The Rudolf Steiner Archive

4. The Human Soul and the Human Body in the Knowledge of Nature and Spirit

[ 1 ] I find myself in a somewhat difficult position with regard to today’s lecture, for the nature of the subject requires me to outline findings from a very broad field of the humanities, and some may wish to hear supporting, substantiating details regarding this or that finding to be presented today. Such details can be provided in future lectures; today, my task will be to outline the field in question. In addition, I will have to draw upon terms and concepts regarding the soul and the body whose actual foundations lie in the lectures I have already given here; for I will have to restrict myself strictly to the topic at hand—namely, the exposition of the relationship between the human soul and the human body,

[ 2 ] This is a subject about which one can say that two intellectual movements of modern times are, precisely with regard to it, mired in the greatest possible misunderstandings. And if one examines these misunderstandings, one will find that, on the one hand, the thinkers and researchers who have attempted in recent times to explore the realm of mental phenomena have little use for the great and admirable achievements of the natural sciences—especially with regard to knowledge of the human body. They are, so to speak, unable to bridge the gap in the right way between what they must regard as observations of mental phenomena and the phenomena of the body. On the other hand, it must be said that those engaged in scientific research are generally so unfamiliar with observations of the soul—so unfamiliar, in fact, with what is even meant by the concept of “observation of the soul”—that they, in turn, are unable to bridge the gap from the truly monumental findings of modern natural science to phenomena of the soul. And so we find that researchers of the soul and natural scientists, when they speak of the human soul and the human body, speak entirely different languages and, fundamentally speaking, cannot understand one another at all. And it is precisely this fact that today misleads—indeed, one might even say confuses—those who attempt, on the basis of the concept of time, to gain insight into the great mysteries of the soul and their connection to the mysteries of the universe.

[ 3 ] I would like to begin by pointing out where, in fact, the error lies in our thinking. A peculiar tendency has emerged—I do not mean to criticize this, but merely to state it as a fact—regarding the way people today relate to their concepts and ideas. In most cases, they do not consider that concepts and ideas, no matter how well-founded they may be, are merely tools for assessing reality as it presents itself to us individually in each specific instance. People today believe that once they have grasped a concept, that concept is immediately applicable to the world. This peculiarity of contemporary thinking—which has permeated all scientific endeavor—is the basis for what I have just characterized as prevailing misunderstandings. People today do not consider that a concept can be entirely correct, yet—even though it is correct—it can be applied in a completely wrong way. To characterize this methodologically from the outset, I want to discuss this using perhaps grotesque examples that could actually occur in life. After all, someone might hold the certainly justified conviction that sleep—healthy sleep—is a good remedy. That can be an entirely correct concept, a correct idea. If it is not applied correctly in a specific case, however, something like this might happen: someone goes to visit someone somewhere; they find an old man who is unwell, sick in one way or another. They offer their wisdom by saying, “I know how good a healthy sleep is.” When he leaves, someone might say to him, “Well, look at that—the old man is sleeping all the time.” Or it may happen that someone else holds the view that, for certain illnesses, taking walks and getting some exercise is exceptionally healthy. He advises this to someone. That person need only object, “You’re forgetting that I’m a mail carrier.”

[ 4 ] I simply want to illustrate the principle here: that one can certainly have correct concepts, but that these concepts only become useful when they are applied to life in the right way.

[ 5 ] And so one can also find concepts in the various sciences that are strictly provable and correct, such that refuting them would prove difficult. Yet the question must always be raised: Are these concepts actually applicable to life? Are they useful tools for gaining an understanding of life? — The mental illness that I have alluded to and illustrated with grotesque examples is immensely widespread in our thinking today. Consequently, many people fail to see where the limits of their concepts lie, or where they must necessarily expand their concepts in light of the facts—whether physical or mental. And perhaps in few fields is such an expansion of concepts and ideas as necessary as in the field we wish to discuss today.

[ 6 ] Regarding what has been accomplished in this field from the standpoint of the natural sciences—which is, after all, the most important one at present—one can only say time and again: it is admirable; it is truly magnificent. On the other hand, in the realm of the soul, there is also significant work, but it does not shed light on the most important questions of the soul, and, above all, it cannot broaden its concepts to such an extent that it could withstand the onslaught from modern natural science, which is nevertheless directed against everything spiritual in one way or another. I would like to refer to two recent literary works that contain research findings in these fields; works that clearly show us how an expansion of concepts must be pursued through an expansion of research. First and foremost is Theodor Ziehen’s extraordinarily interesting Physiological Psychology. In this work, even though the still-fluctuating research findings are in part shaped by hypotheses, it is magnificently demonstrated how, based on modern scientific observations, one must conceive of the mechanisms of the brain and the nervous system in order to gain an idea of how—as we form mental images—our mental images interconnect and how the nervous system functions. Yet it is precisely in this field that it becomes quite clear that the scientific method of observation directed toward the psychological realm leads to concepts that are too narrowly defined and fail to penetrate real life. Theodor Ziehen is able to show that for everything that takes place in the process of imagination, corresponding images can, in a sense, be found within the nervous mechanism. And if one surveys the field of research on this question, one finds that Haeckel’s school, in particular, has achieved something quite extraordinary in this area. One need only point to the excellent work carried out by Haeckel’s student Max Verworn in the Göttingen laboratory on what occurs in the human brain and nervous system when we link one mental image to another—or, as they say in psychology, when one mental image is associated with another. Our thinking is, after all, fundamentally based on this linking of mental images. How one is to conceive of this linking of ideas, how one is to conceive of the formation of memory images, and how certain mechanisms exist that, one might say, store ideas so that they can later be retrieved from memory—all of this is beautifully presented in a coherent manner by Theodor Ziehen. When one surveys what he has to say about the life of ideas and about what corresponds to it in the human nervous system, one can certainly follow his line of thought. But then Ziehen arrives at a further, curious conclusion.

