The Rudolf Steiner Archive

2. Laughter and Tears

[ 1 ] In a series of lectures on facts in the humanities, it might seem to some that the topic to be discussed today is insignificant. But this is precisely what is often a flaw in such reflections, which ascend into the higher realms of existence: that the details of life, the immediate realities of the day, are neglected by those who engage in them. In general, people do, after all, like it when lectures of this kind speak of the infinity or finitude of life, of the highest qualities of the soul, of the great questions of the development of the world and humanity—and perhaps of even higher things; and they are not inclined to engage with so-called everyday matters, such as those—at least seemingly—that are to occupy us today. But anyone who attempts to penetrate the realms of spiritual life along the path described in these lectures will become increasingly convinced that it is precisely this calm, step-by-step advance—from the most familiar to the less familiar realms—that is of great benefit. Moreover, you can already gather from the memory of many such phenomena that the greatest minds of humanity—indeed, the consciousness of humanity as a whole—by no means regards what is commonly called laughter and tears as merely mundane. For that consciousness which works within the legends and the great traditions of humanity—and which so often works far more wisely than individual human consciousness—endowed the great personality who has become so significant for Eastern culture, Zarathustra, with the famous “Zarathustra smile”; and the consciousness of legend sees something special in the fact that this great spirit entered the world with a smile. And drawing on a profound understanding of world history, it links this fact of the Zarathustra smile to the further observation that all creatures of the earth rejoiced at this smile, and that all the evil spirits and adversaries of the earth fled from the Zarathustra smile. When we now turn from such a consciousness—which is active in the tradition of legends—to the creations of a single great spirit, we may also recall that figure into whom Goethe poured most of his own feelings and imagination: the figure of “Faust.” After Faust has fallen into the deepest despair over all existence and was on the verge of destroying his own being, Goethe has this character exclaim, upon hearing the Easter bells: “Tears well up; the earth has me again!” As the symbol of the state of mind that enables Faust, after thoughts of the worst, most bitter despair, to return, so to speak, to the world—as the symbol of a person’s rediscovery of himself within earthly circumstances—Goethe, the poet, presents us here with the tear.

[ 2 ] Thus we see that, in fact, if one were only willing to consider it, one could meaningfully connect with what is expressed through laughter and tears. But one might well believe that it is more convenient to speculate directly about the nature of the spirit than to seek out the spirit in such manifestations as those in which we find it when we observe the world as it is immediately around us. And we can find the spirit—and first and foremost the human spirit—in its very essence precisely in that expression of the human soul which manifests itself in laughter and tears. One can understand what presents itself to our eyes in this peculiar revelation of the soul only if one truly regards these two human expressions as manifestations of one’s inner spiritual life. But this requires not only acknowledging such a spiritual nature, but also understanding it. All the lectures held here during this very winter cycle were, after all, devoted to understanding this spiritual nature of the human being. Therefore, we need only briefly touch upon today how we view the human being from a spiritual-scientific perspective. For even in order to understand laughter and tears, we must take this essence of the human being as our foundation in the spiritual-scientific sense.

[ 3 ] We have seen how human beings appear to us when we consider them in their entirety, consisting of their physical body, which they share with the entire mineral kingdom; their etheric or life body, which they share with the entire plant kingdom; furthermore, from the astral body, which they share with the animal kingdom and which is the bearer of pleasure and suffering, joy and pain, of horror and wonder, and also of all the ideas that ebb and flow in our soul life every day from waking until falling asleep. Thus, for us, the essence of the human being consists first and foremost of these three outer sheaths; and it is within this sheath that what makes the human being the crown of earthly creation—the human “I”—truly lives. This “I” in turn works within the soul life, which is composed of the three soul members: the feeling soul as the lowest member, the next member, the intellectual or emotional soul, and the third member, the conscious soul; and we have also seen how the “I” works through these soul members to lead the human being to ever greater perfection.

[ 4 ] What, then, underlies all this activity of the “I” within the human soul?

[ 5 ] Let us consider this “I” in some of its various manifestations. Some phenomenon, some object, or some being from the external world appears before this “I” of the human being—before the deepest center of his spiritual life. The “I” does not remain indifferent to this being or object, but expresses itself in a certain way; it experiences this or that inwardly, in the soul. An object may please or displease the “I.” The “I” may exult at some event, or it may sink into the deepest sorrow; it may recoil in horror and fear, or it may gaze upon or embrace the event or being with love. It may have the inner experience: “I understand a process that confronts me,” or: “I do not understand it.”

