The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Anthroposophy III

[ 1 ] In our considerations, we have progressed to what we have called the “sense of language,” and we now wish to focus first on what we have called the “sense of the concept.” Of course, you must not take the word here in the sense of a pure concept, but in the sense in which it is used in everyday life; that is, when someone says something to you—any word at all—you can form a conception of what that word means. One might just as well have said “sense of conception.” Now, however, we must first make it clear how this sense of representation comes about. To do this, we must once again refer back to the two preceding senses—the sense of sound, the sense of hearing, and the sense of language—and ask ourselves the question: What does it actually mean to have a sense of language, to have a sense of sound? How does the perception of sound, as we have characterized it, actually come about? — So I will first have to characterize for you what specifically happens when a person perceives a sound—an “A” or an “I” or some other sound. We must, so to speak, clarify the mechanism of sound perception. However, since I cannot speak on such a topic for an entire hour, I will only be able to provide a few points, which you can then verify through this or that insight you gain yourself through reflection or exploration in life.

[ 2 ] You know that, within music, one can distinguish between the individual note, the melody, and the harmony. And you know that harmony is based on the perception of simultaneous notes, melody on the sequence of successive notes, and that the individual note is then considered in and of itself. Now, you can only understand the mechanism of sound perception if you consider the relationship between the sounder—that which is in the sound—and the sound itself. Let us take, for example, what harmony is: we have a simultaneous interplay of tones; and let us take what a melody is: we have a sequential interplay of tones. Now imagine that you could make conscious what you do unconsciously when perceiving sound; the following would happen.

[ 3 ] You must be aware that the concept of “sense” inherently involves something unconscious—or at least subconscious. If what is unconscious in sensory perception were made conscious, it would no longer be a sense, no longer sensory perception; rather, one would have to speak of a judgment, the formation of a concept, and the like. You must therefore imagine how the process that takes place in the subconscious during sound perception would proceed if you could carry it out consciously. Imagine, for a moment, that you are perceiving a melody. When you perceive this melody, you perceive the notes one after another. Now imagine that you could easily compress the notes of a melody along the timeline so that you could perceive them all simultaneously. To do this, of course, you would need to merge the past and the future. Ideally, you would have to already know what comes next while you are still in the middle of a melody in order to be able to shift it from the future into the present. What a person cannot consciously accomplish actually happens unconsciously in the perception of sound. Whenever we hear an “A” or an “I” or any other sound, a melody is momentarily transformed into a harmony through a subconscious process. That is the secret of sound. This marvelous subconscious process occurs on a more spiritual level in much the same way that the various refractions of light within the eye take place according to precise physical laws—laws that you only become consciously aware of afterward. We are now doing the same thing that a physicist does when he demonstrates how the refraction of light occurs in the eye. Thus, a melody is instantly transformed into harmony. But that is not enough. If only that were to happen, the sound would not yet emerge; something else must be added to it.

[ 4 ] You must realize that no musical tone is a simple tone; rather, if any tone is a musical tone, it is so because—even if only very faintly—the overtones are always present. This is what distinguishes a musical tone from other sounds—such as a bang or the like—namely, that the overtones are always present, even if they are practically inaudible. When you have a melody, you have not only the individual notes, but you also have the overtones for each note. If you compress a melody into a chord for a moment, you do not merely compress the individual fundamental tones, but you also compress the overtones of each and every tone into it. But now the subconscious mind must perform one more task: it must divert attention away from the fundamental tones; it must, in a sense, tune them out. This is indeed what the soul does when it perceives the sound A or I. It is not that the other tones are not there, but attention is simply diverted from them, and only that harmony of overtones is perceived. That is the sound itself. A sound arises in this way: a melody is momentarily transformed into a harmony, then the fundamental tones are disregarded, and only the system of overtones is perceived. What these overtones then produce is the meaning of the sound, A or I. Now you have explained what sound perception actually is in exactly the same way that one explains vision in the eye from a physical perspective.

[ 5 ] Now, what—and this is an equally difficult but important question—is the perception of an idea? What is the act of perceiving meaning alone, so that you hear the word and, through the word, perceive and comprehend its meaning? How does this come about?

