The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Gentlemen, I said last time that we have several matters still to discuss. I would like to consider them today. Maybe during the Christmas holidays you could confer among yourselves and decide what should be brought up during the next lecture hour.

The human being has his senses for perceiving the world. We have examined the eye and the ear, considered the sense of touch, which is spread out over the whole organism, and have discussed the senses of taste and smell. All these senses are significant only for man's becoming acquainted with his surroundings and, as I have already explained, for enabling him to shape his body. But man does not live by virtue of the senses; he lives through the process of breathing. If you ask why he is an erect being, why his nose is in the middle of his face, for example, you have to answer that it is because of his senses. But if you look for the reason why he is alive, you have to consider his breathing, because the breath is related to all aspects of life. In one respect, human beings breathe just as the higher animals do, although many animals do breathe differently. A fish, for instance, breathes while swimming and living under water.

If we now look at human breathing we have first to consider the process of inhalation. The breathing process is initially one of inhalation. From the air around us we inhale the oxygen that is required for our existence. This then permeates our whole body, in which carbon in minute particles is deposited; or rather, in which it swims or floats. The carbon that we contain in our bodies is also found elsewhere in nature. As a matter of fact, carbon exists in a great many forms. For instance, carbon is found in coal and in every plant, which consists of carbon, mixed with water and so on, but carbon is the main component of the plant. The graphite in a pencil contains carbon, and the diamond, which is a valuable gem, is also carbon. The diamond is transparent carbon; hard coal is opaque carbon. It is rather interesting that something like coal exists in nature. It is certainly not elegant or attractive, yet is of the same substance as a valuable gem, which, depending on its size, for example, is fit for a crown. Coal and diamonds have the same substance in different forms. We, too, have in ourselves carbon of various forms.

When we breathe in oxygen it spreads out everywhere in our body and combines with the carbon. When oxygen combines with solid coal, a new gas, carbon dioxide, arises. This is a combination of oxygen and carbon, and it is this gas that we then exhale. Our life involves incorporating our body into the rest of the world by inhaling oxygen and exhaling carbon dioxide.

If we inhaled only pure oxygen, however, we would have to contain an immense amount of carbon, and the carbon dioxide would have to remain in us. Yes, we would be forever expanding, finally becoming gigantic, as big as the earth itself. Then we could always be inhaling. But we do not possess that much carbon; it must be constantly renewed. We could not survive if we only inhaled. We have to exhale to acquire carbon anew, and the carbon dioxide we produce is lethal. Indeed, if oxygen is life for us, carbon dioxide is death. If this room were now filled with carbon dioxide, we would all perish. Our life alternates between the life-giving air of inhalation and the deadly air of exhalation. Life and death are constantly within us, and it is interesting to see how they initially enter into the human being.

To comprehend this you must realize that bacteria and bacilli—microscopically small living beings—exist everywhere in nature. Whenever we move, multitudes of these little bacteria fly about us in the air. Countless tiny living beings exist within the muscles of animals. As I have already mentioned, they can rapidly increase in numbers. No sooner does one appear—particularly one of the smallest kind—then the next moment there are millions. The infectious diseases are based on their capacity for tremendous multiplication. These minute beings do not actually cause the illness, but a feeling of well-being is engendered in them when something is ailing in us. Like the plant in manure, these little beings feel well in the stricken organs of our body and like to remain there. Anyone who claims that they themselves cause disease is just as clever as one who states that rain comes from croaking frogs. Frogs croak when a rain shower comes because they feel it and stay in water that is stimulated by what is active in the rain, but they certainly do not cause the rain. Likewise, bacilli do not bring about a disease like the flu; they only appear whenever the flu appears, just as frogs mysteriously emerge whenever it rains.

One must not say, however, that research with bacilli has no use. It is useful to know that man is exposed to a certain illness, just as one knows that frogs croak when it rains. One cannot pour the baby out with the bathwater and say that it is unnecessary to examine the bacilli, yet one must realize that they do not cause the illness. One never gives a proper explanation by merely stating that for cholera there are these bacilli, for flu there exist these other bacilli, and so on. That is only a lazy way out for people who do not want to examine the actual causes of illnesses.

