces of reproduction; the organs surrounding the reproductive tract are continually kept back. And we might say that there is a tendency to transmit through the male what is contained in the reproductive forces and can therefore be inherited. In woman there is a tendency to withdraw from this heredity—and concurrently in her own oogenous powers there is the stronger tendency of inheritance.

So we must ask how the human community can counteract the destructive forces of heredity? For we know, do we not, that heredity finds no barrier between the spiritual and the physical. For instance, in families subject to mental disorders, these may alternate in successive generations with diabetes; there is thus a metamorphosis which swings to and fro. Therefore it is a matter of immense urgency to find out how to shield mankind from the ravages of heredity. The chief preventative measure is first and foremost to do everything to preserve and improve the health of women, for in that case, the extra-telluric influence is drawn more actively into our earth process, and those processes which work continuously to transmit the harmful influences of heredity through the germ, can be combatted through the maternal organism. Thus a community which gives thought and care to the health of their women, wages war against the harmful influence which springs from the earth-forces in heredity, by means of an appeal to the forces proceeding from outside the earth, and acting as a counterbalance. For these cosmic celestial forces have, as it were, their earthly accumulator solely in the organism of a woman. This is most important, and holds good for all forces of telluric and cosmic origin; it is universally true. It becomes conspicuously evident in the case of hæmophiliacs, of so-called “bleeders.” It would be well if there were less vague talk about heredity, and more study where concrete facts point unmistakably to its operation. Observe this as shown among “bleeders.” You will find a striking phenomenon, known to you all, and illustrating what I have just pointed out. In the family descent among hæmophiliacs bleeding itself only appears in males, but the transmission of the illness occurs only through females. A woman whose father was a hæmophiliac, though she does not exhibit the disease herself, is liable to bequeath it to her male descendants. She gets it because she is part of the family. The males, however, become bleeders. But if these marry women free from hæmophiliac descent, the disease is not transmitted.

If you analyse the aforesaid facts, you will find a striking concrete expression of my statements, and indeed the facts of hæmophilia are far clearer proofs than all the recent experiments by Weismann, etc., of what happens in heredity. And they are also important for the general judgment of the human bodily organisation; this organisation must be to some degree estimated in the light of that which is apt to influence it.

What is the actual basis of hæmophilia? This can in fact be detected by superficial consideration. The blood does not coagulate properly, so that the slightest external scratch or prick may cause the hæmophiliac to bleed to death; they may die from attacks of nose bleeding, or the extraction of a tooth, for what would lead to coagulation in other persons does not do so in the case of a hæmophiliac. So the blood of these persons must possess some constituent or quality, which counteracts the power of coagulation. If this quality exists in too potent a degree, it is not neutralised by the external forces which begin to work from outside when the blood coagulates. For coagulation of the blood is caused by forces working from outside. If the blood possesses a quality which does not allow these external forces to prevail, there is an excessive tendency to fluidity of the blood.

It is easy to detect that a strong tendency to excessive fluidity is connected with the whole formation of the human ego. And not superficially but deeply, and with that which manifests in the human ego as will, not with that which manifests as “Ideation.” The constitutional tendency to excessive fluidity in the human blood is associated with all that either strengthens or debilitates the human will. And there is a fine historical example which proves that certain of nature's secrets are accessible to a proper interpretation. Both history and science are aware of the Engadine case; you will probably know it—the case of those two young girls of the Engadine district who have furnished us with a light on some profound—and medically helpful—aspects of human nature. Both of these young women came of hæmophiliac stock, and both formed and kept the steadfast and courageous resolution to refrain from marriage. So they have their place in history as personal champions of the fight against hereditary hæmophilia.

Of course we must lay stress on the real core of this case. It is certainly not peculiar to all the girls in hæmophiliac families to withdraw in this way from propagation. For such a course of action a strong subjective will must be developed; just the kind of strong subjective will that operates in the ego, and not in the astral body. Such a peculiar will power must have distinguished both of those young women. They must have both had something in their egos, in their power of will, that was connected in some manner with the forces operative in bleeders. If such forces are augmented in a conscious way, this could be done more easily in such cases than in persons who are non-bleeders. A just estimate of this interaction leads us to look into the specific forces and properties of the blood and their interplay with the extra-human world. And in studying those properties of blood that are associated with the conscious will, we can learn something of the general connection between the human will and the forces external to man. Certain of these external forces have a particular inner kinship with the forces of the human will, a kinship based on the course of evolution for the very last to be separated out in the natural realm, has been all that is connected with the conscious will of mankind. That is the latest precipitation to emerge in the realm of nature.

Let us now study something in external nature which is among the creations by which nature framed mankind, and which shows by its inherent qualities its association with that formative process of humanity. A substance of that description has long been a subject of study, and there are great difficulties in surveying the results because it is hard to make the forces preserved by atavistic medicine into the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries active still in the intellectual modern man. The substance thus studied was antimony and all that is linked with it. Antimony is a most remarkable substance; it has attracted the most profound attention from all who have had much to do with it, including the legendary Basilius Valentinus. Certain attributes of this substance will reveal the peculiar manner in which it is interwoven with the whole process of nature. Consider, for example, what is perhaps the least of antimony's attributes: its extraordinary affinity to other metals and other non-metallic substances, so that it often appears in combination with other substances, especially with sulphur compounds. Now we have already touched on the specific operation of sulphur in this respect and antimony tends to appear together with the sulphur compounds of other substances. This inclination of antimony shows how it is interwoven in the nature-process. Yet another quality is even more significant. Whenever possible, it forms sheafs of needle-shaped crystals. That is, its urge is along a straight line, outwards and away from the earth. Whenever antimony collects longitudinally, we behold the lines along which the forces of crystallisation are directed from outer space to the earth. For the formative forces in crystallisation which generally work in more regular patterns, produce in antimony the spear-shaped and sheaflike structures. In this way antimony reveals how it is inserted into the whole of nature. The characteristics of the smelting process also indicate antimony as revealing—or betraying—the forces of crystallisation. By means of the smelting process we can obtain antimony in a delicately fibrous form.

Then there is this further quality: if antimony is exposed to temperatures it can oxidize—burn in a peculiar manner. The white smoke that forms from it reveals a certain kinship to cold bodies and attaches itself to them. The well-known “flowers” of antimony produce something in which the force of crystallisation as it were discharges itself in contact with other bodies.

And the most remarkable of all antimonial properties, is its peculiar form of resistance to all the forces which I have grouped together as sub-terrestrial, in a certain sense; those forces that play through electricity and magnetism. Suppose that we treat antimony with electrolysis, bring it to the cathode, and touch the antimonial deposit on the cathode with a metal point—the antimony produces tiny explosions. This active resistance of antimony to electric processes—if the substance is given a little stimulus—is most characteristic and distinctive, revealing its real position in the whole process of nature, no other substance reveals its interactions so emphatically.

We can only interpret the lessons so graphically presented by that substance, on the supposition that the forces present in nature are working throughout, are in fact ubiquitous; and that if certain substances show their operation to a marked degree, it is because the forces are especially concentrated in those substances. What operates in antimony is present throughout nature; the antimonising power—if we may coin the term—is everywhere. It has also a regulative action in man, so that in normal conditions human beings draw the antimonising force from the extra-telluric sphere. That is to say, mankind draws from the cosmos what in concentrated form is manifested as antimony. In normal conditions man does not have recourse to the antimonising force as present on earth and in its specific concentrated form, but turns towards the external, extra-telluric antimonial force. So we must obviously ask: What is the extra-telluric form of this antimonising force?

Speaking in terms of the planets, it is the co-operation of Mercury, Venus and the Moon. If these three do not operate separately but together their action is not specifically of the nature of mercury, copper or silver; but is comparable with the action of antimony in the earth. And of course this can be and must be investigated, by observing and registering the effects of such constellations upon man—constellations, that is to say, in which the three forces of Moon, Mercury and Venus neutralise each other, through the aspects of opposition or square. If all three are in such an aspect of neutralisation, there is the precise interaction which in the case of antimony is laid hold of by the earth. In all the antimony in and on the earth, the same force is exerted from our planet itself, as is exerted by these three planetary bodies upon the earth.

Here it is necessary to warn against a mistake. The constitution the earth is such as to make it erroneous to refer piecemeal, so to speak, to such substances as antimony. All the antimony on the earth is a unity in the earth's structure, just as all the earth's stores of silver or of gold are unities. If you remove separate lumps of antimony from the earth, you are simply extracting or amputating a part of that antimonial body which is incorporated into the earth. We have now attempted to delineate all the perceptible effect of antimonial action: and here, as everywhere in nature, actions meet counteractions. This oscillation between action and reaction, is just what gives rise to bodily form.

Let us then look for those forces which act counter to the antimonial forces. They reveal themselves if we are able to detect that the antimonial forces act on man at the moment in which something presses outwards which is regulated while within him. It is these antimonial forces which are operative in the coagulation of the blood. Wherever the consistency of the bloodstream shows a tendency to coagulate the antimonising force is active. Wherever the blood tends to withdraw from coagulation the counteracting forces are at work. So that hæmophiliacs manifest the forces antagonistic to antimony curiously enough. And these anti-antimonising forces are identical with those for which I should like to coin the term “albuminising forces,” the albumen forming forces, which work in such a health-giving way—that they promote the formation of albumen. For, let us emphasise once more: the forces that hinder coagulation are the albuminising forces.

Thus we arrive at some knowledge of the relationships between the antimonising and albuminising forces in the human organism. In my belief, careful study of the interplay of these two processes would reap very important harvests of knowledge as regards disease and its cure. For what are the processes which form albumen—the albuminising processes? They are those by virtue of which all that is plastic and formative in nature is incorporated into the human or the animal organism, in order to supply its actual substance. And the antimonising forces are those which, working from the outside, so to speak, take the part of the artist, the sculptor, giving the substance which builds the organs its form.

Thus the antimonial forces have a certain kinship to the internal organising forces of the organs. Please take as a concrete example, one organ, the alimentary canal. It is of course internally organised. You are able to follow up its inner structure, without considering the purpose it serves, or the manner in which food stuffs are carried along it and worked upon. It is possible, that is to say, to separate in the abstract the internal processes of the organ and those that take place in working upon the substance introduced from outside. This is an important separation, for the processes are indeed different. In the organ itself, the antimonising force works in man. For man is actually antimony, if we disregard all the ingredients brought into him from the external world. Man himself is antimony. But the internal organic formative force must not be overloaded with the antimonising force in the normal course of life, for the effect would be excessively stimulating, in fact a form of poisoning. But, if strong stimulation is necessary, we may supply antimony to the organism—which normally must not be supplied. The effect of antimony owing to these peculiar properties, varies greatly according as it is applied from within or without. If it is administered from within it is necessary to dilute it so far as to make it absorbed by the upper bodily sphere of man. If you are thus able to introduce antimony into the upper sphere, it will have an amazing stimulant effect on disturbed organ formations and internal organic processes. Thus very fine potencies of antimony can be most useful in certain forms of typhus or typhoid.

In the other case the effect is somewhat different, and is achieved by using lower potencies of antimony externally, in ointments, salves, and so forth. There may be occasions when it is desirable to have recourse to higher potencies in external application; but as a general rule, external application will have their beneficial effect in lower potencies.

This remedial substance is an extremely useful remedy in many different directions. It is at work within the law of polarity just referred to, yet shows constant slight oscillations. Thence arises a rule that should not be disregarded. Antimony should be administered internally by preference, in the treatment of individuals of very strong will power, and externally by preference, in treating persons of weaker will. Here is a first line of differentiation. Antimony represents, within the mineral realm, a substance with an inner kinship to the human will; that is to say, as the human will becomes more conscious, it feels more inclined to call forth the counter-effects to antimonial action. Human will has a destructive effect on all the forces previously described, constituting the characteristic operation of antimony. On the other hand, all that builds up the human constitution under the influence of thought and especially of unconscious thought—including the still unconscious thought forces at work in the child—all these are supported by the antimonial forces; antimony is, as it were, their ally. Thus if antimony is introduced, by any route, into the human organism and is thus able to exert its own properties, it forms a strong phantom (scaffolding or network) within the body. The internal organic forces are thus stimulated, and there is nothing left for co-operation with the substances brought into the human organism. There follow fits of vomiting and diarrhœa—showing that the effect is confined to the organs, instead of including their surroundings. The same is true in the counteracting process. You will be able to counter injurious effects of antimony in yourself by the methods instinctively employed by people when they want to keep their own circulatory and rhythmic processes regular. They drink coffee, through which the rhythmic processes are made even and harmonious. Please note that I am stating a fact; I make no recommendation here, for it may be very harmful in other ways, to relieve the ego of the task of regulating these human rhythms. If man is not strong enough in his soul to regulate his rhythmic processes, then coffee can bring about a certain harmony. And so in cases of antimonial poisoning coffee acts in some degree an antidote, restoring the rhythms between the working of the inner organic forces and their surrounding. For there is a regular interplay through rhythm. Indeed the real reason for drinking coffee, is to establish a continuous regulation of rhythm between our internal organs and what is happening in their vicinity to the food-stuffs we have consumed.

From this point we are led to inquire into the albuminising processes. These are reinforced—that is to say, all those processes are reinforced that lie on the other side of the dividing line, where there is no longer the inner organising force of the organs, but where they unfold their external digestive activity. All the mechanical processes of the movement of the intestines, and of the other digestive activities, are closely interwoven with the albuminising forces, which are virtually the formative forces of albumen, i.e., the complementary polar opposites of the antimonising forces.

Now I must once more refer to something already dealt with. That is the instructive object of study—or subject, if you like—the shell formation of the oyster. To a somewhat less degree the same occurs in the calcareous secretion in the egg. What is the key to these phenomena? What precisely is an oyster shell and egg shell? It is a product that the oyster or the essential substance of the egg must eject, because were it retained it would kill them. This shell formation is necessary for the preservation of life. And so, when eating oysters, we consume that life process which is manifested externally in the formation of the shells. (I put the facts to you in these simple terms; if I sought to impress current science, more intricate and technical terms would of course be necessary.) In eating the oyster we eat this albuminising process, a process which is the antithesis to the antimonising process. Through its absorption we promote and stimulate all that leads in man to typhoid manifestations. The consumption of oysters is an extraordinarily interesting operation. It activates the formative force, that is the albuminising force, within the human abdomen. This relieves the head, drawing certain forces downwards, so that after eating oysters man feels much less burdened by the forces which tend to work in his head. Oysters empty the head, in a sense. And we have need of developing the albuminising forces continually, for we cannot let our head continually be charged with formative forces. But the habitual epicure in oysters exaggerates this, and strives at all costs for an empty head. By so doing, he increases the possibility of a downward eruption of certain forces towards the abdomen, as I have already described, that is to say he promotes the tendency in the lower organic sphere to diarrhœa and typhoid. And as you will readily perceive, such a condition demands antimonial treatment. There would be good results in stimulating the forces to which appeal must be made, if the typhlitic tendency is to be combated in its innermost stronghold, by administration of antimony externally and internally at the same time; especially rubbing with antimonial ointment and simultaneously taking by the mouth antimony in high potency. These would be mutually regulated and thus react beneficially on the typhlitic tendency.

