The Rudolf Steiner Archive

2. The Spiritual Science Foundations of Physical and Mental Health

[ 1 ] Before I proceed tomorrow—following yesterday’s introductory remarks on the paths and goals of Spiritual Science—to discuss those important consequences of Spiritual Science that are of particular relevance to the present day, namely the spiritual scientific perspective on the: moral, social, and religious forces of the human being, I would like to insert a reflection today on what Spiritual Science has to say about the physical and mental health of human beings. Such a reflection as today’s is justified, after all, because human beings can only set moral goals worthy of their humanity, undertake social tasks, and bring forth a corresponding religious life from the depths of their souls if these goals and achievements are grounded in what might be called their capacity, which rests upon their physical, psychological, and spiritual health.

[ 2 ] You will assume from the outset that, if one is to speak of the foundation of health in the context of Spiritual Science and anthroposophy, then it is precisely the spiritual and psychological factors involved that will be addressed in particular. However, such a line of thought immediately leads one to one of the oldest and, at the same time—one might say—most controversial questions of human worldview: the question of the relationship between the spiritual and psychological aspects of the human being and the physical body in general. Much has been pondered and much has been researched using the methods of various scientific disciplines regarding this question: How, in fact, does the spiritual and psychological aspect of the human being relate to the physical aspect?

[ 3 ] The Spiritual Science referred to here must take the position that it cannot, from the outset, regard this question—as it is usually posed—as having been correctly formulated. The question is usually asked: What is the relationship between a person’s spirit or soul and their body, their physical constitution? In doing so, one does not consider whether what we might call a person’s arbitrary state of mind and spiritual capacity might not, in various ways, establish a special relationship between mind and body in different people, or whether, under certain circumstances, a person might influence his or her physical constitution precisely through these forces that he or she develops within the soul. And this question can really only be addressed through a perspective of Spiritual Science, such as the one I took the liberty of presenting to you yesterday. For precisely when we consider what has led Western science—in the sense in which it was characterized yesterday—to its triumphs, we must say: this is not an element that leads toward the human being, but rather an element that, in a certain sense, actually distances us from the human being.

[ 4 ] What, specifically, does the scientist—who has adopted the principles of the last three to four centuries—seek to achieve for his science? He seeks, in particular, to gain such mental images of external things and also of human beings in which human emotions and impulses of the will interfere as little as possible, or indeed not at all. The more one is able to separate everything that can be called the subjective-personal from scientific observation, the more one believes that the ideal of this scientific observation has been fulfilled. Today, the physicist and the biologist believe they can no longer fulfill their task if they allow anything that can only be grasped inwardly in the soul to interfere with their findings.

[ 5 ] If I may recall what I characterized yesterday as an ideal of the Eastern worldview—one that, admittedly, belongs to a distant past—it must be said: since there the whole person was drawn into that transformation, into that development of human nature, which in the East formed the basis for a worldview, this method was the complete opposite of what appears to us today as a scientific ideal.

[ 6 ] Now, when one devotes oneself to such matters, one must cast aside many of the prejudices that prevail today—prejudices that are, I might say, taken for granted, but which will soon no longer be taken for granted; rather, they are prejudices conditioned by the education of humanity over the last three to four centuries.

[ 7 ] If one truly delves into the fundamental character of what defines all our thinking, which is steeped in science, one finds that, in fact, only one part—one aspect—of the whole of human nature finds favor with this way of thinking today: that which may be called the intellectualistic element—the element that rises to thoughts free of feeling and will, which seeks to add nothing from one’s own, subjective human nature to this mental image. Consequently, however, it is not the whole human being as such who participates in the most important scientific work, but only that part of the human being which is precisely the bearer of the intellectualistic life of the soul.

