The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Second Lecture

[ 1 ] Now that we have explored yesterday the relationship between the animals of the heights—represented by the eagle—the animals of the middle—represented by the lion— and the animals of the depths of the earth, represented by the ox and the cow, we can now turn our attention to the human being’s relationship to the universe from the perspective that arises precisely from the human being’s inner, structural relationship to these representatives of the animal world.

[ 2 ] Let us now turn our gaze upward to those regions about which we had to say yesterday: if these are the regions from which the animal draws its special powers, then they actually constitute the entire animal’s head organization. Let us turn our gaze upward to these regions. There we see how the animal owes what it is to the sun-drenched atmosphere. It must be the sun-drenched atmosphere—everything that the animal can, so to speak, derive from it—since it owes the very essence of its existence to the atmosphere through which the sun streams. I told you yesterday: This is, in fact, the source of the actual structure of the plumage. The animal, so to speak, has its essence in its exterior. What the external world makes of it is embodied in its plumage. And when that which can be made from this sun-drenched air is not brought to the being from the outside, as in the case of the eagle, but is aroused from within—as if from the human nervous system—then, as I told you, thoughts arise: the thoughts of the moment, the thoughts of the immediate present.

[ 3 ] Now, when we turn our gaze upward in this way—I would say, weighed down by all that arises from such contemplation—we are immediately drawn to the still atmosphere and the sunlight streaming through it. But in such a case, we cannot consider the sun in isolation. After all, the sun derives its power from its relationship to the various regions of the universe. This relationship is expressed by the fact that, through human knowledge, the effects of the sun are related to the so-called zodiac, so that when sunlight falls upon the Earth from Leo, from Libra, or from Scorpio, it always means something different for the Earth. But it also means something different for the Earth depending on whether it is strengthened or weakened by the other planets in our solar system. And there are different relationships with the various planets in our solar system. There are different relationships with the so-called outer planets—Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn—and different relationships with the so-called inner planets—Mercury, Venus, and the Moon.

[ 4 ] When we now consider the structure of the eagle, we must pay particular attention to the extent to which the forces of the Sun are modified, strengthened, or weakened by the interaction of the Sun with Saturn, Jupiter, and Mars. It is no coincidence that legend holds that the eagle is actually Jupiter’s bird. Jupiter stands there, in general, as the representative of the outer planets. If we sketch out schematically what this involves, we must draw the sphere that Saturn occupies in outer space, in the cosmos; the sphere that Jupiter occupies; and the sphere that Mars occupies.

[ 5 ] Let’s picture this in our minds: the sphere of Saturn, the sphere of Jupiter, the sphere of Mars; then we find the transition to the sphere of the Sun, and we have, so to speak, at the very outermost edge of our planetary system, an interplay between the Sun, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. And when we see the eagle circling in the skies, we are certainly expressing a reality when we say: The forces that flow through the air from the Sun—so that they are composed of the interaction of the Sun with Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn—are the very forces that live in the entire form, in the essence of the eagle. But they also live in the structure of the human head. And when we place the human being—in relation to his true existence (one might say that on Earth he is, after all, only a miniature image of himself)—into the cosmos, we must place him, by virtue of his head, within the sphere of the eagle. We must therefore imagine the human being, as represented by his head, placed within the eagle’s sphere, and in doing so we have identified that aspect of the human being which is connected with the forces directed upward.

[ 6 ] The lion represents the animal that is, in the truest sense, a solar creature, through which the sun, so to speak, unfolds its own power. The lion thrives best when the celestial bodies above the sun and those below it are arranged in such a constellation that they exert the least influence on the sun itself. This gives rise to that peculiar phenomenon I described to you yesterday: the forces of the sun itself, which permeate the air, stimulate precisely such a respiratory system in the lion that the rhythm of this respiratory system is in perfect balance with the rhythm of blood circulation—not in terms of frequency, but in terms of dynamics. This balances out beautifully in the lion. The lion counterbalances blood circulation with respiratory inhibition, and blood circulation continuously stimulates the flow of respiration. I told you that this can even be seen in the shape of the lion’s muzzle. This wonderful relationship between the rhythm of the blood and the rhythm of respiration is already expressed in its form. One can see it in the lion’s distinctive gaze—calm within itself, yet boldly turned outward. But what lives in the lion’s gaze is, in turn, connected to the other elements of human nature: to the head organization, to the metabolic organization, to the chest or heart organization, and to the rhythmic organization of the human being.

