The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Anthroposophical Foundations of Pharmacology II

[ 1 ] You'll have to bear with me a little today; I've just arrived here after a very tiring trip, and I probably won't be able to speak to you properly until tomorrow, really.

[ 2 ] Today, however, I would like to offer a sort of introduction to the lectures I have the privilege of presenting to you here. Actually, it was not my intention to speak at this medical conference, since I believe that the insights derived from anthroposophical research for medicine and scientific thinking should be taken up by those who are experts in the relevant fields. After all, everything that comes from anthroposophical spiritual research—whether for medicine or, for example, physiology—can really only be regarded as suggestions that must then be further developed empirically. Only on the basis of this empirical follow-up work can a valid, convincing judgment be formed regarding the matters at hand—the kind of judgment needed in the therapeutic field.

[ 3 ] However, since I am now going to give these few lectures among you, I am doing so at the special request of our doctors here, and I will endeavor to touch upon precisely those aspects during these days through which the truly anthroposophical perspective can shed light on the field of medicine. I will attempt to show that, first of all, the judgment one can form about the human being—both in a healthy and in a sick state—can be enriched and deepened through the anthroposophical perspective. Perhaps I may begin by drawing attention to how this anthroposophical perspective should actually be understood today—that is, in our historical present. It is all too easy to confuse what is called “anthroposophy” here with older, traditional views of humanity—views whose value I do not wish to discuss here, nor do I wish to criticize them; yet it must be said in their regard that the views I advocate are based on entirely different foundations than those views that have traditionally emerged in the course of human historical development as mystical, theosophical, Gnostic, and so on. And I need only emphasize the main point in order, perhaps precisely through this, to make it radically clear right away what the difference is between the views represented here and those older ones. Those older views are based entirely on the fact that they arose within human thought at a time when there was still no natural science in our sense, whereas my views are based on the fact that they arise in an age in which natural science is developed, and in which natural science has already reached a certain—albeit only provisional—level of perfection. This is what must always be borne in mind if one wishes to understand the full meaning of the debates that permeate what can be said and researched from an anthroposophical perspective regarding the most diverse branches of human knowledge and skill.

[ 4 ] And as you all know — I don’t need to spell this out for you — that in those earlier times, when there was a view of the supersensible world that was free from the natural sciences—in our sense, of course—medicine, too, was interwoven with supersensible views, with views of the human being that did not arise in the way we today take for granted within empirical research. One need only go back a bit beyond Galen, and if one is open-minded enough, one finds everywhere views of the human being upon which medical thought is based—views of the human being that, by focusing on the form of the human being, the form of his organs, and the functions of the human being, connect in their own way thoughts about the supersensible with what we today incorporate into our empiricism—thoughts that, as one might easily believe, they seem to project into human nature, but which for them were as closely connected to human nature as colors, forms, and inorganic forces are connected for us to the things of the external world. Only someone who is biased would speak today of those bygone eras of human medical development as if they were merely childish conceptions compared to present-day ones. Historical accounts are, in this very field, as inadequate as they could possibly be; and for anyone who familiarizes themselves even a little with the historical course of humanity—and does not adopt the standpoint from which one might judge that perfection has now been attained and that everything that came before was foolish—it will naturally be clear that even with what we have now, we are faced with a perfection that is only relative, and that we must by no means view the past—as is evident even when we look at its achievements—with mere arrogance. Nevertheless, no one, regardless of their approach to any branch of contemporary knowledge, should overlook what the natural sciences have accomplished for humanity in recent times. And if, to use this expression of Goethe’s, a “spirit-oriented” approach to human beings, their health, and their illness is to be applied in any way today, it must not operate in opposition to scientific research, but solely in conjunction with scientific research.