Now, if you take these infinitesimally small living creatures away from their habitat, they cannot continue to live. For example, cholera bacilli taken out of the human intestines die. This bacillus can survive only in the intestines of men or of animals like rats. All these microscopic creatures can live only in specific environments. Why? That these tiny beings need a specific environment is an important factor. You see, if you consider the cholera bacillus at the moment when it is within the human intestines, the force of gravity does not have as strong an effect on it as when it is outside. The force of gravity immediately ruins it when it is out of its element. Man, too, was initially a tiny living being just like these countless little creatures. As an egg, an ovum, the human being also was such a microscopic living being, such a miniature living creature. With this, gentlemen, we come to an important chapter.

Compare a cholera bacillus, which can exist only in the human intestines, with the human being. All these bacilli need to live in a place where they are protected from the earth. What does this imply? It means that an effect other than that of the earth influences them. The moonlight that shines sometimes in one way, sometimes in another has its effects on the earth, and it is indeed so that the moon influences all these living creatures. It can be seen that these creatures must be protected from the earth so that they can surrender themselves to the cosmos, especially to the influence of the moon. Now, in its earliest stage the human egg also surrenders to the moon's influence. It gives itself up to the moon just before fertilization. Just as the cholera bacillus exists in the intestines, so this tiny human egg exists in the female and is initially protected there. The female organism is so constituted, however, that the human egg is protected only in the beginning. The moment it passes too far out of the body it becomes vulnerable; then the earth begins to affect it.

Women discharge such human eggs every four weeks. At first they are given up to the moon's influence for a short time and are protected. But when the female organism dispatches the human egg during the course of the monthly period, it comes under the influence of the earth and is destroyed.

The human organization is so marvellously arranged that it represents an opposite to the bacilli. Cholera bacilli, for example, remain in the intestines and are careful not to venture too far out. Left to their own devices, they remain where they can be protected from the earth's influence. The human egg also is initially protected from the earth's influence in the mother's body, but then it moves outward because of the blood circulation of the mother, and comes under the influence of the earth's gravity. With the occurrence of the monthly period, which is connected with the moon's course and influence, an ovum is destroyed; the human ovum is really destroyed. It is not an actual human egg yet, however, for it has not been protected from destruction through fertilization.

What really happens through fertilization? If left only to the earth's influence, this human egg would perish. Through fertilization it is enfolded in a delicate, etheric substance and is protected from the earth. It is thus able to mature in the mother's body. Fertilization signifies the protection of the human egg from destruction by the earth's forces. What is destroyed in the infertile egg passes over into the environment; it does not just disappear. It dissolves in the totality of the earth's environment. Eggs that cannot be utilized for the earth disseminate in its atmosphere. This is a continual process.

We can now look at something that people rarely consider. Let us draw our attention to the herrings in the ocean. They lay millions upon millions of eggs, but only a few are ever fertilized. Those that are fertilized become protected from the influence of the earth. It is a little different in man's case, because he isn't a herring—at least not always [Play on words. In German, “Hering” is a very skinny person.]—but all these herring eggs that are not fertilized and are cast off in the ocean extricate themselves from the earth's influence by evaporation. If you consider the herrings and all the other fishes, all the other animals and also human beings, you can say to yourselves, “My attention is directed to something that continually arises from the earth into cosmic space.” Gentlemen, not only does water evaporate, but also such infertile eggs are always volatilized upward from the earth. Much more happens in cosmic space than materialistic science assumes.