Such are treatments that attempt to realise man within his whole universal surroundings. The significance of such a method is shown if you investigate man's relationships and reactions to such manifestations in nature as arise from a certain defensive resistance to the direct telluric forces. Plants are able to defend themselves against these direct telluric forces; they store up much of their formative power for their seasons of blossom and seed. Our most frequent type of plant structure, of which most edible plants are examples, is based on the employment of a definite amount of telluric power for the formation of the plant itself. If, however, the plant has a defensive attitude to these telluric forces, it becomes exposed to the extra-telluric forces, when the final processes of fructification and seed-formation ensue; and thus the plant becomes something with an urge to contemplate the world from the same point of vantage as the higher beings of the realms above the vegetable. The plant shows an urge to perceive. But the plant has no specialised structures for that purpose: it remains a plant, and yet it has the urge to develop something analogous to the formation of the human eye. But no eye can develop, in what is, after all, neither a human nor an animal body but the body of a plant. And so the plant becomes a deadly nightshade, Atropa Belladonna. I have tried to show by means of pictures what takes place in the emergence of the fruit of belladonna. That plant has already in its roots the force culminating in the growth of its black berries, and with this it becomes akin to all that urges in the human organism towards moulding the form and beyond. It urges towards things only possible in the sensory sphere, lifting man out of the world of his organisation into the sphere of the senses. A process of extraordinary interest occurs, if small potentised quantities of belladonna are administered. This is because it bears a striking resemblance to the process of awakening from sleep which is still interwoven with dreams. In such an awakening, interspersed with dreams, the process is within the limits of normality. In awakening, when perception has not yet begun but when sense perception is still inwardly potentised to the permeation of the consciousness with dreams, there is actually always a kind of deadly nightshade activity in man. And belladonna poisoning consists in the provocation of this same process that occurs when in awaking dreams still hold their sway; but the process called forth in man by belladonna poison is made lasting, not taken up into consciousness, but the transition phenomena remain. This is the interesting point, that the processes which are caused in man by toxic action, are of such a nature that at the right tempo they are part of the whole human organisation.

As I have already described, the birth of the belladonna means a frantic and excessive urge towards becoming man. And further it might be said that the awakening from sleep in man has something of the nature of an urge towards atropa belladonna: but an urge held in leash and tuned down: confined to the moment of waking. Now suppose you wish to relieve the body of the internal albuminising processes, influencing the organism so that the too powerful albuminising is retarded and the bodily event, so to speak, deflected towards the soul, so that the bodily processes become hallucinations—then give potentised doses of belladonna. Thus you will lift something into the soul, something of which you wish to relieve the body. This is the essence of what we meet in the usual macroscopic operation of belladonna—although here again full of perplexities and illusions, as I have already pointed out. Of course, if you give the human being a shock that prevents the normal passage over from the state of awakening to that of full waking consciousness, and makes permanent the transitional state—well, you kill him. For man is always in danger of death during that brief transition of awakening—but we awake so rapidly that we escape that peril. Such are the interesting inter-actions between what is accepted as normal, and is sound in measure and tempo, and what becomes anti-normal as soon as it exceeds that measure and tempo.

It seems to me that these were the processes that the physicians of old time sought ever and again to pursue. If they spoke of the creation of the Homunculus, they did so because their surviving clairvoyant faculties revealed something resembling the phantom of antimony. For there appeared to them, in the forming process which they carried out in their laboratory when antimony unfolded its forces, something projected into it by their own nature, which fights against the power of antimony as albuminising force. That appeared to them as a definite force. That which normally remains concealed within the human organism, they projected externally, and thus they beheld the Homunculus, who appeared during the various metamorphoses of antimony. What appeared in the interplay of these processes and metamorphoses they saw as the Homunculus.

If the study of medicine is to be continued in a way that gives benefit to mankind, a place must be found for what I have tried to indicate in these chapters: the “thinking together” of the whole human organism, in both sickness and health, with the forces, substances and processes in the external world. Only thus can a bridge be built between the trend of natural science, which becomes more and more exclusively diagnostic and the attempt to provide therapeutic methods and preparations. In order, however, to do this successfully, we must first acquire a general view and conception of man, must illuminate him, as it were, through spiritual science, from the point where man as he is today stands in a certain relation to the outside world. This relation is most highly evolved in the interplay of the external senses with the environment and they have relatively little to do with the internal physical processes of our bodies, as for instance the sense activities of the eye. But as soon as we enter the domain of the lower senses such as smell and taste, we at once perceive how what is external in man connects itself inwardly with the surrounding world. For up to a certain point, man's digestion is nothing but a transformation and continuation of sense-activity. Up to the point where the foodstuffs are passed from the intestinal process to the action of lymph and blood formation—all that occurs is fundamentally a metamorphosis of sense-activity, which is the more organic in its manifestations the lower its evolutionary grade. So that up to the point I have denoted, we must recognise that the digestive process is a continuation of the sense of taste.

Now if such a fact were estimated at its true value, the ground would be prepared, first of all for a whole system of dietetics, and then for the recognition of wholesome and necessary methods of treatment in this region. Gradually, too, we should be able to recognise injuries and impairments there. Consider, for instance, the following fact. Follow the operation of—for example—ammoniac salt on the human organism. The adherent of current natural science will say that salts of ammonia, if administered in the form of salmiac, act primarily on what such current theory obliges him to call—the muscular motoric nervous system of the heart.

But this whole nervous system which is supposed to be motoric is an absurdity. As I have sufficiently emphasised, there is no difference between the sensory and the motor nerves. The whole conception of such a distinction is absurd. The matter in question is entirely different. So long as the ammoniac salts retain their efficacy—let us say within the area of the body between the processes of taste and of blood formation—there is also a continuous process of taste in the interior of the organism. This continued process of taste is at the same time a process in the astral body and releases a reflex action in that body, which is manifested in perspiration. If you can accept the whole of the earlier stages of our digestive activities as a continued process of taste, you will see right into the very core of the sebaceous process, and to some extent of the urinary excretion as well. For let me ask you to consider this: if we observe the main activity of this area, we find that essentially it has to do with an absorption of foodstuffs taken into the body secretion of the organism. That is the essence of what happens. All the processes in question reduce themselves—more or less—to this dissolving effect of the bodily fluids upon the foodstuffs. And this dissolving process has its counter-process, which consists in the special activities of the liver and the spleen. Thus in our earlier discussions the hepatic and splenetic activities had to be associated, in the main, with aqueous and fluid activities. But, in contrast to the dissolving effect in the first region of the digestive process, the liver's action operates as encapsulation, encirclement and re-transformation of what has been done in the first part of the digestive process. One may obtain a picture of what happens if one looks at the effect produced by throwing a handful of salt into warm water. The salt disperses and dissolves—this is an image of the action in the digestive tract, until the foodstuffs are absorbed into the blood-vessels and lymph channels. Now let me place beside the salt and water, some little globules of quicksilver, with their imperative urge to roundness, to completion, to organising and shaping. This is an image of the action which begins after the absorption of foodstuffs into the blood and lymph channels, and is controlled from the liver, with its close association with man's astral body.

We must look into the processes of life from this standpoint. For then we pass naturally to the study of the external world as revealed, for instance, in the structure of salt and of mercury formation respectively. We can read from the facts of the external world the gist of what must happen within the organism. But man must always be observed in connection with this external world.

Now follow further these ammoniacal salts; and note that if they pass into the formation of the blood, they have an alkalising effect. They have gone far enough on their appointed path to extend their operation into the upper human sphere from the lower, and to provoke reactions in that upper sphere. The significant fact here is, however, the complete reversal of processes that takes place. What happens may be stated as follows. The upper sphere in man is normally urged to act through sense perception in the lower digestive tracts, that is, to perceive through the sense of taste; but now the whole process is reversed—the lower sphere inclines more towards conscious perception, and the upper inclines towards that which works upon perception. The result is that whereas formerly there was a reflex action, which I have characterised as proceeding from the astral body, there is now a reflex action from below, that is to say, of an action which originates in the upper sphere. So that—to use a technical term—the ciliary epithelia, for instance, vibrate more rapidly and the pulmonary secretion increases. There is a reversed action. At first, the dissolving process stimulates the liver's activity, and then, through this encapsulating hepatic activity, the dissolving operation of the region above the liver—namely of the lungs—is called into action, with the secretion of the upper organs instead of the dissolution in the lower. That is the path in the human organism; from the intake of the substance, through dissolution or liquefaction, through saline processes to formative processes and concurrently, the processes of dispersal which are comparable to combustion and evaporation. Now let us think on the one hand of drops of quicksilver, and boiling liquid on the other, in constant evaporation, giving forth steam—which we might term phosphoric-sulphurous action, a process in which, as it were, inorganic matter is kindled. Then one has the activity developed in the opposite group of organs, that is to say in the lower sphere, but also in all that is associated with the lungs in the upper man.

If we have grasped the main currents of this internal activity, we have the key to what it can incorporate from the external world. If you will call to mind our very recent lectures, you will realise that all the stages of dental formation are a very peripheral activity of the human organism. They soon, therefore, become wholly external, tending to mineralisation, as has been pointed out. I hope this term will not be misunderstood; there has been, I think, some misinterpretation. I said that because the process of dental formation is so extremely peripheral, it is justifiable to use external technique, including the mechanics of dentistry because other forms of external help are impracticable, if the trend to mineralisation has gone too far, and the teeth are decaying. In such cases, it is only possible to apply mechanical treatment to what has mineralised externally. And mechanics here include all manner of dental repairs. Such external aid is necessary and justifiable if the teeth have become defective beyond the point at which they can no longer get what they need from within. But care must be taken of the supply from within of this process of fluorine formation which the whole organism also needs. When the teeth cannot carry out their fluorine activity, a substitute must be created for the process of fluorine in the organism. The replacement can be supplied in a certain way, but we must duly consider the reversal process—which has just been outlined.

What is the reality of this whole emergence of the teeth? It is nothing less than a movement of the mineralising process from within outwards. When the second teeth are all through the gums, this pushing outward of the mineralisation has reached completion. It is opposed by the process of sexualisation, which again drives from outside, inwards; and these two opposite processes act and counteract one another, as in a rhythm. In the same measure as the process of dentition becomes complete, the process of sexualisation proceeds apace at the opposite pole. And in recognising this you will also become aware of another process directed inwards and backwards, and also a polar opposite to dental formation and function, and actually closely associated with it; namely the peristaltic motion of the intestines. Here, then, are two intimately connected processes. Thus all that appertains to intestinal peristalsis is closely associated with what on the other hand builds up the teeth. This peristaltic movement is inwardly connected with the utilisation of fluorine in the human organism. It may be said that whenever the intestinal peristalsis proceeds more rapidly and with greater vigour than is consonant with any individual constitution, there is a reactive effect detrimental to the teeth and especially to all the normal function of fluorine in the human organism. So it will be necessary, in cases where the teeth are extremely defective, for the dentist to suggest a slackening of the whole intestinal function. This may be done externally by prescribing rest, should this be practicable for the patient, or by the administration of sedatives to the digestion, thus diminishing the vigour of the intestinal movements somewhat, though not to any great extent.

The regulation of these functions is of special significance; it is promoted by means of the limb exercises which I have already mentioned These exercises follow regular rules and apply to arms, hands, legs and feet. Especially beneficial is the control of movement through eurhythmy—because eurhythmy permeates movements with soul. If however the gymnastic exercises lie too much in the merely physiological realm, the pendulum swings too far on the other side and the results may easily be the reverse of what is desired. This is the reason why, for example, the excessive amount of ordinary dance movements that many young girls are expected to undergo may react harmfully on dental formation, and why one need not ask why girls who dance so much have, as a rule, more defective teeth than boys. The point is that dancing should not be exaggerated and should be permeated with soul. And what of the hands? The movements proper to knitting and crochet work can be and often are performed to excess, and in such cases we find results diametrically opposed to the benefits which a sound employment of this handicraft can bring to mankind.

Thus even in the sphere of mechanical ostensible movement there is a reversal of processes. In the first place the dental process is a reversal of the digestive. Moreover the human power of locomotion, of forward movement from place to place, in the external world, is a reversal of the movement interiorised in the process of digestion. It means very much for the constitutional health of mankind that man moves forwards, but that the digestive processes are mainly directed from front to rear. This is extremely important, and it is possible to do something for the alleviation of inert digestive processes, by accustoming the patient to practise walking backwards, as a form of gymnastics. There will be a stimulating effect on the function in question. Such empirical observations, based on collections of case notes, become coherent and unite into an understandable totality, if we turn the light of spiritual science upon the whole constitution of man.

Another point may be brought to your attention. There is no doubt whatever of the remarkable effect of Nux Vomica on man. On what does the action of nux vomica depend? Let us observe its action under special circumstances, and we shall have a glimpse into its inherent operations. Study the effect of an administration of nux vomica in what is known as a “hangover”; this will give you the key to its effect. There is a real reversal of all human organic activity under the after-effects of alcohol. For a “hangover” is the continuation of a process which is vividly at work in the upper digestive tract. It occurs if the natural internal activities following indulgence in wine, beer, or champagne, which are normal up to the incorporation of these substances in the formation of blood and lymph, pass the boundary line and affect these latter processes. If that occurs, the regions of the human organism which have as their proper office the liquefaction and dissolution are changed into a kind of sense organ, and instead of the man turning his main sense attention and activity to the world without, and communicating with that external world, and all the phenomena of earth, he is obliged through the damage done by drinking to perceive his own interior. For his own organism now contains processes strongly resembling those of the whole external world. Beyond the intestinal activities, into the very lymph and blood activity there has been inserted an internal replica of the earth's processes, an external world in miniature, an external world within the organism. The man thus makes himself inwardly into an external world, and most painfully and unpleasantly perceives inside himself that which does not disturb in the least if perceived in the external environment. For the human interior is not adapted to become an earth in miniature, but should withdraw from the earth's processes. The man however, in such conditions, makes a little earth in his own interior; something which would be far better placed, if it could be removed outside into full observation and surrounded with the apparatus of sense perception. He is now, however, compelled to perceive and receive sensation by means of an interior, so to speak “turned inside out.”

Nux vomica counteracts all these phenomena, by suppressing the sensitivity to this artificially external-internal state, until natural recuperation asserts itself, which is generally soon after excessive alcoholic indulgences. By suppressing this sensitivity, the interiorised external process is not disturbed; and nux vomica has a healthy effect, by modifying and reducing the continuation of the metamorphosed process of taste. When much modified, this metamorphosed process of taste no longer acts disturbingly on what lies beyond it. Thus some measure of cure is brought about.

Now, assume that the exact contrary occurs. Instead of an enhancement of the continued process of taste—namely of liquefaction—the process is weakened, so that the food substances are insufficiently dissolved. Assume the following: instead of the liquefaction of food-intake at the normal rate and amount, and instead of the food being taken up into the saline process, the interior of man proves too weak to carry this through. In this case the upper digestive tract works in the same way as though nux vomica were administered; it operates by itself, with the help of another process; and the insufficiently dissolved foodstuffs will try to adapt themselves to this change. They cannot pass over the boundary between the activity that causes taste, and the activity that builds up the blood, and they therefore seek an outlet in the opposite direction. Thus that condition arises which can be combated by quickening the dissolving process, whereas it is slowed down through the effect of nux vomica. And all that seeks the wrong outlet may be combated by administering Thuya. There you have the polar opposition between nux vomica and thuya, developed out of the functions of human nature itself. This is another proof of the need to regard constantly the totality of the human constitution, for these inherent polarities of the human organism are of inestimable significance.

All the activities whose trend is to force the processes of the lower organic sphere of mankind into the upper, are enhanced during sleep. It is necessary to take great care in describing sleep. Sleep is indeed one of the best of remedies, but only if employed to the right amount, neither too much nor too little, so that it suits the particular human individuality. Too much more sleep than the individual in question can sustain—is not curative, but toxic. During a too long spell of sleep, the internal barrier to which reference has been made lets through a continuous infiltration; too much passes through from the first digestive area into the region of blood and lymph formation. Man is exposed to this danger quite generally; the lower organic sphere is in a permanent state of sleep, so that man is always in danger of harmful effects on the blood through the processes of the lower organic sphere. But man also carries the antidote to this toxic process; an antidote proportioned to the normal conditions of our organism. The normal human organism tends to auto-intoxication through sleep; but this tendency is counterpoised and held in leash through the iron content of the blood. For iron is first and foremost the metal of most importance to the interior of man. Iron operates so as to restore the balance in case of an excessive impact of the first process on the other. Just as diseases can be understood through the deficiency in the blood, from the points just emphasised, you will have a curative effect on the organism if you administer iron in much diluted form, so that it is truly akin to the continuous homeopathising process of the upper human sphere; you will help the organism to master the disturbing processes which pass upwards from below. The other essential metallic processes of importance to man, are, as you have seen, replaced by our human functions themselves.

