The Rudolf Steiner Archive

4. The Interactions Between the Parts of the Human Body

[ 1 ] Today I will begin by saying a few things that may, in various ways, serve as a supplement to some of what we have discussed over time in the field of our spiritual science. If we recall the most fundamental thing we know—and we can recall it again and again—we conceive of the human being as composed of the four main members, which we initially regard as the members of the present-day human being, as he has emerged through the Saturn, Sun, Moon, and Earth evolutions: the physical body, the etheric body, the astral body, and the I. Now we have often emphasized that simply listing these four components of human nature and naming them accomplishes very little and says very little; for what matters is that we associate ever more specific and concrete concepts and ideas with what arises in our soul when we speak of these four components of human nature. We begin by speaking of the physical body. We have the feeling that we must surely know this physical body—or at least that external science must know it, since it deals with it so extensively. Now we know that this physical human body must be a very, very complex structure, for the reason that it already found its initial predisposition in such early times as when ancient Saturn was unfolding its evolution. It was then transformed during the Solar Age, underwent further changes during the Lunar Age, and has now also passed through a long, long period of Earth’s evolution, which in turn has imprinted its character upon it, so that we must assume: This physical human body has received its character over the course of four long, long periods of time. We must assume a fourfold structure in this physical human body. And when we ask ourselves: What has entered this physical human body during Earth’s evolution? — we will generally arrive at a false conception based on the views that can be developed from ordinary life and from ordinary science. For our physical body has merely been transformed, altered, and metamorphosed during Earth’s evolution. Much of it was already present—not only in potential but also in development and formation—during the ancient lunar evolution. What has been added during Earth’s evolution is, in fact, not very noticeable if one takes “seeing” in the true sense of the word. In reality, only the position has changed during Earth’s evolution: We have become upright beings, walking vertically on the surface of the Earth. The position, the direction, has changed—and everything connected with it. This vertical posture on the surface of the Earth has been imposed upon humanity during the Earth’s evolution. If you recall a very well-known mythological image—the image of the centaur—we can say from a spiritual-scientific perspective: This image of the centaur—human and horse, or indeed human and any animal form—is actually meant to represent, through imagination, the human physical body as it would appear if one were to add to its present upright posture what the human being was during the Lunar evolution, when it did not yet have this upright posture. In such images, in such imaginings preserved by mythology, infinitely profound wisdom lies hidden.

[ 2 ] I initially wanted to cite this merely as an example of the profound wisdom found in such images. In short, let me say it once more: If we are to truly appreciate the human physical body, we must view it as far, far more complex than any external science finds convenient to do today. We must realize that, in fact, only the arrangement of the individual organs—the arrangement of the whole human being—has been imprinted upon humanity during the Earth’s long evolution, and that, fundamentally, human beings have incorporated within themselves an evolution stretching far, far back, even before the beginning of the Earth.

[ 3 ] We must, of course, imagine something similar for the higher aspects of human nature—the spiritual aspects: the etheric body, the astral body, and the I. But now we must also consider the mutual relationships, the interconnections, and the interrelationships among the individual aspects of human nature. At first, the physical body appears to us to be built up from physical matter, and indeed, as long as we are growing, we see it becoming larger, accumulating matter, or pushing matter between its limbs, between its smallest parts. Later, when we gain fat—to the extent that we do so—we continue to see how matter accumulates in the physical body. As for the etheric body, when we consider it in the same way as the physical body, we see something similar. Only here it is not matter that accumulates, but movements. These movements become more complex over the course of life. In a newborn child, we find relatively simple, primitive movements in the etheric body. Gradually, they become more complex. But there is a diversification, a development, present in both the physical body and the etheric body.

