The Rudolf Steiner Archive

5. Nature and Spirit in the Light of Spiritual Scientific Insight

[ 1 ] The first of the topics selected for this short lecture series is “Nature and Spirit in the Light of Spiritual Scientific Insight.” Nature and Spirit! — This seemingly expresses a contradiction, one that immediately brings to mind many opposing views and opinions that have stood in opposition to one another in the world. We know, of course, that in recent centuries a certain kind of science has increasingly emerged that wishes to acknowledge only nature and which, from its own standpoint, can hardly do anything other than count the spirit as part of nature. On the other hand, we see how defenders of the spirit and spiritual life are asserting themselves in all fields, even in our own time. And we need only look, on the one hand, at the extreme position held in the 19th century: that the brain secretes thoughts just as the liver secretes bile—that is, what we perceive as spiritual in human beings is a purely natural process, and we do not believe in any other spirit. — We need only set this side by side with the many current efforts to establish a spiritual science, and then we have extremes.

[ 2 ] But one can also interpret the words “nature and spirit” in another way, namely by referring to Goethe’s words: “Nature is sin, spirit is the devil; between them they harbor doubt, their deformed hybrid child.” And so we can point out many things that set nature and spirit in opposition, and in them we can find many things that have brought human hearts into disharmony, that have caused storms of strife and conflict in the world.

[ 3 ] On the other hand, there is a modern saying, also attributed to Goethe, which states that the spirit could never exist or be effective without matter, and matter could never exist or be effective without the spirit. This statement can be very easily refuted. One need only point out that when I chisel a piece of granite from a rock, I then have matter without spirit! Refutations of profound sayings are very easy to find in the world, and one must clearly recognize, especially within a spiritual scientific movement, that for the foolish in the world, nothing is easier than to refute the words of the wise with a great pretense of righteousness. An anthroposophical perspective must delve more deeply into these matters.

[ 4 ] What is spirit, what is nature? — There is no doubt in our ordinary perception that we are facing nature when we see plants sprouting from the earth in spring, when we see them unfolding. There we see the weaving and life of nature. Nor is there any doubt that we speak of nature with a certain justification when snowflakes cover the earth in winter. These are both effects of nature. But have we thereby, in a fully justified way, participated in what is unfolding around us? Imagine for a moment: if there were beings capable of thought who were much smaller than us—so small that our fingernails or our hair would be as large to them as trees are to us—then these beings would describe the hair on our heads just as we describe the plants that come out of the earth. We humans, however, do not describe individual hairs or the human head as a ground from which individual hairs rise, for we know that we cannot find a single hair as an individual entity in nature; they are only possible on another being. Only one who, due to their smallness, cannot survey the hairs in their entirety could describe a single hair on its own. Such a being might very well be able to distinguish between the different hairs. Depending on the spot on the head where they grow, it could classify them into classes and orders: a class of left temple hairs, a class of right temple hairs; a class of left forehead hairs, a class of right forehead hairs; one could later give them names that further distinguish them. Thus, there could be a science of hair for such small beings. For other beings, there is, with some justification, such a science: it is botany. While in fact the Earth, viewed as a whole, produces individual plants just as our head produces hair, and while the individual plants belong to the Earth and do not exist as a separate species, in botany plants are classified and described without regard to the fact that this plant world forms a unity belonging to the Earth, just as our hair forms a unity with our organism. For nature or the world, it is of no consequence that humans have devised a botany, just as a science of hair devised by a thinking little creature would be of no consequence to humans.

[ 5 ] Spiritual science, however, takes us even further. It shows us that just as one cannot conceive of a being like a human, with hair on its head, without a soul, so too the Earth cannot be viewed as anything other than a whole that possesses all material, purely natural things as organs of the Earth spirit or the Earth soul. If we study this Earth Spirit or Earth Soul further, we find that it differs from the human soul at first glance. The distinctive feature of the human soul is that it appears to us as a kind of unity. This is not initially the case with the Earth Spirit. Ultimately, however, as you know, there is a directing Earth Spirit, but the next thing we find in the spiritual contemplation of the Earth is a great sum, a multitude of elemental beings, which, as a multiplicity, a diversity, form the next stage of the Earth Spirit.