[ 5 ] You will not, I hope, assume from this that I intend to engage in any kind of polemic against scientific views. On the contrary, I would like to emphasize right from the start that this cannot be the case for a very specific reason—it cannot be the case for a matter of principle. You see, when one looks back at those older medical views I just mentioned, one finds that—even though they were not as foolish as some people today believe—they nevertheless lacked what we have gained today through the natural sciences. That was missing from these old views, and it was missing for the simple reason that human cognitive capacity in those earlier times was not at all predisposed to seeing things the way we see them today with our sensory experience, augmented by instruments. What we recognize today through our empirical experience was something about which one might say: Yes, the ancient physician—forgive me for using this term; I might just as well say: the ancient physiologist or biologist—the ancient physician saw something entirely different from what people see today. One could even speak of a different orientation of medical consciousness in those earlier times, which actually came to a radical end with Galen. But what he saw—let’s say, in his four elements of the human organism, in black bile, yellow bile, phlegm, and blood—he did not see it at all as people today see it; rather, what he saw differently, he saw in such a way that, when he describes it and when one understands the words—one usually does not understand them as they have been handed down from ancient times— it appears to us today as if shrouded in mist; he saw this mist as a reality; he did not see, for example, what we call phlegm in his phlegm—he saw in his phlegm something that was not merely a fluid imbued with life, but even a fluid imbued with a soul. That is what he saw. For him, it was something seen as clearly as when we say that something is red or blue. But because he saw something there for which scientific consciousness today is no longer equipped, he did not see what we actually have within scientific consciousness today. One might say: suppose someone with a perfectly normal eye looks through a pair of glasses, and as a result, the outlines appear sharper to them than they do to their ordinary consciousness. In the same way, through modern empiricism, what was once seen—though blurred—from a spiritual-psychic perspective has disappeared, and in its place has come the sharply defined contours of our present-day empiricism. This was not the case in earlier times. Consequently, healing was carried out out of a kind of instinct, which, incidentally, was linked to a strong development of human compassion. For the doctors of old, there was always a kind of—at times even exhausting—shared experience of the patient’s illness. It was from this shared experience that healing took place. And the sharp contours that we have today through our sensory-based empirical knowledge were simply not visible then. Now, because the progression toward this sensory empiricism is simply rooted in the development of humanity, we cannot simply do away with today’s empiricism and return to the old ways. We will only possess such qualities by nature—as the ancients did in all fields, including medicine—if we acquire certain atavistic abilities. If one grows up today—simply through our distinctive elementary school education alone; I won’t even mention higher education—if one grows up today in our civilization, it is impossible to see things the way the ancients did. One simply cannot. If one were to see today as the ancients did, one would be regarded—not as severely, but at least—as psychopathic, as not quite right. And not entirely without reason. For in fact, there is something psychopathic present in everything—I would say, in everything of an elemental, natural nature—well, let’s call it “clairvoyance”—in the present day. We must be very clear about this. But what we can do is, through the development of inner abilities that are otherwise latent in the soul, work our way up to a perception of the spiritual within the soul, just as the eye worked its way up in the course of evolutionary history from indistinct vision to sharply defined vision. So abilities of spiritual perception can be developed today. Now, you see, when such abilities of spiritual perception are developed—I have described this development in my book *How to Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds?* and in other writings of mine—if such abilities are developed in a human being, then at first they see a world they had not seen before, but a world that initially encompasses a kind of spiritual cosmos beyond the cosmos revealed to us by our present-day sensory perception, taking into account what astronomy discovers and calculates. To this sensory cosmos, governed by the laws of nature, another is added: a spiritual cosmos. When we then explore what we can find within the spiritual cosmos, we find human beings there as well. We come to understand a spiritual universe, a universe imbued with spirit, and we understand human beings as a part of this spirit-filled, soul-filled universe. When we engage in conventional natural science, we begin either with the simplest living beings or with the simplest form of life—the cell—and then trace the path from the simple to the complex; that is, we ascend from that which most closely resembles simple, purely physically structured matter to the highly complex human organism. When we engage in Spiritual Science in a serious sense, we begin, so to speak, at the other end. We descend from the comprehension of the spiritual in the universe and regard this spiritual aspect of the universe as the complex one; we regard the cell as the simplest element in the organism. The universe, viewed from the perspective of Spiritual Science, is the most complex, and we arrive at this gradually: just as we complicate our own elements of knowledge in order to, say, move from the cell to the human being, so do we simplify what the cosmos presents to us more and more, and then arrive at the human being. We take the opposite path; that is, we begin at a starting point that is polar opposites, but when we pursue Spiritual Science in this way today, we do not, in essence, reach the realms that are encompassed by our current, obvious empiricism. I must place great emphasis on ensuring that no misunderstandings arise, especially regarding these fundamental matters. That is why I must ask you already today to forgive me for using some pedantically formulated terms. If, for example, someone were to believe: Well, it is nonsensical to engage in sensory empiricism in physiology or biology; why do we need specialized scientific disciplines? Instead, we develop spiritual faculties, look into the spiritual world, and thereby arrive at an understanding of the human being—of the healthy and the sick—and can, in a sense, establish a spiritual medicine—that would be a grave error. Some people do just that, but nothing comes of it. At best, they valiantly rail against empirical medicine, but they are railing against something they do not understand. So this cannot be the case—that we, for example, draw a line against ordinary, sensory-based empirical science and establish Spiritual Science from down in spiritual cloud cuckoo lands. That is not at all how it stands in relation to the empirical sciences—that is, what is called empirical science today, which I would like to call here sensory-based empirical science. That is not the case at all. For example, when you conduct research in the Spiritual Science, you cannot possibly arrive at the same conclusions as you would through microscopic observation. You can safely regard anyone who tries to convince you that they can discover the same things through the Spiritual Science as can be found under a microscope as a charlatan. That is not the case. What constitutes empirical research in the modern sense does exist. And in order to make science—even in the sense of anthroposophical Spiritual Science—complete in any field, it is not permissible to simply set aside the sensory-empirical; rather, it is absolutely necessary to take this sensory empiricism into account. Nowhere will anyone who is—if I may use this expression—an expert in anthroposophical Spiritual Science find anything other than that, precisely because one engages in Spiritual Science, one must all the more concern oneself with the phenomena of the world in the sense of what is empirically perceptible.

