The Rudolf Steiner Archive

6. The Invisible Person Within Us. The Pathology Underlying the Therapy

[ 1 ] In the human being as he stands before us, two distinct entities can actually be clearly distinguished. You will recall that in various recent reflections I explained how the physical organization of the human being is spiritually prepared in pre-earthly life, and how it is then, so to speak, sent down as a spiritual organization before the human being himself, with his “I,” enters earthly existence. This spiritual organization essentially continues to exert its influence throughout the entire physical earthly life; it is just that during physical earthly life it does not express itself in anything outwardly visible. What is outwardly visible is essentially shed at birth, for these are the membranes in which the human embryo is enveloped during the embryonic period: the chorion and amniotic sac, the allantois—all of which are thus shed as physical organization when the human being emerges from the womb to begin a free physical existence. But this pre-earthly organization remains active within the human being throughout his or her entire life. Its nature, however, is somewhat different from the body-soul-spirit activity of the human being during physical life on earth. And that is what I would like to speak about today.

[ 2 ] So, in a sense, we have within us an invisible human being who is contained in our growth forces, as well as in those hidden forces through which nutrition takes place; this being is contained in all that lies beyond the scope of human conscious activity. But [his] influence also extends into this unconscious activity—all the way to the process of growth and the daily restoration of strength through nutrition. And this influence is precisely the aftereffect of pre-earthly existence, which in earthly existence becomes a body of forces that works within us but does not actually come to conscious manifestation. This invisible human being, whom we all carry within us, who is present in our powers of growth and nutrition, and who is also present in our reproductive powers—I would like to begin by describing the nature of this invisible human being to you.

[ 3 ] We can illustrate this schematically by saying to ourselves: This invisible human being also comprises the “I,” the astral organization, the etheric organization—that is, the body of formative forces—and the physical organization. Of course, in a newborn human being, this physical organization is contained within the other physical organization, but in the course of today’s reflections, you will be able to grasp how the invisible human being intervenes in the physical organization.

[ 4 ] When I draw a diagram, I have to draw it this way (see the diagram on the left):

[ 5 ] In this invisible human being, we first have the “I” organization (yellow), then the astral organization (red), then the etheric organization (blue), and finally the physical organization (white). This physical organization, which is relevant to the invisible human being, is involved only in the processes of nutrition and growth—in everything that, from the lower human being, as we have often described him—the metabolic-limb human—manifests itself within the human organization. All currents and all forces within this invisible human being proceed in such a way that they originate in the ego organization, then flow into the astral, etheric, and physical organizations, and finally spread out within the physical organization (see arrow in the diagram on page 76). In the human embryo, what is referred to here as the physical organization is present in the membranes—the chorion, the allantois, the amniotic sac, and so on. In the born human being, everything that is referred to here as the physical organization is contained within the processes that constitute the nutritional and regenerative functions of the entire human being. Thus, outwardly, this physical organization (see drawing on the right) is not separate from the human being’s other physical organization, but is united with it.

[ 6 ] In a sense, alongside this invisible human being, we have the visible human being—the one we see standing before us when a person is just born. I would like to sketch this visible human being alongside it, so to speak. This, then, is how the mutual interpenetration of the physical and the supersensible human being would look during earthly life. Now, however, during earthly life, this flow (arrow) takes place continuously: from the “I” to the astral body, to the etheric body, to the physical body. In the newborn human being, this flow proceeds through the metabolic organization of the limbs, through all that constitutes the forces of movement, and through the inner forces of movement that carry the ingested nutrients throughout the entire organism, all the way up to the brain.

[ 7 ] In contrast, there is also a direct intervention, a force that now flows directly from the “I” into the whole human being (see colored drawing r). We thus have an intervention of an activity—a current, so to speak—that flows directly from the “I” into the nervous-sensory system; that is, it does not first pass through the astral body or the etheric body, but rather intervenes directly in the human physical body. Of course, this intervention is strongest at the head, where most of the sensory organs are concentrated. But I would actually have to draw this current in such a way that it spreads out again over the entire human being via the sense of touch, for example, just as I would have to draw a current representing the intake of food through the mouth. Schematically, however, the diagram I have just drawn is entirely correct. So we have in the human head an organization that flows upward from below, emanating from the “I,” but passing through the astral, etheric, and physical bodies before flowing back up to the “I.” We have another current that enters directly into the physical body and flows downward.