In this connection I want once more briefly, to recapitulate the conclusions to be drawn from the whole spirit of these lectures. Today we have again referred to the blood and lymph formative processes in man. This activity is polar to what arises in the mineralising process in the case of copper. There is thus an affinity between these processes and the metal copper. We must clearly realise that these processes belong to the lower organic sphere, although in its uppermost portion; and that the affinity with copper is such as to constitute a powerful attraction towards the copper-forming force itself, as we find it upon the earth. For all that appertains to the lower organic sphere in man, has kinship with the telluric processes. Therefore, if we aim at influencing that region by the administration of copper, we should make it a golden rule to administer copper here in low potencies, so that its action resembles that in the telluric sphere, and of course not in doses large enough to cause harm.

A similar kinship as between the inner process of blood and lymph formation and copper, is present between all processes leading the outer digestive process into the internal metabolism that forms blood and lymph, with the liver on the one hand and the metal mercury on the other. Just as the former process has affinity to copper, so the other process is akin to quicksilver or mercury. But we must remember the spherical, i.e., rounded, and balancing qualities of quicksilver; it is therefore linked up with the interactions between these two processes. But the processes which man must unfold in order that not too much digestive matter should pass into the blood, and which are activated by the effects of nux vomica and combated by the effects of thuya, are in their turn regulated by the forces of silver.

Thus we have the field clear before us, and are in a position to examine external nature according to these constituents, conceiving it, so to say, as a human being spread out and displayed, so that we are able to fit man into the environment, whether in health or disease; for the lower organic sphere is in particularly close connection with the environment. The processes which ascend from the lower to the upper sphere in man, through their kinship with the forces of copper, are regulated and balanced by copper's opponent: iron. Thus iron is an absolute necessity for man; there must always be a surplus of ferrous processes, to use a chemical term. All other metallic processes are present within us as processes: mankind is as it were a sevenfold metal. Iron alone is within us in its typical iron state; the other metals are only present as processes.

Just as all that collaborates with blood and lymph formation in our organs is akin to copper, so all that opens outwards from lungs to larynx, with its starting point in the lungs, is akin to iron. Furthermore, the regions associated with those portions of the brain which serve internal functions, which in fact are more similar to the digestive activity of the brain, and correspond alternately with the transitional processes from the intestines to the channels of lymph and blood:—these are allied with the processes that form tin. These tin-formative processes have the effect, so to speak, of ensouling and regulating the digestive functions in the particular tracts and stages mentioned. Finally all that is more connected with the nerve fibres, and the organs of the upper human sphere that may be regarded as continuations of the senses, have lead as their affinity; and this also corresponds to the liquid secretions or excretions, whether sebaceous or urinary.

Such are the affinities and correspondences illuminating the nature of man, and at the same time indicating how we can extract remedial effects from counter-processes in the substances of the external world. But we must keep one point quite clearly in our minds. Spiritual Science must point out particularly that so-called “mental diseases” in many respects have their main seat in the bodily organs, whilst, concurrently, “organic diseases” are closely interwoven with spiritual and soul factors. This is a chapter of peculiar difficulty. The materialism of today explores and handles so-called physical sickness on wholly chemical or mechanical lines, treating man more or less as an apparatus. At the same time, in its diagnosis of so-called mental sickness, it is reduced to a mere description of psychical symptoms, because this contemporary materialism has lost any comprehensive view of the connection between the soul and spiritual nature on the one hand, and the bodily and physical nature on the other.

This close association reveals itself particularly if we study concrete cases of the interplay between the soul state and the bodily health condition. Let us inquire into what promotes mental diseases. If an individual falls ill, subjective symptoms appear at first, pains, unusual sensations, etc. These manifestations which are most conspicuous in acute cases and change their nature if the condition becomes chronic, are the initial actions of the soul and spirit, in response to any organic injury; soul and spirit withdraw from the organ in question. The pain that is felt is the retirement or withdrawal of ego and astral body from the physical and etheric bodies. This process may coincide with a withdrawal of the etheric body from the physical; but the main and essential origin of pain is located in the ego and astral body. As a rule the ego is still strong enough to be aware of the whole subjective counter-process, the conscious counter-process of what happens in the bodily organs. If a illness becomes chronic, the process gradually falls away from the ego, so to speak, and as a result the soul's processes are restricted to the astral body, and the ego no longer shares in the sufferings of the astral together with the etheric body. And so organic disease may become chronic, the acute condition become permanent. Here we have to do with soul symptoms, which withdraw from consciousness. If we are to become symptomatologists we must go below the surface in man. Instead of asking the patients how they feel, and where they suffer pain, we should inquire whether they sleep well and are ready for work. That is to say, in chronic states of illness, we must look for symptoms in conditions which cover greater spaces of time and are related to man's general development; whereas in acute illnesses we may consider momentary subjective sensations as significant. In chronic cases, we should have more regard to the whole course of the life in question, than to the individual clinical symptoms.

Ordinary physical illness of chronic type arises if the whole morbid condition can be so retained in some organ that the astral and etheric bodies can both take their due share of the organic effects and contribute as much force to the parts in question as is necessary. The patient may be of an individual constitution able to endure an irregular function of the astral body, working through the etheric into the organ affected. If such is the case, and the patient is able to bear such abnormal operation of the astral body on the liver, for instance, and to carry it beyond a certain critical point, so that, as it were, the liver ceases to feel that the astral body operates abnormally: the organ recovers, but at the cost of habituation to abnormal and irregular action of the astral body. If such action goes on long enough, it begins to choose the other way into the soul sphere: what the liver should take up into the physical body is shifted into the soul region, and we have the symptoms of depression. Thus, if the man surmounts chronic illness beyond a certain point of abnormal relation with the astral body, a disposition has been established towards so-called mental disease.

To regard the subject in this light would bring us further than the mere pathological description. There is much talk today of the irregular course of concepts, of the irregular course of will action, and so forth. But so long as science does not know how the remarkable collaboration of liver, spleen and other abdominal organs actually support what finally emerges in its highest soul form as the human will, so long will it fail to discover the relevant physical correspondence for pathography. It should be possible to introduce the physical treatment in so-called mental cases. It seems indeed paradoxical that it should be left for spiritual science to advocate physical treatment for so-called mental diseases and to emphasise the importance of the soul as a factor in the cure of bodily ills. But this apparent paradox is due to the powerful antithesis between the upper and lower spheres in man. With this reversal is connected what happens if the sensory activity set in train from outside, becomes an internal sensory activity, as in the continued process of taste, mentioned above; or again, as in cases where what is within discharges itself externally through the vibration of the ciliary epithelia, or in the tendency to such epithelia vibration. In the interactions of the upper and lower bodily spheres lies a clue which can show the way to certain results, if it be read aright.

Now, my friends, I have tried to put many considerations on many subjects before you, in these twenty lectures. Before I began the course, I told myself, in viewing all the subject matter, that it would be a difficult thing to do for where could one begin? If one were to start with the elementary facts, it would be impossible to get very far in the allotted space and time; no farther, in fact, than would furnish a guide, or a rough guiding thread. If, on the other hand, one starts at the apex, so to speak, with purely occult facts, it becomes almost impossible to build any bridge to the medical science of today. This would require even more time for explanation and argument. And indeed, whereever the far-reaching ravages of materialism have been recognised today, one also sees the need to counteract these injuries from another approach. I beg of you to take what I say in the most friendly spirit, and not as propaganda or as ex parte statements. I do not wish to “take sides,” but simply to put before you the facts as they really are. One thing alone may and must be stated: in reviewing contemporary medicine of the allopathic school, we become aware of one inevitable consequence of that path, namely, the tendency to judge the sick person according to certain by-effects of the disease, as exemplified in the bacterial theory; the diversion to secondary issues. If bacteriology were treated as an aid on the way to knowledge, it would be of great service; much may be learnt from the specific types of micro-organisms, regarding the illness in question, for each specific kind of bacillus appears under the influence of quite definite primary causes. There is always opportunity for verifying this. But this pronounced tendency to take what is secondary for what is primary and basic as shown, for instance, in the investigation of the effects of bacteria on the separate human organs—instead of the study of the totality of the human organism, as a potential soil for bacteria, is an error which not only makes its appearance in the accepted bacteriology of allopathic medicine, but lies implicit in the whole attitude and point of view. In this way harm is done which it would be superfluous to enumerate in detail, as you will have had ample occasion to perceive it for yourselves.

On the other hand, however, I must ask you to forgive me if I point out that a scrutiny of homeopathic medicine does not always furnish satisfactory results. True, homeopathy attempts to handle the human being as a whole; it forms a comprehensive picture of all the symptoms, and attempts to build a bridge to therapy. But the professional literature of homeopathy brings to light something else calling for comment. At the first glance one is almost in despair, for especially in the therapeutic literature, we find the remedies enumerated one after another and each recommended for an entire legion of illnesses. It is never easy to discover specific indications from the literature, for everything is beneficial for so very much! I will admit that for the present, perhaps, this is unavoidable. But it is also a source of danger. And this danger can only be avoided if we proceed as we have sought to do here, even if on elementary lines, and by indications rather than in detail. Therefore I have selected elementary facts as the content of these lectures, and not—so to speak—the very summit of the finished structure. This can only be remedied if through such an inner study of human and extra-human nature one ascends to the narrowing of the compass of a medicinal remedy, to its delimitation. But this can only come about if we not only study the effects of a remedy on both the sick and the healthy, but gradually endeavour to view the whole universe as an integral unity, and man as involved in it. For example—as I tried to show yesterday—we should trace the whole antimonising process, in order to learn the effects of antimony in the external world, and to correlate these results with the effects of antimony within the human interior. Through this method, certain circumscribed areas—so to speak—are defined in the external world, which then have their interconnections with man.

Such were the reasons why I put the elementary considerations into the foreground of these twenty lectures. Nature—therapy, since it instinctively tries to revive in man the remedial forces contained in himself, makes it necessary to point out the true origin of these forces. Their true basis and origin is the interaction of the telluric with the extra-telluric sphere. And nature-therapy must above all avoid drifting into materialism; for we have come to such a pass today that every party programme, so to speak, has a materialistic tendency. This is a feature common to all of them. And thus there is an urgent need for a spiritualisation of this whole field. The world of today, however, very much opposes these things. It is in fact essential that the cure for materialism should appear in the very field of medicine represented by experts and specialists. For what has been attempted here and is perhaps even now in its first stage of development, must not be confused with any furtherance of dilettantism. I attach the greatest importance to the co-operation of those who are able to testify to our effort to work on proper scientific lines: to their co-operation and support in fighting the very harmful prejudice against us on the score of encouraging dilettantism in any direction. We have already availed ourselves of all the achievements of modern science and taken them into account. There is but little desire, however, to see our actual aims and intentions.

This is the note on which this series of lectures can fitly close. It may induce you to regard the series with all indulgence as a beginning, an introduction; and, in the outset of this introduction, as I said to myself, it was indeed hard, for the reasons already recapitulated, to know where best to begin. But now, my friends, that we have reached the end of this beginning, I confess that it is harder still to conclude. Yes, indeed, not to tell you all that there is yet to say—is more painful still.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Life ether
Chemical ether

Light ether
Warmth ether

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ego = Death

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

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

Astral body = Illness

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

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

Etheric body = Health

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

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

Physical body = Nutrition

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

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

Ego = Death
Astral body = Illness

Etheric body = Health
Physical body = Nutrition

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We find the proper domain for studying diseases in those illnesses that reveal most clearly the improper influence of the so-called astral body. Such illnesses, in which the influences of the astral body are most evident, can be observed within the thoracic cavity. This domain, which is the most important for the study of illness, is at the same time the most difficult one for healing, for the knowledge of healing. It is this aspect of human nature which is ultimately responsible for the deficiencies in the art of medicine that were especially emphasized by Dr. Scheidegger in his lecture given during the first medical course last year. He explained how recent medical developments have led to advances in the domain of pathology but to a kind of nihilism in therapeutics. His significant presentation brought into clear focus the need for a careful study of what we must stress today.

Illnesses in the region of the human blood and circulation are, in one respect, very different from those of the head organs and nerve-sense aspects of man, and different again from illnesses of metabolism, though they are intimately connected with both. The fact is that the head organization has to be treated in a special way, because it is permeable—as we have seen—to the etheric, astral, and ego-being. In the chest the organs are not permeable to the etheric but only to the astral and ego-being. In the chest organs the etheric and physical bodies work intimately together, cooperating as a unity. There is no longer a sum of physical processes in the human chest organism, but rather a cooperation of the etheric and the physical. A process of becoming plant-like is taking place here, and this must be taken into account particularly in the chest. However, this process of becoming plant-like is well-concealed and much modified by everything else connected with it in the human organism. Nevertheless, we must consider a plant process when dealing with the chest organs, which then interacts with everything coming from the astral and ego of the human being. This must be carefully noted.

I said yesterday that the astral is the original bearer of all that which causes illness in the human being. Therefore, in the human chest region there is a persistant inclination for the tendencies that produce illness to have an influence, because the tendencies to illness and health constantly alternate in the human chest organs. Indeed, the normal condition in the human being is like that of a pendulum swinging back and forth: the strong forces of the healthy human being paralyze the forces of illness that are continually present, and the reverse is also true, that overflowing health, which would lead to excessive proliferation in the etheric, is constantly opposed by the restricting power of the astral, which causes illness when it exceeds its limit and grips the body too strongly. This state of affairs in the human chest organs is of particular importance because it is the result of a rhythm.

This result of a rhythm is influenced on the one hand by everything taking place in the head and on the other hand by everything taking place in the metabolism. Hence we must look for the source of equilibrium of this necessary rhythm outside the chest. In the human chest organs themselves, we find only the effects—the sources that must then be eliminated when illness arises are not really present in these organs themselves. Hence at the time when the faculties of human cognition had lost their intuitive grasp of things, the prevailing tendency in medicine led to helplessness in regard to therapy, which was then by degrees eliminated. It was felt that one had to remain with pathology and not even approach therapy. This was the case primarily in the Viennese school of medicine where this tendency took on a brilliant form. This school has therefore been called the nihilistic school. The particular genius of this school is most evident in the diagnosis of chest complaints.

At this same time, significant advances were made in this field, in which it is possible to acquire more and more knowledge but gain practically nothing from it. The other parts of the human being simply must be taken into account. Little is accomplished through mere knowledge of what is going on in the human respiratory and circulatory organisms. Of course, I do not mean that absolutely nothing can be accomplished, but the knowledge gained by the stethoscope and so on can only accomplish something significant if we also have knowledge of the entire human being and are able, from quite another direction, to “come to grips”—in a literal sense—with what the diagnosis reveals. The disclosures of such a diagnosis are basically only interesting scientific facts. In order to characterize such things, of course, I have to present them somewhat radically, but behind these strong statements you will find the truth.

Especially regarding these illnesses afflicting the human chest, the attempt is made in modern times to divert attention from the actual situation to a mystical concept—a concept that does not need to remain mystical, although for modern materialism it has certainly remained so: These illnesses are spoken of as “epidemics.” This concept is really a sack to be filled with what one does not want to understand and what—in a certain respect—eludes medical art today. In this regard I will draw your attention to a very interesting fact. A Viennese doctor, Moriz Benedikt, stood as a candidate for the Imperial Parliament. The motive for his candidacy was precisely his experience as a physician. He felt that this experience forced him to such a step, because so many patients came to him for whom he was unable to prescribe what he should prescribe for them, namely, better clothes, better living spaces, improved air, etc. These things could come about only through social activity and therefore he felt the need to place himself into social-political life. Here the real issue is actually shoved away. Behind all these things there is something else that must be considered. For in order to deal with the processes of illness found in the human chest organism, we must take into account their origin in the irregular interaction between the astral and the etheric. Such an understanding cannot be gained without a mode of cognition willing to ascend to some degree into the super-sensible.