[ 6 ] What one first gains from the Spiritual Science are guidelines for empirical research—certain regulative principles that show us that we must also consider what is present in a specific location within an organism in accordance with that location, for example. “A cell,” some might say, “is just a cell.” And what distinguishes one cell from another—whether it is a liver cell or a brain cell—must, in turn, be determined through empirical observation. That is precisely not the case. You see, for example, if I pass by a bench at nine o’clock in the morning on my walk, there are two people sitting there side by side. I look at them and form an opinion about various things regarding these people. My path takes me past the same spot again at three in the afternoon; the two people are sitting there once more. Yes, the empirical facts are, at first glance, exactly the same in both cases—as far as what presents itself is concerned—with the exception of subtle distinctions. But one person may have remained seated for the entire six hours, while the other may have left immediately after I passed by, only to return now after having traveled a long distance. This changes the picture quite significantly and has nothing to do with the facts that initially present themselves to me through my senses. The same facts present themselves to me through my senses at nine in the morning and at three in the afternoon. But the facts perceived through the senses must be judged in their context, based on their constituent parts. And this is very much a matter of, for example, clarifying to what extent a liver cell must be assessed quite differently from, say, a brain cell or a blood cell. For only if it is true, for example, that an original germ cell—which has been fertilized—lies at the foundation, and that through simple division, division, the entire organism can be explained as arising from this germ cell—only if that is the case could one proceed in such a way as to treat the liver cell the same as the brain cell from the outset and base one’s judgment solely on the purely sensory, empirical facts. But if, for example, that were not the case at all—if, for instance, simply by virtue of its location, a cell in the liver were in a different relationship to non-human forces, to forces lying outside the human skin, than a brain cell is— then we must not merely look at what is happening as the continuation of the process of division and the resulting arrangement; rather, we must relate the brain cell to the universe in an entirely different way than we do the liver cell.

[ 7 ] If someone looks at a magnetic needle and finds that it points from south to north, from north to south, and then claims that the forces causing it to align in the north-south direction lie within the magnetic needle itself, one would certainly not consider that person a physicist today; rather, as a physicist, one relates the magnetic needle to what is called geomagnetism. People may come up with whatever theories they like, but in any case, one cannot deduce the compass needle’s direction from forces within the needle itself; rather, one must relate the compass needle to the universe.

[ 8 ] When someone considers the organic, the relationships to the universe are, as a rule, of extremely secondary importance to them. But if it were the case, for example, that simply because of its different location, the liver stood in a completely different relationship to non-human, universal forces than the brain does, then we could not arrive at any explanation of the human being by following the path we currently pursue through empirical observation. For in that case, we could only arrive at an explanation of human beings if we were able to say what part—let us say—the entire universe plays in the structure of the brain and the structure of the liver, just as the Earth plays a part in the direction of the magnetic needle.

[ 9 ] Today, let’s say, we are tracing what lies within the stream of heredity. We trace back to the ancestors or up to the present, trace forward to the descendants; we do this in the animal kingdom, we do this in the human race, taking into account what emerges there—which we must, of course, know—but in considering what emerges there, we take into account only what the immediate processes tell us, which we observe, so to speak, within the human being. We do not ask whether, under certain circumstances, the human organism merely provides the fertilized germ with the opportunity for universal forces to act upon it in the most diverse ways. And we do not ask at all: Can we perhaps not explain the formation of the fertilized germ cell at all by remaining within the human being; must we not relate it to the entire universe? For official science today, the forces acting upon us from the universe are something secondary. Certainly, they are taken into account, but they are secondary. You will say: Yes, but science today leads us to a point where we do not even raise such questions; it is outdated to relate the human organs to the universe!