[ 8 ] When we examine the human organism, we come to realize that this direct current—which flows directly from the “I” into the physical realm and then branches out throughout the body—travels along the nerve pathways (see colored diagram 1, yellow). Thus, when the human nerves extend throughout the organism, the outer, visible nerve cord is the outward, visible sign of the spread of that current which flows directly from the “I” to the entire organism, but enters the physical organization directly from the “I.” The “I”-organization runs along the nerve pathways. This has a fundamentally destructive effect on the organism. For here the spirit enters directly into physical matter. And wherever the spirit enters directly into physical matter, a process of destruction takes place; thus, along the nerve pathways, starting from the senses, a subtle process of death spreads throughout the human organism.

[ 9 ] The current that first flows within the invisible human being through the astral, etheric, and physical bodies—we can trace this current in the human being by following the blood vessels all the way to the senses (see colored diagram 1, red); thus, when we examine the human being as he stands before us, we can say: The I flows in the blood. — But the I flows in such a way that it has first imbued its forces through the astral organization, through the etheric organization, and through the physical organization. After first taking in the astral and etheric organizations, the “I” flows upward through the physical organization in the blood from the bottom up. Thus, the entire invisible human being flows within the blood process as a constructive process, as a process of growth, as the process that continually regenerates the human being through the digestion of food. This current flows within the human being from the bottom up—as we might say schematically—then pours into the senses, including the skin, and meets the current that flows directly from the “I” into the physical organization. In reality, however, the matter is even more complicated. In reality, we must also consider the process of respiration.

[ 10 ] In the process of breathing, the “I” does indeed flow into the astral body, but then directly into the lungs with the help of the air. Thus, the respiratory processes are also underpinned by something of the supersensible human being, but in such a way that—unlike in the nervous-sensory process—the “I” does not intervene directly in the physical organization; rather, the “I” first imbues itself with astral forces, takes hold of the oxygen, and only then, now—not as a pure “I” organization, but as an “I”-astral organization—intervenes in the organism with the help of the respiratory process (see colored diagram 1, third arrow). One could therefore say: The respiratory process is a weakened process of destruction, a weakened process of death. The actual process of death is the nervous-sensory process; the respiratory process is a weakened process of destruction.

[ 11 ] This is contrasted by the process in which the “I” is further strengthened by the fact that its flow extends all the way to the etheric body and is only then absorbed (see colored diagram ı, fourth arrow). This process, which lies so deeply in the supersensible realm that it cannot be traced by ordinary physiology, is still perceptible externally in the pulse. This is a restorative process that is not as strong as the direct metabolic synthesis process, but rather a weakened restorative process. And it then intersects with the respiratory process.

[ 12 ] The respiratory process is, to a certain extent, a process of destruction. If we were to take in more oxygen, our lives would be much shorter. Our life is prolonged to the extent that the process of carbon dioxide production in the blood counterbalances the uptake of oxygen during respiration.

[ 13 ] Thus, everything works together internally within the organism, and one can truly understand what is taking place within the organism only by drawing on the supersensible human being, because the latter is, outwardly, shed along with the embryonic membranes and, in the born human being, actually acts only through invisible forces—forces that we can, however, describe precisely when we proceed from the anthroposophical understanding of the human being.

[ 14 ] When we look into the eye, for example, using anthroposophical understanding of the human being, we find—upon reaching the eye—the blood process, which flows through the fine branches (see colored diagram 2, red) and is then taken up by the nervous process (yellow), which flows in the opposite direction. The blood process actually always moves toward the periphery—centrifugally in the human being. The nervous process, which is essentially a process of breakdown, always moves centripetally, toward the interior of the human being. And all processes that take place within the human being are metamorphoses of these two processes.

[ 15 ] If the process taking place between the pulse and the breath is in order, then the lower self is properly connected to the higher self, and then the person must essentially be healthy—at least inwardly—unless external injuries befall them. Only when the process of breakdown predominates will pervasive destructive processes take place within the organism. A person becomes ill when foreign substances accumulate in their organism—substances that have not been properly processed, that contain too much of the forces of breakdown, and that contain too much of what is related to the external physical nature that surrounds humans on Earth.