[ 7 ] If we therefore visualize the actual effect of the sun, we must map the human being onto the solar sphere in such a way that we place the heart and the corresponding lungs in the region of the sun’s influence; in this region, we find the lion-like nature of the human being.

[ 8 ] When we turn to the inner planets, the planets close to Earth, we first encounter the sphere of Mercury, which is specifically concerned with the finer aspects of the human metabolic system—the metabolic organism—where nutrients are transformed into a lymph-like substance and then transported into the bloodstream.

[ 9 ] As we proceed, we enter the region of Venus’s influence. We come to the somewhat coarser parts of the human metabolic system; we come to that which, in the human organism, initially processes the ingested food, starting with the stomach. We then enter the sphere of the Moon. I am depicting this sequence as it is commonly understood in astronomy today; I could also depict it differently. So we now enter the sphere of the Moon and arrive in the region where the Moon acts upon and is acted upon by the human being in those metabolic processes associated with the Moon.

[ 10 ] In this way, we have placed human beings within the entire universe. By turning our attention to those cosmic influences that the Sun exerts in conjunction with Mercury, Venus, and the Moon, we then enter the realm that contains the forces which sustain that creature represented to us by the cow, in the sense I explained yesterday. There we have what the Sun cannot accomplish on its own, but what the Sun can accomplish when its forces are directed toward the Earth through the inner planets. When all these forces are at work—not merely flowing through the air but permeating the Earth’s surface in various ways—they act upward from the depths of the Earth. And what acts upward from the depths of the Earth belongs to the region that we see embodied externally in the very structure of the cow.

[ 11 ] The cow is the digestive animal. But the cow is also the animal that carries out digestion in such a way that this digestive process embodies the earthly reflection of something truly supernatural—that the entire digestive process of the cow is permeated by an astral quality, brightly and wonderfully reflecting the entire cosmos. It is—as I said yesterday—an entire world within the cow’s astral organism, but everything is supported by heaviness, everything arranged so that the heaviness of the earth can take effect. You need only consider that the cow is compelled to consume about one-eighth of its body weight in food every day. A human being can make do with one-fortieth and remain healthy. The cow, therefore, needs the gravity of the Earth in order to fully sustain its organism. Its organism is oriented toward substances that possess gravity. One-eighth of its weight must be replaced every day in the cow. This binds the cow to the Earth through its physical matter, while at the same time, through its astral nature, it is a reflection of the heights, of the cosmos.

[ 12 ] That is why the cow is such a revered object for followers of the Hindu religion—as I said yesterday—because they can say to themselves: The cow lives here on Earth; simply by living here on Earth, she manifests—in physical, dense matter—what one might call a supermundane reality, if one speaks in the sense of a follower of the Hindu religion. And it is certainly true that human nature has its normal organization when a person can bring these three cosmic forces—manifested in the eagle, the lion, and the cow—into harmony; that is, when he is truly the confluence of the forces of the eagle, the lion, and the cow or bull.

[ 13 ] But according to the general course of world history, we are living in a time in which the development of the world is threatened by a certain—if I may put it this way—danger: the danger that these one-sided influences will indeed find one-sided expression in human beings. From the 14th and 15th centuries to the present day, with this trend intensifying more and more, the situation in humanity’s earthly development has been such that the eagle forces seek to dominate the human head in a one-sided way, the lion forces seek to dominate the human rhythm in a one-sided way, and the cow forces seek to dominate the human metabolism and all human activity on earth in a one-sided way.

[ 14 ] This is the hallmark of our time: that human beings are, so to speak, to be divided into three parts by the cosmic forces, and that one form of these cosmic forces always strives to suppress the other elements. The eagle strives to cast the lion and the cow into insignificance; likewise, the other two strive to cause the other two elements to sink into insignificance. And in today’s world, something extraordinarily alluring is constantly acting upon the human subconscious—alluring precisely because, in a certain sense, it is beautiful. In the conscious mind, people today do not perceive it, but for their subconscious, the world is permeated by a triad of calls that seek to entice them. And I would say that the secret of our time is that from the region of the eagle resounds that which actually makes the eagle an eagle, that which gives the eagle its plumage, that which hovers astral around the eagle. It is the eagle’s very being that becomes audible to the human subconscious. That is the enticing call:

Learn to recognize my essence!
I give you the power,
Within your own mind
To create a universe.