If someone were sitting up there on Venus, for example, the vapours that arise and condense again as rain would hold little interest for him, but what I have just described to you, rising constantly into cosmic space, would be perceived up there as a greenish-yellow light. From this we may conclude that light emerges from the life of any given cosmic body. We will also be led to the realization that the sun, too, is not the physical body materialistic science pictures it to be but is rather the bearer of even greater, mightier life. It is as I have explained earlier; something that radiates light must be fertilized, just as the sun must be fertilized in order to radiate light through life. So then we have this difference: When a human egg is not fertilized it goes out, it evaporates into cosmic space; when it is fertilized it remains for awhile on the earth.

What happens is like inhalation and exhalation. If I only exhaled, I would give my being up to cosmic space as does the infertile human egg. Consider how interesting it is that you exhale, and the air that you have exhaled contains your own carbon. It is a delicate process. Just imagine that today you have a tiny bit of carbon in your big toe. You inhale, and oxygen spreads out. The small amount of carbon that today is in your big toe combines with the oxygen, and tomorrow this little particle of carbon is somewhere out there in the atmosphere as carbon dioxide. That is really what happens. During his lifetime man constantly has in himself the same substance that the human egg contains when it is fertilized. If we only exhaled and never inhaled we would always be dying; we would continually be dissolving into the atmosphere. By inhaling we guard ourselves against death. Every time we inhale we protect ourselves from death.

The child that is still maturing in the mother's womb has come into being from the fertilized human egg and is protected from disintegration. The child takes its first breath only at the moment of birth when it comes into the world. Before that it must be supplied with oxygen from the mother's body. But now with birth something quite significant happens. At birth man for the first time receives from the outer world the capability to live. After all, man cannot live without oxygen. Although in the mother's womb he exists without oxygen from the outer air, he does get it from the body of the mother.

Thus, one can say that when man emerges from his mother's body and comes into the world, he actually changes his whole life process. Something radically different happens to it. He now receives oxygen from outside, whereas before he was able to assimilate it in the body of his mother. Just ask yourselves if there is a machine anywhere in the world that can supply itself with heat first in one way and then in another? For nine or ten months man lives in the body of his mother before he appears in the external world. In the womb he is supplied with what life gives him in a completely different manner from the way he does after he has taken his first breath.

Let us examine something else connected with this. Imagine that your sleep has been somewhat disturbed. You are awakened from a fitful sleep by a quite frightening dream in which you perhaps experience that you came home to a locked house and cannot get in. Someone in the house is expecting you so you struggle to unlock the door. You may have experienced something like this. In dreams we do indeed experience such conditions of anxiety.

Now, if you examine what actually happens when the human being has such nightmares, you always discover that something is amiss with the breathing. You can even experimentally produce such nightmares. If you take a handkerchief and plug up your mouth or cover your nose, you will dream the nicest nightmares as nightmares go because you cannot inhale properly.

It is rather strange that our having such conditions of anxiety depends simply on inhalation and exhalation, in other words, on oxygen and carbon. We can deduce from this that we live in the air with our soul element. We do not live in our muscles or in our bones with our soul element but rather in the air. It is really the case that our soul moves along with the air during inhalation and exhalation. Thus, we can say that the soul element seeks out the air in which it floats after the child has taken its first breath. Earlier, it had absorbed oxygen in a completely different way.

Where does the human being get oxygen prior to birth? In the prenatal state an actual breathing process does not yet exist. There is no breathing while the human being is in the mother's womb; everything takes place through the circulation. Various vessels that are torn away at birth pass into the embryo from the mother's body, and with the blood and fluids oxygen also passes into the embryo. With birth man carries his basic life principle out of the watery element into the air. When he is born he transposes the life principle from the fluid element in which it existed before birth out into the air.

From this you can conclude that before conception the human being is first an entity that, like the bacilli, is not fit for the earth at all. Initially he is a being alien to the earth. Later on, he is shielded from the earth's forces and can develop in the mother's body, but when he is actually born and emerges from the surroundings of the maternal womb, he is exposed to the forces of the earth. Then he becomes capable of life only by becoming accustomed to an activity that enables him to live in the air. Throughout his earthly life man protects himself against the forces of the earth by living not with the earth at all but by living with the air.