[ 4 ] Things are different for the astral body and for the “I.” After all, as human beings walking about in the physical world, we are initially active only through our “I,” for only the “I” possesses full consciousness. When you focus your eyes on any colored surface, the “I” is active; when you think, the “I” is active; when you feel, the “I” is active. In all these activities you perform—even when you walk or move your hands—the “I” is active. Everything you can do in the waking state on the physical plane is “I”-activity. The “I” is at work there. How, then, does this “I”-activity manifest in relation to the other members of human nature? What we accomplish from the moment we wake up until we fall asleep—that is, while our consciousness is awake—how does that manifest? It manifests not in a process of building up, but in a process of breaking down, in a consumption of substances from the physical body and of movements and forces from the etheric body. When you direct your gaze at a red surface, or at any colored surface at all: because the colored surface makes an impression on you, you break down. There arises—albeit in a very subtle sense, but nevertheless—a kind of killing of the living substance, the living matter, within your physical body. Imagine for a moment—to use a somewhat crude example— you had a crystal, but one that was still malleable, capable of undergoing changes. And some kind of influence—let’s say the influence of light—were exerted: the crystal’s matter would become clouded, it would change. In fact, every time the influence of light is exerted on your eye, something in your physical body becomes clouded; matter is destroyed within your constitution. While we are awake—from the moment we wake up until we fall asleep—we are constantly destroying our physical matter, albeit in a very subtle way, through our “I”-activity. That is why we must compensate for this through sleep. During sleep, the physical matter restores itself to the state we need. It is always a process of building up and breaking down. Sleeping activity means the building up of physical matter, specifically its constitution; waking activity—ego activity—means its breakdown. And so you have a cycle: building up—breaking down, building up—breaking down. We can say that we are actually constantly being worn down and consumed by our ego activity, and must restore ourselves during sleep.

[ 5 ] That is why we often notice upon waking that something rises up from our physical organism. These are the restorative forces, the healing forces. And if we have something pathological in our organism—perhaps even just a subtle pathology—it rises up along with it. When the organism is healthy, it restores itself in a healthy way upon waking. When it is sick, it also brings the illness upward. That is why some people—including children—are in a bad mood when they wake up; they are not cheerful. This is because the aftereffects of what rises from the organism are still present. In fact, everything we have to say about human beings and their lives from the perspective of spiritual science corresponds in a marvelous way to the phenomena of life. Only about an hour and a half after waking up can we say that we are completely free from whatever pathological forces may rise up within us. This is the interaction between the “I” and the physical body. This interaction between the “I” and the physical body—this relationship, this connection—unfolds within the rhythm of sleep and wakefulness: building up—breaking down, building up—breaking down.

[ 6 ] But we also have another relationship that is very important, one that we simply do not notice as much in the course of our ordinary lives. Just as the ego and the physical body undergo processes of building up and breaking down in their relationship, so there is a similar interaction between the astral body and the etheric body. The difference is that the process of building up—insofar as it originates in the astral body—is completed earlier in life, and the process of breaking down begins earlier. For what our astral body breaks down in our etheric body is essentially connected with our growing weaker over the course of life and, when we have become completely weak, with our death. The astral body, in relation to the etheric body, is essentially connected with death. We can die as a result of our astral body gradually consuming the forces of the etheric body, and the etheric body, in turn, consuming the physical body. Thus, in a sense, we can also observe a process of building up and breaking down between the etheric body and the astral body during life—if not in such rapid succession, then at least in a certain rhythm. Now let us observe: If we exert ourselves too strongly in our “I”-activity, it harms us. This is easy to understand for the simple reason that ego activity is a process of breakdown. If we break down too much, we weaken our organism in a very visible way. It is precisely this weakening of the organism in a very visible way through ego activity that is very easily noticeable from the outside. But a weakening of the etheric body can also occur through the astral body. Since the astral body is, in a sense, the consumer of the etheric body, as we have just seen, a kind of excessive consumption can take place. The most common manifestation of this kind occurs when we live in such a way that our astral body—the bearer of passions and emotions—is overtaxed. As you know, this leads to lasting weaknesses in the human being. These weaknesses arise precisely through the astral body’s consumption of the etheric body.