[ 10 ] The way it is often done is also somewhat outdated. But the fact that, in the broadest sense, we are not even led to raise such questions today stems solely from our scientific education. We are educated scientifically in such a way that we are, so to speak, confined to this purely sensory-empirical research, so that it does not even occur to us to raise questions such as those I have just raised hypothetically by way of introduction. But the extent to which one advances in knowledge—and the extent to which one advances in human action in all areas—actually depends on raising these questions. Where questions are not raised in the first place, one actually lives in a kind of scientific fog. One obscures one’s own clear view of reality. And then it happens that one realizes just how limited one’s views are only when things no longer fit into one’s thoughts.

[ 11 ] I do believe, however, that this feeling I am alluding to is actually most present in contemporary medicine—a certain sense that things actually unfold differently within the human being than they ought to according to the sometimes rather simplistic theories—based on which, incidentally, we also treat patients. Then one gets the feeling that there must be some other way to approach the matter. And actually, I mean that what needs to be said here can hardly have any significance for anyone else—if they are a specialist—other than for the very person who, through the practical observation of processes in healthy and sick people, has seen how, everywhere, the views one holds are actually too simplistic, how they fall short of the complexity of the facts.

[ 12 ] Let’s be honest about this for once! Let’s take a look at how, throughout the entire 19th century, in almost every field of scientific and practical thought, one thing was constantly put forward as an axiom. It’s enough to drive one to despair, the way this axiomatic notion is constantly thrown in one’s face! People always said: Explanations must be as simple as possible. — So people made the explanations as simple as possible. Yes, but when things and processes are complicated, it is simply a prejudice to insist that explanations must be as simple as possible; in that case, one must be willing to engage with the complexity! In this regard, tremendous damage has been done—I would say: to human nature as a whole, insofar as science and art are concerned—by the fact that people have repeatedly and incessantly proclaimed: Explanations must be as simple as possible. — Nature, everywhere—in its smallest and largest forms—is not simple, but immensely complex. And one can truly come to grips with nature itself only if one knows from the outset: Even the most seemingly perfect perceptions relate to reality in the same way as photographs—say, of a tree—taken from a certain angle. I can photograph the tree from a wide variety of angles. Under certain circumstances, the photographs may look quite different from one another. The more photographs I have, the closer my mental image will come to the reality of the tree.

[ 13 ] When it comes to theories and views, people today tend to think: any given theory is valid. The one you don’t happen to hold is therefore wrong. But this is exactly like when someone takes a photograph of a tree from a certain angle; that’s the one they have. Someone else photographs the tree from a completely different angle, shows him the photograph, and now he says: “That’s wrong, totally wrong; only this is right”—his view is the correct one. This is roughly how people have generally argued about materialism, idealism, realism, and all sorts of other things. The disputes that have taken place in this field do not look much different from the comparison I have just given you in a seemingly quite trivial way. Therefore, I ask you from the outset not to interpret what I have to present here as if it were meant to be materialistic, idealistic, or spiritualistic, but simply as an approach to reality in accordance with human cognitive capacity. We can sometimes achieve a great deal with materialistic mental images when we seek to master reality—provided we are also able to bring the opposing aspect into play. And if we are unable to distinguish between these aspects, well, then we end up with human perceptions that look something like a single plate on which all sorts of different photographs have been taken. In the same way, many things that are handed down today appear as if they had been photographed from a wide variety of angles onto a single plate.

[ 14 ] Well, you see, when one activates those forces that I have said lie latent in the soul through the means I discussed in my book *How Does One Gain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds?*, then one does indeed rise above the ordinary level of cognition—which is, after all, pursued with particular care in the latest phase of biology—to what I have described as so-called imaginative cognition. A further level is inspired cognition, and the highest level for the time being—if I may use this expression—is intuitive, truly intuitive cognition. In imaginative cognition, I receive images of reality, which I know full well are images, but I also know that they are not dream images, but rather images of reality. I do not yet have reality itself in imaginative cognition, but I have images of a reality. In inspired cognition, these images take on a certain consistency, as it were; there is life in these images; through the images, I know more than what the image itself can convey to me. Through the images, I know that they refer to a spiritual reality. And in intuitive cognition, I stand within this spiritual reality itself. Such is the ascent. What there is to say about these three types of cognition can be found in the book I have mentioned several times already.