The process of breathing that takes place between the outer world and the inner world cannot be understood at all without recourse to an understanding of the astral. In the interchange of carbon and oxygen we have a continuous interplay of the astral and the etheric. You must bear in mind that the human being normally spends one third of his life with a large part of his astral body outside the etheric body—that is, during sleep. In this you can see the significant role of the astral in the conditions of human health, for it is obvious that during sleep the astral is active in the human being, acting not from the head but from the rest of the organism. The astral body thus makes use of an activity during sleep that must remain in the organism in the right way even when the part of the astral that penetrates through the head is outside the human being during sleep.

Therefore you can see that by knowing about the interplay between the astral and etheric in healthy and diseased conditions of the human chest, we are led to yet another rhythm running its course in the human being, the rhythm of waking and sleeping. Actual sleep, which, as we have seen, is strongly bound up with the metabolic process, has less significance for the chest organs than does something else; this other aspect is extraordinarily difficult to observe. Those of you who were present may remember the interesting symptom-complexes that result from the use of substances demonstrated in experiments conducted here last time. Dr. Scheidegger demonstrated this on the board. You will also remember, however, that these symptom-complexes consist of many, many details, and that it requires a certain kind of art to group separate symptoms together. For example, an immediate difficulty arises when we try to do the following with a complex of symptoms. To judge an illness correctly, we have to group together the symptoms occurring in the upper human being. It is possible to be confused about a symptom occurring spatially in the upper human being that is essentially only a symptom forced up from the metabolism. One can make a mistake in judging this complex of symptoms and thereby be led astray in one's diagnosis of the illness as a whole. Thus we should not lose sight of how difficult it is to group together the individual aspects of a symptom-complex in the right way.

Of course it is certainly true that a feeling can gradually be acquired for the right way to group the individual aspects of a complex of symptoms. On the other hand, nature—although helping us here to some extent—at the same time makes it extraordinarily difficult for us to use the help that she provides in this realm. Nature herself groups the symptoms together. You could say that she does just what we do with our formula when we group together the individual aspects of a symptom-complex, but she makes it exceptionally difficult for us to observe what she is doing. That is, she concentrates the individual aspects of a symptom-complex into the very way one falls asleep or awakens.

In fact, what happens when a person falls asleep or awakens is an exceptionally brilliant condensation of what must be taken into account here. Of course, the physician is very seldom in a position to observe his patient when falling asleep or when awakening. He must usually depend upon what he is told by the patient, and this will be very inexact in many cases, especially in difficult situations. He is simply not in the position to observe the patient when he falls asleep and awakens. And what the patient tells him, even if, depending on the patient's consciousness, his description is accurate, is nevertheless most unreliable. If falling asleep and awakening are disturbed, the patient naturally tells us things about them that may well live in his consciousness but that do not provide a sound basis for judging his condition. We must be able to see through what the patient relates.

You will realize the truth of what I am telling you if you deliberate on these facts more and more carefully. You will find it most possible to realize the remarkable connection between the etheric and astral bodies if you observe how sorrow and worries continue to work in a person. You should not observe the sorrows and worries merely of the last few days or weeks—these are actually the least significant—but those lying farther back. A certain period must elapse between the time when sorrows and worries overtake a person and the time when they have become organic, when they have passed over into the workings of the organism. Sorrows and worries that reach a certain intensity always appear later as anomalies in organic function, especially in the rhythmic activity of the organism. They work in the organism to the point of disturbing the rhythmic organism, making it irregular, and then they are able to work further on the metabolic organism and so on. This is a fundamental fact on which we must focus our attention.

We can observe such a consequence above all when we consider the effect of hasty thinking, improbable as it may seem to the materialistic frame of mind. It really is so that hasty thinking, a thinking where one thought jumps over the other, which is a fundamental evil of human thinking in our time—this thinking, where one thought steps on the toes of another, continues to work on, after a period of time, into the human organism, and especially into the rhythmic organism. This has particular significance here.

The soul processes must not be overlooked if we wish to understand the abnormalities of the human rhythmic organism, particularly what takes place in his chest organs. Of course, we can also include the rhythms of nourishment and elimination, belonging in a sense to the periphery of this rhythmic organism. Only by including the rhythm of nourishment and the rhythm of elimination is the rhythmic system fully encompassed.

Something else is also of special importance. The other pole of man's being, the metabolic system, works back upon the rhythmic system. Perhaps we can best understand the way in which the metabolic system works back upon the rhythmic system when we realize that to begin with hunger and thirst are phenomena revealed very clearly in the human astral body. As known to the ordinary human being, hunger and thirst are, of course, astral phenomena. What we experience in consciousness, such as hunger or thirst, is to begin with experienced astrally. You must be perfectly clear about this. The ordinary person knows nothing about what he does not experience astrally. What he experiences only etherically lies so deep in the subconscious that he knows nothing about it.

Thus in ordinary life hunger and thirst are astral experiences, but they cease to be astral experiences when they linger on in the experience that unfolds during sleep. They then cease to be ordinary astral experiences but are nonetheless connected with the astral body, which acts in sleep from below upward. Persistent hunger and thirst work back on the rhythmic system, making it irregular and producing illness. This obviously does not apply to hunger and thirst experienced on the day in question and that have gone to sleep with us—it would be wrong to think that. To go to sleep hungry occasionally is not serious; it is only serious if the state of hunger and thirst become habitual, especially if it is produced by a disorder of the metabolic organism so that the rest of the organism is not properly nourished. It is the after-effect of persistent hunger and thirst that underlies these disturbances of the respiratory and circulatory organisms.

Then we must consider a third factor that influences the chest organs; namely, the effects due to the outer world. Through breathing the human being is connected with the outer world, and influences from this world play into him.

Thus you have here a remarkable state of affairs. In the human thoracic cavity—and partly also in the abdominal cavity in so far as the rhythmic process extends there—you have all kinds of influences: influences from the upper human being, influences from the lower human being, influences from the outer world. A more exact knowledge of this tract within the human being therefore leads us to say that effects take their course here, and in this region itself we cannot find the causes for these effects. We must look elsewhere if we are to eliminate the causes in the appropriate way. For this reason it is also clear that, although this realm of the human being provides the domain for studying the nature of illness in general, our investigations that are stimulated by this domain must be extended to other realms. We must begin from this domain in order to progress then to a study of other realms.

Now the most striking and significant realm of causes is that which lies outside the human being and in which the interplay between oxygen and carbon proceeds. In this tract of the human organism the essentially astral influence works from outside. Thus we must look for the corresponding connections between this tract and the outer world. To the spiritual investigator the matter shows itself as follows: on earth there is a reciprocal relationship between what occurs beneath the earth's surface—in which the action of water must be included with the earthly element—and what occurs above its surface. There is a profound process taking place between the earth and its surroundings that ordinary science cannot yet fathom. This process has extraordinarily interesting aspects. It can be studied very well in those realms of the earth where the process taking place between the extra-terrestrial and the terrestrial is very intimate, where a great deal of the extra-terrestrial penetrates into the earth. This is the case in the tropics. The extraordinary conditions there depend on an intimate cooperation between the extra-terrestrial—air, light, and extra-terrestrial warmth—and what is within the earth itself. Moreover, it is not by chance that we find a certain “pole” of magnetic-electric earthly influences in the tropical zone. To use a comparison, you could say that in the tropical zone the earth most strongly sucks in the extra-terrestrial, developing from this extra-terrestrial element what later sprouts up as vegetation. In the polar regions, the earth sucks in little from the extra-terrestrial; it opposes it and actually reflects it to a considerable extent. Thus you could say that the earth, at least as seen from outside, shines least in the tropics, raying back the least, but sucking in the most of the extra-terrestrial influences. At the poles the earth shines most, reflecting most what is extra-terrestrial and developing the greatest luster.

This is an extraordinarily significant fact. When we take it into account, we learn that in the tropics there is a very strong intimacy between the etheric earthly element and the extra-terrestrial astral, whereas at the poles the astral is flung back in a certain way. This insight can prove most fruitful, for on pursuing it we discover a further connection. Let us take the case of a patient whom we expose to conditions in which light is unusually active, the air being strongly penetrated by light. He is thus surrounded by light. This means that we place him into a region where the earthly element that had worked on him is significantly removed and he is exposed to the extra-terrestrial. In strong sunlight we find what the earth no longer needs, what is rejected by the earth. The patient thus enters this region of extra-terrestrial activity. When we take a patient into sun-permeated air it works on his rhythmic organism to a tremendous extent. In this way we can work against an irregular metabolism directly by way of the rhythmic system, for the rhythmic system regulates itself through this exposure to light.

This relationship enables us to recognize the basis of treatment with sun and light. Moreover, if we find someone particularly unable to resist parasitic illnesses, such treatment is especially to be recommended. This does not mean that one has to be an adherent of the germ-theory. You must be clear that the presence of parasites shows that there are deeper causes at work in the patient that account for the accumulation of bacteria and that permit them to remain there. Bacilli are never really the cause of illness; they only indicate that the patient has the causes of the illness within him. Bacteriological research is important on this account, but only as a foundation for research. The actual organic causes lie in the human being himself. These organic causes within the human being are opposed by what streams toward the earth from the extra-terrestrial cosmos, surrounding the earth but not totally absorbed by it. It is a surplus, an “excess-sun,” an “excess-light,” and so on. Thus where the earth not only sprouts but begins to shine, where it contains more light than is necessary for sprouting, we find what acts most favorably in this direction.

Another procedure that also works very favorably in the same direction is the following: If we find a patient especially susceptible to parasitic influences due to his irregular circulatory organism, it will be helpful to send him to a place higher above sea-level than the one to which he is accustomed, that is, to apply a “high altitude treatment.” (Of course, we must take all the other circumstances into account; we will encounter many of these as we proceed.) The beneficial effect of “high altitude treatment” is also to be sought in this direction. Of course, in other cases it may be harmful. Everything that is potentially helpful can also prove harmful, as we saw yesterday.

Now we must consider something else. We must not forget that certain phenomena that are artificially created by us and let loose on the human being first need to be evaluated by us. If I say “artificially produced phenomena,” I am referring to the fact that we do not simply consume the fruits of nature, as they are, but we cook them or prepare them in some way before introducing them into the human organism, first burning them and then using the ash, or something comparable. Here we subject what is earthly itself to a process that absorbs extra-terrestrial effects. When we cook or burn something we release it from what is earthly. Thus, when we give a person something cooked or burnt, we apply something inwardly in a similar way to our exposure of a patient to strong sunlight or high altitudes. We must bear this in mind when we have a patient who requires a certain change of diet on the one hand and on the other some kind of remedy. Let us say he shows an irregular rhythmic system. In all such circumstances we will have to ask ourselves whether we should give him something obtained through the combustion of vegetable matter. In every process of combustion of vegetable matter, we transcend the ordinary plant process. We extend it through an extra-terrestrial element, that is, by combustion.

In addition, however, the following is also particularly significant. In the form of electricity and magnetism, a process on the earth—or a sum of processes—takes place that is intimately connected with what we have had to call the terrestrial and extra-terrestrial. The domain of electricity and magnetism should really be studied more profoundly in relation to health and illness in the human being. This is a realm, however, in which one can easily blunder, for the following reason. If we represent the surface of the earth schematically in this way (see drawing)—here the inner, here the outer—then what constitutes electricity and magnetism has an intimate relationship to the terrestrial as such. You know, of course, that electricity flows by itself from one ground wire to another, from one Morse telegraph station to another. There is always only one conducting wire; the circuit is completed underground. This has to do with the electric field that the earth has already made its own. What is concealed in electricity and magnetism is fundamentally extra-terrestrial and “intra-terrestrial” (yellow); but the earth takes possession of the electrical effects that are extra-terrestrial (blue). The electrical effects, and also the magnetic effects, however, can also be held back in the vicinity of the earth without being appropriated by the earth (red). These are all the electrical and magnetic effects that we have in our electric and magnetic fields.

If we magnetize a piece of iron, we make it into a little thief with regards to the earth. We transfer to it the ability to steal and retain for itself what the earth actually wants to take from cosmic space before the earth has been able to do so. We make a magnet into a little thief. It appropriates for itself, and has the power to retain, what the earth would like for itself. The entire electric and magnetic field we have on earth is actually something we have stolen from the earth for human use; in this way we induce nature herself to steal, thus retaining the extra-terrestrial above. We thus retain an eminently extra-terrestrial element, which we even keep above the earth in a clever way, although the earth, with all the force at its disposal, would like to absorb it so that it may work from within outward. But we do not let it get to this point; we hold it back.

Therefore in the electric and magnetic fields we can expect to find valuable opponents to unrhythmic human processes. We must develop a therapy specially geared to this. For example, if a marked irregularity or powerful disturbance appears in the rhythmic system (or even a weak disturbance; it would actually work better if the disturbance were weak), we might simply hold a strong magnet near the human organism. It should not touch but be held at a greater or lesser distance to be determined by experimentation. As I said, the appropriate distance will need to be established through research.

I would also like to tell you how one can best make use here of previous scientific results. In doing so I do not intend merely to tell you an interesting fact—for outer science is not yet ready for it—but rather to draw your attention to something about which we can acquire quite another complex of thoughts. The Professor Benedikt mentioned above made some very interesting investigations in a dark room on the lowest human auric radiations. These have nothing directly to do with what I have described in my book, Theosophy, for example, though there is an indirect connection. The latter are higher radiations only perceived in the super-sensible. But between these higher radiations and the coarser effects seen by the eye on the human being, there is a domain that can be perceived in a dark room. Professor Benedikt has described his work in the dark room in an interesting way. He used individuals who were sensitive to the phenomena of the divining rod, that is, individuals in whose hands the rod moved significantly. Benedikt investigated the auric radiations of these individuals in a dark room. The following results were obtained. The auric radiations of such individuals differed markedly from those of other people in that there was greater asymmetry: the radiations from the left side of the person were different from those from the right. The head radiation was also quite different.

A beginning has thus already been made in seeing human radiations through physical demonstrations, even though these results are received very skeptically. But we must remain clear that these are only the lowest radiations connected with the human organization. In studying these, one has not yet entered the realm of the super-sensible, as many might maintain who would like super-sensible investigation to be nice and comfortable. Nevertheless, this is a beginning and could have therapeutic results.

For example, one could investigate the effects of applying a magnet to the back of a person in the first stages of tuberculosis; that is, we might let him be irradiated by a magnetic field. This could be made more effective by holding the magnet at a slant, moving it up and down so that gradually the entire chest organism was irradiated by the magnetic field. If this magnetic field is applied we do not need a “light field” at the same time; this would only be a disturbance. We could then put this patient into a dark room and actually observe the radiations from his fingers. These could soon be seen quite clearly. When we do this—put the patient in a dark room, having applied a strong magnet to his back, and observe that fine radiations proceed from the fingertips (cone-shaped, with the apex directed outward)—it is possible to be convinced that he has really been irradiated by the magnetic field. In this way, simply by using a magnetic field, extraordinarily beneficial results can be achieved in working against the manifestations of pulmonary tuberculosis, for example.

These things show us how seriously we must take the statement that only effects occur in the human chest and that we must turn to the environment if we wish to cure; that is, we must apply something from man's environment: light, climatic influences (for instance, sending the patient to a higher altitude), or the magnetic field. We can even include the electric field, but we must be careful about the way that this is applied. There is a vast difference between applying the poles directly to the organism by letting the electricity flow through the human being and calling forth an electric field as such and placing the patient within this field without the circuit being completed from pole to pole through him. Here, too, experiments need to be done that will be exceptionally significant.