[ 8 ] What I described yesterday as the truly Western pursuit of a worldview based on Spiritual Science seeks—without, however, reverting to Eastern ideals—to develop, from the very essence of human nature, the spiritual powers that give rise to a worldview. That is why yesterday I had to characterize, in roughly the following way, the paths of knowledge that lead to such an anthroposophically oriented worldview based on Spiritual Science. While the person who is merely scientific develops intellectualistic mental images through experiments or the observation of nature, the one who wishes to ascend to a worldview based on Spiritual Science must draw from the depths of their soul life purified feelings and purified impulses of the will. He must, of course, immerse himself in a world of thought. He must be able to work just as intellectually as even the most precise scientist. But his relationship to intellectuality is different from that of the precise scientist. He immerses himself in worlds of ideas; he immerses himself in that which is otherwise provided only by the pale, shadowy thought. But just as one otherwise participates in the events of outer life with one’s sympathies and antipathies, with one’s entire emotional world, and just as one otherwise participates in the demands of life with one’s impulses of will, so, for those who seek the path into the spiritual world in the sense of the Spiritual Science, feeling, volition, sympathies, and antipathies accompany the thoughts and ideas. One associates with the way ideas work and relate to one another an inner element of sympathy and antipathy, an inner volition that one otherwise directs only, for example, toward a person of flesh and blood or, in a lesser sense, toward nature, or that one develops when one is hungry or thirsty, or when faced with other tasks of ordinary life. Just as inwardly alive as one is in one’s volition under the influence of hunger and thirst, or in the feelings one develops toward loved or hated people, so inwardly alive is one in the methods intended to lead to insight in Spiritual Science. The whole human being, with all their feelings and will, participates in these methods. This develops insights and relationships to the external world—and to other people—that are different from those arising from mere intellectual activity.

[ 9 ] Now, when those insights that in this way become the content of “Spiritual Science”—which, admittedly, are a closed book to the vast majority of humanity today, not because spiritual scientists seal this book with seven seals, but because those who should approach this Spiritual Science, so that they need not approach it, first seal it with the seven seals of their prejudices, scorn, and mockery—if this content of Spiritual Science is then taken up by human beings, if the human soul unites with it, then it therefore also has a different effect than the content of merely intellectual knowledge. It immediately seizes the whole human soul. It pours energies and forces into the whole human soul. And when the content of Spiritual Science is gained in such a way that it corresponds to the great interrelationships of world laws, then it pours, as it were, the very same forces into the human soul from which the human organism is built. For the human organism is built from the forces of the world. Spiritual scientific knowledge, in turn, goes back to these forces of the world. Thus, there must be an inner harmony between what is recognized through Spiritual Science as arising from the laws of the world, and what emerges in the organization of the human being as the human being itself, in that the human being receives its own organization from the foundations of the world order.

[ 10 ] This, however, means that there is a completely different relationship between what is regarded as the content of Spiritual Science and the entire development of the human being than there is between what concerns only the intellect—such as the natural sciences or, today, the social sciences and the like—and the human being himself. But there is something that obscures this relationship. This makes it difficult for those who have not yet penetrated the true meaning of Spiritual Science to form precise mental images of such things. It must certainly be said: Just as the healthy nature of the human being is organized in a healthy way out of the world, so too is the content of Spiritual Science gained in a healthy way; and since it encompasses the whole human being, it can therefore have an effect not only on the intellect but also, in turn, on the whole human being. When this is said, someone who is a layperson with regard to Spiritual Science will today draw a conclusion along the following lines. He will say: Certainly, I will grant you hypothetically for the time being that, as a spiritual scientist, you derive sound thoughts from your view of the world. Thoughts that are intellectualistic and shadowy do not affect the human organism; yours, however, are conceived by drawing upon the whole of human nature, so they do affect the human organism—and thus, let us hypothetically assume, they can be used in the interest of sound human nature. So let us say: we will apply those thoughts that you develop as sound thoughts through your Spiritual Science in such a way that we imbue ourselves with them and allow them to take effect upon us; then they will be able to act like a remedy against deviations of human nature from health. |