[ 15 ] Well, to begin with, these three kinds of knowledge—which lie beyond ordinary, concrete, that is, sensory knowledge of facts—provide insights into spiritual worlds: a spiritual universe and the spiritual human being, the spiritual-soul human being; not yet, at least initially, knowledge of what we today consider empirical research findings—say, in biology. But another matter is the application of the special state of soul one enters into when one perceives imaginatively, or when one perceives through inspiration, or when one perceives intuitively—to the understanding of the human being.

[ 16 ] You see, this brings us, for example, to the structure of the human brain. This structure of the human brain is, in a sense—not so much for physiologists and physicians, but for so-called psychologists—something rather peculiar. Psychologists are, after all, a peculiar bunch within our civilization, because they’ve managed—haven’t they?—to have a science without an object: psychology without a soul, the study of the soul without a soul. For psychologists, even this structure of the brain is something very peculiar. Take, for example, a psychologist who has even emerged from the realm of purely empirical science. In recent times, people didn’t know what to do with philosophy because they couldn’t tell whether a philosopher actually knew anything or not. But since it was clear that natural scientists always know something, in more recent times they began appointing natural scientists who dabbled in philosophy to fill philosophy chairs. With natural scientists, it goes without saying that they know something, for while one can ramble on in philosophy, one cannot spout nonsense in the natural sciences—claiming to have seen something under a microscope, through a telescope, or with an X-ray tube; if one verifies this, one will discover the truth. In philosophy today, it is not so easy to verify whether someone is spouting nonsense. Well, take a look at Theodor Ziehen and how he speaks about the structure of the brain. Something quite interesting happened to me in that regard. Perhaps I can illustrate this better for you with a story. I was once at a gathering—it was many years ago—where a doctor spoke first about the structure of the brain, analyzing it in connection with the human soul life, according to a view that can quite rightly be called materialistic. He was a true materialist who explained the structure of the brain quite well, based on current research, and who thus explained the life of the soul in connection with this brain structure. The chair of this gathering was a Herbartian, and he did not conceive of the structure of the brain, but rather of what the life of the imagination is, just as the philosopher Herbart once did. He then said: “Yes, it is indeed curious—the physiologist, the doctor, maps out the brain and draws diagrams; when I, as a Herbartian,” he said, “record the complex associations of mental images—whereby I merely mean a picture of what comes together as mental images, not nerve fibers connecting one nerve cell to another—when I, as a true Herbartian who pays no attention to the brain, draw what I imagine regarding the way mental images are linked together and so on, I depict only in a purely symbolic way—then it looks very much like the physiologist’s drawings of the physical structure of the brain.

[ 17 ] It is not without reason that this looks similar. As we have come to understand the structure of the brain more and more through the natural sciences, it has become increasingly clear that the external structure of the brain actually corresponds in a truly marvelous way to the structure of our imaginative life. Everything found in our imaginative life can be found in the structure of the brain. It is simply—please take this with a grain of salt—as if nature itself had wanted to create a plastic image of our imaginative life within the brain. This becomes particularly striking when one reads, say, descriptions such as those by Meynert. They are somewhat outdated now. Meynert was a materialist, but an excellent brain physiologist and psychiatrist, and one might say: Yes, he is a materialist, but what he offers one as a materialist is a wonderful down payment on what one can also discover—even if one is not at all concerned with the human brain, but merely with how mental images connect and separate and so on, and simply wants to sketch out these symbols. — In short, the fact is that if anything could make one a materialist, it would be the structure of the human brain in particular. In any case, one must say that if there is such a thing as the spiritual-psychic, then this spiritual-psychic has found such an adequate expression in the human brain that one is now not far from asserting: “Yes, what need is there for a spiritual-psychic realm in the life of the imagination? If one were to demand a soul that can still think! Since the brain is such an accurate representation of the spiritual-psychic realm, why shouldn’t the brain be able to think?”

[ 18 ] Of course, you must understand all these things in light of the well-known “coarse salt.” I simply want to point out the meaning of today’s entire discussion. The human brain can indeed turn one into a materialist, especially when one delves into detailed research. And the mystery that actually prevails there—what actually underlies it all—only becomes clear to one when one arrives at imaginative insight. For in imaginative insight, images reveal themselves to one—images of what is truly spiritual, images that one did not see before. But one might say that these images remind one of the images formed by nerve cells and nerve fibers in the human brain. And I would like to say that if I were to give you an explanation for the question: What exactly is this imaginative cognition, which of course takes place entirely in the supersensible realm—what is it? If I were to symbolize imaginative cognition, as it were, the way a mathematician does with his figures when he sketches out mathematical problems, then I could also say: Imagine that one perceives more in the world than what sensory perception provides, by being able to ascend to images that present reality in the same way that the human brain presents the reality of the human soul. Nature itself presents this as a real, sensually real imagination in the brain—what one actually attains in imaginative cognition on a higher plane.