[ 16 ] Through the direct intervention of the spiritual realm via the ego, all those pathological processes are generated within the human being that are foreign formations: foreign formations that may not be immediately visible as physical accumulations, foreign formations that may, for example, exist in the liquid or even gaseous aspects of the human being, but which are nonetheless foreign formations. These will form, and they will not be met by a healing process—such as that which proceeds along the blood vessels from below—so that these foreign formations, which initially tend to form swollen accumulations in the body and then crumble internally, cannot dissolve. If the blood-forming process meets them in the proper way, then they can dissolve, and they will in turn merge back into the general processes of bodily life. But if a blockage arises because, so to speak, an excessively strong process of breakdown takes hold from above, it affects one organ or another. Foreign bodies form that are initially exudative and tumor-like, but then tend to follow the same course as the external processes of earthly nature, which crumble away. And here it is necessary to be clear that not enough of the supersensible human being is taken up into the human being along the path that I have actually outlined here alongside the physical human being.

[ 17 ] One cannot really speak directly of healing through human art, for the matter is this: The moment there is excessive activity directed toward the nervous-sensory system in a centripetal direction—that is, when too much of what is happening in the external environment is crammed into the person, so that these tumor-like formations, which then crumble, arise somewhere—at that very moment, the other system, which runs along the blood vessels, becomes rebellious and seeks to bring about healing; it seeks to permeate what is within the organism with the proper astral and etheric forces that can rise from below; it seeks to prevent the ego—or the astral body together with the ego—from acting on its own. The healer must then respond to such a revolutionary principle within the human organism, and healing consists precisely in supporting, through external means, that which is already present in the organism as its original healing power.

[ 18 ] So if, for example, a tumor-like growth appears, this is a symptom that the ego’s activity is not intervening properly from the etheric body. It asserts itself, but sometimes cannot reach the tumor. One must, so to speak, support the etheric body in this direction so that it can become effective. For when the etheric body becomes active in the proper way—by first being permeated by the ego and the astral body and then becoming active—when it can reach that which comes from above and has not absorbed etheric activity but at most ego and astral activity—in other words, when one can counteract the and astral forces—which poisonously interfere with the organism—can counteract the etheric forces, then one supports the healing process that the human organism itself seeks to bring about. One really only needs to know, in such a case, through which means the etheric organization—properly permeated by the astral and ego organizations—must act within the body. One need only, so to speak, come to the aid of the etheric organization through the appropriate remedies. One must therefore know which remedies, in such a case, strengthen the etheric organization so that it can counteract the excessive destructive force with its own constructive power. What underlies therapy as pathology simply cannot be understood unless one turns to the invisible human being.

[ 19 ] It may also be, however, that when a human being is born, their ego and astral—that is to say, their spiritual-soul organization—does not properly integrate into the physical organization; in other words, the spiritual-soul organization does not penetrate sufficiently into the physical organization. In that case, the whole human being will continually experience a predominance of those forces that are present from below, rising upward as forces of growth, but which do not acquire sufficient weight through their integration into the physical organization. A person may be born in such a way that their physical body is not sufficiently grasped by the invisible human being, so that this invisible human being, as described here, refuses, as it were, to intervene in the blood process in the proper way. In such cases, the human spirit cannot access the blood process, and we see the consequences in that such people appear pale to us from childhood onward, remain thin, or—perhaps due to the predominant growth forces—shoot up rapidly in height. We are then faced with the fact that the spiritual-soul aspect cannot properly enter the organism. And because the body refuses to take in the spiritual-soul aspect, we must work to weaken the activity in the etheric body where it is too strong. We must therefore work with such children—who appear pale, gaunt, and lanky—to bring the hypertrophied, excessive forces in the etheric body are brought back to their proper measure, so that the person gains a sense of heaviness in the body, and so that the blood, for example, by receiving the necessary iron content, acquires the corresponding heaviness, so that the etheric body acts less upward and is weakened in its upward effect.

[ 20 ] One can also recognize such a condition by the fact that in such a person there is a more pronounced manifestation of what I would like to call “night processes” in contrast to “day processes.” For one might say: At night, in every normal person, the physical-etheric organization refuses to take in the spiritual-soul aspects. This nocturnal organization of the person lying in bed—not the invisible person who is out there—this nocturnal organization is too strong in those who carry within themselves a kind of congenital consumption, as I have just described. One must then support the diurnal organization, that is, give it a certain heaviness by actively promoting the processes of breakdown. For when one promotes the processes of breakdown and this hardening—and ultimately crumbling—occurs internally—it must, of course, take place only to a very small degree during healing—one then holds back the overflowing power of the etheric body and restrains the consumptive tendency.

