The Rudolf Steiner Archive

26. The Secret of Human Temperaments

[ 1 ] Ladies and gentlemen! It is often said—and this is certainly a profound truth—that the greatest mystery of humanity is humanity itself. - Yet although this statement is uttered so often, in its depth and in its full significance, it is—let us not even say “not understood” for the moment—but rather, the full enigma of humanity is rarely felt and perceived deeply enough. In truth, not only does man face himself—when he looks beyond the most superficial aspects of existence—as a significant, difficult-to-solve mystery, but every fellow human being also stands before us, in a certain and indeed very profound sense, as a mystery as well. And what should be of particular interest to us today is this: when we speak of the enigma of humanity, we must not hope to have solved this enigma with a single answer; rather, if we proceed not theoretically but in accordance with life itself, we must say: this enigma of humanity essentially encompasses as many individual enigmas as there are people in the world.

[ 2 ] Each individual, within certain limits, may be regarded as a unique enigma within the great enigma of humanity. And closely connected to this view of the human enigma is what we are to consider today regarding human beings: that distinctive quality of human nature, that fundamental tone of human individuality, which presents itself to us in one person in one way and in another person in a different way, and which we designate with the term: human temperament.

[ 3 ] Everything that can shed light on the diversity of human natures is encapsulated in this very word, and we may hope that, if we are able to shed even a little light on the mystery of human temperaments, we may thereby also gain a foothold for unraveling the enigma of humanity in its most varied forms. Of course, it is precisely when we approach this enigma of humanity not in a general, theoretical way, but in a lively, individual way—when we tackle it where it initially seems completely incomprehensible, in the manifold fundamental tone of individuality that emerges as temperament— when we approach this enigma of humanity in a vital, individual way, we must not succumb to the great illusion that an external understanding of the human being—a merely sensory-physical understanding—could somehow lead us further.

[ 4 ] From the perspective of the spiritual sciences—or, shall we say, theosophy—as we have often mentioned here, human beings are highly complex beings, and we can only understand them if we do not merely consider their outer aspect—that which the eyes see and the hands touch, that which the external senses can perceive at all, and that which the human intellect, bound to the brain, can analyze—but only then can we hope to gradually come to a full understanding of human beings if we also take into account the supersensory aspects of human nature. And since it has often been stated what these aspects of human nature are, they need only be briefly mentioned today, to the extent necessary, so that we may then proceed to the consideration of the human temperaments.

[ 5 ] What the eyes see, what the hands grasp—in short, what the physical organs of a human being are capable of perceiving—is, from the perspective of spiritual science, merely the outermost aspect of the human being, the aspect that he shares with the entire seemingly lifeless mineral world surrounding him. Beyond that, we immediately encounter the next aspect of the human being—one that cannot be perceived by the external senses, one that already belongs to the supersensible, invisible aspects of human nature. And while we refer to that which human beings share with inanimate nature as the physical body, we refer to this first supersensible aspect as the etheric or life body. We find it in every living being—in plants, which it permeates and organizes just as it does in human beings, and in animals. In spiritual science, we do not speak of this etheric or life body in the same way that the materialistic view speaks of life, as if life were merely something that arises as an effect from the physical body and the interaction of the forces and substances of the physical body. No, for spiritual science, this etheric body is not merely something independent—something that the human consciousness, which can clairvoyantly look beyond the sensory world, actually perceives as a reality, just as the physical eyes perceive the physical body—but this etheric body is in fact that which, as the first and truly creative element, underlies the physical body. The physical body is not the cause, but the consequence of the finer, the etheric or life body. Just as—and this image has also been used here often—just as someone looking into a vessel containing water can see ice forming into chunks as it condenses from that water, so the spiritual surrounds us, and the physical is the condensation of the spiritual. Thus, within the human etheric body, the physical body—with all its substances and forces—is a condensation of the etheric body. And this is true of all living beings.