[ 6 ] When we observe the self at work—from the moment we wake up until we fall asleep—we see how it tries to harmonize itself with the outside world. When it takes a liking to an object, when that feeling wells up within us: “This is a being that warms us”—then a bond is woven between us and the object; then something reaches out from us to the object. Essentially, we do this with the entire world around us. Our entire daily life appears to us, in terms of inner soul processes, as the creation of harmony between our “I” and the rest of the world. What we experience in the objects and beings of the external world, and what is reflected in the processes of our soul life, affects not only our three soul members—because the “I” dwells within them—but also the astral body, the etheric body, and the physical body. We have often cited, for example, how the relationship that the “I” establishes between itself and any being or object not only stirs the emotions of the astral body, not only brings about a shift in the currents and movements of the etheric body, but also affects the physical body itself. Or should not a person have the opportunity to observe, for example, how a human personality can turn pale when something terrible comes near them? What else has happened here other than that the relationship the “I” has established between itself and the terrifying thing—the bond it has forged between itself and the object—has penetrated all the way into the physical body and set the blood in motion differently than is usually the case? The blood has, as it were, withdrawn from the outer physical body, thereby causing the pallor. The other, particularly characteristic example has also already been cited: the blush of shame. When we feel compelled to establish such a relationship between ourselves and a particular entity in our surroundings that we would prefer to make ourselves vanish for a moment so that no one can see us, the blood rushes to our face. In both of these cases, a specific effect on the blood is brought about by what manifests as the relationship of the “I” to the external world. — We could cite many examples of how what the “I” experiences in the external world is expressed in the astral body, the etheric body, and the physical body.

[ 7 ] Since the “I” seeks harmony or a specific relationship between itself and its environment, very special cases are again possible with regard to such relationships. Thus, we could say of certain relationships to our environment: We find the correct position of the “I” in relation to this or that object or being. Even if we feel fear toward a being that justifies such fear, we can say: Our “I” feels—provided it has the opportunity afterward to reflect on this relationship in the proper way—that it was in harmony with its surroundings even in the feeling of fear. In particular, however, our “I” feels its harmony with its surroundings when, for example, it strives to understand this or that aspect of the external world and is able, through its concepts, feelings, sensations, and so on, to truly gain insight into those objects about which it seeks understanding. Then the ego feels as if it were united with the objects it is seeking to understand. Then it feels as if it were transcending itself, as if it were immersed in the objects, and feels that the bond is a genuine one. Or else the ego lives together with other people with whom it enters into very specific relationships that it cherishes. The “I” feels satisfied and blissful in its relationship with each of these other people—the relationship it has established—and feels that a harmonious relationship exists between itself and the outside world. This relationship is initially expressed within the “I” in such a way that the “I” feels at ease and transfers this sense of ease to its sheaths—the astral body or etheric body.

[ 8 ] However, it may also happen that the ego is, for once, unable to establish this harmony—that is, the relationship that, in a certain sense, could be called normal. If it cannot immediately find this normal relationship, the ego may thereby find itself in a particular situation. Let us suppose that the ego encounters something in the external world—some object or entity—with which it cannot establish such a relationship that, for example, it understands the thing or, through its concepts and ideas, recognizes the existence of this entity or fact as legitimate. Let us assume that the ego is seeking to establish a relationship with the external world; but it is unable to actually find such a relationship that forms a normal bond between the ego and the external world. In such a situation, our ego will nevertheless need to adopt a certain stance within itself toward this thing in the external world. Let us consider a concrete case: We encounter some entity in the external world that we, for the most part, do not wish to understand, because penetrating its essence does not seem worth the effort to our “I”—because we feel, so to speak, that if we were to attempt to penetrate its essence, we would have to devote too much of our own cognitive and comprehension powers. Whereas we approach another being in such a way that we say: “I want to expend my energy to understand you; I want to immerse myself in you and unite what is within me with you”—with this particular being, we take the attitude that it is not worth the effort to immerse ourselves. We would be wasting the powers of our understanding if we were to immerse ourselves in it. In that case, we need to adopt a very special stance; we need to erect a kind of barrier. Faced with a being such as the one described, we do not wish to practice that kind of devotion; we do not wish to immerse ourselves in it; that is to say, we wish to free ourselves from this being standing before us, to keep ourselves free; we want to find ourselves within ourselves, not through immersion, but by diverting our energy away from this being and, by rising above it in our own self-awareness, becoming aware of that energy. When we stand in such a relationship to a being, the feeling that must come over us is that of liberation from that being.