Just imagine how hard it would be if you had to live with the earth! A man who steps on a scale finds that he weighs a certain amount—a thin one less, a fat one more. Now imagine that you had to grab yourself by the hair and carry your whole body all the time, constantly carry your own weight. Wouldn't that be an exhausting chore! Yet, although you do indeed carry it around with you, you do not feel this weight at all, nor are you aware of it. Why? Your breathing protects you from the heaviness of the earth. In fact, with your soul you do not live in the body at all but rather in the breathing process.

You can now easily comprehend why materialistic science does not find the soul. Materialistic science looks for the soul in the body, which is heavy. In its research it dissects a dead body that no longer breathes. Well, science cannot discover the soul there, because the soul is not to be found in such a body. Materialistic science could find the soul only if our constitution were such that in walking around everywhere we would have to carry our own bodies, sweating profusely

from the effort. Then it would make sense to seek for the soul with materialistic means. But the way things really stand, it makes no sense at all. We sweat for other reasons. When we emerge from the maternal womb, we do not live within our solid substances. As it is, we are only ten percent solid substance. Nor do we live in our fluid element, to which we bestow life. With our soul we actually live in our breathing.

Gentlemen, please follow me now in a train of thought that belongs to the most significant matters of the present time. Let us picture to ourselves a human fetus. Through birth it emerges into the outside world and becomes a full-fledged human being who now inhales air with his lungs and exhales again through his nose. It should be quite self-evident to you that when a person is born, he actually lives with his soul in the breathing process. As long as he exists in the mother's womb, he lives in a watery element. In a sense, he emerges from the water into the air when he is born. As earthly man you can live only in the air, not in water. But before birth you lived in water, and up until the third week you were even shaped like a little fish to enable you to live there. You lived in water up to the time of birth, but the earth does not allow you to live in that element. What does it signify that before birth you lived in water? It means that your life cannot derive from the earth at all, that it must originate from beyond the earth because the earth does not permit you to live. We must lift ourselves up from the earth into the air to live.

Because we have lived in water up to the moment of birth, we may conclude that our life is not bestowed by the earth. Our life of soul is not given us by the earth. It is impossible for the earth to bestow this life of the soul on you. Hence we may understand that it comes from beyond the earth. When we comprehend how life is actually contained in the breathing process, and how life already exists in the embryo but in a fluid element, we immediately realize that this life has descended from a spiritual world into the mother's ovum.

People will frequently call such statements unscientific. Nevertheless, we can study a lot of science and reach the conclusion that what the illustrious scientists do in their science is much less logical than what I have just told you. What I have now told you is absolutely logical. Unfortunately, things are such in our age that children are already drilled in school to turn a deaf ear to something like this; or if they happen to hear it, they will say at most, “He's crazy. We've learned that everything grows out of the human egg.” Well, it is just as ridiculous as learning that the human head grows from a head of cabbage. A human head can grow from a cabbage no more than the human element, the whole human activity during life, can be derived from the human egg. But children are already taught these completely nonsensical things in school.

I have already given you an example of this. Even the smallest children are told that once the earth, along with the whole planetary system, was one huge primeval nebula. Of course, the nebula does nothing when it is still, and so it is made to rotate. It starts to revolve quickly, and as it turns it becomes thinner and thinner. Eventually individual bodies split off, and a round one remains in the middle. The children are shown with a demonstration how this can be imitated. The teacher takes a piece of cardboard, sticks a needle through it, and puts a small drop of oil into a glass of water. He now turns the piece of cardboard and the oil drop, which floats on top of the water, begins to move. It starts to rotate, and tiny oil drops split off. A large drop of oil remains in the middle. This is a little planetary system with its sun. You see, children—so he says—we can do it on a small scale. So it is quite plausible that there once existed a nebula that revolved, and from this nebula celestial bodies gradually split off, leaving the large star remaining the middle.

