The Rudolf Steiner Archive

4. The Nature of Man, or Spiritual Chemistry

I. Article in the “Weimarische Zeitung” dated October 25, 1903

[ 1 ] Last night, in the large hall of the “Erholung,” Dr. Steiner gave the first of his lectures—announced for the winter semester—on “The Nature of Human Beings, or Spiritual Chemistry.”

[ 2 ] In the past, people were unable to harness the forces of nature as comprehensively as we do today with our machines. Electrical power now allows us to communicate with people across the globe, and we will likely soon be able to traverse the skies as swiftly as a bird. But science has also been able to paint a bleak picture of the future of our material, earthly life. It can calculate how long it will take until all life on our planet has vanished. Then all material culture will be gone. Will everything that lives in our souls also disappear from the universe? What will become of the inner content we have acquired? Will it, too, be buried in that universal grave? The answer to these questions will come from the Theosophical Movement. The Theosophical Movement seeks to create a brotherhood of humankind. And it will provide proof that what people have strived for over millennia in the realm of spiritual life is not delusion or error. The Theosophical Movement follows a path that is in keeping with our times; yet theosophical works still run counter to the prevailing patterns of thought today. And human beings allow themselves to be dominated by their habits of thought. These habits have led us to the point where we trust only the senses. What the senses do not perceive does not exist. Theosophy, however, seeks to offer, alongside the fruits of our material culture, nourishment for the spirit and the soul—something that our modern view of nature can provide only to a limited extent. Theosophy aims to answer the highest questions of the human soul. We must believe that we can penetrate the essence of the soul just as physicists and chemists penetrate matter; the soul is a multifaceted being whose composition we must study more closely. Just as there is material chemistry, so there is spiritual chemistry. Through spiritual chemistry, we come to know and resolve the essence of the human being and his spiritual mission. Truth and science are the two things we must combine in the realm of inner human nature. The physical human being is not the whole person. Once the soul’s faculties have departed from the physical body, it ceases to exist and decays. The physical forces and substances of our body are constantly changing. Must we not then ask: What is the enduring aspect of our being? The universe is permeated by the life force. The hypothesis that all life sprang from a dead primordial nebula has been abandoned. This primordial nebula was a great organism, a living being. And from this great living being, inanimate and animate nature branched off in two directions.

[ 3 ] Redner goes on to point out the four fundamental parts that are mortal: The human body is mortal; the life force is mortal—it flows into the universal life force of the world to be used anew; our instincts are mortal; our astral body is mortal: It dissolves into a world of purely spiritual forces. What, Redner asks, may we regard as the imperishable in contrast to this? The causal body is immortal; it connects us to the substances of past existences. It is our true higher self and lies once again in the bosom of a unified fundamental being. We attain this single spiritual fundamental being when we seek out the even deeper forces within our soul life. And the seven fundamental parts mentioned—four mortal, three immortal—are the fundamental substances of the human being.

II. Article in “Deutschland” from October 25, 1903

[ 4 ] Last night, Dr. Rudolf Steiner of Berlin opened the series of theosophical lectures planned for this winter in the recreation hall with the topic: “The Nature of Man, or Spiritual Chemistry.” The speaker based his introductory remarks on the following line of thought: The past century has enabled us to scale sublime heights in our external culture; our mastery of the natural forces outside ourselves is so significant that earlier times could not have conceived of it. At the same time, natural science presents us with a bleak picture of the future of our material life—a future that does not satisfy our inner being. Yet it is clear that centuries and millennia have sought to provide a solution to the great mystery of the world, and that the various religions of their respective eras intended to do just that. Building upon the findings of modern science, Theosophy now seeks to provide humanity with this innate sense of fulfillment. Above all, we must delve into our own inner selves without prejudice and cast aside our previous habits of thought. These are by no means decisive for the truth of our views; they are often dependent on chance, change with the ages, and therefore it is not surprising if Theosophy encounters difficulties in this regard. Only gradually will theosophical truths break through and then contribute as magnificent fruits to material culture. Just as modern natural science demands complete devotion to and observation of nature, so too is it necessary to delve into our inner nature and explore our inner forces. Of course, one must believe that such an intimate science of the soul exists. Western science has subjected only the physical human being and physical entities to scrutiny, while disregarding the inner elements of the soul. Our organism is in a state of constant change; years ago we consisted of entirely different elements than we do today, and yet we remain the same—the corpse is composed of the same atoms as the living body was just an hour ago. Therefore, we are compelled to assume that if human beings were merely physical, they would prove to be impossible physical bodies. This would lead us to the conclusion that we possess higher spiritual substances, of which the physical body is the vehicle. This force is expressed in Sanskrit as “Prana,” the life force that permeates all living beings and which we humans share with plants and animals. For a long time now, people have ceased to adhere to the Kant-Laplace theory of the universe, according to which life developed from mere primordial nebula, and it is becoming increasingly clear that this primordial nebula must have been a living organism. This prana holds our inanimate substances together and, after death, returns to the general life of the world just as the physical components return to matter. Plants differ from animals and humans in that they lack the vast realm we describe as pleasure and displeasure, joy and pain. Why do we observe no passions in plants? Because they lack the power to do so. To trigger these feelings, we need a fundamental force of desire—which theosophy calls “Kama.” It would be illogical, after all, to see effects without assuming causes. Humans differ from animals in the power that allows them to control their instincts. Animals unconsciously follow their instincts, whereas humans, by virtue of an innate power, are capable of acting according to their own judgment; and the power that enables this is called the lower mental intellect, the lower “Manas.” The Kama-Manasic forces are bound to our physical body and to the brain, and for us they perish with the brain. The next higher force is the higher “Manas,” that element within our spiritual-soul aspect which, in its entirety, transcends all that is transitory. It lives within us from birth to death and beyond, in order to form new bodies again. Man does not live just once, but countless times. Theosophy calls this enduring presence amidst change—that which constitutes our higher self—the causal or root body. When we consider this causal body, it provides the enduring element across the various incarnations. But within these forces of the soul’s life are enclosed even higher ones, which are recognized in the great cosmic love that permeates the entire world. Whoever is imbued with these feelings ceases to regard himself as an individual being; he feels himself to be a fundamental tone of the universe. It was from this element that the great founders of religions spoke. The power that emanated from these men was able to continue to work, not because it grasped the transitory, but because it flowed from the highest power of the soul. This is what Theosophy calls “Budhi.” When this soul power drives us, we feel what is recorded in the Indian books of wisdom. Every single being is but a drop in the eternal “Atma,” the fundamental substance of human existence, similar to the chemical substance of the elements. Just as we come to know a body by breaking it down into its parts, so can we explain the human being once we have recognized its constituent parts. This is the doctrine of the fundamental constituents of the human being.

[ 5 ] The fairly large audience received the lecture with approval.