[ 11 ] As obvious as this hypothesis might be, and as much as it has found credence among certain superstitious people, it corresponds very little to reality, at least as I have just stated it. And here it is necessary—I would say—to address the very foundation that must be laid so that one can properly understand the interplay between a healthy spiritual-soul life and a healthy physical life. When a human being enters physical existence from the spiritual worlds through birth or conception, by clothing themselves in a physical body, we see how that which is spiritual-psychic and clothes itself in this physical body takes time to unfold. The child arrives in the physical world with its predispositions. But it must grow up. We can observe how, from month to month, from year to year, from decade to decade, what is spiritually and soulfully inherent in the human being gradually emerges within the physical organism. Anyone who, through the Spiritual Science referred to here, acquires the ability to penetrate the true connection between the spiritual-soul and the physical-bodily, comes to the following realization—not through some kind of logical fantasy, but through a penetrating, thoroughly conscientious, and long-term observation of life:

[ 12 ] Just as the whole nature of the human being needs time to integrate itself as a spiritual-soul entity into the physical organization, so everything we take in spiritually and soulfully first needs time to integrate itself into the physical-bodily organization. So when I, as an eight-year-old child, or as a twenty-year-old, or even as a fifty-year-old, take in anything of a spiritual-soul nature—when something of that nature captures my soul—then, in relation to my physical body, that content is, at the point where it enters my soul, as young as a child’s soul is in relation to the physical body, and such spiritual content needs time to take effect in the body. One cannot therefore hope, in the manner of American “thought healing,” to invent thoughts that are administered to a person like a liquid medicine and take effect immediately. No, the transformation that the spiritual-psychic content undergoes as it increasingly permeates the physical body requires time. One form of spiritual-psychic content requires less time, another more, but time must elapse between the moment when a spiritual-psychic content is abstractly taken in—when we penetrate it through understanding—and the state in which it has permeated our entire being.

[ 13 ] What I am telling you here is not just some idea that is carelessly linked to the phenomena of life, but rather something that has been discovered as meticulously as any laboratory or clinical finding—indeed, much more meticulously. In such investigations, one begins by examining the paths that ordinary, everyday mental perception takes within a person, whereby the person can later, through memory, conjure up from the depths of their soul what they once took into that soul. The vast majority of people simply pass by the paths that the soul’s life takes with regard to memory; they do not observe how the experience is entirely different when we recall something we experienced decades ago compared to something we experienced three days ago. We bring both up from the depths of the soul, certainly. But what we experienced three days ago—or even three years ago—appears to those with the capacity to observe such things as something that, I would say, is brought up from the shallower depths of the soul’s life, something that is still very much a matter of the soul. What one might recall as an older person—rather than the experiences of one’s childhood—is drawn up from the depths of the soul. If one observes this process, one sees how it is already intimately interwoven with our entire physicality, how it permeates our physicality like a spiritual blood, and how it has strongly taken on the character of the forces that define our habitual nature.

[ 14 ] This, of course, is only the beginning of that detailed method through which we observe how, over the course of time, what we take in as spiritual and soul content gradually unites with the physical body. From this, however, you will see how Spiritual Science must demand that its approach to fostering physical and soul health not only be counted among the arts that have an immediate effect, but also how it appeals to what is, first, the education of children, and second, public education and community life. For Spiritual Science must work toward human health with foresight—I would say, with a prophetic vision.

[ 15 ] If one truly understands what I am addressing here, one will realize what it means when impulses of Spiritual Science are incorporated into educational methods, when our children are actually raised in such a way that the driving forces of education are guided by principles of Spiritual Science; and then the things we teach the children will be imbued—not with spiritual scientific theories—the world need not fear that—but with a spiritual scientific attitude, a spiritual scientific state of mind, and above all, with spiritual scientific pedagogical fervor. In this way, what is to be instilled in the child’s soul—what will then connect with the child’s spiritual and physical constitution, what grows within the child, and what, because it is healthy, develops in a healthy way alongside the human constitution, making it healthy and strong and resilient against external influences—is already planted in the child’s soul.

[ 16 ] Once the world comes to understand the full significance of what Spiritual Science can achieve in this regard, then all the beautiful—and I say this not ironically, but in the most serious sense—all the beautiful theories about infectious diseases and the like, which today are viewed only in a one-sided manner, will not disappear entirely, but will gradually become less significant. Much more attention will be paid not to the way in which germs and bacteria enter our organism, but to how strong we have become in soul and spirit to resist these invasions. This strength will not require any external remedy in human nature, but rather the remedy that strengthens people from within—from the spirit and the soul—through a healthy foundation of Spiritual Science. Thus, public health care will be placed on a fundamentally different foundation through Spiritual Science than those who believe that the salvation of human development can lie only in the continuation of current views could ever imagine.