[ 7 ] We know, of course, that this human mental life does not consist solely of imagination. Whatever one may think about the relationship of other mental activities to imagination—one cannot, at first, ignore the fact that, in addition to imagination, one must at least distinguish other mental activities or faculties; we know that, in addition to imagination, there is feeling—the activity of feeling in its entire broad scope—and, furthermore, the activity of the will. Theodor Ziehen speaks as if feeling were actually nothing other than a property of imagination; he does not speak of feeling proper, but rather of the emotional tone of sensations or ideas. The representations are there. They are there, not only as we conceive them, but endowed with certain qualities that give them their emotional tone. So one can say: A researcher of this kind is compelled to assert that what takes place in the nervous system is not sufficient for feeling. Therefore, he effectively omits feeling itself and regards it merely as an appendage to representation. One could also say: By tracing the nervous system, he does not arrive, within the nervous mechanism, at an understanding of that aspect of the soul that appears as emotional life. Therefore, he omits emotional life as such. Nor does he find anything within the nervous mechanism that would necessitate speaking of a will. That is why Ziehen flatly denies the justification for speaking of “will” in the realm of the natural sciences with regard to the understanding of the soul and the body. What happens when a person wants something? Let’s suppose he is walking; he is in motion. Then one says—so such a researcher argues—that the movement, the walking, arises from his will. But as a rule, what is actually there? There is nothing there but, at first, the idea of movement. I imagine, so to speak, what it will be like when I move through space; and then nothing more happens than that I subsequently see or feel myself—that is, I perceive my movement. The remembered idea of movement is followed by the idea, the perception, of movement; there is no will to be found anywhere. — The will is thus virtually eliminated by the process of analysis. We see that, in tracing the nervous mechanisms, one does not arrive at feeling, nor even at willing; therefore, one must more or less—and in the case of the will, entirely—disregard these areas of the mind. And then one usually says good-naturedly: Well, yes, one leaves that to the philosophers, but the natural scientist has no reason to speak of these things unless, with regard to mental processes, one goes as far as Verworn, who says: “The philosophers have attributed many things to human mental life that, from a scientific standpoint, turn out to be unjustified.”

[ 8 ] A prominent modern psychologist—whom I have mentioned here on several occasions and who is more significant than is generally realized—reaches a conclusion similar to that of Ziehen, who bases his work entirely on scientific evidence: Franz Brentano. However, Franz Brentano takes the soul as his starting point. In his Psychology, he attempted to explore the life of the soul. It is characteristic that only the first volume of this book was published, and nothing further has appeared since the 1870s. Anyone familiar with the circumstances knows that it is precisely because Brentano works with concepts that are limited in the sense described above that he was unable to move beyond the beginning. But one thing is nevertheless extraordinarily significant in Brentano’s work: in his attempt to examine the phenomena of the soul and classify them into certain groups, he distinguishes between “representation” and “feeling.” Yet, in examining the soul—as it were, from top to bottom—he does not arrive at volition. For him, volition is, in essence, merely a subtype of feeling. Thus, even a researcher of the mind does not arrive at volition. Franz Brentano refers to such things as the fact that even language itself, when speaking of mental phenomena, suggests that what is usually called “volition” is, in essence, exhausted within the mental states—the facts of the mind—in feeling. For it is certainly only a feeling that is expressed when I say: I have an aversion to something. And yet, when I say, “I feel aversion toward something,” I use the word “will” in such a way that language itself instinctively expresses how the will is, in fact, something that belongs to feeling in the life of the mind. From this single example, you can see how impossible it is for this researcher of the mind to break out of a certain framework. For there is no doubt that what Franz Brentano offers is meticulous psychological research; but there is also no doubt that the experience of the will—the transition of inner life into outward action, and the arising of outward action from the will—is an experience that cannot be denied. Thus, the psychologist does not find what undoubtedly cannot be denied.

[ 9 ] One cannot say, however, that all researchers grounded in modern natural science who study mental life in its connection with physical life are strictly materialists. Ziehen, for example, regards matter as a mere hypothesis. But he arrives at a quite remarkable view, namely that, no matter where we look, there is nothing around us but the psychological. Even if there is some matter out there somewhere, this matter must first make an impression on us through its processes; so that, as material facts make an impression on our senses, what we experience in our sensory perception is already a mental phenomenon. Now we experience the world only through our senses; thus, fundamentally, everything is a mental phenomenon—everything is psychological. This is the view held by researchers such as Ziehen. According to this view, the entire realm of human experience would in fact be psychological, and we would, strictly speaking, have no right to speak of anything—other than ourselves, other than our psychological experiences—as being anything other than hypothetical. Based on such views, we essentially weave and live within the entire realm of the psychological and cannot step outside of it.

[ 10 ] Eduard von Hartmann characterized this view in a striking manner at the end of his Handbook of Psychology, and this characterization, though grotesque, is nonetheless quite interesting to bear in mind. He says: Let us take, in the spirit of this panpsychism—one simply coins such terms—the following example: Two people are sitting at a table and are now drinking—let us say, as a remnant of better times—coffee with sugar. One person is seated slightly farther from the sugar bowl than the other, and to the untrained eye, it appears as though one person says to the other: “Please pass me the sugar bowl.” The other person hands the sugar bowl to the one who asked. How, then—as Eduard von Hartmann argues—must this process be conceived if panpsychism is correct? It must be conceived in such a way that something occurs in the human brain or nervous system which takes shape in consciousness in such a way that the thought arises: “I would like some sugar.” But the person in question has no idea what is actually out there. Then this thought—“I would like some sugar”—is followed by another; but this, too, is merely a mental image: that something that looks like another person—for what is objectively there cannot be said; it merely gives that impression—is handing him the sugar bowl. Physiology, Hartmann now says, holds that objectively the following occurs: In my nervous system, when I am that person, some process takes place which is reflected in consciousness as the illusion “I’d like some sugar.” Then this same process—which has nothing to do with the process of consciousness—sets the speech muscles in motion; and again something objective comes into being on the outside, the nature of which is unknown, but which is reflected once more in consciousness, thereby giving one the impression that one is speaking the words “I’d like some sugar.” Then these movements, which are produced in the air, travel to another person—whom we again hypothetically assume to exist—and generate vibrations in that person’s nervous system. Because the sensory nerves in this nervous system vibrate, the motor nerves are set in motion. And while this purely mechanical process is taking place, something like “I am giving this person the sugar bowl” is reflected in the other person’s consciousness, along with everything else associated with it—the movement and so on.