[ 19 ] But this allows us to delve deeper into the human constitution. We will see this in the coming days: One always arrives at the possibility of viewing this marvelous structure of the human brain not in isolation, but—as I would like to say—while one perceives a world, a supersensible world above through imagination, it is as if a part of this world had manifested itself downward, and a realized imaginative world stood before us within the human brain. And in fact, I do not believe that anyone can speak adequately about the human brain who does not see in the structure of the human brain an imaginative representation of the life of the soul. This is also what repeatedly leads us into a dilemma when we start from mere brain physiology and want to move on to the life of the soul. Namely, if one wants to stop at the brain, one has no need for the life of the soul at all. Only those who, in addition to the structure of the human brain, know this inner life in a way different from how it is known through the ordinary means of this world have the right to speak of an inner life in relation to the structure of the human brain. For when one comes to know this inner life in the spiritual world, it has its adequate reflection in the structure of the human brain, and everything that the supersensible organ of the soul can do in the realm of imagination, the brain can do as well. For the brain is a reflection right down to its functions; thus, no one can prove or disprove materialism on the basis of brain physiology. It simply does not exist. If human beings were merely cerebral beings, there would be no need to even consider the possibility that they still have a soul.

[ 20 ] In contrast, we will now turn to a human function other than a mental image. I will begin by briefly outlining something that I will need to elaborate on further and further over the next few days; let us turn to what lies at the heart of the breathing process. I will now take the process of breathing as a function. Consider the processes of breathing and what these processes represent in human consciousness: here you do not encounter anything like what you find in the life of imagination. When you say to yourself: “I have a mental image that reminds me of another mental image I had three years ago; I connect one with the other”—then you do indeed get diagrams, especially if you extend them across several mental images, which are, for example, very similar to Meynert’s diagrams of brain structure. You cannot do this, for example, if you relate what lies in the respiratory process to the human organism. You cannot find an adequate expression in the same way in the organ structure, the organ organization, or the organ formation for the respiratory process as you can for the process of imagination in the brain. You cannot do that. In the process of respiration, we have something that simply does not find an adequate expression in the human organism in the same way that the life of imagination and the life of perception find an adequate imprint in the structure of the brain. But if one rises to inspired insight—that is, if one learns to recognize how, in imaginative insight, one initially has images, and how then, through inspired insight, reality enters these images—I would say, radiating into them from behind—if one learns to recognize this, if one thus learns to look into the supersensible world in such a way that one’s imaginations are saturated with spiritual reality, then one suddenly finds oneself within something supersensible that bears a full resemblance to the relationship between the breathing process, the structure of the lungs, the structure of the arachnoid canal, the spinal canal, and the penetration of the breath into the brain. In short, proceed toward inspired insight, and you will have that which leads you just as much to the full significance of the respiratory process as imaginative insight already leads you to the significance of the brain’s structure. And then you can say: Just as the brain is, in a sense, a realized imagination, so everything connected with breathing is a realized inspiration, one brought down into the sensory world. For the one who seeks inspired insight is doing nothing other than immersing themselves in a world that is spiritual and soulful, yet stands before one here in the sensory world when one traces the breathing process in its entirety and its significance for the human organism.

[ 21 ] Thus, one actually needs the imagination to understand the structure of the brain, and one needs inspiration to understand the respiratory rhythm and everything connected with it. And so, everything connected with the respiratory rhythm is, in relation to the universe, actually something quite different from the structure of the brain. The structure of the brain, I would say, is in its external form most of all a reflection of the spiritual. Therefore, one need not venture far into the supersensible world—only as far as imagination, which is right next to ordinary cognition—yet one already arrives at an understanding of the structure of the brain. You cannot discover the respiratory process through imagination; for that, you must have inspired insight, and you must ascend further into the supersensible world.