[ 7 ] But something else can happen here as well. The way we build up our astral body, little by little, starting from our birth—or let’s say from our conception—and continuing throughout the course of our lives, is connected to our karma. Whether we are inclined to develop strong emotions and passions in the astral body is, of course, connected to our karma. But these passions can also be significant for humanity in a certain sense. Let us take a quality that plays a role throughout the entire human life, and yet is a passion—albeit the noblest passion, the one that, in its noblest form, can develop in such a way that it is free from all selfishness: the passion of love. Love is a passion, but it can become free from all selfishness. It is the only passion that can become free of selfishness. But it resides in the astral body; the astral body is its vehicle.

[ 8 ] Let us now suppose that an artist who has a genuine sense of reality—that is, not a naturalist, for the naturalist has no sense of reality; he sees only abstract naturalistic matter, so-called “realities”—is faced with the task of creating a human figure that is entirely imbued with, and permeated by, the passion of love, the noble passion of love. Whenever an artist was faced with the task of creating a Venus, an Aphrodite, he had to feel precisely that the human form must be entirely permeated by this passion of love. Love must have something overwhelming about it; it must pour itself out. What else could possibly be the case? After all, one cannot say that an ordinary female figure can be sculpted as Aphrodite or Venus. Thus, the astral body of Aphrodite or Venus cannot be like any other female astral body; otherwise, every woman and every girl would be an Aphrodite or a Venus. That is not the case, is it? So the point is that the astral body must be developed in a very special way. The artist doesn’t need to know spiritual science; he doesn’t need to know that, but he must feel it when he creates a Venus: there, the astral body must be more highly developed, more intensely developed, than in the case of the non-Aphrodite, the non-Venus. But the astral body, as we have said, has something consuming about it, something truly all-consuming. I must express that. How, then, will the artist who truly feels this—who truly has a sense that there is a consuming astral body present—create a Venus? He will make it visible that, in a sense, the physical body has something about it that causes it to be gradually consumed. Here, the scholar of spiritual science finds himself in a different situation than, say, the modern physician.

[ 9 ] Let us suppose that an artist creates such a Venus, in the process of whose creation he has correctly sensed: There is a more consuming astral body present than in an ordinary woman. We will see it in the slender neck, in the shape of the ribcage; we will also see it in the other limbs—that there is something consuming at the root of the astral body—and we may even see it in the figure itself, suggesting that she cannot grow particularly old, if the artist expresses this physically. The spiritual scientist will say, when an artist does something like this: “This artist has sensed what actually underlies this in reality.” From this point of view, we will say to ourselves: Often, while creating, the artist senses a real spiritual reality. — What will the doctor, who is not a spiritual scientist, say when he sees that an artist has created such a figure? “That is a consumptive figure,” he will say, for in fact: In someone who has consumption, the astral body—due to the karma of a previous incarnation—is a more intensely burning astral body than in someone who does not have consumption. Botticelli created a very beautiful, much-admired Venus; most of you will be familiar with her. In this painting of Venus standing on a shell, we see a true physical body, which Botticelli has depicted in such a way that we must conclude: a consuming astral body lies at its foundation. This has also given rise to a debate among art scholars. Some admire the figure of this Venus—which deviates from so-called “normal” forms—with her slender neck, her distinctive upper chest, and so on; others say that this is simply because he had a consumptive model. — Certainly, one can explain everything in materialistic terms. Botticelli probably even had a consumptive model: this Simonetta, who died at the age of twenty-three. But that is not the point; rather, the point is that he felt compelled to use this particular model for a Venus, which gave him the opportunity to depict a human being with an astral body that consumes the physical body more rapidly than in others. And indeed, in this very painting—I’ll pass it around slowly; it’s a poor reproduction, but I don’t have a better one at the moment—you will see how it is indeed evident that we are dealing with an astral body of a different nature, one that consumes the physical body through the etheric body. You can see how spiritual science can guide us, how spiritual science can show us the way to understanding such things.

[ 10 ] Everywhere you will find that a perspective not sharpened by spiritual science cannot shed light on life anywhere. Everywhere, light is shed on things when we view them with the help of spiritual science: on external life as it already exists, and on the life of art. However, it is necessary for us to cultivate patience in order to view human beings as something far, far more complex than what external science is content to acknowledge. Human beings are, for one thing, more complex, and the most irresponsible statement often made in the realm of worldview is that the best explanation is the simplest one. It is not the simplest explanation that is the best, but rather the one that truly captures the essence of the matter. We must be clear about this.