[ 17 ] Among many things, I would like to draw attention to just one issue, which I have already brought to the attention of several prominent figures here in this city from other perspectives. Today, for example, in education and in the classroom, tremendous importance is placed on what is called “visual perception”—and rightly so, for within certain limits, it is good to directly introduce the child to what is visible externally or internally and to allow the child’s mental images and concepts to form in such a way that the child derives them on its own. But not everything a child needs for its development toward a dignified existence can be presented to it in this way. And so much must sink into the child simply by the child looking up to its educator, to its teacher as an authority—to the one who develops a certain passion in educating and teaching, who, through that passion, transmits intangible qualities from himself to the child. There will then be many things the child absorbs in the belief that the authority believes in them; but does not yet understand it. Then there may come a time—perhaps fifteen or twenty years after the child has left school—when the child recalls: “You learned this back then and did not understand it; now you have matured, and now you draw it up purely from memory from the wellspring of your soul. Now you understand it.” Anyone familiar with the inner life of the human being knows that such an understanding—brought about by later maturation—of what one has already carried in the soul for years, perhaps decades, develops forces that strengthen the person from within; nothing pours such energy into the will from the very depths of the soul as learning to understand something through one’s own power of maturation—something that was absorbed years ago on the basis of authority or instruction. In this way, pedagogy can be combined with ideal, spiritual hygiene. Only when our public health care system is truly permeated by such far-reaching perspectives will the spiritual—which is rooted in humanity—be able to truly unfold its energies, which are so healing for humanity. While everything we take in solely through the intellect and its training is, in a sense, detached from the human being and therefore cannot have a reciprocal effect on the human being, that which is drawn from the entirety of human nature—Spiritual Science—will also be able to have a reciprocal effect on this entire human nature. And if, even in medicine, we focus not merely on immediate successes but on a form of healthcare that takes into account the laws of the universe—and thus also the laws of time—we have the opportunity to bring about immensely beneficial effects in this direction. Unfortunately, however, humanity today is such that it is very reluctant to look at that which eludes the moment and whose effect, I might say, extends to the greater whole. Modern people would most like to take it upon themselves to disregard the laws of the universe and fall ill whenever they please—you understand that I do not mean this in a strictly literal sense, but such a tendency does exist in human nature—and then, in turn, they would like to be healed instantly. What must be kept in mind, however, is that a strong inner energy must be developed through the education of individual peoples—indeed, throughout a person’s entire life—to truly bring to fruition the healing powers that spring from the soul and the spirit. From this perspective, one will realize that physical and mental health depend very much on the development of such a strong, such an energetic spiritual life within people that this strong, energetic spiritual life can truly influence the physical being as well.

[ 18 ] This, in turn, requires broadening our perspective to encompass longer periods of time. What affects our intellect does not affect our will at the same time. And indeed, if we have never influenced our will, no matter how healthy our ideas and thoughts may be at any stage of life, we will not succeed in influencing our soul through the intellect alone. For no spiritual or soul content can directly influence human nature through the intellect alone. We must also influence the will. We influence the will through everything that arouses our interest in the world—that which stirs our involvement, our loving participation in the world. People often go through life, I might say, with a certain kind of mental deficiency. Certainly, there are also deeper causes, but one of the causes of this mental dullness is that, when such people were still children, no effort was made to develop in them broad, profound interests in everything that acts and lives in their surroundings; for it is this development of interest that influences the will. And only when the will is strengthened in this way can that which acts upon the intellect later, in turn, exert an influence on the whole person. The worst thing that can happen to a person with regard to their physical and psychological health is for their physical organization to become separated from their psychological and spiritual being. This separation of the human physical organization from the soul-spiritual being is brought about in an almost experimental manner in mediumship. There we see that the soul-spiritual being is, as it were, paralyzed or put to sleep for a certain time, so that the physical body—with which the spiritual is, however, always connected—acts almost automatically. Viewed from the correct perspective, mediumship is nothing other than a genuine illness, a genuine discord between the spiritual-soul aspect—which has become entirely enervated—and the physical-bodily aspect, which consequently gains the upper hand. Therefore, when mediumship is taken to extremes, it is always associated with a paralysis of the will and a complete paralysis of the soul of the medium in question. And since morality can spring only from the energy of the soul, a certain moral decline is generally associated with mediumship as well. It is precisely through an understanding of the connection between spiritual-soul health and physical-bodily health that all that constitutes the dark side of mediumship can truly be understood.