In certain circumstances we can also obtain beneficial effects by completing the circuit through the patient. In such cases, however, only what works into the rhythmic system from the metabolic system is effective. Only the metabolic system is influenced if I pass electric currents through the patient himself, completing the circuit through him. On the other hand, if I place a person into an electric field, I will be able to observe the radiations in a dark room from his fingers, toes, and all pointed extremities. I will then notice that I can work curatively on patients who have a regular, healthy digestion but who show symptoms of so-called tuberculosis.

Today we have concerned ourselves with the environment. I pointed out that nature groups together, in the moment of falling asleep and awakening, the complex of symptoms present. I will start from this point tomorrow and will first show the importance, the diagnostic significance, of the moments of waking and falling asleep; then we will study how we can indeed observe what nature tries to indicate at such moments. We will then see how this can be used to guide our observations of symptom-complexes, if only we know the principle involved. And here we will find important indications regarding the very different treatments that need to be applied in chronic and acute illnesses.

Yesterday I said that certain complexes of symptoms are condensed in the phenomena of falling asleep and awakening. It is most important first to study the symptoms that are condensed in the process of falling asleep. To fall asleep inadequately always indicates that the astral body is clinging to the physical and etheric organs, especially to the latter. (I will use these terms this time since you are now all quite familiar with them.) The astral body is too strongly bound up with these other members. This clinging of the astral body is at once evident to the spiritual investigator because, when sleep should appear, the physical and etheric organs continue to function as in the waking state, whereas in the normal person their function is clearly dampened down.

Ordinarily we cannot learn the real significance of this inadequate falling asleep; hence we must acquire a comprehensive view of the phenomena in the waking state that accompany this inadequate falling asleep. We then may notice that everything revealing an involuntary functioning of the organism is a concomitant of falling asleep inadequately. Thus any involuntary twitching of the lips or blinking of the eyelids, any excessive movement of the fingers and the like—any movement that is not an expression of an inner process, any fidgeting—all these are waking concomitants of not falling asleep properly. Obviously this process can be observed only when it manifests outwardly. When such fidgetiness occurs with regard to the internal organs, a certain capacity to perceive such things must be acquired so that one understands how to relate ertain phenomena.

For example, in patients suffering from anemia you may hear rushing sounds in the blood vessels on the right and left sides of the neck. These murmurs or bruits are noticeable in every person when he turns his head far to the left or right, therefore initiating a powerful unfolding of his astrality. Such an unfolding of astrality always arises when a movement that would normally be carried out voluntarily is carried out involuntarily. Whenever an otherwise voluntary movement—that is, a movement dependent on the ego—is made involuntarily, the astrality is too strongly exerted, too strongly engaged, is too strongly pressed into the organ. This is what we are dealing with in fidgety movements. Thus through such indirect observations, attention can be directed to the fidgetiness of the internal organs.

Now we must add that in patients who fall asleep inadequately there is always an underlying irregularity that cannot be countered by direct, outer methods. This irregularity is not closely connected with what I had to say yesterday about magnetic and electric fields, for example. Such things have very little to do with everything accompanying inadequate sleep. Thus in such cases it is necessary to make use of remedies. If we encounter a complex of symptoms that can be grouped together under the formula, “falling asleep inadequately,” we must apply remedies, and in particular plant substances in which processes must first be called forth by cooking, burning, etc. Such remedies will play a large role in cases of inadequate falling asleep, when the disease is in the human thoracic cavity, because there we always find an irregular clinging of the astral body to the organs. All remedies obtained by combustion, by reducing the substance to ashes, or extracted from the roots by boiling will be very valuable here. Everything that remains as force in root extracts and plant ash should play a very important part in such cases.

On the other hand, everything that I described yesterday will play a significant role in cases of inadequate awakening. To wake up inadequately always shows that the astral body enters too little into the organs. In diseases of the chest, this incomplete penetration by the astral body means something different from what it means in generalized diseases of the human organism. In the latter, one must try to bring in the entire astral body. This has to do with what I said about the effects of arsenic. Arsenic is effective when we have to treat an astral body already permeated by the ego, whereas when we want to treat the astral body alone, it will be especially important to apply the methods about which I spoke yesterday. In cases of inadequate awakening, we will always find something accompanying the waking process, what might be called numbness, a tendency to hold on to a dulled state of consciousness. Thus the symptoms that accompany inadequate awakening are essentially soul phenomena. Therefore it is particularly important in cases that show some defect or other in the chest organism—and at the same time the accompanying soul phenomena—to use the magnetic or electric fields curatively.

At this point I will try to answer a question put to me yesterday concerning the difference between treatment by direct current and by alternating current. (In the course of these lectures I will try to answer all your questions, so far as time permits.) In cases where one is treating a weakened individual—that is a person clearly suffering from malnutrition or the like—where the disturbance proceeds more from the lower portion of the middle human being, it is better to use an alternating current. If the disturbance clearly proceeds from the upper human being, it is better to use a direct current. However, the difference is not very great, and if you use one in one case and the other in another case you cannot make too great a mistake.

You will have noticed that in this realm of human health and illness dietary considerations can become quite important. This is because a subtle transition appears here from effects of a more dynamic kind, effects applied to the human being from outside, and those effects worked through by the human being himself in the transformation of plant substances. However, you will understand that because we are dealing with the region of rhythm, with phenomena based on the rhythmic functions in the human organism, there is no place for fanaticism in judging the healthy or diseased individual. There must really be no fanaticism of any kind in medical art—for example, fanatical adherence to an uncooked diet. A raw food diet also entails the exclusion of cooked plant substances obtained from the part of the plant lying toward the root, and this generally has definite consequences for the human organism: it slowly undermines the health of the respiratory system. A destructive influence on the human organism of this kind can continue for a long time, since it is not so easy to destroy this organism, but fanatical adherence to uncooked food will in time lead to shortness of breath or similar symptoms.

Someone may reply, “That may be true, but I have had excellent results with a fruit diet.” But you must then note that fruits are not roots; fruits have been worked upon strongly by outer sunlight. In them an extra-terrestrial process has been intensely brought to completion. One comes very close to the process of cooking when making use of what is dynamically present in fruits. Thus if you let certain patients eat fresh fruits rather than raw roots, you do much less harm. It is best not to be fanatical in either direction; both directions must be dealt with individually. There may well be cases in which it can be clearly determined that the irregularity in the chest system comes from the circulation and not from the respiratory rhythm; it can be proven that this problem derives from the circulation rather than the respiratory rhythm. Then it is necessary to pay attention to what plays into the circulation from the digestive activities. In such cases, what is lacking can be properly assisted by a diet of raw fruits. It is quite correct, in this individual case, a diet of raw fruits could be indicated. On the other hand, if I have a patient whose symptoms suggest that the cause of the inadequate functioning of his chest system is in the breathing, I will not be able to achieve anything by such means, and in fact I may only do harm. In this case I must instead prescribe a diet of boiled roots. In dealing with this very labile system we come to realize how serious the consequences of fanaticism can be in one direction or another.

In this first stage of our studies we must take into account one further thing in order to understand this system completely and not have to return to it. This is a process in the human organism that frequently escapes outer observation entirely and remains unnoticed to the detriment of human health. We should consider this here, in the first stage of our studies, this being the more pathological-therapeutic stage, whereas the next part should be more therapeutic-pathological in character.

In my more public lectures I have had occasion to speak on philology; I haven't had the opportunity to introduce this in the scientific courses, but it could equally well have been considered there. In the public lectures I said that the peculiar processes that come to more outward expression in the organism during puberty discharge themselves more inwardly during the time between birth and the change of teeth, when the child is learning to speak. These processes that occur between the astral body and the human etheric and physical bodies underlie the acquisition of speech and all the changes in the human organism connected with learning to speak. These processes should be carefully observed in the child as learning to speak runs parallel with changes in the rest of the organism. One ought to follow these changes backward toward birth, that is, from the radical change at the second dentition to the time of acquiring speech. However, in addition to the change of teeth there is an equally significant change, only it is more inward and does not express itself as obviously as the change of teeth or the acquisition of speech, which can be observed by anyone because they appear outwardly. This other change is almost more important than these in human health and illness, though they are given more attention because they are outwardly manifest. This other change is actually much more significant and occurs between the change of teeth and puberty. It is a process that lies midway between those events and is due to the fact that the ego—which, in the sense explained elsewhere, is completely born exoterically only around the twentieth year—is born inwardly in the same way that the astral body is born in the acquisition of speech. This process reaches its culmination between the ninth and tenth years of life.

Please consider now the following: What is latent in the human being regarding his ego, waiting to unfold, is almost entirely overlooked. The ego dwelling in the human organism really does something quite special. Everything else—the physical, the etheric, and also the astral in the human being, which only comes into contact from within with what is outside the human being by means of oxygen—all these components of the human entity are very strongly bound to the inner aspects of the human being. During sleep the ego takes only the astral with it out of the human organism. The astral body has a strong affinity for the physical, and especially for the etheric body. But this is not the case with the ego. It is here, taking into account the ego especially in its relation to the outer world, that the far-reaching difference between the human being and the animal is revealed.

In taking up nourishment we introduce substances from the outer world into ourselves. These must be transformed within us. What is it that brings about this fundamental transformation of outer substances? What brings this about? In truth, this is brought about by the ego. The ego alone is sufficiently powerful to stretch out its feelers, you could say, right into the forces of outer substances. To put it schematically, an outer substance possesses certain forces that must first be destroyed (dekombiniert) if they are to be re-constituted in the human organism. The etheric and astral bodies only walk around the substances, as it were; they have no power to penetrate to the inner aspect of the substances, so they just circumvent them. It is the ego alone that really has to do with the penetration of substances, with truly entering into the substance. If you introduce food substance into the human organism, it is at first inside the human being. But the ego overlaps the entire human organism and enters directly into the food substance. The inner forces of the food substance and the ego begin to interact. Here the outer world in regard to chemistry and physics and the inner world in regard to “anti-chemistry” and “anti-physics” overlap. This is the essential aspect.

Now in a child, this penetration of substances is regulated from the head until the change of teeth begins. The child is born in such a way that forces received by way of his head during embryonic development are then active in the human being in working through substances from within. But in the period between the change of teeth and puberty, which culminates between the ninth and tenth years, the ego that works from out of the lower human being, the lower ego, must meet the higher ego. In the child it is always the ego working from the upper man that works through the substances until the time indicated. Of course, I am referring to the instruments of the ego. The ego is indeed ultimately a unity. But the instruments of the ego, the polarity of the ego—that is the meeting of the lower ego with the higher—only establish a proper relationship in the way I have described. Thus the ego must enter the human organization at this time in the same way that the astral body must penetrate the human organization in learning to speak.

With all this in mind, observe the phenomena that can be seen in children from about the eighth or ninth to the twelfth or thirteenth year. Study from this viewpoint just those phenomena that it is so necessary to observe in children of elementary school age. You will find their outer expression in a seeking of the human organism for a harmony, a harmony that must be established during life between the substances taken in and the inner organization of the human being. Observe carefully how the head can be reluctant, at this time, to take in the inner forces of the substances, and how this comes to expression in headaches at about the ninth, tenth, or eleventh year. Observe further the accompanying metabolic disturbances in the secretion of gastric acid, for instance. Observe all this, and you will see that there are children who suffer continually from this inadequate adjustment of the ego from below and from above.

If such matters are carefully noted, one learns how to deal with them and as a rule they then disappear. They correct themselves gradually after puberty, when the astral body appears and makes good what the ego cannot do. They die away gradually between the fourteenth or fifteenth year and the twentieth or twenty-first year. Children who are sickly between the change of teeth and puberty can afterward become extraordinarily healthy. It is very instructive to observe this. You will often have found that sickly children, especially those whose illness is manifested outwardly in digestive ailments, in an irregular digestion, become quite healthy later if carefully treated. It is especially important in dealing with such cases to be extremely careful as to the diet prescribed. Splendid results can be achieved if the parents or teachers of such a child do not continually overload him with all kinds of food and with continuous persuasion to eat. That just makes the matter worse. Rather try to find out what the child can digest easily and give this frequently in small portions throughout the day. One can do these children a great service in this way. On the other hand, it is quite wrong to believe that anything is achieved by overfeeding.
In addition, we must take care that these children do not have too much school work, for this would only aggravate their condition. Thus if we allow them the necessary rest, we assist in this inwardly necessary digestive activity in response to smaller portions of food. There is hardly any area in which more transgressions are made than this one, in relation to which the above suggestions are made. If healthy human development in this direction is hindered, all sorts of tendencies to illness from this stage in life may remain throughout life.

People often complain that we give very little homework at the Waldorf School. We have good reason for this. A system of education corresponding to reality does not heed the abstract principles—or abstractions generally—applied in many spheres of life today. Instead it takes into account everything that has to do with the real development of the human being, and it is important, above all, not to burden children with homework. Homework is frequently the concealed cause of bad digestion. These things are not always manifested outwardly until later, but they nevertheless have their influence. It is remarkable that super-sensible study of the human being leads one to see an indication in an early stage of life of what is being prepared for a later period.

There is always a danger of the ego not being properly interlinked—if I may express it in this way—with the organism from below upward. This danger is really very great for almost all people, and especially for those in our time who are not of robust peasant stock. There is still a marked difference between those of peasant stock and the rest of the earth's population. One must draw a dividing line here. The rest of the population is very susceptible to the dangers arising when the ego is inadequately interlinked with the organism. The organism is then fundamentally ruined before the ego ought to insert itself. With regard to the respiratory system—also the head system—the female is more sensitive to the peculiarly labile equilibrium present there. The male is more robust regarding his chest organs, that is, less sensitive though not more stable. The same troubles can appear, but their outer expression is weaker. The female is more sensitive to the troubles arising there. What I have described as a seeking for the proper interlinking of the ego ends in a healthy human being or in anemia. Anemia (Bleichsucht) is a direct continuation of everything that happens abnormally in this way in the period from age seven onward. Anemia does not appear until later, but it is an intensified result of what was not observable in this direction in the preceding period of life.

In this regard, we must now point to an exceptionally important distinction. When we study the circulatory system, we must distinguish the actual circulation—which is a sum of movements—from the metabolism which is intimately interwoven with this circulation, inserting itself into it in a sense. In the circulatory system there is an equilibrium between the metabolic system and the rhythmic system, whereas in the respiratory organism we find the equilibrium between the rhythmic organism and the nerve-sense organism. Thus when you study this middle aspect of the human being, the chest system, you must realize that it is organized polarically in two directions. Through the breathing it is organized toward the head, and through the circulation it is organized toward the metabolic-limb system. Everything within the metabolism itself, or that is intimately connected with the metabolism in man's capacity for movement—which is of great importance especially during the first or ascending half of life—inserts itself as metabolic forces into the forces of circulation. This insertion upward from the metabolism must then advance a stage further.

Hence, in the process I have described we have to do with an advance, with a further stage of the activity developed by the ego in metabolism, already in the taking up of substances and then in laying hold of their inner forces. What we are dealing with here is a movement upward through the circulation and breathing into the head system, and all this must be properly coordinated in the period between the change of teeth and puberty. The egö s grasp of forces of outer substances must move upward through circulation and breathing to a proper intervention in the head system. It is a very complicated process we are dealing with here. We can really study this process by trying to grasp its influence within the “outer” digestive tract, where the substances are still quite similar to their outer states, where the substances are grasped only weakly by man's inner being. For what is the first stage in dealing with outer substances? What does the ego do when it first takes hold of outer substances?