[ 6 ] A third aspect of the human being, which it shares only with animals, is the so-called astral body—the vehicle of pleasure and suffering, joy and pain, desires, instincts, and passions, as well as ideas and thoughts. The astral body is the vehicle for all that ebbs and flows within the human soul, and just as the physical body is a condensation of the etheric body, so too is the physical body condensed from the astral body. It is certainly a very facile objection raised by materialists: Can you really imagine that there are passions, thoughts, feelings, pleasure, and suffering floating freely about somewhere in the world? Mustn’t these be bound to a physical body? Certainly, if someone has a vessel of water in front of them and only begins to see it once the water has condensed into ice, then they may deny the water’s existence. Thus, the materialist is quite right when he says that, for him, only the physical exists; but whoever recognizes the higher faculties of the human being—which Goethe calls the “spiritual eyes”—must also acknowledge that our world is in fact filled not only with tangible and visible content, but with entities and processes that consist solely of intertwined passions, instincts, and desires, and which can condense into the ethereal and the physical. In short, we distinguish in the human being a third member, the so-called astral body, the bearer of pleasure and suffering, joy and pain, desires and thoughts.

[ 7 ] And as the fourth element, we have always recognized in human nature that which is encompassed by the name “human,” a name that can only resound from within when it is meant to denote that to which it is actually applied; as the fourth element, we designate the bearer of the human “I,” of human self-consciousness. The “I” can name only itself; it can give itself the name “I” only of its own accord; it is impossible for the name “I” to reach your ear from outside if it is to signify you yourself.

[ 8 ] This is only meant to give a rough outline of how we conceive of the human being as a fourfold being. All these aspects interact with one another in the most diverse ways. The ego influences the physical, etheric, and astral bodies; the astral body influences the ego, the physical body, and the etheric body; and so on, and so on. These four aspects of human nature are in a constant state of interaction. It is important that, in addition to this interaction—which can always be observed by the clairvoyant consciousness during wakefulness—we also take into account the changes that can occur in the interplay of these four aspects, beginning with the changes that take place day by day in the alternation between waking consciousness and sleep consciousness.

[ 9 ] When a person falls asleep, their physical body and etheric body remain in bed. The astral body and the “I” leave the body. In the morning, the “I” and the astral body re-enter the etheric body and the physical body and make use of the organs through which the external world can be perceived as physical. A person exists even at night, even as unconsciousness spreads around them. They simply do not see anything because, at their current stage of development, they do not possess spiritual ears and eyes in their astral body. They must make use of their physical organs, and they can do so only when they immerse themselves in the physical body. This is the transformation that a person undergoes day after day. Human nature undergoes yet another transformation—one characterized by the meaningful words that, in essence, already encompass a large part of the human mystery: birth and death—or, indeed, life and death.

[ 10 ] Even today, we must once again briefly reflect on what happens to a person when they pass through the mysterious gate of death. It is not like falling asleep. In death, the human being’s physical body remains behind as a corpse, and the I, the astral body, and the etheric body initially separate from this corpse. What does not occur between birth and death—namely, the etheric body leaving the physical body—happens at death. We can already see from this that throughout life—both in the waking and sleeping states—the etheric body is a fighter against the decay of the physical body. Where the etheric body does not fight against decay, the physical body follows its own substances and forces and disintegrates, decaying. This is the very nature of the physical body, which it manifests as a corpse. The fact that it does not manifest this nature during life—that it does not follow its chemical and physical forces as it does in death—is attributable to the etheric body, which, between birth and death, is a faithful fighter against the decay of the physical body. And once a person has passed through death, having shed their physical body, they can continue to live in the spiritual world with the fruits they have reaped in the life between birth and death—fruits gained through their experiences. The etheric body, which withdraws from the physical body, contains a faithful image of all experiences between birth and death, and it is something like an essence, an extract of the etheric body, that we take with us into the life that follows death—into the life in the spirit. From our etheric body—which, after a few days, usually detaches itself from us as a second corpse—we take with us something like an extract that remains for all eternity. It contains something like a brief summary of the last life; we take that with us into the future life.