[ 22 ] And, you see, one must go all the way up into the supersensible world if one wants to understand the metabolic process. This metabolic process is, in fact, the most mysterious aspect of the human being. For it will become clear to us in the coming days that we must think about this metabolism in a completely different way than is currently the case in sensory-empirical physiology. The changes that the substance I physically place on my tongue undergoes—up to the point, let’s say, where it has an effect on my brain cells—these changes can simply never be traced through mere empirical research; rather, they can only be traced through intuitive insight. Through this intuitive insight, we move from merely observing the object to penetrating into the object itself. And in fact, human metabolism is such that, while the spiritual-soul aspect creates a mere image of itself in the brain and otherwise remains outside, it influences the respiratory rhythm—that is, it enters into it, permeates the respiratory rhythm as a spiritual-psychic force—but then always withdraws again; thus, the human spiritual-psychic aspect is completely submerged in the metabolism, so that it even disappears as a spiritual-psychic force. It cannot be found again. It cannot be found again even empirically.

[ 23 ] Take a look at this work by Theodor Ziehen to see how elegantly he describes the structure of the human brain. In fact, one can construct memory symbolically in such a way that one can also identify corresponding physiological and anatomical structures in the brain. But as soon as he gets to emotional processes, the theory falls apart; that is why he does not speak of emotions as something independent, but only of emotionally charged mental images. And today’s psychologists no longer speak of the will at all. Why? Quite naturally, they say nothing about it! Now, when I want to raise my arm—that is, when I want to perform an act of will—I first have a mental image; then something sinks down into the realm that is, as we say today, completely “unconscious.” Into this reservoir we place everything that we cannot observe in the soul but which we believe is still there. Then the whole thing sinks down into the unconscious. Then I watch as I move my hand. But between the intention and the actual event, the will—as it unfolds—descends entirely into the material realm of the physical organism. One can trace this precisely through intuition; it descends into the innermost essence of the organism. The act of will extends all the way to metabolism. And there is no act of will in the physical human being on Earth that cannot be traced, through intuitive insight, to a corresponding metabolic process. But there is also no volitional process that does not find its expression in what one might call decomposition or dissolution—whatever one wishes to call it—within the metabolic processes. The will first removes whatever is present somewhere in the organism so that it can unfold. It is just as if, in my arm—when I need it to express my will—I first had to burn something away. Something must first be removed—it will become clear in the coming days; I know that today this is considered a terrible scientific heresy, but it will reveal itself to us as a truth—something material must first be destroyed so that the will can take hold. Where there is matter, the spiritual-soul aspect must take root. That is the essence of intuitive knowledge. You will not arrive at an explanation of the metabolic processes in human beings unless you seek them through intuitive knowledge.

[ 24 ] But these three—the nervous-sensory process, the rhythmic processes (the respiratory process and the blood circulation process), and the metabolic processes—actually constitute, at the very core, all the functions present in the human being. And so the human being is, in fact, realized, concrete knowledge—that which he is before us in the first place, whether we observe him from the outside or dissect him. Now let us focus on his head. What is actually going on in the head becomes clear when one knows that imaginative knowledge exists. If one looks at the rhythmic human being: what is actually happening within the rhythmic human being becomes clear when one knows that inspired knowledge exists. If one looks at the metabolic processes: what is happening within the metabolic processes becomes clear when one knows what intuitive knowledge is. And so, in a sense, the principles of reality are interwoven within the human being. So, for example, if you look at those organs that are purely organs of the will, it is only through intuitive insight that you have the possibility of understanding these organs of the will.

[ 25 ] Well, as long as one applies—I would say—monotonous, objective knowledge to human beings, one simply does not come to the realization that this human being is, in fact, something other than what one usually perceives. Isn’t that right? Modern physiology, of course, knows that human beings are, for the most part, actually a column of water. That, of course, is something I don’t need to tell you. But if you now honestly consider whether physiology actually takes into account that a human being is a column of water, or whether it instead conceives of the human being as if one were dealing with nothing but sharply defined, solid forms, then, once you ask yourself this question, you will say: Not much consideration is given to the fact that human beings are, in essence, essentially fluid beings, and that the solid components are merely integrated into them. But human beings are also gaseous beings, air-like beings, and, ultimately, they are primarily thermal beings.

[ 26 ] That which is fixed in human beings, on the other hand, I can understand very well through ordinary, objective knowledge. Just as I familiarize myself with the nature of mercuric sulfide in the laboratory, so I can familiarize myself with that which is fixed through chemical and physical investigations of the human organism.