[ 11 ] I’d like to give you another example that shows how conventional science cannot cope without the perspective of the humanities. Do you recall a public lecture I gave over at the Architects’ House this past winter, in which I said that we must first distinguish between two parts of the outer physical body: the human head and the rest of the body? If you look at the skeleton, the head is sharply delineated, and the rest of the body forms the remainder. I remarked at the time that—not entirely, but essentially—everything attached to the head is an earthly formation. Just as the human being came to Earth after the lunar phase of development, he is now contained only in the structure of the head. We can say that the head is a substantially older organ than the rest of the organism. The head is the oldest, the most venerable part of the human being. The Earth has attached the rest to it—essentially, not entirely, but one must always view things, I would say, in approximate terms. Again, when we consider the fact that the “I” passes from one incarnation to the next, we must also distinguish between the forces underlying the head and those underlying the rest of the organism. Recall what I said in that public lecture: Our head is, in essence, in its form and shape, the result of our previous incarnation. How we behaved in our previous incarnation, how we conducted ourselves in life—that is what has imprinted our organism; this is expressed in the next incarnation in our physiognomy, but especially in the shape of our skull. Remember that I once said: Reincarnation, rebirth, and repeated earthly lives—you can practically touch them with your hands when looking at the skull; for the shape of the skull depends on how we were in our previous incarnation. The way we shape the rest of our physiognomy, our posture, whether we are more or less fidgety, whether we make more or fewer gestures—all of this, in turn, affects the next incarnation; it is expressed in the next incarnation in the formation of the face, particularly in the shape of the skull. From this you can see how disputes can arise over relatively important matters. You know there are people who consider themselves wise—especially in their own estimation—in the field of cranial science: they examine the skull and then provide a character assessment of the person. This may be more or less accurate, sometimes quite accurate, but it can never be completely accurate or exhaustive, for it is truly the case that: Each of us already has our own skull, and no two skulls are alike, for our skull is the result of our previous incarnation. The rest of the organism, on the other hand, prepares the skull for the next incarnation. Now, the craniologists and phrenologists argue because they want to generalize where individualization is required. Everyone has their own skull! Only through intuition can one discern anything about a person’s deeper disposition from the structure of the skull. But even setting aside the phrenologists, science itself does not know what to make of the human skull’s shape. And here I would like to draw attention once again to a point where conventional natural science requires supplementation by spiritual science.

[ 12 ] In 1887, the famous anatomist Karl Langer gave a lecture on three truly significant human skulls: Schubert’s skull, Haydn’s skull, and Beethoven’s skull. Karl Langer was an anatomist, and he sought to examine the three skulls from an anatomical perspective. In that lecture, he emphasized that he had been unable to find any indications of special musical qualities in any of the three skulls, least of all in Beethoven’s. He stressed that, from an anatomical and physiological standpoint, Beethoven’s skull was in fact so ugly that one could have imagined anything other than the possibility that Beethoven’s soul could have been active within that ugly skull. And in Karl Langer we have a physical anatomist who once closely examined this particular case—one who proceeded not from fanciful theories but from reality—and who had to admit: One cannot find anything in the skulls that points to musical qualities. — Now we know that Haydn, Schubert, and Beethoven were indeed musicians in the very incarnation from which the skull originates. They need not have been so in their previous incarnation. And we can very well understand that everything that then became clear in the time between death and a new birth may, in Beethoven’s case, have emerged precisely from a powerful, combative nature. What carries over from the previous incarnation is expressed in the shape of the skull. In particular, it struck Langer that although there were indeed three musicians, there was nothing in common in their skulls—no shared characteristics whatsoever—because all three had presumably had very different experiences in a previous incarnation and only became musicians in the incarnation in which they had the skulls in question. But their nature as musicians was expressed in the soul, whereas what they had experienced in their previous incarnation was expressed in the shape and formation of their skulls.