[ 11 ] However, we still have one more task to complete after death. We must go through a kind of probationary period, a time of weaning ourselves from these things. You can best imagine this time by starting from a simple consideration, by telling yourself: The human astral body is the bearer of pleasure and suffering, of instincts, desires, and all forms of enjoyment. It is not the physical body that is the bearer of these things; it merely provides the instruments for enjoyment. The pleasure itself lies in the astral body. But you take the astral body with you after death. Immediately after death, it is exactly as it was in life. Let’s suppose a person was a gourmet. After death, he still has his astral body; it constantly craves those delicious morsels. But there is no way to satisfy this desire. It can only be satisfied if one has a palate. Once the physical body has been shed, the astral body yearns after death for the pleasures of life. This is true of everything that can only be satisfied through physical instruments. All of this must be weaned away over a certain period of time.

[ 12 ] This period of weaning, during which a person learns to no longer desire anything that can be satisfied only through the physical organs, is usually referred to as the realm of desires, Kamaloka. For when a person has gone through this period of weaning, when he no longer desires anything that can be satisfied only through the physical senses, then he sheds the third body. First, they have shed the physical body, then the etheric body, which dissolves a few days after physical death, and then they shed the useless parts of the astral body. And then the human being is that purely spiritual being who undergoes a period of purely spiritual life.

[ 13 ] The transition from the period of weaning oneself from physical passions manifests itself in that the human being initially experiences, at the very core of his or her being, something that can be described as a feeling of bliss. Now, above all, begins the period in which the individual works toward a new existence, in which he begins to apply what he has learned in previous lives—what he has absorbed as fruits—and gradually shape it into a spiritual archetype from which the next life can become a reflection. Creative work is always connected with the feeling of bliss. And that creative work in which we gradually form the archetype for a future existence—that is the highest bliss. I do not even wish to speak of the bliss associated with every spiritual creation, but it is already bliss when—forgive the comparison—the hen participates in the production of the new chick. Bliss is what permeates a being in every act of creation. Bliss is therefore also what a human being experiences by being free from all the limitations of the physical world, by bringing everything together spiritually, which—once it has been spiritually developed—proceeds to a new existence on this earth.

[ 14 ] Once a human being has fully developed the spiritual core of their being—a process that takes a long time—the descent back into the physical world begins, and the human being then surrounds themselves with three new bodies. Depending on the person’s characteristics, substances from the astral world align themselves with him or her, forming his or her new astral body. We can compare this formation—let’s say—to spreading metal shavings on a thin plate and passing a magnet underneath; these metal shavings then align themselves into all sorts of shapes, in which they then shine. In the same way, as it descends, the astral substance organizes itself around a spiritual core.

[ 15 ] Then the human being is guided to a pair of parents, and through the union of this spiritual core—to which its astral sheath has become attached—with what is taking place between the parents, the further human sheaths around this core of the human being take shape. Through the interplay of what descends with the parents, a new etheric body and a new physical body take shape around the descending being, so that every time we see a human being entering an existence, we must say to ourselves: This human being receives from two sides what it actually is for this earthly existence. The inner being descends from spiritual heights. Because the human being is spiritual and astral, he descends from higher worlds. Through what is inherited from generation to generation, from ancestors to descendants, that which we perceive as the outer shell forms around the human being, but also much of what belongs to the etheric body—the body that fights against the decay of the physical body.