[ 15 ] Thus speaks the eagle. This is the call from above that seeks to polarize people today.

[ 16 ] And there is a second call. This is the one that comes from the middle region, where the forces of the cosmos shape the nature of the lion, where the forces of the cosmos, through the confluence of sun and air, bring about that balance of rhythms, breathing, and blood circulation that constitutes the nature of the lion. What makes the air tremble there—I would say, in the sense of the lion—what seeks to polarize the human being’s own rhythmic system, speaks enticingly to the human subconscious today as follows:

Learn to recognize my essence!
I give you the strength,
In the glow of the circle of air
To embody the entire universe.

[ 17 ] Thus speaks the lion.

[ 18 ] And these voices, which speak to the human subconscious, have a greater effect than one might think. Yes, my dear friends, there are various human organizations on Earth specifically structured to absorb these influences. For example, everything that inhabits the West is specifically organized to be enticed and seduced by the voice of the eagle. American culture, in particular, is—due to the specific organization of its people—exposed to the seduction of what the eagle speaks. The European center, which embodies much of what constitutes ancient culture—much of what, for example, prompted Goethe to make the journey to Italy to liberate his life—is particularly exposed to what the lion speaks.

[ 19 ] Oriental civilization is, above all, subject to what the cow expresses. And just as the other two animals resound in their cosmic representation, so too—one might say—rises from the depths of the earth, like a rumbling, bellowing call, the voice of that which lives within the cow’s heaviness. It is truly as I described to you yesterday: that one sees the herd, grazing to satiety, resting in its peculiar manner—surrendering to the earth’s gravity—in a posture that expresses this submission to the earth’s gravity, this submission to the fact that every day it must replace one-eighth of its own body weight within itself to sustain its weight. Added to this is the fact that the depths of the earth, which—under the influence of the Sun, Mercury, Venus, and the Moon—bring about all these effects in the cow’s digestive system, resonate through such a herd with a demonic, rumbling force, as if saying:

Learn to recognize my essence!
I will give you the strength
To wrest the scales, the measuring rod, and the number
From the universe.

[ 20 ] Thus speaks the cow. And the Orient, in particular, is exposed to this alluring call. However, the point is this: while the Orient is initially exposed to this call of the cow—because of the ancient worship of cows in Hinduism—if this call were to truly take hold of humanity to such an extent that what arises from it were to prevail, then it is precisely that which emanates from the Orient that would manifest itself in the center and the West as a civilization that hinders progress and and bringing about decline. The earth-demonic forces would act one-sidedly upon earthly civilization. For what would actually happen then?

[ 21 ] What would happen then is this: Over the course of the last few centuries, we have developed a technology on Earth that is influenced by external science—an external technical life. Our technology is indeed marvelous in all fields. The forces of nature operate within technology in their lifeless form. And what is required to bring these natural forces into play—to turn them, so to speak, entirely into a layer of civilization covering the Earth—is the scale, the measuring rod, and numbers.

[ 22 ] Scales, standards, weighing, counting, measuring—that is the ideal of today’s scientist and engineer, whose entire profession is now based on external science. We have reached the point where a prominent contemporary mathematician, when asked, “What guarantees existence?”—gives the following answer. Well, philosophers of all ages have attempted to answer the question: “What is actually real?” This prominent physicist says: That which can be measured is real; that which cannot be measured is not real. — It is, so to speak, the ideal to view all existence in such a way that it can be brought into the laboratory and weighed, measured, and counted; and from what has been weighed, measured, and counted, what is then actually compiled is what is still regarded as science—which then flows into technology. Numbers, measures, and weights have become, so to speak, the guiding principles for the entire civilization.