[ 11 ] Here we have the peculiar interpretation that what actually takes place outside of us remains unknown to us, is merely hypothetical, but appears to be neural processes that oscillate through the air into the other person, where they jump from the sensory nerves to the motor nerves, and carry out the external action. This is entirely independent of whatever may be happening in the two consciousnesses; it takes place automatically. As a result, however, one gradually reaches a point where one can no longer gain any insight whatsoever into the connection between what takes place automatically outside and what we actually experience. For what we experience, if one adopts the standpoint of universal animism, has nothing to do with anything that would be objective outside. Strangely enough, the entire world—I would say—is taken up entirely within the soul. And individual thinkers have already raised some very weighty objections. If, for example, a merchant is expecting a telegram with a specific content, then if even a single word is missing, instead of joy, displeasure, sorrow, or pain can be triggered in his soul. Can one say, then, that what one experiences in the soul takes place only within the soul itself, or must one not conclude, based on the immediate results, that something has indeed taken place externally that is experienced within the soul? And on the other hand, if one adopts the standpoint of this automatism, one might say: Yes, Goethe wrote Faust—that is certainly true; but this merely attests to the fact that the entire Faust lived in his soul as a mental image. Yet this soul has nothing to do with the mechanism that described this mental image. One cannot move from the mechanism of soul life to what exists out there.

[ 12 ] As a result, the view that is now very widespread has gradually taken shape: that, in a sense, what is psychological is merely a kind of parallel process to what exists out there in the world, that it merely adds to what exists out there in the world, and that one cannot really know what is actually going on out there in the world. Essentially, one can then arrive at the same conclusion I have reached—namely, that in my book The Riddle of Man, I refer to this viewpoint, which emerged in the 19th century and has become increasingly prevalent in certain circles, as the viewpoint of “illusionism.” Now one might ask: Is this illusionism not based on very sound foundations? — It almost seems that way. It really does seem that there is nothing to be said against the idea that there may be something out there that acts upon our eyes, and that it is the soul alone that translates what is out there into light and color, so that we are truly dealing only with the soul, that we never go beyond the boundaries of the soul, that we would never be justified in saying: this or that corresponds to what lives in the soul. Such things only appear to have no significance for the highest questions of the soul—for example, the question of immortality. They have a profound significance for it, and some hints regarding this will also be offered today. But I would like to begin precisely from this foundation.

[ 13 ] The school of thought I have described here fails, above all, to consider that, with regard to the life of the soul, it takes into account only what happens when impressions are made on a person from the outside through the sensory world, and the person then forms ideas about these impressions through his nervous system. These views fail to consider that what happens there applies only to human interaction with the external sensory world, but that this interaction—even when examined from the perspective of spiritual research—yields quite specific results. It becomes evident that the human senses, in particular, are structured in a very special way. However, what I have to say here about this structure—with regard to its subtleties—is such that, in many respects, it is not yet accessible to what is already being observed today by external science. In the organs we possess for the senses, there is something built into the human body that is, to a certain degree, excluded from the general inner life of this human body. You can consider the example of the eye as a symbol of this. The eye is built into our cranial organism almost like a completely independent entity, connected to the interior of the entire organism only through certain organs. The whole process could be described in detail, but that is not necessary for our consideration today. However, a certain degree of independence does exist. And in truth, such independence exists for all the sense organs. So something quite special happens in sensory perception—in sensory experience—that is never taken into account. The external sensory world extends into our own organs through our sense organs. What happens out there through light and color—or rather, what takes place in light and color—extends into our organism through our eye in such a way that the life of our organism does not initially participate in it. Thus, light and color enter our eyes in such a way that the life of the organism—I might say—does not hinder the penetration of what is happening outside. Through this, the flow of external events penetrates our organism to a certain extent via our senses, as if in a series of waves. Now, the soul first participates in what penetrates in this way by itself first animating what enters from the outside as inanimate. This is an extraordinarily important truth that is brought to light by spiritual science. Through our sensory perception, we continually animate that which continues into our body from the flow of external events. Sensory perception is a genuine, living permeation—indeed, even an animation—of that which, as something lifeless, flows into our organism. Through this, however, we truly have the objective world directly within us in sensory perception, and as we process it through our soul, we experience it. This is the actual process, and it is extraordinarily important. For with regard to sensory perception, one cannot say that it is merely an impression, that it is merely an effect from the outside; what takes place externally truly penetrates into our inner being, physically, is taken up into the soul, and is imbued with life. In the sense organs, we have something in which the soul lives, without our own body, strictly speaking, living directly within them. One day, scientific research will also come closer to the ideas I have just developed when, through comparative study, people form accurate views regarding the fact that in the eyes of certain animal species—and this can be extended to all the senses—there are certain organs that no longer exist in humans. The human eye is simpler than the eyes of lower animals, even those very closely related to us. Once people ask themselves: Why, for example, do certain animals still have the so-called fan in the eye—a special organ composed of blood vessels—and why do others have the so-called sword-like process, which is also an organ composed of blood vessels?—then one will come to realize that in the animal organism, because these organs project into the senses, the immediate physical life still participates in what takes place in the senses as a continuation of the external world. Therefore, the animal’s sensory perception is by no means such that one can say the soul directly experiences the external world as it enters through the senses. For the soul, through its instrument—the body—still permeates the sensory organ; bodily life permeates the sensory organ. But precisely because the human senses are constituted in such a way that they are animated by the soul, it is clear to anyone who truly grasps the essence of sensory perception that we have external reality in sensory perception. In contrast, all of Kantianism, Schopenhauerianism, and all of modern physiology fall short, because these sciences are not yet at all capable of allowing their concepts to advance to a proper understanding of sensory perception. Only when what takes place in the sensory organ is taken up by the deeper nervous system—the brain—does it pass into that realm where bodily life directly penetrates, and thus inner processes take place. Thus, the human being has the sensory realm on the outside, and within this sensory realm, as it were, the zone facing the external world—where this external world can approach the human being purely insofar as it can act upon the senses. For nothing else takes place. But then, when sensory perception becomes a mental image, we find ourselves within the deeper nervous system; then every mental process corresponds to a nervous-mechanical process; then, whenever we form a mental image derived from sensory perception, something takes place within the human nervous organism.