[ 16 ] And now, recognizing that human beings are shaped by two opposing forces, let us ask ourselves what would happen if one or the other extreme were to prevail. Let us suppose that a human being were to bring with them only a few qualities from spiritual heights; then there would be a little richer content in their astral body, and what forms the etheric and physical sheaths around the human being would have an overwhelming effect. That is to say, such a person, who brings only a meager inner content, would be found in all their ancestors—a repetition, so to speak, within the line of inheritance. The richer the inner content that a person brings down with them, the more what passes from the ancestors to the descendant—the general similarities found in the line of inheritance—is transformed and driven into the individual. People who descend from the spiritual realm with a meager inner life are, so to speak, overwhelmed in their inner being by the external circumstances that surround them—race, tribe, family, and social class—and they possess the character traits of their people and their family. People who descend with a rich inner life and a significant unfolding of inner strength emerge as sharply defined individuals; they do indeed absorb what passes from ancestors to descendants, but this similarity recedes in the face of the individual traits that are a consequence of the spiritual development of the individual. We can find this to be true when we observe “primitive” peoples, or more specifically, when we turn our spiritual gaze back to the Earth’s primeval times. There, the people of a single nation resemble one another. Why do they resemble one another? Because the people who incarnate in such primeval times have passed through few past stages of existence, have experienced little in earlier stages, and therefore bring down little from the spiritual realm. Among more developed peoples, we find more advanced stages; there we encounter people who have many, many lifetimes behind them, who have drawn rich, rich fruits from earlier lifetimes, and who therefore bring down into the physical world what they have carried upward as fruits through many lives, thereby shaping an individual existence for themselves. But every human being must, so to speak, strike this compromise within our present era of humanity; they must descend and enclose themselves in physical bodies that they must take from the hereditary line. This duality is present in every human being, coming together to form a whole. On the one hand, the human being is similar to what flows down through the ancestors; on the other, they are a distinct entity.

[ 17 ] Certainly, materialistic thinking raises many objections to precisely such ideas. For example, people say: “Oh, what are you talking about—the descent of the human being? It’s all inherited! We can even find the characteristics of the greatest geniuses in their ancestors.” — There are people who take Goethe or Leibniz or this or that figure and trace their lineage back to the earliest ancestors, only to find the qualities that stand out in the genius scattered among the ancestors—one quality in this one and another in that one. And so these people tell us: “You can see for yourselves how genius is based solely on heredity.” Genius very rarely appears at the beginning of a generation, but usually at the end of it; thus, it has inherited what is unique to it from its ancestors. - What a strange line of reasoning! For anyone who reflects on this logic will find that it implies the exact opposite of what it claims. This logic seeks to prove that genius inherits its qualities. It would prove this if it could be demonstrated: “Here is a genius; the son inherited his qualities, the grandson did as well, and so on.” But that is not the case. This is precisely what is being refuted. Genius is not hereditary. It is rare for genius-like qualities to be simply passed down. If a genius stands at the end of a line of generations, that does not mean that this individuality, in its entirety, flows down through the line. Of course, the physical and etheric bodies—which are the instruments of the human being’s core—originate from the hereditary line, and the fact that they exhibit the characteristics one can observe here and there is not surprising. That is just as obvious as telling someone, after a person has fallen into the water and been pulled out, “This person is wet.” It goes without saying. So it is with the characteristics one inherits. The logic commonly employed to somehow refute the well-founded fact that human beings are a fusion of two lines—one of which runs from generation to generation and is designated by the terms “race,” people, tribe, or family, while the other lies within the spiritual world, where a person progresses from life to life and, over long periods of time between death and a new birth, prepares for that very new birth in a purely spiritual world. These two lines converge.