[ 6 ] We can begin by considering this Earth Spirit. It then becomes apparent that, for example, on the half of the Earth where it is currently summer at a given time, these beings of the Earth Spirit undergo a kind of slumber, whereas where it is winter, they are awake. For spiritual perception, the elemental beings and spirits actually begin to fall asleep to the same extent that plants sprout from the earth. In winter, it begins to rain. Then these elemental beings and spirits form their own ideas, sensations, and feelings in their own way. What night is to humans, summer is to the half of the Earth where it is currently summer, and what day is to humans, winter is to the Earth. The Earth as a whole being wakes and sleeps like a human, but in such a way that one half is always more awake while the other sleeps more, whereas a human is organized so that when he sleeps, his entire being sleeps simultaneously. This is actually not quite correct either; rather, it is exactly the same with humans as it is with the Earth. When a human sleeps, only the head region sleeps, while the other organs are all the more awake. But humans are simply not attuned to perceiving this. It is actually the same with the Earth, though not entirely. One hemisphere of the Earth has more water than the other, so the Earth’s sleeping and waking is not unlike that of humans.

[ 7 ] Just as we regard human beings as living, sentient beings, so too must we regard the Earth. It is only because we walk upon the Earth as such small beings that we fail to see that it possesses both a body and a soul. But this stems from our materialistic age. Kepler, for example, who was certainly capable of deep thought, still says that he regards the Earth as a great organism. However, he did not have an occult view of the Earth; therefore, he did not know that winter signifies waking and summer signifies sleeping for the Earth, and he imagined the Earth as a great whale rather than conceiving of it as an animated being that is higher than humanity. He reduced the scale of things somewhat, viewed the Earth as a whale, and saw the animal’s inhalation and exhalation in the movement of the air. That was also Giordano Bruno’s view. For him, the Earth was a great, animated organism that undergoes its breathing process in the ebb and flow of the tides. So too did Goethe: The Earth is a great, living individual that manifests its inhalation and exhalation process in the ebb and flow of the tides, in the air currents, and in the sea. — Yes, the minds of the older, more spiritual age still knew that one cannot view the Earth in such an abstract, theoretical way as is done today—as if one could describe a hair or a nail in isolation—while one should know that these cannot exist without the whole organism, that they are grounded in the whole organism. The naturalistic view does not know what really matters. When viewing the world, what matters is that one must be able to ask oneself about everything in the world: Is this a part of a whole, or is it a whole in itself? — If someone finds a human tooth, they must not regard it as an individual entity; rather, the tooth is only meaningful when viewed as a part of the human being. Likewise, it is absurd to describe a single plant, for it is conceivable only as a part of the entire earthly being. Thus, the outer body of the Earth is conceivable only together with the soul and spirit of the Earth. And if one knows nothing of the Earth’s spirit, if one does not know that this Earth is the body of a spirit, just as our own body is, then one views the Earth just as mineralogy, geology, and botany view it. These disciplines lack the awareness that behind everything they describe lies the guiding Earth spirit. When I chisel a piece out of a rock, it is easy to say: There is no spirit in it! — There is no spirit in a piece of a tooth either, but the piece of tooth is inconceivable without the whole human being and the soul-spiritual to which it belongs.

[ 8 ] We must keep this in mind when we speak of nature and spirit. So when we speak of the Earth as a natural planet, without mentioning its soul and spirit, this description stems solely from the fact that we disregard the spirit and wish to know nothing of it. Where, then, does the Earth exist as a mere natural planet? Botany, geology, and astronomy would say: It moves through outer space! — If that assertion were true, then it would soon cease to move; then it would collapse, like the human body after death, when the spirit has left it.

[ 9 ] This way of viewing the world has rubbed off. Even the parts of the human body and the whole human being are described today as if they were merely natural phenomena—that is, as if one were looking at a corpse. For if human beings were as the physiologist, the anatomist, and so on describe them, they would die immediately. Physiology describes only its own fantasy, as do astronomy and geology with their descriptions of the Earth. This is a pure product of the imagination. This purely natural Earth does not exist at all. For the fact that the Earth is as it is—down to the smallest piece of rock—is grounded in the fact that the Earth is permeated by the Earth Spirit.

[ 10 ] Here we see what really matters. When considering human beings, it is essential to find the point of departure from the part to the whole, so that the part is not separated from the whole. Human beings, as such, are a whole. But when it comes to the Earth, the entire Earth must be regarded as a whole. If we separate nature and its effects from the Earth, what then is this nature? Then it is a product of our imagination, which does not actually exist at all, which only appears to us as such because we cut a part out of a whole. Thus one sees that what matters is not that one describes something faithfully, but that one knows how a part integrates into the whole—or rather, grows out of the whole. Thus the Earth must be regarded as a whole, not as a physical whole, but as a corporeal being that belongs to its spirit.