[ 21 ] Thus, through an understanding of the whole human being, this unique interplay between health and illness—which is always present and is essentially balanced by the processes occurring between the pulse and the breath—becomes clear. And once one learns to recognize which external means can promote one or the other, one is then able to support the natural healing processes that are always present but do not always manifest. For it is impossible to introduce a completely foreign process into the human organism. What happens in the human organism is always as follows: If one introduces any foreign process into it, it is immediately transformed internally into its opposite. When you eat something, that food contains certain chemical forces. As the organism absorbs them, it immediately transforms them internally into their opposites. And this must be possible. For example, if a food retains its external properties for too long after being ingested, it triggers a process of decomposition, which in turn causes external, destructive, and deadly decomposition processes within the human body. In a sense, whatever enters the human body with food must be immediately received through internal processes and transformed into its opposite.

[ 22 ] You can follow these processes—which I have now outlined for you here based on the human being as a whole—in detail. Suppose you accidentally puncture yourself with a foreign object somewhere (see colored diagram 3, yellow). Your body’s response to this foreign object can take two different forms. Let’s assume you cannot remove the foreign object; it remains inside. Then two things can happen. Around the foreign object, the regenerative force in the flowing blood (red) is active. This force accumulates around the foreign object but is displaced from its normal location. This causes nervous activity to immediately begin to predominate. An exudate-like substance (blue) is secreted around the foreign object. The foreign object becomes encapsulated. As a result of this process, the following occurs at that point in the body: Whereas normally, when there is no foreign body present, the etheric body interpenetrates the physical body to a certain extent, the etheric body will now be unable to interpenetrate the foreign body; instead, a sort of bubble will form inside it, filled solely by the etheric (red lines). We have within us a small part of the body that contains a foreign body, and where a small part of the etheric body is not fully integrated with the physical body. It then becomes essential to strengthen the astral body within that area so that it can act upon that part of the etheric body without the aid of the physical body. And through this encapsulation, our body has, in effect, turned toward the destructive forces in order to isolate these destructive forces within a portion of the body and then to integrate the healing etheric body there—which, however, must then be supported in the appropriate manner by the astral body and the ego through proper treatment.

[ 23 ] So, in a sense, we must say that in such a case, that which lies above the physical in human beings must become strong enough to act on this small part of the human organism without the physical. This always happens when, in the context of what is called a “healing,” some foreign body in the human being—a splinter that has been driven in, for example—becomes encapsulated. In this case, the human being is, so to speak, shifted upward a bit with his entire organism in relation to this part of his body. Now, of course, foreign bodies also form purely out of the organism itself. This must then be viewed in the same way.

[ 24 ] But now a completely different process can take place if we have gotten a splinter stuck in us. It may be that once we have pricked ourselves with the splinter (see colored illustration 4, yellow), nervous activity around the area begins to intensify and comes to dominate blood activity. Then the nervous activity—where the “I,” or perhaps the “I” strengthened by the astral body, is at work internally—this nervous-sensory activity, which courses through the entire body, stimulates the blood activity; it prevents the exudate from clotting but instead stimulates the substance that is being secreted, and this then leads to the formation of pus (white). And because the nerves project outward (arrows), the pus is driven by the impulse—which travels through the nerve pathways as part of the catabolic process—toward the periphery, to the outside of the body; the splinter festers, comes out, and the entire area then scars over.

[ 25 ] You can therefore see directly from the encapsulation process—which occurs specifically when the splinter is lodged too deep within the body, so that the force of the breakdown system, the nervous-sensory system, is insufficient to expel it—that the regenerative forces in the bloodstream will be stronger and lead to encapsulation.

[ 26 ] If the splinter is located closer to the surface, the nerve impulse—the degrading force—will be stronger; it excites and stimulates what is about to become exudate, thereby utilizing the otherwise always-present degradation pathways leading outward for the purpose of degradation, and the whole area will become suppurative. So we can actually say: At the beginning—in a sense, at the moment of formation, in the status nascendi—we actually always carry within us the latent tendency for our organism to harden inwardly, centripetally, and to be dissolved outwardly, centrifugally. However, in the normal human bodily process, the inward-acting, tumor-forming force and the outward-acting, purulent-inflammatory force are in equilibrium; they balance each other out. We always become inflamed to such an extent that we overcome the tumor-forming force that tends toward dissolution. Only when one is stronger than the other does either actual tumor formation or actual inflammation occur.