[ 18 ] How is harmony established between what comes from the spiritual world and what lies within the line of inheritance and is defined by terms such as “people” and “family”? How is a balance achieved? This balance can only be achieved by ensuring that the characteristics that distinguish a person—insofar as they belong to a race, a tribe, or a family—are met by others similar to them, who then unite with those originating from below. If we were merely automatons reproducing within the hereditary line, we would say: This is who we are. — We look back along the line of ancestors and find in them the characteristics that are present in our physical and etheric bodies. We find not only the shape of the nose and forehead, hair color, and physiognomy in our ancestors, but also inner qualities that come very close to what can be described by the word “moral”—these are inherited. There are concepts—for example, regarding sensations and feelings—that are characteristic of this family, that race, or that tribe. How are these passed on? If reproduction were to occur solely from physical body to physical body, then people would be similar only in this respect. The fact that they also correspond in such qualities—which are characteristic traits of a tribe—stems from the fact that the etheric body is part of what is likewise passed down through the generations. And just as the physical body exerts a influence from below upward on the etheric body—the qualities that the physical body, once formed, imprints upon the etheric body from below—these become the racial characteristics. Originally, the physical body arose as if through a kind of condensation of the etheric body. But once it exists, it absorbs impressions from the external world. These impressions, in turn, act back upon the etheric body, and to the extent that they do so, they are transmitted along the line of heredity. Thus, because every human being is, so to speak, a descendant of some ancestor, the etheric body of each person is endowed with very specific, typical, pattern-like racial characteristics.

[ 19 ] The spiritual core of the human being, through which he descends into the physical world, must adapt to whatever is available to him in this physical world as a covering. This covering must provide him with something akin to the qualities of the etheric body. In other words: The descending “I” must be able to imprint such qualities onto the etheric body that the etheric body—through these qualities imprinted upon it from above by the astral body—can form a compromise between what comes from below and what comes from above. When a person enters a new existence, certain qualities then converge in the etheric body; these qualities are present in the etheric body because it is connected downward to the physical body, while other qualities flow through it from above, imprinted upon it by the descending astral body.

[ 20 ] The qualities imprinted on the etheric body by the descending astral body form the basis of the human temperament. This is where the temperament resides. The human being brings this temperament with them. They do not yet possess it when they have only the astral body; they acquire it because, as this astral body descends, it must unite with the etheric body, which possesses certain characteristics of the race or people. Since it develops, so to speak, certain characteristics that correspond to what lies below, yet are also in harmony with the original, essential traits of the human being, the temperament is something that is at once individual and that, so to speak, casts its own tone over the general characteristics that the human being shares with their race, tribe, and family. If we were to inherit only the characteristics of race, tribe, and family, we would be average figures; if we were to come from above with our essential being and now, so to speak, have to merge into these, then that would not fit well. What we bring with us—what we may have developed millennia ago—would be out of harmony with what we find here. That which, as the individual, can adapt to the stereotypical general from below—that is the temperament.

[ 21 ] Thus, through his temperament, a person is able to transcend the condition of being a completely individual being. For through his temperament, a person tempers the full obstinacy of an individual being; he mitigates it. But at the same time, they eliminate the stereotypical. That is why we also see that human temperaments arise from a mixture of what are, in essence, only a few basic temperaments.

[ 22 ] You are all familiar with these four basic temperaments, which are referred to as melancholic, phlegmatic, sanguine, and choleric. In fact, there are not just these four, but seven shades of temperament. Only the choleric temperament is, strictly speaking, a distinct category on its own. The sanguine, phlegmatic, and melancholic temperaments all have an active and a passive side, so they manifest in two forms. This results in seven shades, just as there are seven colors in the rainbow and seven notes in the musical scale. The eighth is merely a repetition of the first. But that is of less concern to us. Let us be clear that we must never attribute any one of these temperaments in isolation to a single person; rather, every person is a mixture of all these temperaments. Only whatever stands out among the four makes a person appear melancholic, phlegmatic, or sanguine, and depending on that, we describe them as such. The melancholic person contains the others; they are simply overshadowed by the underlying melancholic mood. You could easily demonstrate this by considering, for example, Napoleon; he certainly had a choleric temperament. Think about how phlegmatic he was in very specific matters that did not interest him. He could be very phlegmatic in certain areas. A person has one prominent trait but is composed of the four—or rather, seven—basic colors of temperament.