[ 11 ] However, one could now speak of nature and spirit in yet another way. One need only consider human beings themselves. In human beings, we encounter, in a certain sense, something that seems to justify the concepts of “nature and spirit” as opposites. A child is born, and all the child’s expressions of life in the early stages appear as something formed from the physical, from the whole of physical nature. That is why people often say: The child still acts entirely according to its nature. Only later does the spiritual, the soul, emerge from the body. At the beginning of life, the human being is more nature; later, the spirit develops more. — But this, in turn, is nothing more than a careless way of looking at things. For in the early stages of our life there is much spirit within us; it is simply more hidden within us than it is later. Everything that gives our body its form is active spirit; it is just not the case that we are inwardly active in the spirit and illuminate it with our power of memory. We truly have no less spirit within us in the early years of childhood than in later years. One could, under certain circumstances, speak even more radically. Someone asked recently: What does it mean when a child lives only a few days and then dies? — Occult science now shows us that such a short life does indeed have a meaning. Often the being within this child’s body has been able to develop many things, but sometimes it has been unable to develop one thing, for example, fully healthy vision. Let us suppose that someone was an excellent person in one incarnation but had poor eyesight. Then it may happen that such a person later lives for only a few days in an incarnation, solely to make up for what was lacking in the previous life due to their poor eyesight. In this case, one must count this incarnation as part of the previous one. People generally greatly underestimate the importance of a child’s capacity to learn in the first few days. When a child learns to see in the light, this requires more capacity than everything one learns in the first academic semester.

[ 12 ] One might raise many objections to such things, but if one simply reflects on the substance of such a matter, one will see that it is true. We only view childhood correctly when we realize that the spirit is no less present in the body during the development of our brain, the formation of our physiognomy, and so on, than it is later, when we are capable of more sophisticated mental activities. In later life, the spirit has withdrawn somewhat from the body and acts as a more abstract spirit, which, however, can no longer organize the brain. The brain has already solidified by then. The spirit that people so readily call “spirit” in later life was already present in the first part of human life, but had something else to do there; it was more closely linked to natural processes. One simply does not see this, which is why one calls what happens there merely “nature,” and what happens consciously later merely “spirit.” Therefore, people assume a contrast between the “natural” processes of early childhood and the spirituality of thinking, feeling, and willing in later life. The contrast, however, is quite different.

[ 13 ] In early childhood, there is a close connection between nature and spirit; they interpenetrate one another and still relate to one another in a friendly manner. Later, they separate, and the spirit and natural processes proceed more independently. In return, the natural processes also become more spiritless, as the spirit has differentiated itself from them and become the distinct soul of which human beings are so proud. Human beings pay for this by their bodies becoming more spiritless. Human beings have first drawn the spirit out of their bodies so that they can use it more independently for themselves. Something similar occurs throughout the entire development of the Earth. In the very early days of the Earth, the spirit was intimately connected with the Earth’s nature everywhere; hence, there was at that time an intimate interplay between the Earth spirit and Earth nature. Today, in a certain sense, Earth nature is as separate from its spirit as human nature is from the soul. And just as in human beings it is the spirit that directs thinking, feeling, and willing, so too in the Earth’s development does the Earth spirit run alongside the natural process as the course of history. In the Lemurian epoch, these were even more interwoven, just as spiritual and natural processes are more closely related in a child than in later human beings. What, then, is the point here? Is it a matter of saying: Does the spirit develop in later stages of life or in later geological eras? — No, it was already there, but at that time it directed its activity toward what has since become separate. And that hardens, it becomes woody, it dies.

[ 14 ] For this reason, we must not view the whole—which is to be regarded as a whole—in terms of time, but only in terms of its parts. The human being, as a child, is not a physical whole on earth. Only the human being in youth, middle age, old age, and so on is a whole, and we cannot say: The human being undergoes a development from the natural to the spiritual—but we must say: In early childhood, nature and spirit were intimately connected. Later, they become more separated from one another. As a result, the natural becomes somewhat more lifeless, somewhat less inwardly alive, and the spirit becomes more independent. A differentiation has thus taken place within the entire human being. — That is the correct impression. But the spiritual does not simply develop out of the natural. Differentiation exists. When we speak of nature without the spirit, we are speaking of a mere figment of the imagination. Under today’s physical conditions on Earth, a human being could never later become a thinking, feeling, and willing being so proud of its spirituality if it had not first detached its spirit from natural existence. One must learn to completely rethink nature and spirit.