[ 9 ] When it comes to a being we understand, and into whom we immerse ourselves either through the power of knowledge or through love or compassion—in such cases we do not feel the “I” withdrawing; on the contrary, we feel drawn to that being. With a being such as the one just described, however, we feel: Our “I” would lose something if it were to immerse itself in the other being; therefore, we must hold our forces together. With such a state of consciousness, clairvoyant observation can perceive how the “I,” as it were, withdraws the astral body from the impressions that might be made upon it from the surroundings or from this other being. This being will, of course, make an impression on our physical body unless we close our eyes or plug our ears. But because we have less control over our physical body than over our astral body, we withdraw our astral body for a moment from the physical body—and indeed from the etheric body as well—thereby preventing it from being touched by the other being. This withdrawal of the astral body—which otherwise expends its energy within the physical body to hold its forces together—appears to the clairvoyant consciousness as if the astral body were expanding; it, as it were, spreads out during such a liberation. When we rise above a being, we allow our astral body—like an elastic substance—to expand and become limp, whereas we would otherwise have kept it taut. As the astral body expands, we free ourselves from any bond with the being in question; we withdraw, as it were, into ourselves and rise above the entire situation. And because everything that happens in the astral body is expressed in the physical body, this withdrawal of the astral body is also expressed in the physical body; and the expression of the expansion of the astral body in the physical body is laughter or a smile; so that every laugh or smile—which can arise from no other state of mind than the one described—is accompanied by an elastic expansion of the astral body. — We may therefore say: What appears in the human being through the expansion of the astral body and its physiognomic expression as laughter or a smile is a rising above what is happening in the surroundings, because we do not wish to exert our understanding, and, given the entire nature of our attitude toward the matter in question, we should not exert our understanding for it either. In the extreme, therefore, everything that is not meant to elicit our understanding must entail such an expansion of the astral body and thereby provoke laughter. — Satirical publications have had the habit of depicting certain public figures with enormous heads and very small bodies, thereby grotesquely expressing what the person in question represents for his or her time. To try to understand this would be absurd, for there is no law that would combine such a large head with such a small body. If we were to immerse ourselves in this subject with our power of cognition, it would be a waste of energy, for we would be squandering our power of understanding in the process. The only satisfaction in this should be precisely to rise above the object—or rather, to free the “I” from the impression made on our physical body and to expand the astral body. For what the “I” experiences, it first projects onto its innermost sheath, the astral body; and the physiognomic expression of this is laughter.

[ 10 ] However, it may also happen that we are unable to find a relationship with our surroundings—one that we seek and are fully justified in seeking, given our entire state of mind. Let us suppose we have loved a person for some time; this person is not only connected to our actions, but very specific soul experiences are linked to this person’s existence and to the bond between our own personality and theirs. Let us suppose that this person is taken away from us for a time. With the removal of this person, a part of our own soul experiences is lost; something that serves as a bond between us and a being in the external world is lost. Our soul, through the state of mind that has developed through the relationship with this person, is entitled to seek this bond, because it has trained itself to have this bond. Now it can no longer have it. Something has been torn away from this “I,” and what has been torn away causes a reaction within the “I” that in turn is transmitted to the astral body. And because something has now been taken away from the astral body—because it seeks a relationship with the outside world that it cannot find—it now withdraws into itself; or rather, the “I” compresses this astral body.