[ 23 ] The question now arises: When is a person primarily a melancholic, a phlegmatic, a sanguine, or a choleric? As was already mentioned in the introduction, all aspects of human nature interact with one another. In the same way, all the higher aspects of human nature influence the physical body. If a person had no “I,” no individually distinct “I,” then their blood and the entire blood circulation would not be as they are. Blood circulation is the expression of the “I.” The “I” is purely spiritual, but the effect of this spiritual aspect—this “I”—is the blood in its entire circulation. The way the blood circulates within us is the expression of our “I.” The expression of the astral body is the nervous system—one expression, at least. The expression of the etheric body is the glandular system. Only a being that is permeated by an etheric body can have a glandular system; for the etheric body permeates the physical body with the glandular system, which is necessary for all life, for nutrition, and for reproduction. Only a being that has an astral body can think and feel; for an astral body permeates the physical body with a nervous system. And only a being that is an “I” can have blood circulation; for this is the physical expression of the “I.” Thus, just as each of the higher members we have identified acts within the physical body, so too does the physical body act back upon them.

[ 24 ] We have seen that the temperaments find their particular expression in the etheric body. The temperament arises from this balance that occurs between what is imprinted into the etheric body from above as the human being descends, and certain qualities that enter the etheric body from below. Now, if a person has a physical body of such a nature in a particular incarnation that this physical body exerts a stronger influence on the etheric body than the astral body and the ego—if the predominant influence emanates from the physical body—then what is called the melancholic temperament develops in the person. Due to the peculiar way in which the descending astral body acts—because it does not, so to speak, fully master the laws of the physical body—this physical body, with all its heaviness, exerts a counter-effect on the etheric body, and this gives rise to the melancholic temperament. In particular, it must be that part of the physical body which serves as the physical instrument of thought—of the spiritual life in general—that exerts this influence in the melancholic temperament upon the etheric body and upon the person’s entire life circumstances. Therefore, the person who, so to speak, does not gain mastery over the physical brain—that which is otherwise the physical instrument of thought—through his astral body and his “I,” will be at the mercy of his thoughts. In this way, the physical body compels the etheric body, so that the person does not gain mastery over his thoughts but is instead dominated by them.

[ 25 ] This is what underlies the melancholic’s tendency to brood. He drags himself along behind the masses of his thoughts and feelings, which keep recurring, because the physical body exerts a predominant influence on the etheric body. And wherever the physical body exerts a predominant—that is, excessive—influence on a person, wherever that person’s life is such that they cannot be fully governed by the higher members of their being, the resulting effects become apparent, even when they take on a pathological character. It is simply the result of the higher aspects of human nature being unable to exercise full control over the physical body when, for example, epileptic seizures or nervous headaches occur. As soon as a melancholic disposition veers toward the pathological, such things can occur.

[ 26 ] Therefore, in Greece—where people still possessed clairvoyant sensibilities—a person in whom the densest element exerted the predominant influence was described as a melancholic. It is the physical body that human beings share with the mineral entities, which are grouped under the concept of “earth,” and people in ancient Greece still knew—as we no longer do today—that the human physical body is formed by its various humors; and these were not viewed merely as physical substances, they did not merely examine them in the chemical retort, but knew that they underlie all that is spiritual; and therefore they designated this temperament—in which the physical body exerts the predominant influence—as black—melas— the melancholic temperament, because they observed in human beings the secretion of humors that causes the rigidity of the physical body, whereby it withdraws from the normal influences of the higher members and thereby turns the human being into a gloomy, introspective being. For through his higher members, the human being belongs to a much greater community. Through his etheric and astral bodies and his “I,” he would feel himself to belong to the great whole, the great World-I, the Deity. The spiritual constituents of the human being are precisely fused into the personal through the fact that the human being is enclosed within the skin of the physical body. This is why the melancholic finds it so difficult to detach from his individual physical existence, because this physical aspect exerts the predominant influence.