[ 14 ] And here one must say: What has been achieved in the natural sciences—particularly through Verworn’s discoveries—regarding the processes that take place in the nervous system and the brain when this or that is imagined is truly admirable. Spiritual science will simply have to be clear about the following: When we face the external world through our senses, we are confronted with the actual course of external events. When we imagine—for example, from memory, or when reflecting—where we do not draw on external stimuli but rather connect what has been taken in from the outside, something is certainly alive in our nervous system; and what takes place there in our nervous system—what lives there in its structures and processes—is truly… the deeper one delves into this fact, the more one encounters a wondrous reflection of the soul, of the life of the imagination itself. Anyone who engages even a little with what brain anatomy and nervous system anatomy can already tell us today will find that this structure and these patterns of activity in the brain belong to the most wondrous things that can be revealed in the world. But then spiritual science must be clear about this: just as we face the external world with our gaze directed outward, so do we face our own physical world when we are absorbed in the play of thoughts drawn from the external world. It is just that this usually does not come clearly into consciousness. Yet when the spiritual researcher rises to what he calls imaginative perceptions, he recognizes that, while this remains—I would say—dreamlike, it is nonetheless the case that, in his unguided imagination, a person perceives his inner activity in the brain and nervous system in the same way he otherwise perceives the external world. By strengthening one’s soul life through meditations such as those I have described, one can recognize that one relates to this inner nervous world no differently than to the outer sensory world; except that in the case of the external sensory world, the impression coming from outside is strong, leading one to conclude: the external world makes an impression; whereas what comes from within the bodily life does not impose itself in the same way, even though it is a wondrous interplay of material processes, so that one therefore has the impression: the mental images play out on their own.

[ 15 ] What I have said applies to everything I have hinted at so far regarding human interaction with the external sensory world. On the one hand, the soul, as it permeates the body, observes external reality; on the other hand, the soul observes the workings of its own nervous system. Now, however, a certain view—and this is the source of the misunderstanding—has formed the idea from this fact that this is, in fact, the entirety of the human being’s relationship to the external world. When this view raises the question: How does the external world affect human beings?—it answers it as it must, based on the remarkable findings of brain anatomy and physiology; it answers it in the way we have just described what happens when a person either immerses themselves in perceptions relating to the external world or later recalls such perceptions from memory. This, says this view, is the very nature of humanity’s relationship to the world. Consequently, however, it must conclude that all mental life actually runs parallel to the external world. For the external world can certainly be entirely indifferent to whether we conceive of it or not; it unfolds as it unfolds; our conception is merely an additional factor. Here, even what is a fundamental principle of this view applies: Everything we experience is mental. But within this mental realm, sometimes the external world exists, and sometimes the inner world. And—as follows from this—in one case, it is as the processes outside are; in the other, as the processes within the nervous mechanism are. Now, this view assumes the following: Therefore, all other psychological experiences must also relate to the external world in a similar way—including feeling and will. And if researchers such as Theodor Ziehen are honest, they do not find such relationships. Therefore, as explained, they deny emotion in part and the will entirely. They do not find emotions within the nervous mechanism, and least of all the will. Franz Brentano does not even find the will within the soul itself. Where does this come from?

[ 16 ] One day, when the misunderstandings I have described today have faded away, and when spiritual science is called upon to shed light on these matters, spiritual science will provide clarification. For the fact I have only hinted at is precisely this: what we call the realm of feeling in the life of the soul has, at least in its origin—as strange as it may sound—absolutely nothing to do with nervous activity. I am well aware of how many assertions of modern science I am contradicting with this. I am also very familiar with all the well-founded objections that can be raised. However, as desirable as it would be to go into all the details, I can only present conclusions today. Ziehen is quite right when he does not find feeling or even volition in the nervous mechanism, but finds only imagination, so that he says: Feelings are merely tones—that is, qualities or emphases of the life of imagination; for only the life of imagination exists in the nerves. Will does not exist at all for the natural scientist, for the perception of movement, which follows, is directly linked to the representation of movement. There is no will in between. There is nothing of human feeling in the nervous mechanism; this consequence is simply not drawn, but it is inherent in it. So if human feeling expresses itself in the body, what is it connected to? What is the relationship of feeling to the body, if the relationship of imagination to the body is as I have just described with regard to the relationship of sensory perception to the nervous mechanism? Well, here spiritual science shows that, just as imagination is connected to perception and the inner nervous mechanism —as strange as that may still sound today, it will one day be a finding of natural science, but can already be described today as a thoroughly established finding of spiritual science—feeling is connected in a similar way to everything that physically pertains to human respiration and to what is associated with this respiration. Feeling, in its origin, has nothing to do with the nervous mechanism, but rather with what is connected to the respiratory organism. But now, at least one objection that lies so close at hand should be raised here: Yes, but don’t the nerves stimulate everything connected with respiration? I will return to this objection again when discussing volition. The nerves do not stimulate anything related to breathing; rather, just as we perceive light and color through our optic nerves, so too do we perceive the respiratory process itself—albeit in a more subdued manner—through those nerves that run from the central nervous system to the respiratory system. These nerves, which are usually referred to as motor nerves for breathing, are nothing other than sensory nerves. They are there, just like the cranial nerves—though in a more subdued way—to perceive the act of breathing itself. The emergence of feeling—in everything that exists, from emotion all the way up to the subtlest sensation—is physically connected to everything that takes place in the human being as a respiratory process, and to what belongs to it, which is its continuation in one direction or another within the human organism. One will think quite differently about what physically characterizes feeling once one comes to understand that one cannot say: “Certain currents emanate from some central organ—the brain—which stimulate the respiratory processes”; rather, the opposite is true. The respiratory processes are there; they are perceived by certain nerves, and through this they enter into a relationship with them. But this relationship is not such that the origin of feelings is anchored in the nervous system. And here we enter a field that, despite the admirable state of modern science, has not yet been explored at all. The physical expressions of emotional life will be illuminated in a wonderful way once we study the finer changes in respiration—and especially the finer changes in the effects of the respiratory process—as one emotion or another unfolds within us.