[ 11 ] We can always observe this through clairvoyant awareness whenever grief or pain arises in a person due to a loss, as the “I”—from which something has been taken away—contracts the astral body. Just as the astral body, when driven apart, becomes limp and thereby gives rise to the physiognomic expression in the physical body that must be described as laughter or a smile, so an astral body that contracts penetrates, as it were, more deeply into all the forces of the physical body. This is indeed the case. When the astral body contracts, it presses the physical body together with it. And the physical expression of the ego’s contraction into itself—and thus of the astral body’s contraction into itself, and consequently of the physical body’s contraction into itself—is the welling up of tears. The astral body, which has, as it were, developed gaps within itself and seeks to fill these gaps through its contraction by drawing in substances from the surroundings, thereby compresses the physical body along with it and drives the substances of the physical body outward in the form of tears. What, then, is the tear at the same time? — The “I” has lost something in grief, in loss. It contracts because it has become poorer, because it can feel its individuality less strongly than before; for the richer it is in experiences with the surrounding world, the more strongly it feels its own uniqueness. We do not merely give something to the things we love; rather, we enrich our own soul through our love. And as the experiences of our love are torn from us, and the astral body develops gaps and contracts, it seeks—through this pressure exerted, as it were, upon itself—to regain the forces it has lost through that loss. It seeks to enrich itself by drawing inward, because it has been impoverished by what it has lost. What emerges in the tear is not merely the flow of tears, not merely an opening outward, but something that could be called a substitute for the self that has been impoverished. Whereas the self once felt enriched by the outside world, it now feels stronger in the process it brings forth itself; it feels whole by forcing out the tears. What the personality has lost spiritually in terms of self-awareness, it seeks to replace by spurring itself on to an inner creation—the production of tears. Thus, in a certain sense, the tear is a form of compensation, a substitute for the self’s impoverishment. That is why we can say: When the self, having experienced a loss, is able to reach the point of the tear—when it elevates its consciousness by becoming aware of its loss through the tear—then this tear gives the self a certain subconscious sense of well-being. One could even say: In a certain sense, the tear is a catalyst for a kind of inner pleasure. A form of compensation is created through the tear. You are surely aware of how a person, when feeling truly miserable in grief, finds a kind of comfort in the tear, because the tear is something that can offer them a certain substitute. And you will also know how much more difficult it is for certain people—those said to be unable to cry—to endure grief and pain than it is for those who can derive inner comfort from tears at every opportunity.

[ 12 ] Thus we see that it is the “I” that cannot find the connection it seeks with the outside world, and must either rise to a state of inner freedom or withdraw into itself to regain strength in the face of an inner loss. We see how the “I” is the central being of the human person, expressing itself in laughter and tears. Therefore, we can also understand that the “I”—which makes a person a person—is, in a certain sense, a prerequisite for true laughter and true tears.

[ 13 ] When we observe a child as it is born, we find that in the first few days it can neither laugh nor cry. True laughter and true crying do not occur until the thirty-sixth or fortieth day of life. Before that, the child cannot laugh or cry; and the reason for this is as follows: Although it is determined what kind of “I” from a previous incarnation lives in this particular child, this “I” does not immediately begin to shape the human being in the first days of life; it does not immediately seek to establish relationships with the outside world. After all, the human being is placed into life in such a way that what is within and upon them originates from two sources. One source is that which contains all the qualities and activities the human being inherits from their father, mother, grandfather, and so on—in short, the qualities and activities derived from the hereditary line. But within this, the individuality—the human “I” that passes from life to life, from incarnation to incarnation—works to shape its soul qualities. When we see a human being enter existence at birth, what first presents itself to us is the indeterminacy of the person’s physiognomy, and how indeterminate are those qualities that the person will one day manifest as talents, aptitudes, and distinctive characteristics. But we also see how the creative, active “I”—which has brought developmental forces with it from previous lives—works these indeterminate traits out with ever greater clarity and modifies what has been given through heredity. Thus we see the inherited traits merging with those that pass from incarnation to incarnation. — You can now find more detailed information about the course of human development with a certain degree of clarity in my recently published book *An Outline of Esoteric Science*, where these matters are discussed in the first sections in a way that is appropriate to people’s understanding today.

[ 14 ] Thus we see how the “I” takes shape within the child. But it takes time for the “I” to reshape both the physical and the psychological aspects of the child. Therefore, a human being enters existence in such a way that, in the first few days, he or she exhibits solely the inherited characteristics. In the first few days, the “I” still lies deeply hidden within, waiting until it can shape the child’s indeterminate physiognomy with what it has carried over from previous lives—what it can develop day by day, year by year.