[ 27 ] When the etheric body is not strongly influenced by the physical body, the astral body, or the “I”; when the impulses of the family and the characteristics of the race are not strongly pronounced; when there are no strong influences on the etheric body from above or below; and when it remains, so to speak, neutral—then the phlegmatic temperament arises. Phlegm represents balance in the etheric body. Neither the physical body nor the astral body nor the ego exerts a particularly strong influence here. In this case, the person possesses the balanced phlegmatic state of the forces within their etheric body that are in a state of fluctuation. You can trace this all the way down to the physical body’s form, which you see projected outward. You can see how, in the phlegmatic person, because the etheric body receives no strong influences from above or below, the excess of life settles as fat. You can see in every detail the consequences of what we must perceive in the spiritual realm; the physical is, in every detail, an expression of the spiritual. We can only understand the physical if we comprehend the spiritual.

[ 28 ] When things are arranged in such a way that the astral body exerts a predominant influence on the etheric body, making its impressions particularly strong upon it and suppressing what rises up from the physical body, then what we call the sanguine temperament arises. There is the astral body, the astral body that is active within itself; the surging emotions and sensations stir and move with life. It is surrendered to all impressions from the external world. We will soon hear that it is the “I” that spiritually restrains the ebbing and flowing images that arise in the astral body—images that have their physical instrument in the nervous system—and that the blood, the expression of the “I,” restrains them physically. In fact, the blood and nervous systems interact in a most remarkable way. Imagine that the blood weakens. What happens? Fantastic images appear—hallucinations, figments of the imagination—that have no basis in reality. The proper restraints on these hallucinatory and imaginative forces are provided physically by the blood and spiritually by the “I.” There is nothing pathological about the sanguine person, but they are therefore at the mercy of all impressions from the outside world because the true “I” is not yet strong enough. What is active are the astral body and the nervous system. That is why the sanguine person is at the mercy of every impression; that is why the sanguine person is agile, because their astral body is agile. Observe the sanguine gait of a sanguine child—how it skips along, how this and that captures its interest. If it were not the case that this and that alternately interest the child, then these impressions would have to be regulated by the “I” and the blood.

[ 29 ] This is the case with the choleric person. When the ego and its blood are active—predominantly active—and act upon the etheric body, this gives rise to the choleric temperament, which goes too far in the opposite direction; it does not rush from one image to the next, but rather develops forces that restrain and curb change. These forces are present in the choleric person.

[ 30 ] Thus we see how we come to understand the various nuances of temperament that result from the influence of what comes from above and below. If the influence of the physical body on the etheric body predominates, this results in the melancholic temperament; if the etheric body is neutral, the result is the phlegmatic temperament. If, in particular, the astral body is active inwardly, we have the sanguine type, and if it is the “I” that is primarily granted dominion within the human individuality, this results in the choleric type.

[ 31 ] Once you have grasped all these things in the spiritual realm, you will find them expressed in the physical realm as well. Consider the choleric types—people in whom the ego is strongly developed; they restrain the astral body. And now, the ego is the original shaper of the physical body. The astral body has the need, the longing, to make the physical body as slender as possible and to develop it as diversely as possible. In choleric people, the ego works against this and thus restrains growth. Now look around at the choleric types; they will show you the stunted growth of the physical body. I would like to draw your attention to the image of Fichte, who was a choleric; he had precisely this expression in his physical appearance; and I need only remind you of Napoleon, of the expression of his small, stocky figure. There, too, you see the stunted growth expressed.

[ 32 ] In particular, the characteristics of one’s temperament are revealed precisely in what a person can offer through their individuality—as opposed to what generally and typically overtakes them. See how the human being is formed by the convergence of these two currents. The human being has firmly established features; what is permanent and fixed in facial expression is inherited. What is flexible becomes the expression of the individual, which descends from the spiritual. It is within this flexibility that the temperament is embedded. Facial features can be an expression of the rigid, inherited traits; a person’s gaze, however, stems from their individuality. The gaze is the expression of temperament: the piercing gaze belongs to the choleric type, the restless one to the sanguine, the reserved one to the melancholic, and the dull one to the phlegmatic. Take a look, for example, at the shape of the feet. An expert would be able to state: One race has this foot shape, another that one. But with the gait, it is different. In it, we find an individual expression. The gait reveals the racial character at most in its basic forms; otherwise, the individual comes into play. Therefore, the gait is something like the mediation between the individual and the general. You can see the bouncy gait of the sanguine person, the firm gait of the choleric person, the heavy step of the melancholic person—caused by the heavy physical body with its predominant influence on the etheric body—and you can see the casual gait of the phlegmatic person. In all the characteristics where the individual factor comes into play, what is only partially individual becomes apparent, because it must balance itself against what is generally racial in human beings; this is where temperament comes into play.