[ 17 ] The respiratory process is entirely different from the one that takes place in the human nervous system. In a certain sense, one could say that the nervous system is a faithful replica of human spiritual life itself. And if I were to use an expression—such expressions have not yet been coined in the language, so one can only use figurative language—to describe the way in which the life of the soul is so wonderfully reflected in the human nervous system, I would say: the life of the soul paints itself into the life of the nerves; the life of the nerves is truly a painting of the life of the soul. Everything we experience psychologically in relation to external perception is imprinted in the nervous system. It is precisely this that must make it understandable that nervous life—especially that of the head—is, already at birth, a faithful imprint of the soul life that emerges from the spiritual world and connects with physical life. What people today might object to—particularly from the standpoint of brain physiology—regarding the connection between the soul emerging from the spiritual world and the brain, the organ of the head, will one day be presented precisely as proof of this very fact. Before birth or conception, the soul prepares, from spiritual foundations, that marvelous formation of the head which exists as the formation of human soul life. The head—which, for example, becomes only four times heavier over the course of human life than it is at birth, whereas the entire organism becomes 22 times heavier as growth continues—already presents itself to us at birth as something fully formed in itself, if I may use that expression: perfect. Even before birth, it is essentially an image of soul experience, because soul experience works upon the head from the spiritual world long before any physical events unfold in the familiar way that ultimately lead to the human being’s existence in the physical world. For the spiritual researcher, it is precisely this marvelous structure of the human nervous system—which is a reflection of human soul life—that serves as proof that the soul originates from the spiritual realm and that the spiritual realm contains the forces that make the brain a reflection of soul life.

[ 18 ] Should I now use an expression to describe the connection between emotional life and respiratory life that would characterize it in a similar way to the expression “nervous life—an image, a painting of soul life, of imaginative life,” — then I would like to call the respiratory life and everything associated with it an imprint of the soul-spiritual life, which I would like to compare to pictorial writing. The nervous system—a real image, a real painting; the respiratory system—only pictorial writing. The nervous system is structured in such a way that the soul need only be left to its own devices to discover from the painting what it now wishes to experience within itself. With pictorial writing, one must interpret; one must know something; the soul must engage more deeply with the matter. The same is true with regard to the respiratory life. Respiratory life is less a faithful expression—if I were to characterize this more precisely, I would have to refer to Goethe’s theory of metamorphosis, but there is not enough time for that today—a direct pictorial expression of soul experience; rather, it is an expression that I would like to compare to the relationship between pictorial writing and the meaning of pictorial writing. The soul life is therefore a more inner aspect of the emotional life, one less bound to external processes. That is why its connection also eludes the realm of gross physiology. For the researcher of the spirit, however, it is precisely this that makes it clear: just as the respiratory life is connected to the emotional life, so too—because this respiratory life is a less precise expression of the latter—must the emotional life be freer and more independent in itself.

[ 19 ] Thus, we embrace the body more fully when we regard it as a shaper of emotional life than when we regard it merely as a shaper of the life of the imagination. But because the life of feeling is connected to the life of breathing, the spiritual lives more actively and more inwardly in the life of feeling than in the mere life of representation—in that life of representation which does not rise to the level of imagination but is merely a revelation of external sensory experience. The emotional life is not as clear, not as bright—just as pictographic writing does not express what it means as clearly as a picture does—I must speak more in terms of comparison—; but precisely because of this, what is expressed in the emotional life is more deeply rooted in the spiritual than the ordinary life of the imagination. The respiratory life is less of a tool than the nervous life.