[ 6 ] That this is something quite special may simply become clear to you from the trivial consideration that you can designate any given thing in different languages using a wide variety of sounds. You might call a thing “Amor” in one instance and “Liebe” in another. Thus, these two different sound patterns express something that is the same in both cases. This points to the conceptual meaning behind them. So while the sound is perceived differently by every people, in every language, one hears the same concept through the sound everywhere—that which actually lies behind it and which, despite all the differences in sound patterns, remains the same. This must also be perceived. And how is this perceived?

[ 7 ] To clarify this, let us consider the process of perceiving mental images—and I ask you to bear in mind—on the assumption that the mental image reaches us through sound. If, in our perception of sound, we have a melody that has been transformed into harmony—setting aside the fundamental tones, which give us the meaning of the sound or the word—then, for the meaning of the mental image to emerge, it is necessary that our attention be diverted from the entire system of overtones as well. If you carry this out mentally as well, then you look back at what has been embodied in the overtones, at that which comes to you as an idea. But this also means that when a person hears the sounds and words of their language, they perceive—so to speak—a somewhat nuanced, tempered version of what is universally human: the concept that runs through all sounds and all languages.

[ 8 ] We have said that through language—insofar as language has its sounds—lofty spiritual beings reveal themselves, beings who have their own special mission in the context of earthly life: the national spirits, which do not merely murmur mysteriously [of languages] but also in the equally mysterious shaping of the human life forces—in that which vibrates into the human organism through the system of overtones—then we must say that what lies behind the sounds of the overtones as the universally human is the common human spirit that surges across the entire Earth. This human spirit, surging across the entire earth, can therefore only be recognized when each person, in their own place, listens, so to speak, through the overtones into the inaudible, into the purely conceptual. It is precisely because human beings have been given the ability, so to speak, to look beyond the nuances, to listen beyond them, and to recognize a commonality that surges across the entire earth—it is through this that they have, in the course of humanity’s historical development, acquired the capacity to comprehend that which is universally human. For it is only in the life of the imagination that the Christ Spirit can first be grasped in its true form, in what is universally human. Those spiritual beings who proclaim him—and are to proclaim him—in the most varied forms, who have been sent out by him, each to their own place—as you find so beautifully depicted, for example, in Goethe’s poem “The Mysteries”—these spirits, these messengers of Christ who have received their mission from him, are the individual national spirits, the spirits of the individual national identities.

[ 9 ] All of this gives you a glimpse of what the sense of imagination actually is. But in doing so, we have traveled a very special path. We have, so to speak, first exhausted that which constitutes meaning for us in ordinary human life. We have done so by looking at that subconscious psychological capacity within the human being that is capable of, so to speak, pushing back the system of overtones. What, then, will be an even higher capacity? What is it that pushes back this system of overtones? What is it within the human being that reaches out like tentacles and pushes back the system of overtones? — That is the human astral body. If the human astral body acquires the ability to push back the overtones—which, expressed in everyday language, means nothing other than turning one’s attention away from them—then this signifies a greater power of the astral body than when it is, so to speak, less capable of pushing them back. When will this astral body become even stronger? It will be even stronger when it can not only push back the overtones—not only reach the images by pushing back the overtones and thereby reach the boundary of the outer world and observe it as an image at that boundary—but when it enables itself, without any prior resistance being present, to expel its astral substance through its own inner power. To arrive at a mental image, you still need to push back against a resistance: the system of overtones. When you are now able, without any external stimulus, to extend your astral tentacles, what occurs is what can be called, in the higher sense, spiritual perception. The actual organs of spiritual perception begin to form. At the moment when a person acquires the ability not only to push back the system of overtones with their attention, but also to project their astral substance from a certain point in the forebrain—between the eyebrows—like two tentacles, he forms at that point what is called the two-petaled lotus flower—the first spiritual organ, which can also be called the imaginative sense. This is now the eleventh of the senses. And to the same extent that a person becomes increasingly capable of extending their astral substance of their own accord—without being compelled by the external world—to that same extent they develop further higher senses. In the region of the larynx, through this work, they develop a very complex sense—the sixteen-petaled lotus flower, the inspiring sense; further on, in the region of the heart, the sense that can also be called the intuitive sense—the twelve-petaled lotus flower; and then even higher senses, which, however, since they enter the purely spiritual realm, can no longer be called “senses” in the ordinary sense. It is sufficient, after all, that we have to add to the physical, proper senses the imaginative sense, the inspiring sense, and the intuitive sense.