[ 13 ] A dispute then arose over these three skulls. Another anatomist attempted to refute Langer. But this dispute did not amount to much, for what does a physical anatomist actually rely on when investigating such matters? After all, he wants nothing to do with a previous incarnation, so he turns to heredity. And Schaaffhausen, who wanted to refute Karl Langer, remarked: “Well, we’ve simply inherited our skull shape!” — On such an occasion, the question of the actual heredity of skull shape is never examined. If one were to proceed without the usual logic so readily applied in this field, one would immediately realize how unfounded it is to speak of heredity in this context. In truth, we develop our skull shape based on the outcome of our previous incarnation. Certainly, other factors may intersect with what has come about according to the previous incarnation. We grow up within a certain circle. Especially when our feelings and our disposition are connected to personalities in a particular environment, we will imprint many things onto our finer constitution. But essentially, the skull’s structure is shaped by the previous incarnation.

[ 14 ] But as you know—I’ve mentioned this often—how ingeniously one actually approaches the so-called theory of heredity. There is now a very meticulously researched, scholarly book—and one really cannot fault the scholarship in such a case, as these works are generally the product of immense diligence—that traces Goethe’s ancestors as far back as they can be traced. What is the point of such evidence? The aim is to show that what has emerged among a person’s various ancestors occurs whenever a genius joins a line of ancestors. People think this is terribly logical. But as I have often said, this proves no more than that when a person falls into water and is pulled out, he is wet; for it goes without saying that the one who has passed through the line of descent still bears the traits of that lineage. After all, he sought them out. But to prove that the theory of heredity really holds true as natural science assumes, one would have to start with certain characteristics and then demonstrate them in the descendants. One would therefore have to begin with the genius and then move on to the descendants. That is something one will likely refrain from doing. After all, one cannot prove that Goethe’s genius was passed down to his son or his grandchildren, since it is precisely these individuals whom we know, isn’t that right! Nor is such a thing often detectable in the descendants of other geniuses. If it is demonstrable, it is based on something entirely different from physical heredity; it is based on the fact that a soul has a tendency to incarnate into a particular family in search of certain characteristics. Well, we have spoken about this often enough. You see, this is yet another example of how conventional science must be supplemented by spiritual science. At every turn, what conventional science offers us—and what ordinary life offers us—must first be illuminated by insights from spiritual science. People today have no idea at all how wonderfully the mysteries of the world’s becoming affect the soul when viewed from a spiritual-scientific perspective.

[ 15 ] Do you recall that I have often spoken of the fourth post-Atlantean epoch, the Greco-Latin epoch, and our present fifth epoch, and that I have pointed out many ways in which the human beings of the fourth post-Atlantean epoch, the Greco-Latin epoch, differ from those of the present epoch? People today look at Greek works of art. They admire how finely observed these Greek works of art—especially the sculptures—are, and how they depict things that people today do not readily perceive. Those who think in a crude, materialistic sense today say: “The Greeks simply saw things better; after all, they also observed the human body in their games,” and one is quite tempted to reenact these games. — Well, those who reenact Greek games today will certainly not become Greeks—you can count on that—but the outward forms are often imitated. I have already emphasized that the Greeks recreated things in a different way than modern Europeans do. This is because the Greeks still possessed something within. We know that the Greeks had developed the intellectual or emotional soul; for us, the “I” is directed outward, while the intellectual or emotional soul is directed inward, grasping more the inner balance and the inner mobility of the body. Human beings are even more inward-looking than the Greeks were—and even more so than modern people. The Greek, therefore, did not work with the model in the same way as the modern artist; rather, when he had to sculpt an arm, he felt the form of the muscle within himself, felt the shape within himself; when he was to depict a movement, he felt—as he made the movement himself—what it was like. Yes, the Greek could do even more, because he was still within himself. As you know, during the Egyptian-Chaldean period, the soul of sensation was developed; during the Greek-Latin period, the soul of understanding or the emotional soul. But it is still within. Only the “I” steps out and looks at the outer world. When the Greek looked at a bird, he could feel—in the movement of his own arm, as he imitated the bird’s flight—how he had to shape his wings, whereas modern man needs a model; he pins a bird down somewhere and then copies or imitates it. This inner experience has rightly been lost to modern humanity. But we must recognize this and appreciate it: modern man lacks this inner, sculptural understanding that the Greeks possessed. We must understand that when the ancient Greeks depicted a person in motion in sculpture, they knew—from inner knowledge, not from external observation of a model—how to position the leg, the toe, the fingers—how to arrange all of these elements. Modern people, in essence, cannot actually paint a bird in flight. In modern paintings, birds hover; they do not fly.