But now, gentlemen, what is the most important factor in this experiment? Why does the drop of oil rotate in the glass of water? Because the teacher turns the piece of cardboard. Likewise, a great cosmic teacher had to sit somewhere out there in the universe to turn things around, spinning off celestial bodies! Gentlemen, when from the beginning someone teaches children such things, they become “clever” as adults. When someone wants to be logical and expresses doubt, they call him a dreamer because they know how the world began!

You see, such thoughts contain absolutely no reality. This rotating, primeval nebula thought up by Kant and Laplace has no reality at all; it is really quite foolish. To postulate such rotating nebulas is really rather stupid. The only grounds for it are the supposedly spiral nebulas observed through telescopes. Out in the wide cosmic spaces there are indeed such spiral nebulas; that is correct. But if by looking out there with a telescope and seeing these spiral nebula, a man should say, “Well, yes, our whole solar system was once such a nebula too,” then he is about as clever as one who takes a swarm of insects in the distance for a dust cloud. This can happen, but the swarm of gnats is alive while the dust cloud is lifeless. The spiral nebula out in space is alive; it has life within it. Likewise, the whole solar system had its own life and spirituality in earlier times, and this spirituality continues to work today.

When the human egg is shielded in the body of the mother by fertilization, it can unite with the human spirit. When we gradually grow old, the heaviness slowly makes itself felt by the fact that our substances are seized by the earth's gravity. Suppose a person's digestion is amiss and, as a result, the life forces do not properly pass through it. Then all kinds of tiny solid particles form in the muscles. They become filled up with these small solid bodies, which are minute uric acid stones, and then we have gout. We begin to be conscious of heaviness, of gravity.

When we are healthy and oxygen invigorates us through our breathing, such uric acid deposits are not formed, and we do not become afflicted with gout. Gout occurs only if oxygen does not pass through our body in a truly invigorating manner and does not assimilate carbon correctly. If oxygen does not pass through our organism in the right way, carbon will cause all kinds of problems; then there will be present everywhere such minute particles in our blood vessels. We feel that as an effect of the earth in moving around. In fact, we have to be shielded from the earth. We remain alive only because we are constantly protected from the earth and its influences by the breathing process. The earth is not damaging for us only because we are constantly being shielded from it. We would always be sick if we were always exposed to the earth.

You see, in the middle of the nineteenth century, when natural science had its greatest materialistic successes, people were completely stunned by its accomplishments and scientists wanted to explain everything by way of what happens on the earth. These scientists were extremely clever, and they liberated man from much that had encumbered him. Nothing is to be said against them; they can even be praised but they were utterly stupefied by scientific progress and tried to explain the whole human being in such a way as if only the earth had an influence on him. They did not realize that when the earth's influences begin to take effect on man, he first becomes nervous and then becomes ill in some way. He is well only by virtue of being constantly shielded from earthly influences.

Eventually, however, man is overcome by these earthly influences. How do they make themselves felt? The earthly influences assert themselves because man gradually loses the art of breathing. When he cannot breathe properly anymore, he returns to his condition before conception. He dissolves into the cosmic ether and returns to the world from which he came. With his last breath, man sinks back into the world from which he emerged. When we correctly understand breathing, we also comprehend birth and death. But nowhere in modern science do we find the right understanding of breathing.

In sum, man first learns to live with the world through the female ovum, then learns to exist independently on the earth for a certain length of time by virtue of the male fertilization, and finally returns to the condition where he again can live on his own outside the earth. Gradually one learns to comprehend birth and death, and only then can one begin to have the right concept of what man is regarding his soul, of what is not born and does not die but comes from without, unites itself with the ovum in the mother, and eventually returns to the spiritual world.

The situation today is such that we must comprehend the immortal soul element, which is not subject to birth and death. This applies especially to those who are active in science. This, indeed, is necessary for mankind today. For hundreds and thousands of years, men have had a faith in immortality that they cannot possibly retain today because they are told all kinds of things that actually are nothing and fall apart in the face of science. Everything that a man is asked to believe today must also be a matter of knowledge. We must learn to comprehend the spiritual out of science itself, the way we have done here in these lectures. That is the task of the Goetheanum and of anthroposophy in general: to correctly understand the spiritual out of natural science.