[ 10 ] Now let us ask ourselves: Are these three senses active only in the clairvoyant, or is there something in the ordinary person as well that can be understood as an activity of these senses? — Yes, even in the ordinary person there is something that can be understood as an activity of these senses: the imaginative, the inspiring, and the intuitive senses. If you have understood exactly how these senses function in the clairvoyant person, you will realize that they function by extending outward like tentacles. They are also present in the ordinary person, with the difference that they do not extend outward but rather inward. Exactly at the point where the two-petaled lotus flower arises in the clairvoyant person, there is something in the ordinary person resembling two such tentacles that extend inward and cross only in the region of the forebrain. Thus, ordinary consciousness simply directs these tentacles inward, rather than outward as in the clairvoyant person.

[ 11 ] I can only explain what is at issue here by means of a comparison. You would have to meditate deeply if you wanted to move beyond the comparison to the fact itself. For it is a fact. You need only realize that a person sees what is outside of himself, but does not see what is within him. No one has ever seen their own heart or brain. The same is true in the spiritual realm. Not only are the spiritual organs not seen, but they are also not conscious, and therefore they cannot be utilized. Yet they are active. Just because something is not conscious does not mean it is inactive. Consciousness does not determine reality. Otherwise, everything that surrounds us here in the city of Berlin—and which you cannot see right now—would not exist. Admittedly, this is the logic followed by those who deny the higher worlds because they cannot see them. These senses are active, but their activity is directed inward. And it is this inward effect of their activity that human beings now perceive. How do they perceive it?

[ 12 ] As the imaginative sense flows inward, what arises is what we call in everyday life the sensation of a thing—the external sensation, the external perception. The fact that you see things outside is due to this sense working inward. What you experience outwardly as a sensation or perception, you can only have because what emerges in the imaginative sense is working its way into you. But be sure to distinguish what is called a sensation here from what, for example, a sound is. It is quite another thing to hear a sound, to see a color, or to have a sensation in doing so. Seeing a color and saying it is red is different from having the sensation that it is beautiful or ugly, pleasant or unpleasant, in the immediate impression.

[ 13 ] The inspiring sense, too, directs its activity inward, and through this activity arises what is now a more complex sensation: feeling. The entire life of feeling, which is more inward than the mere life of sensation, is an activity of the inspiring organ, which acts only inwardly rather than outwardly. And when the intuitive sense flows inward, what we now actually call thinking—the formation of thoughts—arises. This is the result of the intuitive sense’s inward activity. First, a person has a sensation of the thing; then feeling arises; and finally, he forms his thoughts about it.

[ 14 ] You will have seen, then, that we have already moved from the life of the senses into the life of the soul. From the outside, from the world of the senses, we have grasped the soul within the human being itself in sensations, feelings, and thoughts. If we were now to proceed further and consider the higher senses—which we can no longer properly call “senses,” and which correspond to the other lotus flowers—in their inward action, we would find the entire higher life of the soul. For example, when the eight-petaled or ten-petaled lotus flower, located lower down in the organism, pours its activity inward, an even finer soul activity arises. And at the end of this series we find that very finest soul activity, which we can no longer describe as mere thought, but rather as pure thought, purely logical thought. This is what is brought about by the various lotus-flower activities working inward into the human being. When this inward working ceases to be merely inward and, as I have indicated, begins to work outward—that is, when those tentacles that otherwise extend inward crisscross everywhere and pour outward as lotus flowers— then that higher activity comes into being through which we ascend from the soul to the spirit, where that which otherwise appears to us merely as inner life in thinking, feeling, and willing now manifests in the outer world, carried by spiritual beings.

[ 15 ] In this way, you have, so to speak, come to understand human beings by ascending from the senses, through the soul, to that which is no longer actually within the human being, but which acts upon the human being from outside as a spiritual force and belongs to the human being just as much as it does to all of nature and the rest of the world outside. We have ascended to the spiritual realm.