[ 15 ] It goes even further. Let us consider the outward nature of men and women. Anyone who approaches this very superficially will come to the conclusion that women are closer to nature and judge more directly on the basis of natural principles. Men have distanced themselves more from nature; independent thinking and the independent spirit live more strongly within them. — The materialistic age, which conceives of the spirit in materialistic terms, has offered other reasons for this difference, such as the weight of the brain. But when the brain of the man who devised this theory was weighed, it turned out that he had a particularly small male brain! So if we look at nature and the spirit in this way, even a superficial glance shows how little this holds true. Anyone who delves into the depths here will, in turn, arrive at a completely different way of looking at things. A woman’s outward appearance is, in a certain sense, more natural, but at the same time also more spiritual than a man’s. Womanhood on today’s Earth is more natural because spiritual activity in her has not yet become as separated from her physical being as is the case with man. Therefore, man is not to be thought of as possessing greater spirituality than woman; rather, in man, only that which is distilled spirit—leaving matter behind—stands out more prominently. Conversely, in certain respects, male physicality is more devoid of spirit. Female physicality is more imbued with spirit, as is the case, for example, with that of a child; male physicality in later life is more devoid of spirit than is the case in youth. But we must not speak of greater naturalness or spirituality in being male or female.

[ 16 ] Our perspective must therefore change completely. It is true: in a certain sense, what has to do with the nature of men and women affects us throughout our entire lives. It is not always pleasant to point this out. Why, for example, are there more women than men in the Anthroposophical Society? Doesn’t that actually speak against the presence of intellect in anthroposophy? — one might ask. This can be answered quite objectively, though one is then easily misunderstood. The fact that more women join the Anthroposophical Society—that is, that they assimilate spiritual truths more easily—is because they preserve the spirituality of the nervous system and the brain to a greater extent in later life. In men, this separates from the physical body earlier, so they do not have the ability to so easily take in what speaks to that which is neither man nor woman, but which stands above them: the being itself.

[ 17 ] In any given incarnation, a human being is either male or female. In men, the material aspects are more developed, and the spirit—the temporal, transient spirit—is somewhat more distilled from their overall nature. In women, nature and spirit remain more closely connected throughout their lives; therefore, their nature remains more flexible. But spiritual truths speak to something within the human being that has nothing to do with the difference between man and woman. For the being that passes from incarnation to incarnation can be alternately male and female, even if this is a truth that often angers men.

[ 18 ] That which constitutes our deepest essence, then, has nothing to do with man and woman. Just as it has nothing to do with man and woman, so too does the deepest essence of worldly phenomena and facts have nothing to do with nature or spirit at all; rather, it manifests itself sometimes more spiritually, sometimes more naturally. These are both phases of existence; this is how life proceeds. Just as in human life there is an alternation between more soul-spiritual activity during the day and more natural activity for the physical human being at night, so too in the universe there is an alternation between periods in which beings become more spiritual and periods in which they become more “natural.” This is a rhythm in the universe. For example, if one looks at the nature of the human being—when he is a man in an incarnation, that is, when he is karmically destined to distill the spirit from the natural—then he can say to himself: Now, I am indeed karmically destined to distill the spirit from nature, but this must rhythmically and cyclically alternate with a female existence, where I may allow my spirit to be more immersed in the natural, so that I may in turn experience a pendulum swing toward a natural existence.

[ 19 ] This is true of all planets, of all wholes, totalities, and of all worlds. Wherever we find something natural, something spiritual is part of it, and wherever we find a spirit, it has a tendency to secrete from itself something that is natural. Nature and spirit are not opposites, but rather alternating states of the higher essence that underlies them.

[ 20 ] Thus, we must recognize that our spiritual worldview requires us to correct certain outdated concepts that have been the source of much confusion. When we stop describing only parts of a being that is actually a whole, we will also gain clarity regarding the concepts of spirit and nature and will no longer limit ourselves to one-sided views. Then one will realize that the spirit would be something very weak if nature were hostile to it; then one will realize that nature is something the spirit temporarily projects from itself, just as the snail projects its shell from itself. But the spirit can also take nature back into itself and dissolve it within itself. Then it renders it invisible, but then it has it within itself; then it has become one with it. If a complete unity of spirit and nature were to exist anywhere, this would mean: In the realm of facts, the spirit has dissolved all of nature that belongs to it.

[ 21 ] Let’s assume a person is forty years old. He has his nature, and he has his soul and his spirit, of which he is so proud. If we go back to his childhood, it is more of a unity, but it appears more in his natural foundation. If we go back even further, before their birth, they are entirely spiritual; at that point, they possessed all spirituality without a natural foundation, without any matter within them.

[ 22 ] There is a pendulum-like interplay in the world: the essential creates its image in the aspect of nature and reveals itself through it. The spirit carries nature within its bosom in order to create an image of itself through that which it itself gives birth to as nature within its bosom. But the essential also has the power to take in everything that is nature out there into the spirit. And so the spirit can triumph over all its own images in order to appear anew, everlastingly, in new transformations and new forms. This testifies to us that an infinite number of forms rest within the bosom of the essential, and that the meaning of the world is actually realized in an ever-renewing becoming. If one can perceive the interconnectedness, the inseparability of spirit and nature, one arrives at the essential in the world.