[ 15 ] Before the child assumes the individual character that applies only to that person, it is not possible for the “I” to express any relationship to the outside world through laughter and crying. For it is the “I” that matters—the most individual aspect, which seeks a bond and wishes to bring itself into harmony and accord with its surroundings. It must be the “I” that, in laughter or a smile, seeks to free itself from objects; it must be the “I” that, when seeking a relationship it cannot find, compresses the inner core of the human being in that sense of loss. Only the “I” can express itself through laughter or crying. We can see from this that we are dealing with the deepest spirituality of the human being when we are faced with the revelations of the human being in laughter or tears.

[ 16 ] Those who like to lump everything together and therefore refuse to acknowledge any real differences between humans and animals will, of course, also find analogies for laughter and crying in the animal kingdom. But anyone who understands these things correctly will agree with the German poet who says that an animal does not go so far as to cry, but at most to howl; and it does not go so far as to laugh, but only to grin. Therein lies a profound truth which, when put into words, is expressed by the fact that the animal does not rise to that individual selfhood which resides within the being itself, but rather that the animal is governed by laws which, though they resemble those of the self-aware human, are so ingrained in the animal that they remain external to it throughout its life. The animal does not attain individuality. This significant difference between human beings and animal beings has already been mentioned here. It has been said that what interests us about animals can be summarized in the generic or species character. Try to determine for yourself whether what interests us most about animals also exhibits such great differences—for example, between a lion cub, a lion father, a lion grandfather, and so on—as we find in human beings. What we observe in animals is subsumed within the species character. In the human realm, however, every human being is a distinct genus in and of themselves, and what appears to us in animals as the species or genus must, in the case of humans, interest us in each individual human being. This means that, among humans, every person has their own individual biography. This interests us just as much as the species- or genus-level biography in animals. Certainly, there have been many a dog father and cat mother who claimed they could also write a dog or cat biography. But I also knew a schoolteacher who regularly assigned his students the task of writing the biography of their steel nib. What matters is not that a thought can be applied to everything, but that our understanding strives to grasp what is essential in a thing or being. Up to the level of animals, the biographical individuality is the non-essential; in humans, however, it becomes the essential, because in humans the main thing is that which develops as individuality from one life to the next, whereas in animals it merely passes from one species to the next. If such importance of the biographical element is not acknowledged, it is not because this importance is any less significant than that which we attribute to the natural laws of the external world, but because the person who does not acknowledge it is unable to perceive the significance of any phenomena.

[ 17 ] In spiritual science, we call that which extends from one species of animal to another—that which lives on from genus to genus—the animal’s group soul or group ego, which we regard as something real. And we say that the animal does not have its ego within itself, but outside itself. In the field of spiritual science, we do not deny the existence of the animal “I”; rather, we speak of a group “I” that directs the animal from the outside. In the case of human beings, on the other hand, we speak of an individual “I” that penetrates into the innermost core of the human being and, from within, directs each individual human being as the underlying individuality in such a way that the human being enters into a personal relationship with the beings in their environment. The general relationship that the animal realm can establish under the guidance of the external group ego also has a typical, general character. What this or that animal loves or hates, what this or that animal fears, has a general, typical character and varies only in certain minor details—for example, in the case of our domestic animals or those that live alongside humans. But what love and hate mean for human beings in relation to their surroundings, what fear and terror signify for the soul, and what sympathy and antipathy are—these are cultivated by human beings in their individuality, in the sense of self that passes from one incarnation to the next, in an individual manner. Therefore, the special relationship through which a human being frees themselves from some being in their surroundings—which is then physiognomically expressed in laughter—or the other relationship, where we seek something and can no longer find it, and which seeks its physiognomic expression in weeping, is always something that only the human “I” can unfold. Therefore, we can also say: The more the child extricates itself from the merely animal, from the merely bestial, the more its individuality reveals itself, the more its humanity is revealed in laughter or in the tears welling up from its eyes. If we consider life in its truth, we must not seek what is most important in the crude facts of life, nor in the similarity of bones and muscles between humans and animals, nor in the similarity of other organs that exists to a certain degree, if we wish to affirm the higher position of humans above earthly beings; but rather we must seek the essential characteristics of human nature where we perceive the more subtle realities. To those who consider facts such as laughter and weeping too insignificant to apply them as the true characteristics of humanity and animality, one must say: There is no help for those who are unable to rise to the facts that matter if we wish to understand human beings in their spiritual nature.