[ 19 ] If only those who judge Spiritual Science without knowing its true nature would not so often lump it together with all the aberrations of the spirit of the age—or indeed of modern times in general—to which I am referring here! It is, however, easier to turn to mindless mediumship to learn something about the spiritual world than to turn to Spiritual Science, which demands effort. When one turns to mediumship, one allows a medium—in whom one has first suppressed the spirit—to report on the spirit. It is a convenient method of reaching the spirit. Spiritual Science, however, requires that one not suppress the spirit in another in order to learn about the spirit, but rather that one bring the spirit within oneself to higher unfolding and development, so that it can channel its powers into the spiritual world, enabling them to experience the characteristics of that world there. If one were to view Spiritual Science without prejudice, one would clearly see how it is the universal remedy against such aberrations as those I have just alluded to in a few words.

[ 20 ] Thus, one can say: Health care is a necessary consequence of what Spiritual Science seeks to contribute to human development. But, of course, human nature is subject to manifold influences. No one should interpret what I have discussed so far as if I meant that, through the practice of Spiritual Science, all diseases would one day be eradicated from the world. That is certainly not what I mean. Diseases have their causes. More important than recognizing their causes is the process of their healing. And here the point is that Spiritual Science certainly has something to say not only about that form of healthcare which is based on Spiritual Science, but that—just as it has something to say about all aspects of life—it also has something to say about medicine itself. It is a fact—admittedly denied by many because they do not want to acknowledge the true state of affairs on this point—but a fact nonetheless, that many truly deep-thinking people who have completed their medical studies today, when they then feel called upon to serve suffering humanity, are seized by the most bitter anguish of the soul, because they then realize the demands that the human organism—when it strays from health into illness—places on human insight, and how little can be gained for this medical work specifically from the means and methods of knowledge derived from a purely scientific approach. It is precisely in medicine that the dark side of a purely scientific approach becomes so evident—an approach that, incidentally, also has a bright side when it comes to our understanding of mere external nature. In medicine, however, the dark side is present. For one need only consider the following: This natural science—let it be said once more—places its primary value on completely sidelining the human being by viewing the world in an intellectualistic manner and seeking its natural laws through experiments in an intellectualistic way. One learns what can be learned from observation regarding the efficacy of this or that remedy on the sick person, or regarding the efficacy of this or that natural product on the human being in general. But one lacks an inner insight into, first, the interconnectedness of human nature as a whole, and second, the connection between what is produced in the external natural world—be it as food or as a remedy—and the human being itself. And it is only when one seeks to progress in such an unbiased way from pure natural science to medicine that one realizes what it means to exclude the human being from the line of inquiry and then to apply what has been gained through such an approach to human nature. This backfires, because natural science excludes everything that can spring forth in human nature in order, as it claims, to achieve true objectivity. That is how it arrives at objectivity. But human beings are not included in this objectivity. Human beings first exclude themselves. No wonder that in the science they are now developing, human beings are not included. Now one is supposed to apply this science to human beings. One cannot do so, because no consideration has been given to human beings.