[ 20 ] And when we come to the life of the will, the situation is such that if one begins to speak about this fact—especially as a researcher of the spirit—one can be branded a die-hard materialist. But when speaking of the relationship between the human soul and the human body, the spiritual researcher must consider the whole soul in relation to the whole body—not merely, as is often the case today, in relation to the nervous system. The soul expresses itself throughout the entire body, in everything that takes place within the body. If we wish to consider the life of the will, where must we begin? We must begin with the lowest, the deepest impulses of the will, which still appear to be entirely bound to bodily life and are absorbed into it. Where is such a volitional impulse found? Well, such a volitional impulse simply manifests itself, for example, when we are hungry—when certain substances in our organism have been depleted and must be replenished. We descend into the realm where the processes of nutrition take place. We have descended from the processes in the nervous organism through the processes in the respiratory organism and arrive at the processes in the nutritional organism; and we find the most fundamental impulses of the will bound up with the nutritional organism. Spiritual science now shows that, in general, when we speak of the relationship between the will and the organism, we must speak of the nutritional organism. A relationship similar to that between imagination and sensation on the one hand and the nervous mechanism on the other—or between breathing and the life of feeling—only even looser, exists between the nutritional organism and the life of will in the human soul. However, further-reaching matters are connected with this. And here one must be completely clear about one thing that, in essence, only spiritual science asserts today. I have advocated this in smaller circles for many years, and I am now also making it clear here publicly as a finding of spiritual science. Contemporary physiology believes it has a clear understanding that when a sensory impression occurs, it is transmitted to the sensory nerve and—if physiology admits the existence of a soul—is thus received by the soul. But then, according to modern physiology, there are so-called motor nerves—nerves of movement—in addition to these sensory nerves. Such motor nerves—I know how heretical what I am about to say is—do not exist in spiritual science. I have really been studying this subject for many years, and I am, of course, aware that one can arrive at this point with all sorts of arguments that seem so well-founded. Take, for example, a patient with tabes dorsalis or anyone whose spinal cord has been compressed, in whom the lower part of the body is effectively dead from a certain organ downward, and so on. None of these cases refute what I am saying; rather, if one understands them correctly, they are precisely proof of what I am saying. There are no motor nerves. What modern physiology still regards as motor nerves, as nerves of movement, or as nerves of volition, are in fact sensory nerves. If the spinal cord is severed at a certain point, then what is happening in the leg or foot is simply not perceived, and consequently the foot cannot be moved because this sensation is absent—not because a motor nerve has been severed, but because a sensory nerve has been severed, which is simply unable to perceive what is happening in the leg. But I can only touch on this briefly, for I must move on to the important conclusions of this matter.

[ 21 ] Anyone who develops habits with regard to psychophysical experience knows that, for example, what we call an “exercise”—such as playing the piano and the like—is something entirely different from what is today referred to as “refining the motor neural pathways”; that is not what it is about. For in all the movements we perform out of our will, nothing at all comes into play as a physical process other than a metabolic process. In terms of its origin, what arises from the impulse of the will comes from metabolism. When I move an arm, it is not the nervous system that comes into play at first, but the will itself—which, as you have seen, physiologists deny; and the nerve has nothing to do with it other than that what takes place as a metabolic process as a result of the volitional impulse is perceived by the motor nerve, which is in reality a sensory nerve. We are dealing with metabolic processes throughout our entire organism as the physical triggers of those processes that correspond to the will. Because all systems in the organism are interrelated, these metabolic processes are naturally also connected to the brain and to brain processes. The will, however, finds its physical expression in metabolic processes; nervous processes as such are in reality connected to them only insofar as they mediate the perception of volitional processes. All of this will also be demonstrated by natural science in the future. But if we regard the human being, on the one hand, as a nervous being; on the other hand, as a breathing being—with all that this entails; and, thirdly, as a metabolic being—if I may use that term—then we have the whole human being. For all organs of movement, everything that can move within the human body, is itself connected in its movement to metabolic processes. And the will acts directly upon these metabolic processes. The nervous system is there merely to perceive them.

[ 22 ] It is, in a certain sense, awkward to have to contradict a view such as this—one that appears to be so well-founded, namely, that of the two types of nerves; but at least one can say that, to date, no one has found any significant difference—neither in terms of response nor in terms of anatomical structure—between a sensory nerve and a motor nerve; they are identical in every respect. When we acquire skill in something, we do so by learning to control metabolic processes through our will. This is what a child learns after initially wriggling in all directions and performing no coordinated voluntary movements: to control metabolic processes as they unfold in their finer details. And when we play the piano, for example, or possess similar skills, we learn to move our fingers in a certain way and to control the corresponding finer metabolic processes through our will. The sensory nerves—which are, in fact, what are otherwise called motor nerves—become increasingly aware of what the correct touch and movement are, for these nerves exist solely to sense what is happening in the metabolism. I would like to ask someone who is truly capable of observing both soul and body whether, upon closer self-observation in this direction, they do not sense how they are not merely honing motor nerve pathways, but rather how they are learning to feel, perceive, and vaguely imagine the finer vibrations of their organism that they bring about through the will. What we are practicing here is truly self-perception. We are dealing here with the entire realm of sensory nerves. One need only observe speech in this context—how it develops from a child’s babbling. It is entirely based on the will learning to intervene in the speech apparatus. And what the nervous system learns is simply the finer perception of what is taking place as subtle metabolic processes.

[ 23 ] We are thus dealing with the will as something that physically expresses itself in metabolism. And metabolism manifests itself in movements, even down to the very bones. This could be demonstrated very easily if one were to examine the actual scientific findings of our time. But this metabolism expresses even less than respiration what takes place on the soul-spiritual level. If I have compared the nervous organism to a pictograph and the respiratory organism to a pictographic script, then I can compare the metabolic organism to a mere symbolic script, such as we have today, in contrast to the pictographic scripts of the ancient Egyptians or the ancient Chaldeans. These are merely symbols; the soul must become even more inward. But because the soul becomes even more inward through the will, the soul—which, I might say, is only loosely engaged with the physical in metabolism—enters the realm of the spiritual with the greatest part of its being. It lives in the spiritual. And just as the soul connects with the material through the senses, so does it connect with the spiritual through the will. Here, too, the special relationship between the soul and the spirit becomes evident—a relationship that spiritual science examines through the methods I outlined in my last lecture. It follows that the metabolic organism, as it exists today—I would have to refer to Goethe’s theory of metamorphosis to characterize this more precisely—is only a preliminary hint of what is fully realized in the nervous system, in the central organism. Through what the soul accomplishes in metabolism—by, so to speak, adjusting itself to metabolism—it prepares that which it then carries through the gateway of death into the spiritual world for its future life in the spiritual realm after death. But of course it also carries over everything through which it lives in connection with the spiritual. For, as I have described, it is most alive inwardly precisely where it is only loosely connected to the material, so that in this realm the material process acts merely as a sign of the spiritual; this is especially true of the will. This is why the will must be specially developed if one wishes to attain spiritual vision. This will must be developed into what is called true intuition—not in the trivial sense, but in the sense in which it was recently characterized. Feeling can be developed in such a way that it leads to inspiration; imagination, when cultivated through spiritual research, can lead to intuition. Through this, however, the other—the spiritual—enters the life of the soul objectively, in accordance with its true reality. For just as we must characterize sensory perception in such a way that, according to the nature of the human sense organs, the external world sends waves into us, so that we experience ourselves within them, so too do we experience the spirit in our will. There the spirit sends its essence into us. And no one will ever understand freedom who does not recognize this immediate life of the spirit in the will.