[ 18 ] These facts, which we encounter here from the perspective of the spiritual sciences, can indeed shed light on certain achievements of the natural sciences—but only if these facts are reintegrated into a larger, spiritual-scientific whole. There is something else connected with laughter and crying in human beings. Anyone who observes laughter and crying in human beings will find that these expressions of the human being involve not only the physiognomic expression of laughter or grief, but also a change, a modification of the breathing process. When a person is so sad as to shed tears, and when their sadness leads to such a compression of the astral body that the physical body is compressed along with it, one can observe that the inhalation becomes shorter and shorter, and that the exhalation occurs in long breaths. And when laughing, the opposite is true; there we notice a long inhalation and a short exhalation. In this way, the breathing process is modified. And it is not merely a metaphor, but corresponds to a deeper reality, when we say: When the astral body of a laughing person becomes limp, and when the physical body also relaxes in its finer structure, something similar occurs to what happens when we create a vacuum by pumping the air out of a space and then exposing that evacuated space to the outside air: the air then whistles into it. A kind of clearing of the outer physicality thus occurs during laughter, and then, in a long exhalation, the air flows inward. When we cry, the opposite is true: we compress the astral body—and also the physical body—and the result is that the long exhalation is brought about by this compression as if in a single breath.

[ 19 ] Thus we see how what is experienced in the human soul through the presence of the “I” is connected, once again, to the physical manifestations of life and extends all the way into the outer physical realm.

[ 20 ] When we consider these physiological facts, a spiritual-scientific fact is illuminated for us in a remarkable way—a fact that has found its expression in symbolic form—as spiritual-scientific facts generally do—in the religious records of humanity. Let us recall that significant passage in the Old Testament where it is described that human beings are raised to their present humanity when Yahweh or Jehovah breathes the living breath into them, thereby making them a soul that lives within itself. This is the moment that points, in a broader sense, to the emergence of the “I.” In the Old Testament, the nature of the breathing process is presented as the expression of the human being’s true self; breathing is linked to the inner soulfulness of the human being. When we observe how the human “I” finds a particular expression in laughter and weeping, the intimate connection between the human breathing process and the inner animation of the human being becomes evident to us; and from this insight, we then look upon the religious texts with the humility that such a deeper, true understanding bestows upon us.

[ 21 ] In spiritual science, all these documents are, at first glance, of no concern to us. For even if a great catastrophe were to destroy all these documents, spiritual research has the means to discover, through spiritual research itself, that which underlies them. Spiritual research is never dependent on documents. But when the facts have been discovered, and one subsequently recognizes in the documents the unmistakable pictorial expression of what one had previously discovered through spiritual science independently of the documents, then our understanding of these documents deepens. Then one says to oneself: What is discussed there could not have found its way into the texts in any other way than through beings who knew what the spiritual researcher can rediscover in them; and across the millennia, it speaks from spiritual researcher to spiritual researcher, from spiritual insight to spiritual insight! In this way, one gains the correct perspective on these documents precisely through this insight. And when it is recounted how God breathed His living breath into humankind, thereby enabling humankind to become an “I” found within itself, we find—precisely through a contemplation such as this one on “Laughter and Tears”—just how true such a figuratively depicted fact is with regard to human nature.

[ 22 ] I’ll just point out one thing here, because otherwise we’d go too far off on a tangent. For example, someone might say: “You’ve approached this whole discussion from the wrong end, because you should have started where the external facts speak for themselves.” You must look for the spiritual element where it appears solely as a pure natural phenomenon—for example, when a person is tickled. There we have the most elementary fact of laughter. How do you reconcile that with all your fanciful notions about the expansion of the astral body—and so on?

[ 23 ] Oh, then the expansion of the astral body is taking place all the more. For all the characteristics listed are present, albeit at a lower level. When a person is tickled on the sole of the foot, this is a fact that he cannot come to terms with using his intellect. He does not want it; he rejects it. He will only comprehend it with his intellect when he tickles himself. But then they do not laugh; for then they know the source. When someone else tickles them, however, it is something incomprehensible to them. The “I” rises above it, seeks to free itself from it, and tries to detach the astral body from it. And it is precisely the astral body’s liberation from an inappropriate touch that is expressed through unmotivated laughter. This is precisely a liberation, a rescue of the “I” at an elemental level from that attack which is exerted upon us when we are tickled on the soles of our feet—a situation we cannot grasp with our understanding of the matter.