[ 16 ] What I have described to you now in these remarks given today and in the last two lectures is the true human being; this is the human being, so to speak, as an instrument for perceiving the world, experiencing it soulfully, and grasping it spiritually. That is what a human being truly is. And what this human being is actually shapes his or her body. I have not described to you what a human being is when he or she stands before you fully formed. I have described to you the active interplay taking place within the human being. But what constitutes this active interplay—all that works together—sensually, soulfully, and, in turn, spiritually—is what shapes the human being as he stands before us on the earth.

[ 17 ] How does it take shape for human beings? For now, I can only offer you hints, so to speak—hints that you will find to be true wherever you examine the positive results of external observation. What stands out there before us when we look at a human being with our external senses is merely an optical illusion. It does not actually exist. It appears quite differently when viewed in its entirety. Just think about this—to get a sense of it—that you cannot perceive yourself entirely through your senses. When you let your gaze wander over yourself, you see only a part of yourself, only a part of your surface. You can never perceive the back of your own head or your own back. Yet you know that you have them. You know this through your other senses—through your sense of balance, your sense of movement, and so on. You know, so to speak, through an inner consciousness, that there is something about you that you cannot perceive externally in yourself. Thus, there is much about the human being that he cannot perceive—things that, for example, can only be grasped once the entire set of higher organs of perception that I have characterized are developed.

[ 18 ] Now let us first consider that part of the human being that he—let us assume through his eye—can perceive sensually in himself. Begin by defining the part that a person can see in himself. What, in fact, is this part that a person perceives in himself? Just pay close attention to the words. Through what means is a person supposed to perceive this aspect that they can see in themselves? Everything one perceives is, in essence, perceived through the sensory soul. For if one does not receive any information through the sensory soul about what is happening, one will not arrive at any understanding of anything. If the sensory body alone were to receive such a message, it would be unable to comprehend it. It would stand before it without understanding. But it is the sensory soul that enables a person to perceive something, for it is the sensory soul that grasps what is happening. And what is it that stands opposite this sensory soul? What is the object that stands opposite the sensory soul when the eye perceives it? It is nothing other than the appearance of the sensory body, the outer illusion of the sensory body. However, you must now broaden the concept somewhat. You can perceive yourself not only by directing your gaze toward the surface of your body, but you can also reach out with your fingers. In that way, too, you perceive it through the sensory body. The sensory body extends wherever a human being can be perceived through touch, through sensation. However, what the human being perceives there is not the sensory body itself. If you were to truly see the sensory body, you would see that where you see your own reflection—your physical body—an astral form presses forward and is pushed back. When something is pushed back, it accumulates. Thus, at the front, you have an interaction between the sensory body and the sensory soul. From behind comes the flow of the soul of sensation, so that it collides with your skin on the front of your body, and from the front, what constitutes your body of sensation pushes its way in. When two flows become blocked, the blockage becomes apparent. It is just as when two streams collide: something then comes to light. There you see one current, and you see the other current. But now imagine that you could not see either current, but could only see what emerges at this point through the swirling intermingling of the two currents. This is the part of your outer physicality that your eye—or any other external sense—can perceive in yourself. You can literally trace the boundary on your skin where this meeting of the sensory soul and the sensory body takes place. From this example, you can see how what we have considered spiritually—how these various members of the human being—take shape in the human being themselves. We see how the soul shapes the body itself. Now let us continue.

[ 19 ] We can say that in human beings there is an interplay between the front and the back, such that the sensory soul and the sensory body come into contact. In the same way, there is a collision of currents coming from the right and the left. From the left comes the current that pertains to the human being’s physical body; from the right, the current that pertains to his etheric body. The etheric body and the physical body pour into one another, interpenetrate one another, and where the two interpenetrate, where the physical body and the etheric body act together, what arises there is the actual, sensibly perceptible human being. A kind of illusion arises before the human being, so to speak. From the left comes the current of the physical body, from the right the current of the etheric body; the two interpenetrate and form in the middle what appears to us as the physically perceptible human being.