The first activity of the ego in laying hold of the forces of outer substances is accompanied by sensations of taste. Tasting—that is, working through outer substances in a way that finds subjective expression in tasting—is the first stage of laying hold of the outer forces. It then proceeds further inward. But tasting also extends further inward. The “inner” digestive organism that lies on the other side of the intestines and transfers substances into the blood is still a tasting, but a tasting that grows ever weaker. It extends upward until, in the head organism, the tasting is opposed and thereby dampened down. The activity of the head in regard to tasting consists in the damping down of tasting, it opposes it. This process must take place properly. Then, of course, the ego lays hold of the substances as they proceed further; the ego grasps them more strongly than is the case in tasting, which is subjective and merely external. This process that takes place in the outer digestive tract is strongly influenced by mineral salts.

You will be able to harmonize every aspect of what I am now saying with what I said in the last course. You will see that what I am now saying is essentially bringing to completion what was said then. We have to ask ourselves, “What really is a remedy from the outer kingdoms of nature?” This is a fundamental question for medicine. What is a remedy?

Anything that the organism can digest in its healthy state is not a remedy. We can only speak of a remedy when we introduce into the organism something it cannot digest in a healthy state but is able to digest only in an abnormal condition, that is able to be digested, therefore, only in an abnormal human organism. We provoke the abnormal human organism to digest something that the healthy human organism does not digest. The healing process is a continuation of digestion, but a digestion carried step by step into the interior of the human organism.

Among the symptoms accompanying the condition seen in its most pronounced form in anemia we find these: fatigue, lassitude, and inadequate falling asleep and awakening. If all these symptoms appear, as can happen with most children during the period of development mentioned today, then it is necessary first to experiment with the outer digestive tract. There one must apply the mineral element, and yet not completely mineral. If you do this, you will obtain results. In the first place, these things could be observed through the symptoms that arise. For example, you may find that definite symptoms arise, all of which point to the need for the ego to take hold outwardly of the forces of outer substances. This process could be assisted by carbonate of iron. Ferrum carbonicum is a remedy that can act as a support for the weakness when the ego ought to be taking hold outwardly.

Let us go a stage further and consider an inadequate intervention of the ego within the circulatory organism. We will notice that this inadequate intervention of the ego in the circulatory organism can be supported by ferrous chloride (ferrum muriaticum)—that is, by a still more purely mineral remedy.

Let us go a stage further still, to what we encounter in the breathing organism. Here we can find special support for the ego through plant-acids. And if we go yet further, to the head system, we can support the ego by pure metals. These, of course, must not be used in their outer form as pure metals, for they then have no proper relation to the human organism. We must apply the finest forces of these metals. Last year I therefore said that the human organism does not allow itself to be treated with metals allopathically. The organism itself acts homeopathically; it breaks up the metals itself as they move from the digestive system to the head organism. The organism can, of course, be supported in this activity through potentization.

You will see, however, that we can learn from this something about potentization. (We will return to these things later from another viewpoint.) First one must form a mental picture of the real center of the deficiency. The deeper this center lies—the farther from the head organization—the lower the potency required. The nearer this center lies to the head organization, the higher the potency we must apply. Of course, what approaches the head organization can come to expression outwardly in all kinds of ways.

If you proceed properly from this viewpoint—that is, from the ego's laying hold of outer substances—you will be able to gain insight into the symptoms you encounter. This leads us back to what I have said today and have often emphasized elsewhere: that the human organism is not simply something we can draw with lines; that is only the solid part. The human organism in essence is organized fluid, organized air, organized warmth, and the ego has to intervene in these various members of the organization.

The ego's intervention in the warmth conditions of the body is especially subtle and important; it does this in the following way: When a person is born we have initially an imprint of the ego and this is present in the head. This imprint is active during childhood. In order to do this, the ego must offer its being [Sein] from below upward. It must intervene in this way. This finds expression in the ego-imprint, that we have in the head, permeates the organism with warmth during childhood. It has something to do with the human organism being suffused with warmth. But this warming follows a descending curve; it is strongest at birth, since it proceeds from the head, and then moves in a descending curve. As human beings we are compelled in later life to compensate from below upward for what unfolds there in the warmth curve. We have to maintain its proper level from below through the ego's intervention in these warmth conditions. We must later oppose the descending curve by this other ascending curve. The latter depends essentially on the ego laying hold of the ascending forces of substance gained in food and leading them over into the circulation, the breathing, and then into the head system.

Now imagine that this is not taking place in the right way, that the transference of the inner forces of the outer world's substances into the human organism is too weak, that it is not developed with sufficient intensity. Then insufficient warmth is introduced into the organism by way of the ego. The head, which is now only developing the descending curve, lets the body become cold. This occurs at first at the periphery. You should observe that those individuals who suffer from this further development of the condition of lassitude, due to all I have described, have cold hands and feet. This is palpable, for you can sense here how the process that was accomplished in childhood from above downward through the imprint of the ego is not being met in the necessary way by the active ego, by the ego that must be developed and that carries warmth right into the outermost periphery of the limbs.

This will show you that we have what you could call pictures in what manifests outwardly in this way; for as soon as you apply yourself to perceiving things pictorially, as soon as you take into account the interplay in the human being of the various forces above with the forces below—if you consider these so delicately that you arrive at a pictorial impression—you have pictures. In cold hands and feet you have pictures of something that is taking place in the entire human organism and appears in this way. One learns to make use of symptoms so that from them there springs forth a knowledge of the whole human being. If a person has cold hands and feet, it is a profound sign that the ego is not intervening properly in later stages of life. If we are attentive to such things, if only we enter into what spiritual science has to say out of its considerations, we gain a connection with the human organism. Otherwise we will see that through inattention we gradually lose touch with a real, penetrating insight into the human organism. If only we can enter into what spiritual science has to offer, we receive a connection with the human organism, we grow into it.

Consider the following, for instance: Spiritual science continually impresses upon us the fact that in mari s power to hold himself erect there lies something connected with the development of the ego from below upward. This power of holding himself erect is at first expressed only outwardly in a certain sense. It is supported by what streams from above downward. When the change of teeth is accomplished, when this force of erectness has done its work in the proper way, this elementary force of erectness comes to a full stop and now transfers its influence to the inside. Now the balance of the forces that work upward from below and downward from above must be created within.

Then the forces from above downward and from below upward appear in contrast. They meet each other. In this one-dimensional encounter, as you could call it, between forces from above and forces from below, one can see especially what is taking place in this period. Just observe what especially fatigues people with a tendency to anemia. They become most tired when they climb stairs, not when they walk on the horizontal. This points directly to the phenomena that we have been studying. People with a tendency to anemia will always complain about climbing stairs. Thus by looking at the symptoms, by observing what comes to living expression in a process of becoming, we can get a hold of what stands spiritually behind the human being. Then we can come to the point where we learn simply to read what needs to be done in response to these abnormal conditions from what we have gained through diagnostic pathology. We will take this further tomorrow.

These studies will have to culminate in a description of the nature of the remedies we have arrived at and which we then need to bring into more common use. But it will not be possible to speak properly about what one must know and master with regard to these remedies if we have not fully prepared ourselves. This must be done first. Therefore today we will study a few of those things that can guide us into the whole web of man's being, which results from the cooperation between ego, astral body, etheric body, and physical body. I have already mentioned that, by means of a certain effect of arsenic, one can drive the astral body further into the organs than is otherwise the case in the human being. Of course, the astral body draws the ego in with it.

By driving the astral body further into the organs, we enhance the mineralizing process in the organs. And if we notice that the organs are indicating a proliferating etheric, are too active vitally, developing life forces that are too strong, then the introduction of arsenic would have a healing effect. One can even designate something that occurs inside the human being by means of an outer process that has a certain affinity with the human process. If you want to express this affinity of the astral body with the etheric body—and thereby with the physical—you may speak of “arsenizing.” A gentle “arsenizing” is continually taking place in the human being and is especially strong at the moment of waking. We must realize clearly that the human organism has within itself, as a system of forces, that which lies in the metals. This affinity between the human being and his earthly-cosmic environment is certainly present; certain processes that unfold outside and come to an end in the metals, for example, also occur in the human being. Hence, when we speak of “arsenizing” the human being, you must not think of the arsenic as directly active; rather the human being is itself active within in the way that arsenic is active outside.

Through this one attains insight into the way to assist such effects in the human being. When you study this “arsenizing” process—I might also say this “astralizing” process—in the human organism, you will notice that when it is too active it finds expression in a kind of warming in the region of the stomach, whereby digestion and assimilation become facilitated. When these become excessively facilitated, it can become a serious problem, because difficulties then arise as reactions to such processes that occur with too great a facility. All this is connected with a certain mineralizing process in the human being. This is a direction to pursue in our research. But such research must be done in the right way, taking all the other factors into consideration. The bodies of people who “astralize” too strongly, i.e., “arsenize” strongly in their organic physical processes, do not decompose so readily as those of people whose astral bodies are weakly connected with their organs. This is certainly something that ought to be observed. Indeed, one sees the extreme form of this tendency in bodies poisoned by arsenic; they tend to mummify and do not decompose easily.

Now the question is: What can we do if this “arsenizing” (or “astralizing”) process is too strong, that is when the person mummifies himself while alive, so to speak? One must have an eye for such things. If a person is mummifying too intensely, how can we counter this process? If I may express myself radically, I would say that then one must make the whole human being partly into a tooth. This is something that can give us many clues into the mysterious working of the human organism. One must make the whole human being into a tooth. In some way or other one must try to give him the radiating force of magnesium, taking the whole organism into account. He must be given some preparation of magnesium, thus introducing into his whole organism the radiating force of magnesium, which Professor Römer has described. This is something that leads us deeply into the relation between the astral body (which is also carrying the ego) on the one hand and the etheric and physical bodies on the other.

Let us now consider the opposite condition in the human being, in which the astral body and the ego have an inadequate tendency to permeate the organs. The organs, in so far as they are nurtured by the physical and etheric influences, begin to be left to themselves. The expression of this condition is that there is no proper connection between things that should work reciprocally, between the reciprocal nourishment of the human being by his environment and the inner organic processes. The inner organic processes begin to develop their vital forces too strongly. They receive no influence from outside; the permeation of the food-substance by the forces of the ego diminishes. The astral body, in consequence, has to be too active in one direction and cannot reach the etheric body properly. A proliferation of physical and etheric activity occurs, expressing itself in diarrhea, which is essentially connected with such phenomena. Blood is found in the stool, and the inner vital activity becomes so strong that small, organic tissues peel off from the intestinal walls. These are also found in the stool, which takes on the appearance of a fluid resembling beef bouillon. Finally protein is drawn into the process and excreted without being worked through in the proper way. Such phenomena clearly indicate that the vital force is proliferating, unhindered by the “astralizing” force.

The astral body and the ego must work into the physical and etheric human being if these half-conscious movements of the digestive tract, that are necessary for the organism, are to occur. Now imagine that the astral body and the ego are not inserted in the right way and that the etheric body and the physical body remain active by themselves. There then arises a nervous need to relieve the bowels, which is characteristic of such conditions. The farther you follow this matter, the farther you are from ordinary diarrhea and the nearer to dysentery. The farther you proceed with the description of this clinical picture, the more you find yourself describing in all these phenomena the opposite of “arsenization,” or “astralization.” And as the astral body is strongly implicated in all this, you will be led, by the matter itself, to the conclusion that the antidote to be used is in everything that comes from arsenic, i.e., that one must oppose these conditions by “arsenizing.”

I believe that we can deeply enrich and intensify our ideas in relation to such things if we make clear to ourselves that there are processes in the outer world corresponding to everything that takes place in the human being. And even if it must sound dreadful to one who has passed through the educational system of today, I do not want to avoid using certain expressions that have a serious meaning for spiritual science and which, if understood correctly, can lead us very deeply into these matters.

You see, the “arsenizing” (or “astralizing”) process observed in the human being, the mummification of the physical organism, its becoming brittle, is basically the same process as that which takes place when the earth forms rocks. Wherever rocks are in process of formation the earth is, in a sense, poisoned by arsenic or in the early stages of poisoning. Imagine, on the other hand, that the outer astrality that surrounds the earth everywhere (as I suggested in the last course of lectures), succeeds in avoiding the surface of the earth and rests directly on the water. Imagine that it avoids playing its part in bringing forth the blossoms, the growth and the emergence of the plants from the earth into the atmosphere. The outer astrality penetrates below the ground, and in these areas the earth gets dysentery. The process I am now describing ought to be taken into account, for there is much that is real behind it. It should be considered, because it gives information as to the connection of what takes place under the earth with a phenomenon such as dysentery, for example. In dysentery, we observe an effect on the human being of what lies under the ground, particularly in water, and it must be studied from this viewpoint. The essential thing to consider is that the astral body is very much involved in the matter, and hence to cure it it will be necessary to use intermediate potencies, because the efficacy of the astral body is through the middle system in the human organism.

Now phenomena such as those that take their course like diphtheria are especially able to teach us about certain subtleties in the human organism. Such diseases should be studied more precisely, if only for the sake of discovering remedies. I believe the opinion that has arisen from materialistic conceptions is still held that diphtheria must be treated locally as much as possible. Of course, numerous opposing opinions have also been expressed regarding this. The significance of the emergence of diphtheria—and to everything related to it—leads us to make some additions to what we studied in the last course, because at that time we were not yet able to deal so precisely with this interaction of the four members of the human organism.

In another context I have indicated that the child's acquisition of speech is accompanied by various organic processes. While he is learning to speak, and therefore while something special is taking place in his breathing organism, something also occurs polarically in his circulatory organism, which also receives into itself the metabolic processes. I also pointed out, in yet another context, how what at puberty appears in a reciprocal relationship of the human being to the outer world, takes place inwardly in learning to speak. Thus this push of the astral body, which at puberty takes place from within the human being outward, takes place from below upward in the astralizing process. The capacity for acquiring speech also develops from below upward. So here too we have an astralizing process, and we will be able to see clearly that an interaction occurs where the respiratory and circulatory systems meet (see drawing). The astralizing process working from below upward (yellow) encounters the developing organs of speech working from above downwards (red). In this encounter the organs of speech become stronger in their capacity for speech. It is what is taking place simultaneously below that especially interests us here: this tends to work upward. The whole process is one from below upward (yellow arrows). Now, if the astrality presses upward too strongly while the child is learning to speak, we have a predisposition to diphtheric conditions. It is certainly important to pay proper attention to this.

Let us now consider the outer earthly process that has a certain selective affinity for the process I have just described. Let this be the surface of the earth (see drawing above). In a plant that behaves appropriately in relation to the cosmos, the earth plays a part in the formation of its roots. With growth the influence of the earth diminishes and the extra-terrestrial influence becomes stronger and stronger, unfolding especially in the blossoms (see drawing, red). What develops here is a kind of external astralizing of the blossom, which then leads to the formation of fruit. If this process, which ought to occur in the normal course of the world processes, takes place below (see drawing below), it can only insert itself into the water, and we have what I have just called “dysentery of the earth.”

But we can also have another situation: What takes place when a plant develops properly—the blossom unfolding always a little above the earth's surface—can develop right on the earth's surface (see drawing below, red). Then fungi arise; this is the basis for fungus formation.

And now you will begin to guess that, if fungi arise from such a special astralizing process, the same process must take place from below upward when, as in diphtheria, this remarkable astralization occurs in the human head. This is actually the case. Hence you find in diphtheria the tendency to fungoid formations. It is most important to consider this tendency to fungoid formations in diphtheria, and it will also show you that a truly occult process is taking place there. Everything external is really only a sign that irregular astral currents are prevailing within the human being. This will suggest to you how a pathology, willing to consider merely outer symptoms, can know only the outer manifestations of the whole process; it then regards this process as local, for it sees only the outer aspects and does not consider what is pushing from within outward in such cases. The whole skeptical attitude adopted toward this process is certainly explicable if we trace it back to what we have just discussed.