[ 27 ] Now, you must not think that all of this appears as simple in reality as it is—as one must—presented schematically in a description. In reality, these processes are thoroughly intertwined. You can observe that when inflammatory forces are strong in a person, febrile symptoms occur. These are essentially excessive, predominant regenerative processes present in the blood. With the inner strength that a person often develops during a fever, one could certainly sustain a second person for quite some time, if those forces could be channeled in the right way.

[ 28 ] On the other hand, where the destructive forces are strongly at work, symptoms of a cold actually occur; they are just not as easy to identify as the symptoms of a fever. But these symptoms also alternate with one another, so that in reality one is always dealing with an interplay of these factors—which must be distinguished from one another if one is to understand the matter fully.

[ 29 ] When we encounter poisons in nature—for example, the poison found in belladonna—the question naturally arises: Compared to the ordinary substances we find in our environment—which aren’t poisons because we can eat them—what exactly are poisons?

[ 30 ] When we eat our food, we take into our organism that which is formed in nature in a manner similar to that of our invisible human being. We take into ourselves that which emanates from a spiritual activity (see colored diagram 5, yellow), enters into an astral activity (red), then into an etheric activity (blue), and finally into a physical activity (white). When such an activity—which in nature flows from top to bottom, that is, which in a sense acts from the outer sphere down onto the Earth, an activity related to our inner “I”-activity, which is purely spiritual—when, in other words, what I have schematically drawn here in yellow flows downward, but is transformed along the way from the astral, continues to be transformed along the way from the etheric, and then enters the physical, then the plant generally absorbs such an activity. The plant grows upward toward this activity and absorbs this etheric activity, which, however, already properly contains within itself—from above—the astral and “I” activity, that is, the soul and spiritual activity.

[ 31 ] But it can also happen as it does with poison. Toxins have the peculiarity that they do not act upon the etheric body as ordinary green substances in plants do, but act directly upon the astral body; that is, the astral body—which I have marked here in red—enters into this substance (see colored drawing 5, the lower red portion within the white). In the case of the belladonna, the fruit becomes extraordinarily greedy and, due to its greed, is not content merely to absorb the etheric; rather, the fruit directly absorbs the astral before this astral has taken in the life forces through the etheric as it flows downward. I would say that, instead of entering the etheric, astral matter from the surrounding cosmos is constantly dripping down onto the Earth. And such droplets of astral substance, which have not passed through the Earth’s etheric atmosphere in the proper way, are found, for example, in the poison of the belladonna. Likewise, in the poison of, say, the datura, in hyoscyamine, the poison of henbane, and so on, we have, so to speak, a dripping of the cosmic-astral into the plant.

[ 32 ] As a result, however, that which lives in these plant substances—for example, what lives in belladonna—is related to the activity that flows directly from the “I” or the astral body into the human nervous system and the human oxygen cycle. Thus, when we ingest the poison of the belladonna, we experience a significant intensification of the processes of breakdown within us—those processes that would otherwise proceed directly from the “I” into the physical body. The human ego is not strong enough to withstand such an intensification. Once the counteracting effect—which travels from the lower regions upward through the bloodstream—becomes too strong, one can counter it with such catabolic processes; and in a small dose, atropine, the poison of the belladonna, can serve as an antidote to the excessively strong growth processes. But the moment too much of this toxin is administered, there can no longer be any question of a balance existing: then the growth processes are initially suppressed, and the person becomes completely clouded by a spiritual activity that they cannot yet endure with their “I”—an activity they may only be able to endure in future states, in the Venus and Vulcan states. This gives rise to the characteristic symptoms of poisoning. First, the starting point of the activity at work in the blood is undermined. Then those gastric symptoms appear that mark the beginning when belladonna poison is ingested. Next, the forces are strongly prevented from acting properly from the bottom up, and complete unconsciousness sets in, leading to the destruction of the human being through the processes of decay.