[ 23 ] Well, as long as people rely solely on their intellect to measure, count, and weigh things, it’s not particularly bad. People are indeed very clever, but they are still nowhere near as clever as the universe itself. Therefore, things cannot get particularly bad as long as they are merely, so to speak, dabbling in measurement, weighing, and counting in relation to the universe. But if today’s civilization were to transform into an initiatory civilization, then it would be bad if it were to cling to its current mindset. And this could happen if Western civilization—which is entirely characterized by scales, standards, and counting—were to be flooded by what might, after all, happen in the East: that through the science of initiation, one might fathom what actually lives spiritually within the organization of the cow. For if you penetrate the organization of the cow, you will learn to recognize how this eighth of nutrients, burdened with earthly heaviness—with everything that can be weighed, measured, and counted—you will learn what spiritually organizes this earthly heaviness within the cow; you will learn to recognize the cow’s entire organism as it lies in the pasture, digesting, and through its digestion astral-ly revealing wondrous things from the universe: then you will learn to recognize how to integrate what is weighed, measured, and counted into a system with which you can overcome all other forms of civilization, and give the entire globe, solely and exclusively, a civilization that does nothing but weigh, count, and measure, causing everything else to vanish from civilization. For what would the initiation into the cow’s organization yield? This is a profoundly far-reaching question, a question of immense significance. What would it result in?

[ 24 ] Yes, the way in which, for example, machines are designed varies greatly depending on the individual machine; but everything points to the fact that the still imperfect, primitive machines are gradually becoming ones based on vibrations: where something vibrates, and where the machine’s effect is achieved through vibrations, through oscillation, through periodic movements. Everything boils down to such machines. But once we are able to design these machines in their interaction—as we can learn from the distribution of nutrients in the cow’s body—then the vibrations generated by the machines across the globe, these small terrestrial vibrations, will proceed in such a way that what is above the Earth will resonate and vibrate in unison with what is happening on Earth; so that our planetary system will have to resonate in its movements with our Earth system, just as a string tuned to the same pitch resonates when another string is plucked in the same space.

[ 25 ] This is the terrible law of the resonance of vibrations, which would come to pass if the cow’s call were to seduce the Orient, so that it could then convincingly penetrate the spiritless, purely mechanistic civilization of the West and the Center, thereby creating on Earth a mechanistic system that fits precisely into the mechanistic system of the universe. As a result, everything that is an effect of the air, an effect of the surroundings, and everything that is an effect of the stars would be eradicated from human civilization. What a person experiences, for example, through the cycle of the year—what they experience by participating in the sprouting, budding life of spring and the withering, stagnating life of autumn—all of that would lose its meaning for humanity. Human civilization would be permeated by the clatter of vibrating machines and the echo of this clatter, which would stream down from the cosmos onto the Earth as a reaction of the Earth’s mechanism.

[ 26 ] If you consider some aspects of what is happening today, you will say to yourself: Part of our present civilization is certainly on the path toward making this terrible decline its goal.

[ 27 ] Now just imagine: if the middle ground were tempted by what the lion says, then the danger I just described would indeed no longer exist. The mechanisms would gradually disappear from the face of the earth once again. Civilization would not become a mechanical one, but human beings would be surrendered, in a one-sided way, to all that lives in the wind and weather and in the course of the year. Human beings would be integrated into the cycle of the year, and as a result, they would have to live in particular in harmony with the interplay of their breathing rhythm and circulatory rhythm. They would develop within themselves what their involuntary life processes can provide. In a sense, they would develop their “chest nature” in particular. As a result, however, such egoism would come over human civilization that, in fact, everyone would want to live only for themselves, and no one would care about anything other than the well-being of the present moment. Opposed to this is the civilization of the middle, which could very well impose such a way of life upon human civilization.

[ 28 ] And yet, if the eagle’s call were to entice the West, so that it succeeded in spreading its way of thinking and its mindset across the entire Earth and in isolating itself within that way of thinking and mindset, then a urge would arise within humanity to connect directly with the supersensible world in the manner that once existed—that which existed at the end of the Earth, at the beginning of the Earth. People would feel the urge to erase what humanity has achieved through its freedom and independence. They would come to live entirely within that unconscious will which allows the gods to live in human muscles and nerves. They would return to primitive states, to original, primitive clairvoyance. Humanity would seek to break free from the Earth by returning to the beginning of the Earth.