[ 24 ] Every laugh at a joke or at something funny is on the same level. We laugh at the joke because laughing helps us put it into proper perspective. A joke brings together things that cannot be brought together in serious life; for if they were logically comprehensible, they would not be funny. In a joke, relationships are brought together that—unless one has fallen on one’s head—do not necessarily challenge our understanding, but rather challenge us precisely to use a certain playfulness of the mind to bring together the things that are brought together there. The moment we feel we possess this playfulness, we free ourselves and rise above the content contained in the joke. You will find the act of freeing oneself, of rising above any phenomenon, wherever laughter occurs. And likewise, you will see that the fact that a person is searching for something they cannot find—and therefore contracts within themselves—lies at the root of crying.

[ 25 ] However, this kind of relationship to the outside world, as it has just been described, may be justified or unjustified. We may wish to free ourselves from a certain sense of justification through laughter; or, due to our own peculiarities, we may not wish to understand—or be unable to understand—the event in question. In that case, the laughter does not lie in the nature of the facts, but in our own imperfection. This becomes evident wherever an undeveloped person laughs at another because he cannot understand him. When an undeveloped person does not find in another the mundane and philistine qualities that he considers to be correct, he thinks it is unnecessary to approach the matter with understanding; he seeks to free himself from it—perhaps precisely because he does not want to understand it. Consequently, it easily becomes a habit among us to free ourselves from everything through laughter. This is also often the nature of certain people: they laugh and grumble about everything; they do not want to understand anything at all; they puff themselves up in their astral body and thereby find themselves laughing constantly. This is precisely the same fundamental fact. However, while on the one hand it may seem justified not to want to delve into the understanding of a matter, on the other hand it may be unjustified. It may also be due to the imperfections of fashion that something does not seem entirely appropriate to ordinary behavior, making it difficult to understand. In such cases, one smiles, imagining oneself to be above one thing or another. Laughter, therefore, need not express a justified sense of withdrawal; rather, it can also express an unjustified withdrawal. This, however, does not alter the fundamental fact that has characterized laughter.

[ 26 ] However, it can also happen that someone counts on what constitutes human expression. Let’s assume that a speaker counts on what his speech is intended to evoke—such as approval or the like. In that case, he is naturally counting on what the human soul is capable of experiencing. Now, in certain cases, it may be justified to point out things that are so trivial or so far beyond the grasp of certain listeners that one may describe them without forging a particularly intimate bond between the listeners’ souls and these subjects; but rather, one will help the listeners free themselves from what lies outside the scope of what the speaker is meant to elucidate. In such cases, the speaker may expect the listeners to share his stance of rejecting the subjects in question. However, there are also speakers who always want to have the audience laughing on their side. I have heard speakers say: “Where I want to prevail, I will stimulate the laughter muscles so that I have the audience on my side—and whoever has the audience on their side has prevailed!” But this can also stem from an inner dishonesty. For when one appeals to laughter, one appeals to something that is meant to lift a person above a matter. But one also counts on people’s vanity—even if they aren’t aware of it—when one presents the matter in such a way that they aren’t required to immerse themselves in it and are allowed to laugh at it simply because it is brought down to a level where it appears inferior. Thus, relying on laughter can stem from a principle of dishonesty. And in a certain way, one can sometimes win people over by arousing in them that sense of well-being and comfort which was described in today’s lecture as being connected to tears. When a person is presented, so to speak, with a loss that exists only in the imagination, they feel as though they could say to themselves: “You may now search for something you cannot actually find!” They feel reinforced in their egoism, in their self-interest, by the compression of the ego; and much of this calculation based on emotion is often, in the grand scheme of things, nothing other than a calculation based on human self-interest. All these things can therefore be seriously abused, because emotion and pain, grief, scorn, and mockery—accompanied by laughter or tears—are connected to what strengthens and liberates the ego, that is, to human egotism. Consequently, when these things come to the fore, selfishness can be addressed and appealed to; and then it is selfishness that can just as easily destroy what binds one person to another.