[ 21 ] The exact opposite is true of what anthroposophically oriented Spiritual Science strives for. There, the whole human being is called upon to form judgments about humanity and the world. However, the insights are also grounded differently. To clarify this point, I would like to remind you today that the Spiritual Science referred to here is, in essence, merely a development of what was first established as a new understanding of nature by the much-misunderstood natural scientist—not the poet—Goethe. That is precisely why we call our building out on the hill in Dornach the Goetheanum—because we want to practice Goetheanism, though not the kind of Goetheanism practiced by Goethe scholars who believe that the Goethean spirit ceased in 1832, and that one must study what this Goethean spirit produced in order to practice Goethean scholarship. No, we practice a form of Goetheanism that does not date back to 1832, but is a Goetheanism that stems from the Goethean spirit, which continues to work today, dating from the year 1920. But what still appears in a very elementary form in Goethe can today be grasped in a higher form of education through the course of human development.

[ 22 ] Now I would like to mention something that may seem quite remote, but through which I will be able to illustrate how one can reach the highest heights of Spiritual Science by starting from Goetheanism. Goethe focused on the similarities and affinities, particularly in the nature of living beings. It became clear to him that the entire plant is merely a complex leaf, and that a single plant leaf is an entire plant, simply structured. Thus, Goethe saw in every part of an organism the metamorphosis—the transformed form—of another part. In this way, he sought to discover the origin of the enigmatic forms of the human skull bones—forms that are indeed enigmatic to the untrained observer. As he himself recounts, when he once walked through the Jewish cemetery in Venice, he found a sheep skull that had split open in a particularly striking way. The bones had fallen apart in such a way that their shape had an immediate effect on Goethe’s soul. And as he gazed at this form, he said to himself: “Yes, these skull bones are nothing other than transformed, metamorphosed spinal bones. If the simple, almost ring-shaped vertebrae—according to Goethe’s view—transform in such a way that certain extensions grow more prominently and certain ridges flatten out, then the skull bones arise through a transformed growth of the simple vertebra.” This enabled Goethe, for the first time, to articulate what—with certain modifications—is also a finding of modern human anatomy: that the skull bones are transformed spinal vertebrae. In this context—since it will also help explain the point I am making—I would like to share a kind of personal experience. I have been particularly drawn to these views of Goethe’s since the late 1870s. Well, I had already begun writing about Goethe’s scientific worldview back then. This view of the transformation of the skull bones—the transformation of vertebral bones into skull bones—was also an integral part of what I elaborated upon regarding Goethe’s worldview. But I asked myself: How could it have escaped the notice of such a universal mind as Goethe that, when speaking of the transformation of vertebral bones into skull bones, one must proceed to the concept of the transformation of the simple nervous structure in the spinal cord into the complex structure of the brain, so that one must also view the brain as a transformation of the simple nervous structure that is located within the spinal cord. And when I was then appointed to Weimar at the end of the 1880s to collaborate on the Goethe and Schiller Archive for the new edition—or, in fact, the very first edition—of Goethe’s still-unpublished writings, it was naturally a cherished task for me to investigate whether there might be some trace, somewhere, suggesting that Goethe had already held this view of the brain’s transformation from simple nerve ganglia. And lo and behold, when I came across a notebook with poorly written pencil scribbles from the 1790s, there it was—Goethe’s own notes on this view of the human brain, exactly as I had suspected!

[ 23 ] I would like to draw your attention to a different perspective—though in Goethe’s work it is still only in its most elementary form—a perspective that differs from one that merely observes the laws of nature in an intellectualistic manner. I would like to draw your attention to a way of looking at things that is instinctively present in Goethe, one that draws upon the whole human being. Using the kind of dissecting, analytical experimental method that is common in the natural sciences today, one cannot properly perceive such transformations, for one must take everything into account—not merely what can be measured and counted. One must also take into account that which can be observed only in terms of its intensity and quality. In Spiritual Science, one must go even further. There, one must actually observe things according to the qualities imprinted upon them by the spirit of the world, by the soul of the world—qualities that are simply not found in the external scientific method.