You see, it is difficult to get people somehow to comprehend something new. It is Christmastime now, and people could say to themselves, “Well, we must find a new way to understand how the spirit lives in the human race.” If people would stop to think how the spirit lives in mankind, and if they would try to arrive at this understanding through real knowledge, we would find everything renewed. We could even celebrate Christmas anew, because we would observe this holiday in a manner appropriate for the modern age. Instead, on one hand, people continue to observe only what is dead in science and, on the other, they perpetuate the old traditions to which they can no longer attach any meaning. I would like to know what meaning those people who exchange gifts can still see in Christmas. None at all! They do it merely from an old custom. Side by side with this, a science is taught that is everywhere filled with contradictions. Nowhere does anyone wish to consider the fact that science presents something that can lead to the realization of the spiritual.

Today, one can say that if Christianity is to have any meaning at all, one must once again embark on attaining a real knowledge of the spirit. This is the only thing possible; it is not enough just to perpetuate the old. For what does it imply to read the Bible to people on festive occasions, or even to children in school, if along with this one tells the child that there was once a primeval nebula that rotated? The head and the heart come completely to oppose one another. Then man forgets how to be a human being on the earth because he no longer even knows himself.

Anyone is a fool who thinks that as human beings on the earth we consist only of what is heavy, of the body that is put on the scale and weighed. This part we do not need at all. It is nonsense to think that we consist of these material substances that can be weighed. In reality, we do not become aware of the body at all, because we shield ourselves from it in order to stay well. The curing of illness consists in expelling the earthly influences that are affecting the sick person. All healing is actually based on removing the human being from the earth's influence. If we cannot remove man from the earth and its influences, we cannot cure him. He then lies down in bed, allows himself to be supported by the bed and gives himself up to weight. When one lies down one does not carry one's own self.

So we have the old customs on one hand and, on the other, a science that does not enlighten man as to what he really is as a human being. Nothing positive can come from all this. It is true that the World War, with all the consequences that still afflict us today, would not have occurred if human beings had known something of the inhumanity beforehand. Even now, they do not want to know. Even now, they still want to get together at congresses without any new thoughts and just repeat the same old things. Nowhere are they able to conceive new thoughts. What at first existed in mankind as confused ideas became a habit and then became our social order today. We are not going to get anywhere in the world again until from within we really feel what in fact the human being is.

This is really what those who understand the aims of anthroposophy conceive of as Christmas. Christmas should remind us that once again a science of the spirit must be born. Anthroposophy is the best spiritual being that can be born. Mankind is much in need of a Christmas festival. Otherwise, it does away with the living Christ and retains only the cross of Christ. Ordinary science is only the cross, but once again we must arrive at what is living. We must strive for that.

Well, gentlemen, that is what I wanted to mention on this particular day in addition to the other things. With this, I wish you all pleasant holidays!

Question: For many years I have suffered from hayfever. Now I have heard that it must be treated early in the year. If injections are administered as early as January or February before a person begins to suffer, they are supposed to be more effective. Should I go along with this remedy?

Dr. Steiner: What you have said is correct, but there is one small catch. You see, the remedy that is in use here is meant to be applied prophylactically; that is, it is meant to work ahead of time. In fact, it should be used weeks before the symptoms of hayfever arise. The problem, however, is that patients come in only when they are already afflicted with the malady. Just today we received an interesting letter about another hayfever remedy. The inventor of this other remedy writes that his medication brings only a little relief to individual hayfever attacks. He believes that our remedy can permanently cure hayfever, especially if it is taken twice at wide intervals. Naturally, we would much prefer patients to be treated in January or February rather than in May or June. Understandably, however, people generally see a doctor only after an illness has been contracted.