[ 24 ] On the other hand, you can see how Franz Brentano, who investigates only the soul, is right: he does not arrive at volition because he investigates only the soul; he reaches only as far as feeling. Modern psychologists do not engage with what volition transmits into metabolism, because they do not want to become materialists; and materialists do not engage with it because they believe that everything depends on the nervous system. But since the soul is so closely connected in its very nature to the spirit that the spirit can penetrate the human being in its primordial form—the spirit sends its waves into the human being—what we posit as the highest, as moral volition, as spiritual volition in the world is truly an immediate life of the spirit within the soul. And because we experience the spiritual directly within the soul, the soul—in those concepts that I characterized in my Philosophy of Freedom as underlying free will—is truly not isolated within itself, but is, to a high degree, higher and, above all, in a different way, consciously present within the spirit. It is merely a failure to recognize this inner presence in the spirit when, just as the physiologist does with regard to the will in Theodor Ziehen’s work, the psychologist, too, refuses to acknowledge the finer impulses of the will, which are, after all, a truly real experience. They cannot, of course, be found in the soul itself, but the soul experiences the spirit within itself, and by experiencing the spirit in the will, it lives in freedom.

[ 25 ] This, however, conceives the human soul and the human body in such a relationship to one another that the entire soul is related to the entire body, not merely the soul to the nervous system. And with this, I have outlined for you the beginnings of a scientific direction that will bear fruit precisely through the discoveries of the natural sciences, provided these are viewed in the proper way. It will show that the body, too—when viewed in its entirety as an expression of the soul—is evidence for the immortality of the soul, which I characterized from an entirely different perspective in the last lecture and will further characterize in the next lecture from yet another angle.

[ 26 ] A certain scientific-philosophical school of thought in recent times, unable to come to terms with psychophysical life for the reasons indicated, has taken refuge in the so-called unconscious. Its foremost representative, aside from Schopenhauer, is Eduard von Hartmann. Now, the assumption of the unconscious in our mental life is certainly something entirely justified. But the way Eduard von Hartmann speaks of the unconscious makes it impossible to understand reality in a satisfactory way with him. In the example I mentioned—of the two people sitting across from each other, one of whom wants the sugar bowl from the other—he explains in a peculiar way how the conscious plunges into the unconscious, and what happens in the unconscious resurfaces into consciousness. But such a hypothesis does not bring us any closer to the insights gained by spiritual science. One can speak of the unconscious, but one must speak of it in two ways: one must speak of the subconscious and the superconscious. In sensory perception, something that is in itself unconscious becomes conscious by being animated in the manner described today. Here the subconscious rises into consciousness. The same is true when the nervous system is considered internally in the interplay of ideas: the unconscious rises into consciousness. But one must not speak of the absolutely unconscious; rather, one must speak of the subconscious as something that can rise into consciousness. The subconscious is therefore only temporary, only relatively subconscious; the subconscious can become conscious. Likewise, one can speak of the spirit as the superconscious, which enters the realm of human soul life through the ethical idea or the spiritual-scientific idea that penetrates into the spirit itself. There the superconscious enters into consciousness.

[ 27 ] You can see how many concepts and ideas need to be corrected if one is to do justice to life. And it is only through the correction of these concepts that a clear view will emerge of what the truth is with regard to the life of the human soul. However, I must save for next time an explanation of just how far-reaching the significance of such a consideration of the relationship between soul and body is. Today, in closing, I would simply like to point out that recent developments in education have strayed far too far from the ideas that can provide clarity in this area. On the one hand, it has narrowed the entire relationship of the human being to the external world down to what applies only to the sensory external world in its relationship to the human nervous system. As a result, however, a body of ideas has arisen in this field that is more or less tinged with materialism; and because attention has not been turned at all toward other connections between the human spiritual-soul aspects and the physical, this perspective has been narrowed. And this narrowness of perspective has even carried over into all scientific endeavors in general. This is why it must be painful to the soul to read how, in a relatively good lecture delivered by Professor Dr. A. Tschirch on November 28, 1908, as an inaugural lecture at the University of Bern on “Natural Science and Medicine” upon assuming his rectorship—those listeners who are frequent visitors here will know that, as a rule, I only criticize those whom I otherwise hold in high regard, and that I only say anything disparaging when doing so in self-defense—a curious confession that stems precisely from the misunderstandings I have alluded to and from the inability to understand the relationship between soul and body. Professor Tschirch says:

[ 28 ] “But I believe that we don’t need to worry just yet about whether we will ever truly penetrate ‘the inner self.’”

[ 29 ] He means the innermost depths of the world. It is from this mindset that all the antipathy toward potential research in the spiritual sciences arises. That is why he goes on to say: “We really have more important things to do.”

[ 30 ] Well, anyone who, in the face of the great, burning questions of the soul, can even bring themselves to say: “We really have more important things to do”—one would have to question the seriousness of their scientific attitude, were it not understandable given the direction their thinking has taken; especially when one reads the sentences that follow:

[ 31 ] “The ‘inner nature’—by which Haller probably meant something similar to what Kant later called ‘the thing-in-itself’—remains so deeply hidden within us at present that millennia will pass before we—assuming, of course, that a new ice age does not destroy all of our civilization—have even come close to it.”