[ 20 ] And furthermore. Just as there are currents from the left and right, from the front and back, so there is a current from above and one from below. For the main current of the astral body flows upward from below, and the main current of the “I” flows downward from above. If we previously characterized the sensory body as being bounded at the front, the truth is that the astral body flows upward from below, but this flow is then taken up by a flow that moves from back to front, and is thereby limited in a certain way. But there is not only a flow from below to above and from the back to the front in this astral body; there is also a genuine flow from the front to the back, so that the astral body comes into being through these directions of flow: from below to above and from the front to the back. In human beings, all these currents truly flow into one another: one from top to bottom, one from bottom to top, one from back to front, one from front to back, one from right to left, and another from left to right.

[ 21 ] What, then, results from the convergence of the currents flowing upward from below and those pouring downward from above? I will explain what results from this in the following way. A current flows from top to bottom. It cannot flow unimpeded because it is held back by the other current, which flows from bottom to top. The same is true of the current that flows from right to left, and so on. Each is held back, and this creates the illusion of the physical body in the center.

[ 22 ] When we consider the two currents—from back to front and from front to back—we must be clear that these two currents are intersected by the currents from below and from above. And this intersection does indeed give rise to a threefold division within the human being. Thus, the lower part of one of these currents can be described as the feeling body in the narrower sense. Then, through this convergence, something arises that corresponds to what can now be described, in the strictest sense, as the highest development of the sensory body—there where the actual senses develop—which you can no longer see because the eyes themselves are part of it, and which you can no longer smell because the olfactory organ itself is part of it. You cannot look into the interior of the eye, but you can only look out from the eye.

[ 23 ] This is the structure of the entire human sensory body. But why did I draw two parts for you in the first place [see p. 62], if it is all sensory body? The reason is that down below, the effects mainly come from the outside, and up above is the physical reflection of what we call the sensory soul. In the face, first of all, you have the expression of the sensory soul. The face is formed by the soul of sensation. And up there, the uppermost part—the one that is least pushed back—that is where the soul of understanding builds its organ. But now notice that these currents do not come only from below and above, but that currents also come from the right and the left, so that the whole is once again bisected. We have a current there that runs through the body’s longitudinal axis. This current causes a kind of division to arise up there as well. A portion is split off from the form of the intellectual soul; and this split-off portion, right at the very top of the boundary, is the form of the conscious soul. This consciousness soul shapes its way upward into the very innermost part of the human being, and there it also shapes the convolutions of the gray matter of the brain. There you have the work of the consciousness soul in the human being. If you understand the human being in this way as a spiritual being, then you can readily grasp what exists in the human being as form from this spiritual being. This is how the spirit works on the form of the human body. All the individual organs are, so to speak, sculpted out of the spiritual realm. A person can only understand the structure of the brain once they know how the individual currents swirl through it.

[ 24 ] Now let us examine one detail so that you can see how these things can one day bear fruit when they become the common heritage of a true science, rather than today’s superficial science. We have now seen that up there, through the various currents, the external organs for the conscious soul, the intellectual soul, and the feeling soul—for example—are formed. To show how these organs then continue inwardly would require very lengthy explanations. But let us raise another question. We have said that the “I” acts from top to bottom, and that the main mass of the astral body moves from bottom to top, so that the main mass of the astral body and the “I” come into contact within a single current. This gives rise to an interaction between the “I” and the astral body, causing them to interpenetrate one another. Where the “I” is to carry out a conscious activity, something must be able to come about that arises through the soul of feeling, through the soul of understanding, and through the soul of consciousness. Something that arises, for example, through the intellectual soul is a human judgment. Where, then, must a human judgment be located? Naturally, it must be located in the head, because that is where the relevant living forces and constituents of the human being find their expression. Let us, however, take a specific example: suppose a human being were to develop an organ in which the intellectual soul plays no part, in which no judgment is made, but in which only the physical body, the etheric body, the “I,” and the astral body—as the bearers of pleasure and suffering, joy and pain, and so on—are to be involved. Let us assume that these four aspects of the human being—the astral body, the “I” (without the finer activity of judgment and consciousness), the physical body, and the etheric body—were to interact. What would an organ look like in which these four currents interact? Such an organ would be such that it would not allow for judgment; it would immediately follow the impression of the astral body with a counteraction. The physical body and the etheric body must interact, for otherwise this organ could not exist. The astral body and the “I” must interact; otherwise, this organ could not have feelings, nor could it express any sympathy or antipathy in response to an impression. Let us imagine the physical body and the etheric body working together, and let us imagine that this is a physical organ, and that it must naturally have a corresponding etheric body, since every physical organ must be constituted by an etheric body. In this case, a current from the right side of this organ’s etheric body would have to interact with a current from the left—that of this organ’s physical body. These currents would accumulate in the middle, would be unable to overlap, and would therefore cause a thickening. Then there would be the other two currents: that of the astral body from below and that of the “I” from above; these would cause a different kind of congestion. Now let us imagine, schematically, this interplay of currents within a single organ. I will merely sketch the concept schematically; the actual forms of such an organ would arise from entirely different conditions. Let me put it this way: There would be an organ, shaped in some way; there would be one current representing the physical body, and another current representing the etheric body. These would cause a thickening in the middle. The other two currents, from above and below, would also accumulate and, in turn, cause a thickening. There you have the human heart: right atrium, right ventricle, left atrium, left ventricle. If you carefully consider everything the human heart is capable of, you will have to say to yourself: This is exactly how the human heart must be constructed from the spirit! — This is how the human spirit builds this heart. It cannot be any other way.