[ 16 ] That is indeed true; one simply has to understand it. We must not impose on people today the same demands that were placed on the ancient Greeks. This inner sensitivity had to be tempered so that human beings could direct their sense of self outward. One must not view human development the way modern materialistic Darwinists do—as a process that starts from the imperfect and ascends to the perfect human being—but must also consider the spiritual development that descends from the human being who is perfect in the spiritual world to one who adapts more and more to the physical organism. We have two concurrent currents of development, not just one. Therefore, we can say: We have been able to incorporate into our modern perspective something that was not the case in earlier perspectives. We know that earlier perspectives should not be carried over into later ones, even though they are naturally carried over at times in the course of nature.

[ 17 ] I’d like to draw your attention to something. Take a look at any illustrated magazine—Der Tag or Die Woche or something like that—and examine a snapshot of people walking down the street. These snapshots capture immediate external reality; they show people just as they are—and it’s usually not very pretty! If you take a snapshot of a bird, it looks quite different from how a painter would depict it today. But here’s the curious thing: when you look at Japanese birds, their depictions resemble these snapshots. That’s one thing. There is a certain similarity between Japanese drawings of birds in flight and a snapshot of a bird. And it is similar even in drawings of people, for the Japanese—though one must limit oneself to observing their outward appearance—tend much more to depict what a snapshot captures. This stems precisely from the fact that the Japanese way of seeing from the fourth post-Atlantean epoch has been preserved into the present. We can no longer see the way the Japanese see. The Japanese today—though not with the same sense of beauty as the Greeks—often see more accurately in the Greek sense than Europeans who have advanced to the fifth post-Atlantean cultural epoch. These things become clear only when we view them through the lens of spiritual science. And when we compare Asian art with European art, we will find the difference between the fourth post-Atlantean epoch—which has been preserved there—and our own fifth post-Atlantean epoch.

[ 18 ] They see everywhere the need to incorporate spiritual science into all things. But today, with regard to our external culture, we are far removed from this understanding of incorporating spiritual science into external knowledge. For the most part, this is really not because it would be particularly difficult to attain a spiritual-scientific perspective; people simply resist it. What is described in the book How Does One Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds? can be attained relatively easily. It is possible to achieve this, but people resist it. I am not, of course, referring to you, but to external culture, which resists it. It resists it specifically because this external culture today does not even want to establish the basic conditions for developing a thinking conscience, a conscientious approach to thinking, and a logical conscience. And this brings us to a very real cultural ailment of our time, one that the scholar of the spiritual sciences must confront, because it confronts him everywhere: the lack of logical, intellectual conscience. One can make the strangest discoveries in this regard. We have already cited examples of this; let us take another example today.

[ 19 ] There was a man—and he still exists—who wanted to provide philosophical proof that ideals are not real, not essential. He simply wanted to do justice to the modern worldview, which, after all, accepts ideals when necessary but does not regard them as actually existing, like something external and physically perceptible. But on the other hand, this philosopher in question would really have very little to do if he did not accept ideals; after all, the other sciences deal with the physical world, and as a philosopher one must still have something to do, mustn’t one? But now: since ideals are not essential, yet one still wishes to accept them, he says: They are simply fictions; one must accept them as necessary fictions, as necessary assumptions. He then developed this idea further into an entire philosophy, the philosophy of “as if.” I have spoken of this on several occasions. According to this philosophy, one says: It is not necessary to assume that an atom exists, but we regard the world as if an atom existed; it is not necessary to assume that a soul exists, but we regard the world as if a soul existed. Thus, an entire philosophy of “as if”! This man used a comparison to help his readers understand that one can still hold fast to ideals even if one regards them as having no intrinsic reality, and this comparison is characteristic of this philosopher’s logical conscience. He said: Let us consider a child who plays with a doll even though the child knows that the doll has no real life within it. Why, then, should we reject ideals, since children do not reject the doll? Even though the doll is not alive, they treat it as if it were. Why should we not treat ideals in the same way, even if we know that they are not substantial? —