[ 24 ] This leads to results such as the one that one might think is merely an aperçu, but which is not an aperçu at all; rather, it is the result of work in Spiritual Science—work on which, I may say, I have labored for more than thirty years—that result which divides the human being into three, I would say, subdivisions of his nature. It is commonly assumed that what is spiritual in the human being—that is, the soul—is bound to the sensory-nervous system. This is, after all, today’s one-sided view—and anyone familiar with the development of science understands that this was bound to happen—namely, that people today believe the spiritual-soul life depends solely on the nervous system. You can read what I have to say on this point, based on research in Spiritual Science, in my book *On the Mysteries of the Soul*, published two years ago. In it, I attempted to show that only the intellectual-sensory life—that which observes objects through the senses and processes them intellectually—is bound to the sensory-nervous system as its instrument within human nature. In contrast, the human emotional life is bound directly—not merely indirectly—to the rhythmic life within the human being, that rhythmic life which encompasses the respiratory system, the associated blood circulation system, and which is connected in a peculiar way to the carrier of the intellectual-sensory system, namely as follows: We have within us, as the most important component of our brain, what is known as cerebrospinal fluid. Our brain is, of course, first and foremost a nervous organ that must process what is conveyed through the senses. But this brain floats in cerebrospinal fluid. And this cerebrospinal fluid, which fills our cranial cavity and our spinal canal, has a special function. When we exhale, the cerebrospinal fluid sinks from top to bottom. The diaphragm rises, causing the cerebrospinal fluid to sink; the opposite occurs when we inhale. Thus, we are immersed in a continuous rhythm of the cerebrospinal fluid rising and falling.

[ 25 ] This rhythm of the rising and falling cerebrospinal fluid is the external vehicle of human emotional life. And through the interaction between what the cranial nerves experience and what occurs as this rhythm in the cerebrospinal fluid, there arises what is known as the exchange between feelings and thoughts.

[ 26 ] This is a point where an anthroposophically oriented understanding of the human being will have a long way to go if the human being is to be properly understood in terms of his soul-spiritual and physical nature. Only when one develops within oneself those methods of knowledge that are described in my book *How Does One Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds?*, in my *Esoteric Science*, and in other writings of mine, can one truly learn to discern—through an inner soul experience capable of penetrating to the core—how the life of feeling can be separated from the intellectual life. Otherwise, they become intermingled. And the person who relies on conventional science fails entirely to recognize that the brain and the nervous-sensory system are merely carriers of the intellectual, whereas the rhythmic aspect of the human being is the carrier of the emotional life.

[ 27 ] And in the same way, the carrier of the life of the will is metabolism—wherever it occurs, it is metabolism; metabolism in the brain, too, is the carrier of the life of the will. But the essence of the human being, in terms of its functions, is exhausted by nervous-sensory activity, rhythmic activity, and metabolic activity. That is the whole human being. Anthroposophically oriented Spiritual Science seeks to grasp this whole human being through the cognitive powers of the whole human being itself. Therefore, because it draws upon everything that comes not merely from the intellect, but also from the life of feeling and from its vehicle—the rhythmic activity of the human being—and because it also derives its insights from what weaves and lives spiritually within metabolism, it is able to grasp the whole human being. It is only through this process that it truly begins to recognize the significance of the lungs, the liver, the spleen, and the other organs in the human being; for this can only be recognized by a path that draws upon the spiritual imbuement of things.

[ 28 ] This leads to an intuitive understanding of human beings and paves the way for intuitive medicine. By viewing human beings as mere mechanisms, one fails to truly understand them. One learns only to recognize the mechanical aspects of the human being. It is only by comprehending the human being in such a way—by further expanding and spiritualizing Goethe’s intuitive approach—that the individual organs of the human being become transparent in their metamorphoses. But only then, once one has come to understand what these individual metamorphoses of the human organism signify, can one place the human being—whom one has now grasped—back into nature. If one first perceives nature in such a way that one excludes the human being, then one cannot place the human being back into nature either. If one truly comes to know the human being as I have described him, then one can also place him back within nature. One studies human organology and learns to recognize the deep kinship that exists between the human being and the cosmos. Then one begins to understand the connection between the food taken from the external natural world and the human organism. But one also begins to understand the connection between the remedy—whether taken from the external natural world or, in the case of spiritual healing, from the soul—and the whole of human nature.