[ 25 ] Let's take another example. We said something interesting yesterday. We said that, fundamentally, the act of seeing involves a subconscious thought process. When this thought process becomes conscious, it takes place only in the brain. Now let’s consider how the brain is structured so that conscious thought can occur.

[ 26 ] We don’t have time right now to go into the individual structures of the brain in detail. We could demonstrate for each individual organ that it must be the way it is. Let us assume the basic structure of the brain, to the extent that we need it, from the outset. Let us say: In the brain, we have—setting everything else aside—the outer membrane, then a kind of vascular membrane; then inside, between the vascular membrane and the reticular membrane, we have something like cerebrospinal fluid. ^{1What was demonstrated on the blackboard in what follows is only inadequately recorded in the lecture notes.} From there, it then enters the spinal cord. The interior of the brain is filled with the actual brain matter, with nervous tissue. Nervous tissue is the outer form of thought activity, so that when an impression is transmitted to the nervous tissue through any sense organ, what results is the conscious, intellectual processing of this external impression. All of this is conveyed to the nervous tissue. When the impression arrives, it is first processed intellectually, and after it has been processed intellectually, it is further processed by the nervous system into sensation and so on.

[ 27 ] Now suppose there were to be no conscious mental processing of an external impression. You would have to do that in a similar way at first. So there would have to be, once again, a kind of—let’s say—envelope; there would have to be, on the back wall, what one might call a vascular membrane. For a specific reason—which could be explained in detail, but that would take us too far afield here—the cerebrospinal fluid would atrophy. In order for subconscious thought activity to become possible, we must push the brain matter back: this creates space in the front, allowing for a subconscious thought process that is not processed by any nervous system. Something must happen to what would otherwise be immediately received by the nervous tissue. But for this to happen, the nervous tissue must be pushed back. If the nervous tissue were not pushed back, thinking would take place here. If it is pushed back, thinking cannot take place here, nor can sensation. You have an organ intended to serve a subconscious thought process—provided you push everything that constitutes the nervous system all the way back to the rear wall, and allow the impression to be processed not immediately by a mass of nerves, but by something that is not permeated by any nervous system. — Now look at what we have done: we have turned the brain into an eye.

[ 28 ] What is the eye? The eye is a small brain that has been shaped by our mind in such a way that the actual nervous system has been pushed back to the rear wall, where it has become the retina of the eye. This is how the architects of nature, the creators of forms, work. This is how they shape things. Essentially, there is a blueprint governing all human organs, which is modified only in detail, as needed. If I could speak for weeks on end, I would show you how every sense organ is nothing other than a modified little brain, and the brain, in turn, is a sense organ at a higher level. The entire human organism is built from the spirit.

[ 29 ] Let us now consider yet another detail. But first, allow me to make a sort of epistemological preliminary remark in order to clarify, through this remark, the standpoint of anthroposophy.