[ 20 ] So we already have the view that ideals are not essential entities, but people can still make use of them in life by treating them much as the little girl treats her doll—which is also not a living thing, but is treated as if it were. We are dealing with a philosopher who compares ideals to dolls! Well, let’s try to make sense of this comparison, this image. First: The little girl plays with the doll, but she does so on the assumption that the doll at least represents a living being. She would hardly play with the doll if she didn’t see in it something that represents a living being. That is the prerequisite. So the doll can hardly be compared to the ideal unless we assume that the ideal does, in fact, represent something, right? That is the first piece of nonsense he utters—that he uses this comparison at all. The second point is: We want to organize life according to the ideals, as if they actually existed. Yes, will anything come of it? Of course, just as much as comes of a child playing with a doll, since that is the comparison he’s basing this on. So it’s merely an imitation of life! Here we are dealing not only with a completely foolish comparison, but also with a second error, a second folly on the part of this man. The comparison must be false, because the doll analogy simply doesn’t hold up: the doll at least imitates life—ideals are not supposed to imitate anything. But if they were, they would produce only an imitation of life, not life itself. We are thus dealing with a double absurdity. We have before us a philosopher who commits not just a simple absurdity, but a double one. We could point to many, many such double absurdities in science and in life. In particular, these double absurdities are frequently found in so-called worldly wisdom, in philosophy. When such thinking exists, when thinking goes down such crooked paths, then this thinking cannot discipline itself so as to form only valid comparisons or develop a sense for valid comparisons, and thus there is no foundation for spiritual insight. For spiritual insight can develop only if thinking is, to begin with, sound.

[ 21 ] That is why I urge you most earnestly, especially in the new book that will be published in the near future, The Riddle of Man, to take note of what is said there about the concept of the real. We must develop the concept of the real, not merely the concept of the logical. When I have a crystal in front of me and regard it as a crystal, it is a reality in and of itself. The crystal tells me the truth about itself when I regard it as a crystal. But take a tree trunk whose branches have been cut off, whose roots have been severed! Does it also tell me the truth about itself? No, it lies to me, just as it appears in the realm of the senses, for it cannot be that way! This tree trunk could not exist if it had not developed in connection with a root and with branches and leaves; that, too, is part of the severed tree trunk, and I have only the truth when I imagine the whole tree. So I have cut something out of the sensory world. But what has been cut out is not reality. Thinking in accordance with reality must always develop a sense of what must be included in the concept. Only when one has a sense that a leaf is not a real thing—because it can only be conceived in connection with a plant (it is one thing to find a leaf and quite another to find a crystal)—only when I develop this sense of reality am I prepared to ascend to spiritual realities in the proper way. Something may be logical; but reality is something else entirely! The point here is to develop a sense of reality. It is very easy to make mistakes regarding this sense of the real. When I look at a picture that has been created by cutting a single figure out of a whole, that is not something real, because I must look at the entire picture. Now, if someone were to say: “Yes, but then you must, after all, because this picture arises from earlier pictures painted by the same artist and other artists, survey the entire history of art”—that, in turn, would be nonsense. One must develop precisely this sense of reality—that there are self-contained realities. Otherwise, “real” would mean nothing other than the entire universe. I therefore ask you to pay particular attention to this in the book that will be published shortly: The Riddle of Man.