As a matter of fact, the risk of infection in diphtheric conditions is very great. Why is it so great? Because diphtheric conditions clearly arise in connection with the acquisition of speech. Because of this they occur primarily in children from age two to four. Later the risk is very much less. However, every process that occurs as the normal course of events in the human organism at some time or other can also arise abnormally. Thus, this process, which is simply a concomitant of childhood, can also occur at another period of life, although somewhat modified or metamorphosed. Nevertheless, when a type of diphtheria occurs at a later stage in life, there is something of an infantile nature at work in the individual. The fundamental characteristic of the infantile stage is, as you know, the tendency to imitate. When expressing the facts of spiritual science about infants, it is only necessary to speak of the more psychological aspect, the external manifestation of the childhood stage is certainly this imitative aspect. The organism itself is forced to become imitative when it becomes diphtheric. Infection is due to a person becoming an imitator. Indeed, there is a very delicate sensitivity involved in this imitating. When this condition is studied with the methods of spiritual science, one finds that the ego actually plays a certain role in infection with diphtheria. For this reason, the parasitic aspect, what develops as fungoid growths, is more infectious than in other diseases. This is because the human organism, by virtue of its imitative tendency, comes to meet the trouble, adjusting itself in an imitative, receptive way as soon as it “perceives” the diphtheric poison. Hence a psychological rebuke, when it is possible in the initial stages, and psychological support by encouragement may well have a favorable effect.

But when, as here, the processes work so deeply into the organism, much more will naturally be achieved by trying to find the specific remedy with which to oppose the particular process at work. I am not aware of whether any steps have been taken to find, even empirically, a specific remedy for diphtheric conditions. One should try intermediate potencies of cinnabar. In cinnabar we will find effects that counteract all the phenomena I have mentioned. Cinnabar expresses this even in its outer appearance. The outer appearance of substances, however, is only of use when we supplement it with inner perception. The old “Doctrine of Signatures” was based on an instinctive, inner perception, and it has perished because people today no longer have the capacity to observe such things. Nonetheless it is important to be able to study these inner activities manifesting in all external appearances in the world. We ought not become involved in all sorts of mystical notions; if instead we acquire a sound understanding of such things we will recognize that cinnabar through its vermilion color is something that in a certain way brings to expression this activity opposed to the fungoid process. That which is approaching the colorless can become fungoid. While too strong an astralization of the earth's surface plays a part in the formation of fungi, in cinnabar there is a counter-reaction to this astralization and thus this reddening. Wherever a reddening appears in natural processes, we find a powerful counter-effect to the astralization process. You could express this in a moral formula: “The rose in blushing works against astralization.” These domains of pathological-therapeutic study are really interconnected in a certain way. They guide us into this peculiar relationship of the ego and astral body to the other organs, to their laying hold of organs, to their emancipation from organs, or to manifestations of the excessive working of the astral from below upward.

In this way insight can gradually be gained into the whole human body. This can be understood more thoroughly if one takes these studies to a further stage. Here you will have to take into account something that I would like to add now to what I presented to you last year. It is remarkable that the human ego, studied in its spiritual, psychical, organic, and mineral activities, is a kind of vehicle, you could say, for phosphorus. The ego creates the phosphorus-vehicle in such a way that with this vehicle it extends to the periphery of the organic human being. The phosphorization of the human organism is an activity of the ego. Through the ego, this phosphorus distribution is extended to the outermost borders, to the very periphery of the organic human being, in a most ingenious way. To a certain limit—which must not be exceeded, however—the ego can only carry phosphorus through the organism by first combining it chemically to other substances. The ego in essence hinders the chemical liberation of phosphorus by carrying it through the organism. This is one of the ego's tasks, to hinder the chemical liberation of phosphorus, of all but the traces of phosphorus required by a certain special process. This process would occur on a large scale if the ego did not succeed in preventing the liberation of the phosphorus taken in.

If the phosphorus were to be set free, inducing an intensive effect in the human organism, there would be definite consequences. I have told you in the course of these lectures that when the human being enters the world, that is, when his pre-existing soul-spiritual aspect comes into corporeality, the imprints of the etheric body, astral body, and ego are first created. I also said to you that everything constituting the imprint of the ego is actually to be found in dynamic systems, the systems of movement that are brought to an equilibrium. This is something to which we must pay special attention at this point in our considerations.

The ego requires phosphorus to bring about equilibrium between unbalanced states or those in which the balance has been disrupted. When I take a step forward, my equilibrium is disturbed and I must restore it again, but through the help of inner processes. This task in the human organism is accomplished essentially with the help of phosphorus. When the ego does not exhaust its phosphorizing activity in making static what is dynamic within the human being, it brings phosphorus to the imprint of the ego already present, to this process of making static what is dynamic. I have frequently drawn your attention to the fact that in addition to our solid constituents we must also consider the fluid man, the aeriform man, and the warmth man. Picture to yourselves the fluid man, that which is expressed in the imprinting of the ego, of the astral body, and then the ego itself, in the etheric body. This means that in the etheric body something dynamic, something not in a state of equilibrium, must continually be brought into equilibrium.

What we are speaking about here has to do with extraordinarily delicate effects. And these delicate effects are regulated by the presence in the human body of free-floating globules that are nevertheless connected with the whole movement of the organism, including the inner movement. These are the blood corpuscles. Against these blood corpuscles must beat the activity of the ego within the body's mobility—including, for example, the mobility of warmth. These blood corpuscles are not really little globules but are essentially constituted so that even their form shows that they are intended to guide movement over into equilibrium. What the ego does in working into the capacity for movement of the human organism reaches its limit at the blood corpuscles. Here it has to stop, and that most intimate interaction between the human ego and the whole human organism must occur. Here too occurs what I might call the most hidden battle between the continual phosphorizing process in the human being and the formative process of the blood. Thus, if phosphorus is brought into the human being in the free state, the blood corpuscles are destroyed by the phosphorizing process.

This is something that can lead us pictorially to this remarkable reciprocal action of the ego, which is a spiritual entity. Indeed, the ego is spiritual through and through, but it continually interacts with the physical through the blood corpuscles. In this respect, “blood is a very special fluid,” as an old saying—not Goethe—tells us. For in the blood the outer physical part of the human being interacts with his most spiritual member, the first that he carries with him, the ego. It is in the blood that the most injurious processes can arise when the ego enters into this interaction improperly. A great deal in the physical body can be ruined by such an incorrect interaction: destruction of the epithelium, fatty degeneration extending to the muscle fibers—especially the striated muscle fibers, for the ego acts especially on these—disintegration of the blood corpuscles, and so on. Indeed, this corporeal process of degeneration can extend into the bones if the phosphoric effects are not in order.

This interplay between the ego (which, of course draws the astral body with it) and the physical body (which then draws the etheric body with it), shows us clearly that there is a constant striving toward a normal and an abnormal state. The normalizing tendency attains a certain culmination and is then followed by a decline. We see this manifested when we have to do with a case of poisoning by phosphorus, for instance. In phosphorus poisoning, you will find that in the first place the astral body and the etheric body resist what is occurring in the physical body and the ego. They resist, they defend themselves with all the force, with the strongest force, of the etheric body. The etheric body tries to stand up to the over-activity of the ego; it tries to counter this by strengthening its own forces. Therefore there is an inner similarity between the process of the first stage of poisoning by phosphorus and another process, namely, the occurence of the review of life after death. As you know, this can last for a day and a half, or for two to three days. During this review the etheric body is held within the astral body. In a sense, they cling together. This also happens in the human body when phosphorus poisoning occurs. Everything that can develop through the cooperation of the astral and etheric bodies, which takes place during this review after death by means of the etheric body, is developed now. Hence through these forces that are expended in the first stage of phosphorus poisoning, an improvement will set in after a lapse of as long a time as such a review would last. There will be a kind of fatiguing or recession, and then after this recession the abnormal influence of the ego will set in with even greater intensity. An actual case of phosphorus poisoning is extraordinarily difficult to treat, because it can only be combatted by trying to find a way of inducing in the whole organism an intense cooperation of the astral with the etheric. This could be achieved by opposing the phosphorus poison with a strong application of drawing plasters applied to various parts of the body. You would certainly achieve results in this way. Of course something must be known about these things, and one has to have a feeling for how far to go.

Thus the physical organism, when the ego intervenes in it, can be intensely engaged by being involved in what we may call “phosphorization” of the human being. However, when the ego intervenes strongly in the physical organism,—that is, in a destructive way—the polar opposite must necessarily occur: what the ego normally does in the human organism, when it does not intervene too strongly, must suffer. Hence you will find a phosphorization that is too powerful accompanied by states of insomnia, due simply to an excessive proclivity of the astral body and ego to the physical. You could deduce this from everything I have said. You will find headaches and all the conditions usually accompanying paralysis. These conditions naturally arise in connection with what I have said about the interaction with the blood. What lies in the middle, and what therefore appears with phosphorization (when the ego attacks the blood corpuscles and is repelled again in the alternating process described) comes to expression in conditions of jaundice. In fact, in jaundice we can also observe an interplay of the psychological and the physical.

From what I have presented to you, you will see that the process constituting the human being is essentially a cooperation of the ego and astral body with the forces of the outer world, within the space enclosed by the skin. It is a process working in from without, and one must be able to study correctly how this process can be regulated, how one can acquire a kind of control over it.

Certain dietetic measures that would be effective occur to one when studying ailments with this perception as a foundation. If the ego is working too strongly in the human being, causing irregularities in the stomach, but at the same time an overvitalization is at work in abnormal diarrheal conditions and the like, it is necessary to combat this by appropriate dietetic measures. The actual ego process and the process of the astral in the human being are a kind of analyzing process; they fragment what is synthetically present in the outer world. Whereas we have a kind of primary synthetic process in the physical and etheric bases of the human organism, we have an analytic process in the ego and astral activities. This analytic process is a part of the normal activities of the human being, and its unusual character is expressed strongly in the necessity of keeping it within bounds. If the ego becomes too active an analyst regarding phosphoric salts, it decomposes them as far as the phosporus, and this then begins to be unhealthy for the human organism. In last year's lectures I referred to this analyzing process carried as far as iron: this is the farthest point to which analysis can be carried without harm. This process of analysis carried as far as iron is connected with the iron content of the blood. In many respects this is the polar opposite of analysis with respect to other metals, where the analytical process must, in a certain sense, be restrained.

Today I wanted to show you how outer phenomena in fact give us pictures of what is developing from the inner spiritual aspect. On this account the outer view of the human being in states of health and illness must be supplemented by what one can learn of the inner, of the spiritual human being. We now have a basis for understanding our remedies and answering many of the questions that have been asked.

We will deal with these as much as possible in the remaining lectures.

I said yesterday that these studies are intended to lead us on to a clarification of the essential nature of the remedies we have proposed, and we will continue to pursue this theme. Today I would like to begin by mentioning something that can suggest a great deal regarding our method of working.

In approaching an illness or a complex of symptoms with imaginative observation, we frequently receive a direct, intuitive knowledge of the remedy. Then we obviously attempt to think about the matter in accordance with judgments connected with the matter by external scientific knowledge, and we find we are wrong, that it cannot be so. This is an experience frequently encountered by one who is able to make occult investigations, and it also applies to domains other than therapeutics. Only on thinking more about the matter, pursuing it still further, does one come to see how correct one actually was. What is discovered by imaginative investigation followed by intuition is always correct, provided, of course, that it is based on sound powers of cognition. But one's judgment activity must first wrestle through—if I may put it so—to what one comes to know in this way.

It must first be realized that this human organism is complicated to the highest degree, so that in fact an intellectual grasp of it presents the greatest conceivable difficulties, especially if one tries to relate this human organism to the outer world again. This is especially noticeable if we examine more closely the function of nitrogen in the human organism. Earlier in these lectures, I reported that nitrogen is found in greater quantity in exhaled air than in inhaled air and materialistic thinking can hardly help regarding the difference as unimportant. The reason for this is that the materialistic view of the human being is basically unable to discover the function of nitrogen. This is possible only if the following is considered:

You know that the most varied theories exist about nutrition and that, accordingly, investigators often hold diametrically opposed views regarding the question: ”What is the function in the human organism of protein in food? Why does the human organism need protein?” Some say that the structure of man's protein organism is constant, or at least relatively constant, and that the protein absorbed undergoes rapid disintegration and has little significance for the plastic, constructive forces of protein in the human organism. Others hold the view—regarded somewhat out of date today—that the proteinaceous body of the human being is continually disintegrating and built up again from the protein absorbed. These diametrically opposed theories are put forward in the most varied forms, but both miss the essential point, because they compare protein with protein in a one-sided way without considering the human organism as a whole.

In this human organism we have to do with an opposition between the head formation, and therefore the formation of nerves and senses, and the formation proceeding from the metabolic-limb system. This is a polar opposition within human nature, and we cannot pay enough attention to it. Without taking into account what I have just said, we cannot understand the sequence of stages in the build-up of man that are so important in therapeutic deliberations. For instance, one will not be able to understand the real relationship of the lung to the entire human organism unless one's investigations begin in the following way. If we are considering the head organism, certain forces obviously predominate there. Next we have the chest organism containing the lungs. The lung is an organ that also has forces of head formation within it, though to a lesser degree. The whole human organism has everywhere these same forces, but in varying intensities. And if we investigate how the ego, astral body, and etheric body work in the whole plastic formation and deformation of the organs, we are brought to the paradoxical statement that the lung formation is a less intensive head formation. The lung formation is a metamorphosis of the head formation, only it is arrested at an earlier stage. The head advances further with regard to the same formative forces that are present in the lung but remain there at an earlier stage.

Because the lung has remained a kind of retarded metamorphosis of the head formation it is adapted to its own function, i.e., breathing. If the same forces that remain retarded in the lung, making it suitable for breathing, develop further, they render the lung more and more head-like. A consequence of the lung becoming more and more head-like is that it takes in thought forces—the organic forces of thinking—and strives to become a thinking organ. In trying to become a thinking organ, taking up too strongly the forces properly seated in the head, the lung becomes disposed to tuberculosis.

Pulmonary tuberculosis can only be understood in this way, proceeding from the entire human being. It can certainly be understood if we realize that in a tuberculous lung breathing strives to become thinking. In the head, breathing is metamorphosed, and all functions of thinking, even the processing of perceptions, are nothing but breathing developed further in an upward direction. The head is an advanced respiratory organ, having moved beyond the lung stage, but it represses breathing and, instead of taking in air, takes in etheric forces through the senses. Sense perception is nothing but a more refined—which means extending more into the etheric—respiratory process. Thus head and lung breathe. There is something else in the human being that is also breathing, something that remains at a still lower stage in this process of metamorphosis: the liver. The liver is a lung that has not reached its final development, it is a head formation not fully developed. It also breathes, but now the other metamorphosis, the polar metamorphosis of the sense perceptions—that is, taking in food and working it through—predominates in the liver. Therefore lung and liver formations lie in the middle between the stomach and the brain and head formations.

If you lay a foundation with such thoughts, you will not be far from understanding what I have to say about certain human organs really being organs of respiration. All those organs that are shaped like the brain, lung, and liver are at the same time organs of respiration, but they have a tendency to breathe out. Thus they also excrete carbon dioxide externally. Such external excretion of carbon dioxide is the essential thing in breathing. These organs absorb oxygen and give off carbon dioxide, and this holds good not only for the lung but for the entire organism, for every organ. It is essentially an activity of the astral body, which develops its activity in sympathy and antipathy. Sympathy as a force corresponds to inhalation; antipathy as a force corresponds to exhalation of the astral body. In the description of the astral body given in my book, Theosophy, you find that it is permeated by the forces of antipathy and sympathy. It works in the human being in the whole breathing process according to antipathy and sympathy. This must be regarded as the inner activity of the astral body.