[ 27 ] So we see that the human “I” feels freely uplifted in laughter and in what underlies laughter, and that the sense of self feels constricted in tears and in what is associated with them. But we have also seen in other lectures how the “I” not only works on the feeling soul, the intellectual soul, and the conscious soul, but how, through this very work, it is meant to become ever more perfect and stronger. We will therefore easily understand that laughter and tears can, in a certain sense, be means of education. As the “I” rises to laughter, it summons the forces of its self-liberation, its sublimity, and its self-containment in the world. In tears, it can train itself to connect with that to which it belongs; and by feeling a sense of lack in relation to that to which it belongs, it nevertheless enriches itself in another way through its own sense of self, by drawing itself together. Oh, in laughter and tears lie, at the same time, means of education for the “I” and the powers of the “I.” The self, so to speak, rises in its freedom and unity with the world by expressing itself through laughter and tears. It is therefore no wonder that among the great educational means of human development are those productions and human creations that work specifically to stir the very soul forces underlying laughter and tears.

[ 28 ] In the tragedy, we see something presented that actually compresses the astral body in order to bring firmness and inner cohesion into our “I,” whereas in the comedy, what is presented is that which expands the astral body, as the human being rises above folly, above that which collapses within itself, and thereby seeks to liberate the “I.” We see how this is connected to human development: through the tragedy and the comedy, artificial creations are set before the soul.

[ 29 ] Anyone who can observe human nature and essence even in the smallest things will see that everyday experiences can also lead to an understanding of the great truths. Such things, which we encounter, for example, in art, show us that there is something in human nature that swings back and forth like a pendulum between what is expressed in tears and what is expressed in laughter. It is only through this movement that the “I” continues to develop. In a state of static equilibrium, it would not expand or develop further; it would be doomed to inner death. It is right for human development that the self can, on the one hand, liberate itself through laughter and, on the other hand, seek itself even in its loss, in tears. However, if a balance is to be sought between two poles, it must also be found. Therefore, the self can find its fullness only in balance, never in the back-and-forth oscillation between “ecstatic joy” and “deepest sorrow”; it can find itself only in a state of equilibrium that can move toward both one and the other.

[ 30 ] Human beings must gradually become the guides and leaders of their own existence as they develop. When we understand laughter and tears, we perceive them precisely as manifestations of the spirit and will say: Human beings become truly transparent to us when we see how, in laughter, they seek an outward expression for an inner sense of liberation, and how a tear expresses an inner sense of fortitude when the “I” has lost something in the outer world. — Thus, in laughter and tears, we have two poles through which the mysteries of the world reveal themselves to us.

[ 31 ] And let us ask ourselves: What, ultimately, is the smile on a person’s face? — we know that it is the spiritual revelation that man strives for liberation, that he does not allow himself to be ensnared by things unworthy of him, but rather, with a smile on his face, rises above that of which he must never become a slave. And the tear on a person’s face is for us the spiritual expression of the spiritual fact that even when a person feels the thread between themselves and some being in the outside world has been severed, they still seek that thread in their loss; that when they wish to strengthen their self in the tear, they wish to express precisely this: I belong to the world, and the world belongs to me, for I cannot bear to be torn away from the world.

[ 32 ] Now we understand how liberation—which rises above all that is base and evil—could be expressed through the “smile of Zarathustra,” and how it could be said: at this smile, all creatures of the earth rejoiced, and the spirits of evil fled! For this smile is the symbol in world history of the spiritual elevation of the free “I”-being above that in which it must not become entangled. And everything on earth may rejoice when that which constitutes its essence can rise with the smile of the Zarathustra-being. But then, when the “I” has a moment when it says: “Existence is worthless; I want nothing more to do with the world!”—and when the power is to surge up in its soul to bring these words to consciousness: “The world belongs to me, I belong to the world!”—then such an expression may be found in Goethe’s words: “The tear wells up! The earth has me again!” In this, we sense that we must not be excluded from all that the earth is, that we may feel a sense of belonging to the world, which finds expression in the tear when it is taken from us. This is justified in the deep mysteries of the world.

[ 33 ] The tear on a person’s face can reveal to us their oneness with the world, and the laughter on their face can reveal to us their liberation from all that is base and seeks to ensnare them.