[ 29 ] I would like to say that, for the truly clairvoyant eye, this is further confirmed by the fact that the grazing cow actually penetrates him again and again with a kind of voice that says: Do not look upward; all power comes from the earth. Familiarize yourself with all that lies within the workings of the earth. You will become the master of the earth. You will make lasting what you achieve on earth. — Yes, if human beings were to succumb to this lure, then the very danger I have spoken of—the mechanization of earthly civilization—could not be averted. For the astral nature of the ruminant seeks to make the present permanent, to eternalize the present. From the lion’s organization emerges that which does not seek to make the present permanent, but rather seeks to make the present as fleeting as possible; that which seeks to turn everything into a play of the ever-repeating cycle of the year; that which seeks to dissolve into wind and weather, into the play of the sun’s rays, into the air. Civilization, too, would take on this character.

[ 30 ] When one truly contemplates the eagle as it soars through the skies, it appears as if its plumage bears the memory of what existed at the Earth’s very beginning. It has preserved within its plumage the forces that once acted upon the Earth from above. One might say that in every eagle one can see the millennia of the Earth, and that it has not touched the Earth with its physical form—at most to seize prey, but certainly not to satisfy its own life. Yet it circles in the skies when it wishes to nurture this life of its own, because what has come to be on Earth is of no concern to him, because he derives his joy and enthusiasm from the forces of the air, because he even despises earthly life and wishes to live in that element in which the Earth itself lived when it was not yet Earth, but when, at the beginning of its earthly existence, it was still permeated by heavenly forces. The eagle is the proud creature that did not wish to participate in the solid development of the Earth, that withdrew from the influence of this more solid earthly development, and that wished to remain united only with those forces that were present at the Earth’s point of origin.

[ 31 ] These are the teachings that this triune being imparts to us when we view it as a great, powerful text inscribed into the universe to explain the mysteries of the world. For, when it comes down to it, every single thing in the universe is a character, if we can read it; specifically, if we can read the context, then we understand the mysteries of the universe.

[ 32 ] How meaningful it is to have to say to ourselves: What we do when we measure with a compass or a ruler, when we weigh with a scale, when we count—we are actually putting together something that is, after all, nothing but fragments; it becomes a whole when we comprehend the cow’s organization in its inner spirituality. This means reading the mysteries of the universe. And this reading of the mysteries of the universe leads to an understanding of the existence of the world and of human beings. This is modern initiatory wisdom. This is what must be spoken today from the depths of spiritual life.

[ 33 ] It is actually difficult for people today to be human. For, I would say, compared to the Triune Beast, people today resemble the antelope in yesterday’s fable that I told you. That which seeks to become one-sided takes on a particular form. The lion remains a lion, but he wants his fellow predators to serve as metamorphoses for the other creatures. For what is actually the eagle, he uses a fellow predator, the hyena, which essentially feeds on the dead—on that death that is generated within our heads, which, as we die, continually supplies atomistic fragments at every moment. Thus, this fable replaces the eagle with the hyena—the hyena that feeds on decay—and, in keeping with the decline, substitutes the lion for the cow—the legend may have originated in African culture—with its fellow predator, the wolf. And so we have in the fable the other trio of animals: the lion, the hyena, and the wolf. Just as the calls of the birds stand in opposition to one another today, so too, I would say, does cosmic symbolism stand in opposition, in that gradually, as the calls ring out, the eagle descends to the earth and becomes a hyena, and the cow no longer seeks to represent the universe in a sacred, patient manner, but becomes a ravenous wolf.

[ 34 ] Then we have the opportunity to translate that legend I told you at the end of yesterday’s session from the “Negro” language into the language of our modern civilization. Yesterday I had to tell you the story—I might say—from the “Negro” perspective: A lion, a wolf, and a hyena went hunting. They killed an antelope. The hyena was to divide the spoils first; she divided them according to hyena logic and said: One-third for each of us; one-third for the lion, one-third for the wolf, and one-third for me. — Then the hyena was eaten. Now the lion said to the wolf: Now you divide it. — The wolf then said: You get the first third because you killed the hyena, so you’re also entitled to the hyena’s share. You get the second third because you would have gotten a third anyway according to the hyena’s ruling—that everyone should get a third—so you get a second third. You also get the third third because you are the wisest and bravest of the animals.” And the lion said to the wolf, “Who taught you to divide so excellently?” — The wolf said: “The hyena taught me that.” — The logic is the same for both, but when applied to reality, the result is something entirely different, depending on whether the hyena—or, drawing on the hyena’s experience, the wolf—applies the logic. The essence lies in the application of logic to reality.