[ 32 ] These individuals are so earnestly devoted to the spiritual—which is the “inner”—that they are able to say: We need not concern ourselves with this today; rather, we can calmly wait for millennia. If this is science’s answer to the burning questions of the human soul, then the time has come to supplement this science with what spiritual science is. For the attitude described above has led to the soul being, one might say, virtually abolished altogether, allowing the view to emerge that the soul is, at most, a byproduct of the physical—a conviction that even the famous Professor Jodl held until almost the present day; but he is only one among many.

[ 33 ] But where does this line of thinking lead? Well, it certainly caused quite a stir when Professor Dr. Jacques Loeb—another man whom I hold in the highest regard for his positive research—delivered a lecture on “Life” on September 10, 1911, at the first Monist Congress in Hamburg. There we see how something based solely on a misunderstanding already becomes ingrained in human attitudes, and how, in these human attitudes toward the study of the soul—forgive the expression—it turns into brutality, in that what ought to be based solely on the conviction that springs from research is turned into nothing less than a question of power. Professor Jacques Loeb begins that lecture by saying:

[ 34 ] “The question I intend to discuss is whether, given the current state of our knowledge, there is any prospect that life—that is, the sum total of life phenomena—can be explained entirely in physical and chemical terms. If, after serious consideration, we can answer this question in the affirmative, then we must also build our social and ethical way of life on a purely scientific basis, and no metaphysician can claim the right to prescribe rules for our way of life that contradict the findings of experimental biology.”

[ 35 ] Here we see the quest to conquer all knowledge through that science of which Goethe has Mephisto say: “It drills a donkey out of itself and doesn’t even know how!” This is, in fact, how the words appear in the earlier version of Goethe’s Faust:

Whoever wishes to understand and describe something living,
Must first seek to extract the spirit,
Then he holds the parts in his hand,
But, alas! the spiritual bond is missing!
Chemistry calls it Encheiresin naturae,
Mocks itself and does not know how.

[ 36 ] Today, Faust reads: “Mocks himself and does not know how”—the young Goethe wrote: “Drills himself a donkey and does not know how.”

[ 37 ] That which is built upon those misunderstandings works toward this end: to abolish all knowledge that is not merely an interpretation of physical and chemical processes. However, no science of the soul will be equipped to withstand such an onslaught unless it possesses within itself the capacity to truly penetrate, of its own accord, into the physical realm. I fully acknowledge the achievements of brilliant minds such as Dilthey, Franz Brentano, and others. I fully acknowledge it. I hold all these figures in high esteem; but the ideas that have been developed there are too blunt, too weak to penetrate on their own, so that they could hold their own against the findings of the natural sciences. A bridge must be built between the spiritual and the physical. It is precisely in relation to the human being that this bridge must be created by arriving at strong spiritual-scientific concepts that also extend into an understanding of physical life. For it is precisely through an understanding of physical life that the great questions—the question of immortality, the question of death, the question of destiny, and so on—will be grasped. Otherwise, if humanity does not come to appreciate the significance of this spiritual science—and the seriousness of this endeavor in such grave times—then we may find ourselves confronted with views expressed, for example, as follows: One can now come across a book that has come over from America and been translated into German—a book by an American scholar named Snyder. In it there is a charming sentence that nevertheless expresses the spirit of the entire book, which is titled The Worldview of Modern Natural Science. And the translator, Hans Kleinpeter, explicitly points out that this spirit must gradually give way to true enlightenment in the present and in the future. Well, allow me to conclude by reading to you what I would call a central sentence from this book:

[ 38 ] “Whatever the brain cell of a glowworm or the perception of the harmonies in Tristan and Isolde may be, the substance of which they are composed is, on the whole, the same; it is evidently more a matter of a difference in structure than one in material composition.”

[ 39 ] And with that, something essential, something enlightening, has been said! But it is a mindset that is already connected to what I have discussed today. And it is deeply telling of modern times that such things can find followers at all, that they are presented as something special.

[ 40 ] I also appreciate philology, as well as those sciences that are underestimated by some today. Wherever there is true scholarship, in any field, I appreciate it. But if someone were to come and tell me: Goethe wrote Faust; sitting next to him was his scribe Seydel, who was perhaps writing a letter to his lover; whatever the difference between Faust and Seydel’s letter may be, the ink is the same in both! — Both assertions stand on equal footing; it’s just that one is regarded as a great advance in science, while the other is, of course, regarded as what those adoring listeners who laughed at it have attested to.

[ 41 ] In contrast, we must draw upon and build upon that mindset—which is also a scientific one—but which, stemming from the full breadth of the human soul and a profound contemplation of the world, first laid the foundations for a science, including that which is present in Goethe’s scientific observations. The first elements of what spiritual science seeks to develop ever further are found in Goethe; and the true, genuine attitude toward a genuine view of the world is expressed so paradigmatically and beautifully in many of his words. I would like to conclude this reflection by bringing to your attention his comprehensive consideration of the relationship between spirit and external material existence, particularly with regard to the human body. As Goethe contemplates Schiller’s remains and, in this “partial” form, senses the noble soul—the relationship of the whole spirit and the whole soul to the entire human body—he crafts words in his beautiful poem, which he titled “On Contemplating Schiller’s Skull,” — words from which we can discern the mindset required for a comprehensive contemplation of spirit and nature:

What more can a person gain in life,
Than for the divine nature to reveal itself to him,
How it causes the solid to dissolve into spirit,
How it firmly preserves what the spirit has created!

[ 42 ] And we can apply these words to the human soul and the human body and say:

What more can a person gain in life,
Than for God-Nature to reveal itself to him,
As it causes matter to dissolve in the spirit,
And as the spirit experiences itself in matter! —

[ 43 ] by showing him how the body is an expression, an image, and a sign of the soul, and how, precisely because of this, it is the physical proof and manifestation of the immortal soul and the eternal spirit.