And now we come to the final point of these considerations. The proteinaceous content present in the human being, in so far as it belongs to the organs described, is essentially for the support of breathing and manifests outwardly through breathing. But everything that manifests outwardly also expresses itself inwardly. This is how I would sketch it schematically. If you have here a human organ rich in protein and belonging to the group of organs I mentioned, it manifests outwardly by developing the activity of breathing (see drawing, red). But in breathing outward, it unfolds another activity within, the polar activity to breathing, namely, the activity liberating the soul, liberating the spirit. An activity freeing the soul: in breathing out, in unfolding the act of breathing in an outward direction, you unfold inwardly a soul-spiritual activity. This does not require space, of course; on the contrary, in space it disappears continually, passing out of three-dimensional space. This activity manifests within, however—in an inward direction—and to develop this activity within is essentially the function of human protein. What functions as an activity in the head enters from outside by way of the senses. Hence the head organs are the organs containing least of what is spiritual. They absorb the spirit from outside, acquiring it for themselves by means of the senses. The head is the least spiritual organ in the human being.

By contrast, man's spirituality—that is, the development of spirit within, the development of spirituality in the body, of real spirit, not abstract spirit—begins in the pulmonary system and works from outside inward in contrast to breathing. The most spiritual organs are those belonging to the liver system. These are the organs that develop the most spiritual activity in an inward direction. This also explains why “head men” are often materialistic, because only the external spirituality can be worked through with the head, and in this way one is wrongly led to believe that everything spiritual that is developed is received from outside, from the world of the senses. If a person is a real intellectual, then he becomes at the same time a materialist. The more one is a “head thinker,” the more one is disposed to become a materialist. On the other hand, if the whole human being struggles to attain knowledge, if a person begins to develop a consciousness of the way the entire human being thinks, including the organs situated further back, materialism ceases to be justifiable.

The activity manifesting in breathing is also revealed outwardly in the excretion of carbon in carbon dioxide. But the inward activity of spiritualization is bound up with nitrogen. The nitrogen that has been used in spiritualization is eliminated, and the degree to which nitrogen is eliminated is a measure of the inner work of the human organs in the direction of spirituality. You can conclude from this that one who does not believe in such spirituality will obviously have to remain very unclear about the absorption of nitrogen in the human organism. The role played by nutrition can be clarified only if one knows how in all protein formation there unfolds an activity directed outward and one directed inward. If you study this process, which is essentially a breathing process with its polar opposite, you will realize that nutrition and digestion border everywhere on the breathing processes, that nutrition and digestion everywhere encounter the processes of breathing and spiritualization.

In this process of spiritualization, and therefore on the other side of breathing, are found the real shaping, plastic forces in protein formation: there we find everything that shapes the human being. From this you will also be able to see that what is active here points to an interaction between the astral and etheric bodies. The astral body is active in breathing by means of sympathy and antipathy; the etheric body is active through encountering in its activity the sympathies and antipathies of the astral body. Everywhere the etheric body with its activities hits up against the breathing process in the human organism. These etheric activities have their primary point of attack in the fluid constituents in the human being. As you know, at least two-thirds of the human body consists of water, and in this water-organism the etheric body is chiefly active. The etheric forces express themselves physically in this water-organism. The forces of breathing find expression in the air organism built into the human being. Thus we may regard what takes place between the astral body and the etheric body as an interaction between water forces and air forces.

This interaction of air and water forces is continually ongoing in the human organism. Of course, neither completely suppresses the other; hence we always inhale traces of water vapor with the air. There the etheric element encroaches on the breathing. Similarly, the breathing activity encroaches on the digestive and nutritive organs. In so far as you are formed out of protein, you also breathe. Thus these activities always overlap, and we are always faced with a predominance of one activity or another in one organ or another. There is nothing here that can be described in a one-sided way. We can never describe this or that organ as being exclusively a respiratory organ. If we maintain this about the lung, we are in error. The other activity is always there, even if to a lesser degree. Nutrition takes place primarily through an activity that impresses itself on the fluid-etheric and on the solid-physical. Therefore nutritive and digestive activities occur primarily in the ethericfluid and the physical-solid, whereas the main respiratory activity is developed in the astral-airy, and the main ego activity, the actual spiritual activity, unfolds in the warmth conditions connected with the ego itself. Spiritual activity within the physical organism is a cooperation of the ego with warmth conditions, i.e., with all those organizations where warmth can work into the physical. The ego must always go hand in hand with warmth, must always operate through warmth. If we put a patient to bed and tuck him in, this is simply an appeal to the ego to make use of the warmth generated in an appropriate way.

These considerations provide insight into human nutrition in general. Nutrition is an interaction between tissue fluid—i.e., the watery constituent in which nutrition and elimination chiefly take place—and the protein organism of the human being. The latter is, relatively speaking, extraordinarily stable; it is labile in a certain respect only during the period of growth, then becomes stable and undergoes a kind of disintegration during the second half of life. In the tissue fluid there is a continual assimilation and disintegration of the protein in food. It is in this activity that attacks are made on that which wants to remain stable in protein formation: the human being's inner proteinaceous organs generally; they want to remain stable. This is because they wish to liberate soul-spiritual activity inwardly, to isolate it within. What is achieved through the process of nutrition is this continual interaction between the extraordinarily mobile play of forces, constituted by this active assimilation and disintegration of protein, and the play of forces striving towards rest that arise in this interplay of the inner protein in the human being. Hence it is partly a superstition, partly correct, to say that the human being builds up his body through the substances he absorbs from his food. It is a superstition because the constructive forces are already present in his proteinaceous body simply by virtue of the fact that a human being is a human being; on the other hand, the human being unfolds an activity from the other pole, which conducts a continual attack on this stability of his own proteinaceous formation.

We may say then that it is incorrect to believe that human life is maintained only by the consumption of food. This is simply not correct. It would be just as correct to say that life is maintained by the active interplay of forces in the tissue fluids. When you give food which stimulates this activity in the tissue fluids, you maintain life. This does not happen by merely introducing food substances into the body but by the encounter with the stable forces of its own proteinaceous constituents. This is a process that you stimulate by absorbing food, and this process is the most fundamental factor in the maintenance of life. Here, too, we find that we have to look at the process. It can be, for example, that substances we know to be effective in children do not necessarily act in the same way in an adult; for a child is developing his body and needs the introduction of substances and the unfolding of their forces in an inward direction. If you know that something is effective as substance in a child, it will not be similarly effective in the adult. In an adult, it may be much more necessary simply to maintain and stimulate the forces in his tissue fluids that are striving toward rest.

If you now study everything that takes place in the human organs with a backward orientation, as it were (the head is also such an organ), everything taking place in the lungs and liver, and then turn your attention to those more embedded in this activity of the tissue fluids, you will find the heart enclosed by the lungs as the archetypal organ. The human heart is entirely formed out of the activity of tissue fluid, and its activity is no more than the reflection of this inner activity.

The heart is not a pump! I have often said this; it is rather an apparatus for sensing or registering the activity in the tissue fluid. The heart is moved by the circulation of the blood; it is not the pumping action of the heart that moves the blood. The heart has no more to do with human circulation than a thermometer does with the production of outer heat or cold. Just as the thermometer is nothing more than an instrument for registering the degree of heat or cold, so your heart is nothing more than an apparatus for registering what takes place in the circulation and what flows into this from the metabolic system. This is a golden rule that we must heed if we wish to understand the human being. In the belief, that the heart is a pump driving the blood through the blood vessels, we can see how modern natural science reverses the truth. Anyone believing in this superstition about the heart ought to be consistent and believe that it is warmer in his room because the thermometer has risen! This is the consistent conclusion of such an approach.

You can see to what results one is led by views that simply do not take into account what is by far the most significant aspect of man's being: the soul and spirit. Such views ignore the mobile, the dynamic aspects and proceed from what is merely material, trying to draw from the substance itself those forces that are only imprinted on the substance. Such views want to attribute to the heart the forces that are only imprinted upon it by the dynamics, by the play of forces in the human body.

In the heart activity and in the heart organ we really have the most advanced organization of what is placed over against respiration and the liberation of the spirit in man. This may now be called a polar metamorphosis, in contrast to a mere transformation. In the head, lung, and liver, you have various stages of metamorphic transformations. But as soon as you study the heart in relation to the lungs, you have to speak about a polar metamorphosis, for the heart in its formation is the polar opposite of the lung.

All those organs that develop in a more forward direction—for example, the female uterus, which is the most prominent example—are then further transformations, step by step, of the heart formation. (I speak of the “female uterus,” because there is also a “male uterus,” but this is only present in the male as part of the etheric body.) The uterus is nothing other than a transformed heart. With this method of studying things, we can gain all that is necessary to understand this organization in the human being.

The fats and carbohydrates now intervene in this other activity that has its center in the heart—if I may put it so—and comes to rest in the heart's movement. The fats and carbohydrates exert their activity here. Of course, this extends over the whole body, because the whole body deposits substance and is a functional outcome of systems of forces directed toward combustion, just as the whole body breathes and develops what is spiritual.

This sheds some light on pulmonary tuberculosis and we will see how such an inner study of the human organism leads us further and further toward therapeutic matters. What was formerly called consumption—and has now been labelled tuberculosis for purely theoretical reasons—is really due to man's being cut off from the extra-terrestrial and confined to the earthly through various influences such as poor housing and so on. All descriptions of pulmonary tuberculosis can be summed up by saying that the patient is being cut off from the sun and cosmic space and is drawn toward what is cutting him off. He is drawn toward that which paralyzes his delight in the extra-terrestrial. This delight depends essentially on sense perception. The patient's soul cannot penetrate to the senses and retreats down into the lungs, so that the lungs strive to become an organ of thought, to become a head. This is, in fact, revealed clearly even in the pathological manifestations. In wanting to become a head they take on a form and one can see that the forces tending to ossify the human head then come to expression in the lungs, resulting in indurations, consolidations, tuberculomas, and the like.

How can this tendency be opposed? If you want to work against this tendency of the lung to become “head,” you must realize first of all that we have to do with a weakening of the required astral activity and with an excessive strengthening of the ego activity. This activity of the ego begins to overpower the astral activity. This must be remedied. Sense impressions from outside especially stimulate ego activity, but sense impressions from outside pass into the whole human organism by bringing about salt depositions. These are not properly regulated in a person with a tendency to pulmonary tuberculosis. Hence you must help in such a case by using rather strong salt rubbings to try to oppose, at the right moment, what the lung can no longer oppose. Salt rubbings, applied from outside, oppose the consolidating processes acting from within. Of course, one must form the whole treatment in such a way that the organism is inclined to receive what is introduced in the effects of salt from outside. The patient could also take salt baths, strong salt baths, but then the organism must be led to become disposed to work upon the salt within, i.e., to respond from inside.

Here we can be led to the following considerations, which follow partly from our discussions last year. If you wish to stimulate the organism to develop an activity from within that interacts with and regulates certain outer organizing forces, you must give mercury in small doses, i.e., in doses approaching the homeopathic. Mercury is an important remedy in this direction, an important means for regulating this. Here you will have to take into account something of general importance regarding dosages. Putting together all I have presented, you can conclude that the system most similar to outer nature is the metabolic-limb system. If something is lacking there, you must use the lowest potencies. As soon as you have to deal with the middle system, you need intermediate potencies. When you have to work with the head, when something has to do with the spiritual in the head, you have to work with the highest potencies. But in this case we are dealing with the lung activity, i.e., with a part of the middle human being, and an intermediate dosage of mercury must be used.

Whenever one intends to work primarily upon the head organization and from there back upon the entire organism, the highest potencies are required. These will be particularly beneficial in cases where one believes that something can be achieved with compounds of silica. Silica compounds require the greatest dilution by their very nature, for they always rise toward the head and the periphery of the body, which belongs to the head system. On the other hand, when you have occasion for other reasons to administer calcium compounds, you will usually do right not to use the highest potencies but lower ones. In short, the potency required will be determined by whether, in your view, you have to act on the metabolic-limb organism, the middle, rhythmic organism, or the head organism. You must bear in mind, of course, that the head organism works powerfully upon the whole organism from the other direction. For example, you may believe a patient to be suffering from a foot disease, but actually this may be a disguised head disease, having its origins in the head. In such a case you will have to effect a cure not from the metabolism but from the head. Thus one must use high—but not too high—potencies of a substance perhaps known to be valuable in lower potencies in cases that have to be treated from the metabolism. Gradually a rationale can be introduced into these deliberations, and this must be done. The details will become clear only when you consider precise observations yielded by experiments. The investigations must pursue these details in the directions I have suggested.

Only an individual who can carefully retain in his memory all that his experience has taught him will be able to speak about healing in detail. Every individual experience is obviously instructive and bears fruit for further experiences. If you consider then what I have said, it will no longer appear so puzzling that there are diseases that, for instance, attack the brain and the liver simultaneously, for the liver is only a metamorphosed brain. If you therefore find deterioration of the liver together with degeneration of the cerebral ganglia, these conditions run in the same direction, and you have a form of disease that is an intensification of what causes pulmonary tuberculosis. It is only an intensified metamorphosis of pulmonary tuberculosis. Hence internally you will have to give stronger doses of mercury. Regarding external treatment, you should not be content with salt rubbings and with baths of table salt (sodium chloride); instead you will have to use calcium salts.

You see now, however, that sources of error are everywhere, and one really finds what is right only if the human organism is studied from within. Imagine that someone can go and say, “Here is a disease that I will cure with mercury,” he may achieve some success. The disease, however, may have nothing to do with syphilis, but at some point this person got the idea that when mercury effects a cure, the disease must be connected with syphilitic processes. This is not necessarily the case at all. You will now better understand what I said last year when I spoke of "mental illnesses." Of course I meant paralytic disease when I spoke a few days ago of softening of the brain, but the description is not so vivid if one uses the word “paralysis.” One always has the feeling that one is dropping into a description of the outer complex of symptoms.

Questions now arise regarding what I said last year about the actual causes of psychological diseases. As I said then, these have to be looked for in deformations of the organs. One gets nowhere if one merely takes into account the psychological symptoms. Similar psychological complexes can even be traced back to totally different causes of illness. Especially in so-called mental illnesses we are led more and more to deformations of the organs, to an organ that is not functioning properly, and then the question arises as to why the organ is not functioning properly. It is because the stable—not the variable—forces in protein formation have become defective. Something in the patient is therefore continually striving to destroy the original plastic structure of the affected organ. Therefore it does no good to look for the cause in what is going on in the tissue fluid, which presents the other pole, the metabolism. If we proceed from the symptoms, it will not help us to study what is presented by the metabolism itself within the organism. Instead it is exceptionally important in trying to gain knowledge of mental illnesses to study the excretions. An important reference point will always be found there. It is of tremendous importance to investigate the excretions of mental patients, for—as I said last year—in certain forms of mental illness there is a compulsive tendency to form imaginations, inspirations. This is what “freeing the spiritual within” signifies.

This tendency is there because the organ has become defective. If the organ were not defective, if it were constituted normally, it would indeed form imaginations, but these would remain unconscious. When the organ has become defective, it is not able to form imaginations correctly. On the one hand, the organ is defective and the tendency to form imaginations arises; on the other hand, imaginations remain uncovered by the organ, and hallucinations arise. You could say then, that when we have an organ with imaginations developing within it (see drawing, red) which radiate through the rest of the human organism (see drawing, bright) and become perceptible, we are dealing with a deformed organ. The formation of imaginations (red) cannot unfold properly in its plasticity. As a result, because the imaginative activity is abnormal, it intrudes upon consciousness, and visions and hallucinations arise. On the other hand, the organ is damaged, and this gives rise to an urge to form correct imaginations. Only by seeing through these things from within can they be explained.

We will proceed tomorrow to answer individual questions that have been posed and to an explanation of our remedies.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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