[ 35 ] Well, we could also—I’d say, translated into modern civilizational terms—tell the story a little differently. But I always tell—please note this—I always tell what is at the heart of the grand course of culture. And here I’d like to say that, expressed in modern terms, the story might go something like this: The antelope is killed. The hyena retreats and passes silent judgment; it doesn’t dare to provoke the lion’s wrath just yet—it retreats. It passes silent judgment and waits in the background. The lion and the wolf now begin to fight over the antelope’s carcass, and they fight and fight, and fight until they have wounded each other so severely that they both die from their wounds. Now the hyena comes and devours the antelope, the wolf, and the lion, after they have begun to decompose. The hyena symbolizes that which lies within the human intellect—the destructive force in human nature. It is the flip side, the caricature of the eagle civilization.

[ 36 ] If you sense what I mean by this “Europeanization” of the old Negro fable, then you will understand that these things really ought to be properly understood today. They will only be properly understood if humanity learns to counter the threefold call—that of the eagle, that of the lion, and that of the cow—with its own maxim, the maxim that today should be the shibboleth of human strength, thought, and action:

I must learn:
O cow,
Your power from language,
Which the stars reveal within me.

[ 37 ] Not earthly heaviness, not merely weighing, counting, and measuring; not merely learning what lies in the physical organization of the cow, but rather what is embodied in her—the shy turning of the gaze away from the cow’s physical organization toward what she embodies; to turn one’s gaze upward toward the heights: then, then what would otherwise become the mechanistic civilization of the earth is spiritualized.

[ 38 ] The second thing a person must tell himself:

I must learn:
O Lion,
Your power comes from language,
Which, year after year and day after day,
Works within me.

[ 39 ] Pay attention to the “revealing” and the “acting”! And the third thing a person must learn is:

O Eagle:
Your power comes from language,
Which creates within me that which springs from the earth.

[ 40 ] Thus, human beings must counter the one-sided lures with their threefold saying—that threefold saying whose meaning can bring these one-sidednesses into harmonious balance. They must learn to look at the cow, but—after having thoroughly sensed it—to look up from the cow to what the language of the stars reveals. He must learn to raise his gaze to the eagle, and, after having thoroughly internalized the nature of the eagle, to look down with that gaze—with what the nature of the eagle has given him—upon what sprouts and grows in the earth and also works within the human being, rising from below. And he must learn to look at the lion in such a way that the lion reveals to him what sweeps around him in the wind, flashes in the lightning, what rumbles around him in the thunder, and what wind and weather bring about over the course of the year in the entire life of the earth, into which human beings are woven. So when a person—with their physical gaze directed upward and their spiritual gaze directed downward, with their physical gaze directed downward and their spiritual gaze directed upward, with their physical gaze directed straight ahead toward the east and their spiritual gaze directed straight ahead in the opposite direction toward the west—when a person is thus able to allow their spiritual and physical gazes to interpenetrate one another in all directions—up and down, forward and backward— to allow the spiritual gaze and the physical gaze to interpenetrate one another, then he is able to hear the true, life-strengthening—rather than life-weakening—calls of the eagle from on high, the lion from the surrounding wilderness, and the cow from the interior of the earth.

[ 41 ] This is what human beings should learn about their relationship to the universe, so that they may become increasingly capable of working for the benefit of Earth’s civilization and serve not its decline but its rise.

Learn to recognize my essence!
I give you the power,
Within your own mind
To create a universe.

[ 42 ] —Thus Speaks the Eagle (West)

Learn to recognize my essence!
I give you the strength,
In the glow of the circle of air
To embody the entire universe.

[ 43 ] —Thus Speaks the Lion (Center)

Learn to recognize my essence
I give you the strength
To wrest the scales, the measuring rod, and the number
From the universe.

[ 44 ] Thus Speaks the Cow (Orient)

[ 45 ] I have to study

O Cow: your power
From the language,
That the stars reveal within me —

O Lion: your power
From the language,
That in year and day
The cycle works within me

O Eagle: your power
From the language,
that creates within me what springs from the earth.