[ 33 ] If we now understand this mystery of temperament and how it works, then on the one hand we will say to ourselves: Oh, it is precisely in such subtle human characteristics that we see how we can only understand a person if we perceive them not merely in terms of their physical body, but in terms of their entire being. And on the other hand, it also becomes clear to us how necessary it is to know all this when we work with human beings in order to foster their development. We know from other lectures that the physical body takes shape up to the age of seven, the etheric body from then until the age of fourteen, and then the astral body and the “I.” This is how the individual parts are structured within one another. We can therefore see that we can only grasp the truth if, through the unique nature of the chemical composition—so to speak—of the temperaments, we gain some insight into the distinctive character of the developing human being. Only in this way can we, as educators or counselors, for example, guide human nature toward maturity if we understand this unique, quasi-chemical composition that presents itself to us through the four temperaments. Truly, just as every human being is composed of four parts—the physical body, the etheric body, the astral body, and the I—so do the influences of these four intermingle and reveal themselves to us in all manner of nuances, which can be traced back to these four or, respectively, seven temperaments. And now we see—because the mixture can be so varied—how every single human being can be a mystery, and how we can understand them only when we grasp them in the fullness of life. When we perceive each person as a mystery, only then do we truly face them as they are.

[ 34 ] Temperament is not something theoretical, but something that affects us from person to person. We will not only seek to unravel the human being with our intellect, but we will accept the whole person and allow them to remain a mystery to us. Then we approach the human being with full respect and love when we perceive his or her individual nature in such a way that, in the end, he or she does indeed appear to us as a mystery—one that we admire with wonder, but which we grasp in our feelings, in the way we meet each individual through our respect and love, through our appreciation. Oh, there are other mysteries besides those that can be solved by the intellect. People are all mysteries, and they are not solved merely by the intellect; rather, the way we value, honor, and respect them—how we reach out to them with our feelings and how we act on their behalf—is also a kind of solution to the mystery, and we will make this our habit as we learn to sense how the individual blends with the universal through that intermediary—the temperament. Truly, it is the case that we see two currents converging within the human being when a person enters this earthly existence. And we see at the same time that these currents must interact so that what can come to fruition through this existence may be carried over into a subsequent life and lived out in a new incarnation. There is in the human being that which is changing and that which is eternal. The eternal core ascends from one spiritual world to the next; but what is transient is not experienced in vain. In the balance between temperament and racial character, we create from within our etheric body the fruits that we carry with us throughout our entire subsequent life.

[ 35 ] And so it is certainly true of this realm as well that freedom holds true alongside the necessity that, while we enter life through the convergence of these two currents and are shaped by necessary laws, nothing is destroyed that we ourselves shape within our individuality and the universal.

[ 36 ] Freedom and necessity are equally beautiful—one as much as the other—as expressed in Goethe’s words—if only we fully understand them—which are meant to tell us how the law runs through human nature; when we see how the temperaments interact in their chemical mixture, then we find, particularly in this mystery of the human temperament, the truth of what Goethe so beautifully expresses in *Symbolum*, and with which we wish to conclude:

Just as on the day you were given to the world,
The sun stood in greeting to the planets,
You flourished immediately and ever since
According to the law by which you came into being.
This is how you must be; you cannot escape it!
So said the Sibyls, so said the prophets,
And no time, no power can break apart
A formed shape that develops while alive.