[ 29 ] I could only sketch out this perspective on the human being. But what I have outlined here is the path from anthroposophically oriented Spiritual Science toward an intuitive medicine—the kind of medicine, I would say, that so many long for today: those who have gone through their medical studies without prejudice and then feel compelled to devote themselves to suffering humanity. They miss the intuitive, spiritual element in what has influenced them in the understanding of human beings and the art of healing. It is precisely in medicine that we see most intensely where a science that excludes the human being from its methods leads.

[ 30 ] Oh, I know that what I am saying still faces a wall of prejudice in the present. But this wall of prejudice must be addressed again and again. It will be a long time before a larger number of people attempt to follow the path outlined here, because it is, after all, less comfortable than the path currently being taken. For just as the entire plant is, in Goethe’s sense, a complex leaf, so too is the whole human being, in a sense, composed of three human beings: the thinking human being who perceives through the senses, the rhythmic human being, and the metabolic human being. Each represents a human being in a certain way, and one must construct the total nature of the human being from these three aspects. And each part of the human being stands in a different relationship to external nature. But what that mysterious connection between remedy and disease is—that can only be understood through the intuitive medicine described here.

[ 31 ] I am also aware that many people today still regard it as presumptuous of the Spiritual Science referred to here to consider, among many other things, the reform of medicine. It must consider this out of a sacred obligation to the progress of humanity. For it must recognize that the path taken by the natural sciences—which has been a blessing in so many fields over the last three to four centuries—can never be a more beneficial one for the treatment of the sick. Just as an artist cannot be a true artist if he knows the laws of aesthetics only intellectually, so a physician cannot be a healer if he knows only what are today considered the laws of nature. He must be able to immerse himself, as a whole human being, in the weaving and essence of nature itself. He must be able to immerse himself in nature as it creates and weaves. Then he will be able to follow with deep empathy even those paths that nature takes in the face of illness. Then, from his perception of the healthy human being, his perception of the sick human being will emerge.

[ 32 ] Not only must Spiritual Science point the way to a form of hygiene derived from spiritual forces; it must also open up the prospect of an intuitive medicine. Anyone who engages with this Spiritual Science will realize that today I have only outlined, in broad strokes and in general, abstract terms, a path toward an intuitive medicine; yet much of what I have sketched here has already been developed, and much is merely awaiting the moment when the official representatives of medical knowledge come and come to the realization that it must be incorporated. This applies both to physical illnesses of the body and to illnesses of the soul itself. One must already appear rather presumptuous today if one wishes to point out what Spiritual Science believes it can contribute to human healing and the human being, based on sound foundations of knowledge.

[ 33 ] I would like to bridge the gap to what I will be discussing tomorrow—the moral, religious, and social nature of the human being—by concluding here with a reference to how, precisely in a field such as that of genuine intuitive medicine, it would be the ideal of the Spiritual Science scientist to one day be able to express himself before those who are truly expert in the field. If they were to gather and allow their expertise to speak without prejudice, they would see just how much enrichment this very expertise could gain from Spiritual Science. Spiritual Science does not fear the criticism of experts. Spiritual Science is not amateurish dilettantism. Spiritual Science seeks to draw upon deeper scientific foundations than those of ordinary, modern, external science. Spiritual Science knows that it is laypeople’s common sense—not expertise—that it might perhaps fear, were it not for the fact that it has long since outgrown such fear for reasons that are easy to understand. Spiritual Science has no reason to shy away from or fear expertise or impartiality. It knows that the more expertly one examines its findings, the more one will respond to them in a positive sense. Precisely with regard to what one might envision as the perspective of an intuitive medicine, one is reminded of an old saying, the universal value of which I do not wish to examine today, but which, in a certain limited sense, must certainly apply to that way of thinking that willingly seeks to find its application in the art of treating the sick. The sages of old have said: Like is recognized only by like. To heal a human being, one must first recognize them. What is active in science today with regard to the human being is not the whole human being; therefore, it is not the human being; therefore, it is not something like the human being. When the whole human being is called upon to recognize the human being, then like—the human being—will be recognized by like—the human being. And then a science of human understanding and an art of treating human beings will emerge which, on the one hand, will preserve health in social life to the greatest extent possible, and which, on the other hand, will treat illness in the only way it can be treated—by combining all genuine healing factors.