[ 30 ] We have said that anthropology has its standpoint down below in the details of sensory life, that theosophy has its standpoint up on the mountaintop, and that anthroposophy has its standpoint in the middle. If you now wish to focus on the difference that lies in how human beings relate, on the one hand, to the external sensory world and, on the other hand, to the spiritual world and the facts communicated through spiritual research, then you can say: Anyone who has senses and who applies their intellect—which is bound to the sensory world—can convince themselves of the existence of the sensory world and its laws. That is why people generally find it easier to believe in things that resemble what they perceive in the sensory world than in what is communicated through spiritual research. For they can grasp those things more readily. But one could very easily show that, formally speaking, there is no difference between the belief you place in the facts communicated to you by the spiritual researcher and the belief in the fact that you are told there was a Frederick the Great. There is, formally speaking, no difference between believing that there are spirits of the will and believing that there was a Frederick the Great. The only difference is that what is recounted is based on what is available in the archives: These are the deeds of Frederick the Great that occurred in the external world! — And if someone reconstructs the entire course of historical events for you, based on external facts, all the way back to the time when Frederick the Great lived, you believe them simply because no being lived back then that looked any different from a human being. That is why people who do not want to believe in spiritual worlds believe it—because what is told to them here resembles what they themselves experience in their own surroundings. The spiritual researcher is, after all, not initially in a position to speak, based on his research, about things that resemble the beings and objects found in the ordinary person’s surroundings. Since there is nevertheless no difference between the two kinds, and since this is absolutely well-founded, what I have just said must nevertheless be taken into account in a certain way. But now something else comes into play.

[ 31 ] We have characterized the perspective of someone who, for example, takes the standpoint of anthropology, and the perspective of someone who takes the standpoint of theosophy. It is entirely justified—as Dr. Unger has proven to you—to have well-founded trust and faith in what is presented by spiritual science. This is indeed a fully justified way of acknowledging the truths of spiritual science. But now the question arises: Is there perhaps a third option? — Are there only these two possibilities: to acknowledge something because it resembles what one is accustomed to seeing in the sensory world, or to acknowledge the spiritual solely on the basis that one receives it as a message from the higher worlds? Is there not a third possibility after all? In other words, can a person reasonably distinguish only between these two: Here is something perceptible through the senses; I believe it because I see it with my senses. Then there is something perceptible through the spirit; I believe it because the spiritual researcher sees it. — Is there not something else in between?

[ 32 ] I want to use an example to show you that there is, in fact, a third possibility. Imagine there is a hammer lying here. My hand picks it up and stands it upright. Now the hammer has performed a movement. You will attribute this movement to the fact that there was a will that raised the hammer. There is nothing remarkable about this, for you see the will behind it embodied in a human being. When you see a person pick up a hammer, you do not regard it as anything special. But suppose the same hammer were to stand upright on its own, without any visible being touching it. What would you say then? Now you will say: I would be very foolish if I believed that what has raised itself up there is a hammer like any other hammer, which can only be raised by a human being. — What will you have to tell yourself now? You will now say to yourself: It goes without saying that this is no ordinary hammer, but that there is something invisible within this hammer—something that is a will. — When you see the hammer standing upright, you can no longer regard it as an ordinary hammer, but must regard it as something that is the embodiment of another will, of another spiritual entity. And you will say to yourself: If I see that a thing does something which, according to the properties by which I know it as an external thing—based on the knowledge derived from ordinary external sensory observation—it cannot do, then I must say: Although I do not see the spirit in the hammer that has raised itself up; but in this case, I must not merely believe in the spirit; rather, in this case, I would be a great fool if I did not believe in the spirit within the hammer.

[ 33 ] If you lack keen powers of observation and were to walk with someone who is clairvoyant, there might be a person lying there who isn’t moving at all. With your lack of keen powers of observation, you wouldn’t be able to tell at all whether that’s a real person or a person made of papier-mâché. But the other person would tell you: “That’s a real person; he has an astral body!” — Then you’ll have to believe it. But there’s also a third possibility, which is that the person lying there might suddenly get up. Then you’ll no longer doubt that the clairvoyant was right all along and that there is a spirit and a soul inside that person once they’ve gotten up. That is the third possibility.