[ 22 ] Now that I have, so to speak, exhausted the subject of today’s discussion—that is, without detracting from the actual discussion itself—I may say a little more that goes beyond it, not to say anything harmful or negative, but to say something that is somewhat suited to shedding light on the way our entire movement must be understood. After all, this spiritual science can truly be introduced into contemporary culture only if there are a number of people who have the good will to approach this spiritual science with the right feelings and sensibilities. I am always reluctant to make such observations, but they must be made from time to time. You see, I am striving in every possible way to show how, in fact, there is a tendency, an impulse toward spiritual science in our present time. To this end, I have cited for you Hermann Bahr’s two books, Expressionism and Himmelfahrt, because we are dealing here with a man who has lived past the age of fifty and is now beginning—despite having written so many plays and novels—to develop, as it were, a longing for spiritual science and also for Goethe, who is so intimately connected with the impulses of spiritual science. And I tried to show how this Hermann Bahr, out of good will, finally began at the age of fifty—as he himself admits—to read Goethe, and how he began to find his way, “feeling his way,” as I said, into the spiritual sciences, so that he is still at the very beginning. Books such as Hermann Bahr’s Expressionism and the other one, Ascension, are truly extraordinarily telling, because they show us how spiritual science—forgive the trite expression—is a matter of time. But we will only make progress in this field if we take these matters truly seriously and thoroughly, if we approach them with the proper reverence for spiritual science, if we recognize, so to speak, that it is a fundamental impulse that is being sought in our current cultural development. It is always detrimental to our cause when things are taken superficially, when they are treated in such a way that what is being attempted here—and this can certainly be said without offending modesty—with thoroughness is confused with all manner of charlatanism, folly, and fantasy in our time. Nothing harms our cause as much as when it is confused with all sorts of fanciful, amateurish nonsense. We have been working together for a long time now, and this seriousness toward the cause and this ability to distinguish it from other things—which do bear some similarities—must gradually develop; after all, even a mongrel bears some resemblance to a lion: they both have four legs! After all, everything bears some resemblance to everything else! But what must be taken into account above all else is the seriousness of our endeavor, the seriousness of our work. Now really, please consider it this way: in the case I am discussing here, I naturally acknowledge the exceptionally good will that underlies it—and I am grateful for that good will—but I am nevertheless compelled to address the symptomatic aspects for the time being.

[ 23 ] So, after I had examined in those two essays how Hermann Bahr portrays, as it were, a self-portrait in his “Franz”—how the character navigates life through a wide variety of experiences, and how he eventually arrives at a kind of mysticism—in other words, a serious work that is a reflection of an entire human life— a few days ago I received a book in the mail from among those who have been listening to this discussion: Apostel Dodenscheidt by Margarethe Böhme, with the remark: Just as with Hermann Bahr’s Franz, so too would the Apostle Dodenscheidt have undergone all manner of developments and ultimately come to embrace the concept of reincarnation and karma. — Well, the book that was sent to me is a roman à clef of the worst kind. One need only recall certain things here in Berlin and the surrounding area: There was once a Josua Klein and people like him; in this novel, there’s a Gottfried Groß and so on. And nothing worse could happen to one than for the two things referred to here, and the things underlying this roman à clef—which, moreover, is a book of inferior literary quality, a bad book in literary and artistic terms—to be mentioned in the same breath! Yet there is a tendency to mention these things in the same breath when something like this can happen—when things are lumped together. It is certainly no sin that this happened in this particular case—after all, it was sent to me. But it does show what associations of ideas arise, and with what things one confuses that which is to be sought here from the sources of life. I do not wish to pass judgment, but merely to discuss a symptomatic phenomenon. The things discussed here are truly not meant in the way they are understood by those who take all the crazy stuff covered in the book Apostel Dodenscheidt seriously in any way. It is precisely the conflation of our cause with these or those endeavors that is what harms our cause the most! It is important that this finally sink in deeply, for anyone who finds something here similar to what is in the book Apostel Dodenscheidt does not properly understand what is being said here. I do not wish to deliver a tirade; I would like to say once again that I naturally acknowledge the good will involved. But I must address this symptomatic issue, for what has come to light here keeps reappearing time and again in the wider world: that the matters discussed and advocated here are truly not taken with the necessary seriousness and insight.