[ 27 ] I can no longer do that with regard to what is fluid in the human being. That which lives within the human being—as a fluid being in a state of constant organization and disorganization—cannot be viewed in the same way as the stomach, which I depict, or the heart. When I depict these organs as if they were solid, it is, of course, easy to talk about them. But that is not the case if one truly takes this fluid nature of the human being seriously. In there, within the fluid, something is constantly coming into being and constantly passing away. It is as if the heart were constantly coming into being and constantly passing away, even if this does not happen so rapidly. When approaching the fluid human being, one must do so with imagination,

[ 28 ] And that which is gaseous, that which is air-like within us: Of course, we know how the functions that take place in the gaseous realm are of great significance in the organism; we know how gaseous substances are drawn from everywhere and distributed everywhere in the human organism, how everything is in circulation with regard to the gaseous realm; but as one area of the gaseous realm influences another, it does so precisely according to the pattern of inhalation. That which is air-like in human beings: we can only grasp it through inhalation.

[ 29 ] And that which constitutes the human being’s thermal field: Try for a moment to grasp how the human being is something quite special precisely because he is a thermal structure—because heat and cold are structurally present in a wide variety of ways at various points throughout his being. One must be present within it oneself—just as a human being lives within their own warmth with their “I.” One must enter into it with intuitive insight.

[ 30 ] And so, when you consider the human being as a whole—not as if he were a collection of fixed, sharply defined organs, but when you consider the human being in his totality—you must approach him from various angles. Just as when one moves from the brain to the other organ structures, one is driven to recognize things imaginatively, inspiringly, and intuitively, so too is it when one considers the human being in relation to his various aggregate structures. And you see, when one considers the solid aspects of the human being—that which exists within the human being as a truly solid body—this differs almost not at all in the human organism from how it exists outside the human organism. But what exists in a liquid state, what exists in a gaseous state, and even heat differ significantly. We will discuss these in the coming days. But only when one broadens one’s view of the human being in this way do the organs acquire their true significance within human nature for the sake of knowledge.

[ 31 ] With purely sensory-empirical physiology, you can hardly trace the functions of the human organism any further than the transition of the chyme from the intestinal villi into the lymphatic vessels. That is as far as one can go in today’s sensory empiricism. Whatever comes after that is essentially a matter of speculation. All mental images about the processes that take place to bring about what subsequently happens to the substances we take in from the outside—the processes, for example, within the bloodstream—are, in essence, mere speculation within modern physiology. And something like the role of the kidneys in the human organism, for example, can only be understood if, alongside the ascending processes—which today are regarded almost exclusively as significant for the human constitution—one also considers the descending processes. A long time ago, I told a friend: Just as important as observing the development of the human embryo from fertilization to birth is, for any study of embryonic life, the observation of the organs surrounding the embryo that are later expelled. And only then does one have a complete picture—when one observes cell division and the formation resulting from it, and when, alongside this ascending process, one also traces the descending process. For not only do we have this descending process, so to speak, alongside us during the embryonic period, but we also carry it within us continuously throughout our later life, and we must know for every organ: to what extent it involves ascending processes, and to what extent descending processes. Descending processes are, as a rule, even associated with an increase in consciousness. Clear consciousness: even descending processes—decomposition, destruction, and the removal of the material—are necessary for this.

[ 32 ] The same applies to excretory processes. The kidneys are excretory organs. But the question arises: If they are, first and foremost, excretory organs in the sense of sensory experience, do they not also have significance for the constitution of the human being? Are they not perhaps more important for the structure of the human being through something other than their excretory function? And if we continue to examine these functions and, say, move from the kidney to the liver, we encounter this interesting phenomenon: The kidney ultimately excretes outward, while the liver excretes inward. And the question arises: What does this mean for the relationship between the liver process and the kidney process—that the kidney, relatively speaking, discharges its waste products outward, while the liver discharges inward? In other words, that in one instance the human being communicates with the outside world, and in the other, communicates with itself? — This leads us to a gradual understanding of the human organism. But to achieve this understanding, we must draw upon precisely what is sought through the approaches I could only briefly hint at today. I intend to build on this in my next lecture and show to what extent these insights lead to a genuine pathological and therapeutic understanding, and to what extent they provide guiding principles for what is today recognized as empirical research—research that should by no means be called into question, but rather shown how it actually attains its true value precisely through the establishment of such guidelines.

[ 33 ] For I am by no means intent on undermining today’s scientific research or scientific medicine; rather, I wish to show that this scientific medicine still holds immense reserves of knowledge that can lead to a deeper understanding than can be gained through today’s methods and, above all, from today’s perspective. The scientific worldview should not be dismissed; on the contrary, it should be all the more firmly grounded. It is only through justification rooted in the spirit that it attains its full significance. I will speak further on this tomorrow.