[ 34 ] Now I would like to show you a case where you can observe this in life—not at close range, yet in a sense, very close at hand. We have said: In the human being, the current of the physical body flows from left to right, the current of the etheric body from right to left, the current of the sensory body from front to back, and the current of the sensory soul from back to front. From bottom to top and from top to bottom, the astral body and the “I” act in opposition to one another. These currents thus all flow intermingled. The “I,” as we said, acts in the human being from top to bottom. How, then, must the external organ be situated so that the human being can have it as an instrument of the “I”? The external organ for the “I,” as you know, is the circulating blood. The “I” could not act from top to bottom if it did not find its organ in the physical body, one that runs through the human body from top to bottom in a vertical direction. Where can there be no “I” as humans possess it? Where the main blood flow does not run from top to bottom, but rather runs horizontally. This is the case in the animal kingdom. The group “I” of animals finds no organ because the main blood flow is horizontal. This is the difference: the main blood flow had to become vertical in humans so that the human “I” could enter into this main blood flow. So we have, on the one hand, animals in which the “I” cannot grasp the blood as its organ because the main bloodline runs horizontally, and, on the other hand, humans in whom the “I” can grasp the blood as its organ because the main bloodline has risen vertically. Let us now consider the view that assumes a kinship between animals and humans based solely on external characteristics. In that case, you must say to yourself: There are animal forms; they have been preserved from earlier times. But at some point, the entire bloodline had to rise from the horizontal to the vertical so that the human being could emerge from it. — Here you have the historical case: you have something that lies horizontally. But of course, based on the characteristics you can observe in the animal’s blood nature, it cannot raise itself up any more than a hammer could raise itself up if it were not animated by a spirit. Just as it would be foolish to deny that there is a spirit in that which raises itself up, so too would it be foolish to think that the horizontal bloodline of the animal raises itself up of its own accord to become the vertical bloodline of the human being. Only when there is a spirit within it, when a will flows through it, can it rise from the horizontal to the vertical; only then can the animal group soul transform into the individual human soul. And whoever does not admit to himself, on the one hand: “I would be a fool if I were to believe that the hammer that raised itself up were nothing more than an ordinary hammer”—that person would be just as great a fool if he were to assume: “I think that what is in the blood raises itself up vertically on its own.”

[ 35 ] Here you have the third way in which you can verify all truths of the humanities, by realizing that certain things happen in which it is foolish and absurd to assume that only what is perceived by the external senses is involved. And the deeper one delves into these matters, the more it becomes evident that this middle path of conviction is possible for everything—this middle path, which consists in ordinary thinking being enriched by spiritual science. For you must surely admit that a human heart cannot be described as we did without prior spiritual research. Research must be inspired by spiritual science. But then, once the results of spiritual science are established, and we then observe the external phenomena, we will see that something is taking place in these external phenomena that could not possibly occur unless the things that spiritual science can tell us were presupposed. Thus, there is a method for observing things impartially: for example, when you see that the bloodline runs horizontally in animals but vertically in humans, and then ask yourself, “What must be present in the blood to allow the entire main bloodline to stand upright?” and then receive the answer from spiritual research: Spiritual beings reign in the blood! So that you then say to yourself: Does the blood not show me the presence of a spiritual being just as surely as a hammer that were to stand up on its own would show me the presence of a spiritual being? Here you have the middle ground of anthroposophy, which observes the facts below, observes the facts of the spiritual world, compares the two with one another—and thereby fully explains what exists outwardly in the world.

[ 36 ] Thus, using individual examples—such as the transformation of the brain into the eye and the internal schematic contraction of the human heart—we have shown how the form of every organ can be grasped. In this way, we could construct the individual forms of every organ from the mind. Everywhere you would see how the spirit works in human beings to bring about the organs and the forms of the body. This should only be hinted at in principle. But through such things as have been hinted at today, you should gain a sense that there is indeed much in the world that scholarly wisdom cannot even begin to imagine, because it refuses to engage with these matters. If you take this sense with you, you will see that there is a way for people to view the world with an open mind—where the interweaving of what the spiritual researcher communicates from the spiritual world with earthly things, though not everyone can see it in the same way, leads one to say: It is absurd not to accept, for certain phenomena, the facts that the spiritual researcher describes.

[ 37 ] If this feeling is present, then these anthroposophical lectures have already achieved enough; for we can only ascend slowly and gradually in spiritual research.