[ 33 ] In this way, if we know exactly what spiritual elements are contained in any substance we ingest—and this is, of course, best studied in plants—we can accurately track how such a substance acts within the human organism. This must be combined with a proper understanding of the external natural world. We must know what lives and grows within individual plants—and then we will also know how individual plants affect human beings, for example, in dietary regimens; and we will achieve something if, at the same time, we bring about a social condition in which these things can actually be put into practice. Today, even if one knows something, one is usually in a situation where it cannot be obtained, because our social conditions are not at all adapted to the insights into nature. Insights into nature are abstracted and taken out of context. Thus, one is unable to grasp humanity’s true place within the entire universe. We are unable, on a larger scale, to actually implement something in such a way that we might say, for example: Here is a person for whom it is necessary to administer this or that plant substance at this or that rhythm. Yes, for this to happen in a comprehensive way, our scientific medicine must take on a different character. We must connect the external structures of social life as a whole with what we can know about the relationships between human beings and the surrounding natural world.

[ 34 ] Certainly, a great deal can be done on an individual basis. One can boil roots for a person in whom one knows that the degenerative processes, originating in the head, are too severe. One decocts certain roots known to contain substances which—precisely because they are roots—have drawn the spiritual, the soul, and the etheric downwards in the proper way, all the way into the physical realm within the root system. Through this, the human organism receives something from the substances of root formation which, when brought into effect within the organism all the way to the outermost periphery of the blood vessels and up to the head, can then be called upon to counteract the excessive breakdown processes of the nervous system. But one must have a precise understanding of the transformations that something undergoes—something that resides in the plant root—when it is ingested, say, through the mouth, and then processed so that it can reach the outermost periphery of the head’s structure or even the skin’s structure. In another case, one will need to know, for example, how substances extracted from a plant’s flower—which are already somewhat unstable in their relationship to the etheric, which already absorb the astral very strongly, and which, in a certain sense, albeit subtly, border on the toxic; how, when these substances are added to baths and thereby introduced into the organism by a completely different route, they can stimulate the weak constructive organization within the bloodstream, thereby counteracting from the other side the destructive effects that are acting outward.

[ 35 ] The same applies when one wishes to observe internally the effects of what is being injected. Essentially, this also involves strengthening the constructive processes so that a proper balance is established with the destructive processes. Therefore, especially with injections, one will always observe how the destructive processes must react. With injections, one does not achieve the proper effect unless one observes how the catabolic processes initially resist and only gradually align themselves with the anabolic processes in the correct manner. Thus, when something is injected, one will observe the occurrence of minor visual disturbances or ringing in the ears, because the catabolic processes initially resist achieving the proper balance with the enhanced anabolic processes. But you also have a guarantee that an intervention in the processes is taking place when such reaction symptoms actually occur.

[ 36 ] You can see from this that anthroposophy is truly not about providing schematics for sectarian gatherings of aunts and uncles to argue over: “The human being consists of a physical body, an etheric body, an astral body, and an ‘I’”—but rather that it is a matter of a very serious understanding of the human being and his or her relationship to the world, of bringing the spiritual into everything material. And the fact that anthroposophy can trace the spiritual within the material is something that must be recognized if anthroposophy truly wishes to establish its place in the world. For as long as one works merely for gatherings of aunts and uncles in sectarian circles, who pass down their classifications of the human being, one is dealing only with something that comes into conflict with all sorts of other sectarian matters. But the moment one actually demonstrates how what one understands in anthroposophy intervenes in all other knowledge—how, according to the statement I made yesterday, sheds light on all other earthly knowledge, just as astrology once shed light on all earthly processes—then one has in anthroposophy something that must intervene in the modern process of civilization, so that a genuine process of building up can take hold in the human process of civilization, even in the face of the processes of decay that have come down from earlier times.

[ 37 ] Such seriousness must be combined with what might be called a commitment to anthroposophy. Certainly, the individual cannot always contribute in such a way that he or she, for example, independently discovers how Belladonna, on the one hand, and Chlor, on the other, affect the human organism. But the point is not that the individual should discover this, but rather that there should be, in wider circles, an understanding—a general understanding of feelings and sensations—of how what is healing for human beings can be derived precisely from an anthroposophical understanding of the world and of humanity.

[ 38 ] After all, Waldorf education does not require that every single person be able to educate—or at least to educate children from the age of compulsory schooling onward. What is required, however, is a general understanding of how this educational approach is built upon an understanding of humanity and the world. What anthroposophy needs is an understanding that is open to it. It would be entirely wrong to believe that every single person should know everything. But the effectiveness of the anthroposophical community should lie in the fact that a general understanding, based on common sense, is found for what anthroposophy strives for and attempts to realize in the interest of human well-being and the future of humanity.