Yet, our hayfever remedy works in such a way that if given to the patient even during the external appearance of the illness, which is only the final result of an inner affliction, it protects him from a renewed attack. It is particularly effective if applied again a year later. After that, the application need not always be repeated. Even though the illness affects only one organ, this remedy treats its basis in the whole bodily organization. To explain this, I would like to go into more detail concerning the causes of internal illnesses and how they arise in the first place.

Of course, it is quite simple to comprehend why one becomes indisposed if one breaks a leg or sustains a concussion due to a fall. In these cases the injury is external and the cause easily understood; the cause is externally visible. In the case of internal illnesses, however, one usually does not really consider where they come from and how they suddenly assert themselves. This pertains to another question raised earlier of why one may become infected when in contact with certain people. An external cause also seems to be present here.

Ordinary science offers a simple explanation for this. Bacilli are transmitted from an ill person who has influenza, for example, and then these are inhaled and bring about the disease in another. It is like someone injuring a man by hitting him with a mattock. In this case the injury is caused by a patient bombarding another person with a multitude of bacilli. Matters are not at all that simple, however; they are much more complicated. You will understand this when you realize that in everyday life a man constantly becomes a bit indisposed and then must cure himself. The point is that all of us are really a bit sick when thirsty or hungry, and we cure ourselves by drinking and eating. Hunger is the beginning of an illness, and if it is allowed to continue we can die from it. After all, we can die of starvation and even sooner of thirst. So you see that even in our everyday lives we bear something like the beginning of a disease. Every act of drinking or eating is in truth an act of healing.

We must make clear to ourselves now what in fact happens when we become hungry or thirsty. You see, our body is inwardly always active. Through the intake of food, the body receives nutrients. External substances are absorbed through the mouth and the intestinal passages into some part of the body. Now, you must understand that the human organization immediately rebels against these nutritional substances; it does not tolerate them in their original forms and destroys them. Food substances must actually be disintegrated. In fact, they are annihilated, and this begins in the mouth. The reason for this is that there is continuous, never-ceasing activity in our body. This activity must be observed in the same way as fingers or hands are. Ordinary science simply records how a piece of bread is eaten, dissolved in the mouth, and then distributed in the body, but we must also take into consideration that the human body is continually active. Even if nothing is put into it, if nothing goes into the body for five hours, say, still its activity does not cease. You may even be like an empty sack, but things have not quieted within. You remain in constant inward activity, and things are still bustling around. Only when this internal activity can become occupied with something is it content. That is especially the case after a meal when it can dissolve and disintegrate the food substances; then it is content.

This internal activity that we possess is quite different from man in general, for the human being can become lazy. The internal activity is never lazy, it never ceases. If I don't eat anything, it is as if I had an empty flour sack in which there is activity even if I avoid all tangible substance. This activity—for reasons that I shall tell you later on—is identified in spiritual science as the astral body. It is never lazy, and if it can stay active destroying and dissolving the food substances, it is filled with inward comfort; it then has a feeling of inner well-being. But if I take in no food substances, then the astral body is not satisfied, and this dissatisfaction is expressed as hunger. Hunger is not something at rest within us; it is an activity, a soul-spiritual activity that cannot be stilled. We can truly say that this inner activity is in love with the food substances, and if it does not receive them it is just as dissatisfied as any jilted lover. This dissatisfaction is the hunger, and it is by all means something spiritual.

So the activity that is executed internally consists of disintegrating food substances. What is useful is transmitted into the blood vessels, and the rest is eliminated through urine or feces. This is the healthy, normal and regular activity of the human being in which the astral body works properly to dissolve the food substances. It absorbs into the body what is useful and discharges what is not.

We must assume, gentlemen, that this activity of man is no ordinary activity; rather, it contains something immensely wise. Now, dissolved and transformed food substances are constantly being transmitted through blood vessels to the inner organs, and the nourishment that goes into the lungs is completely different from what goes to the spleen. The astral body is much smarter than the human being. Man can only stuff the provisions into his mouth, but the astral body can distinguish them. It is like sorting two substances, throwing one in one direction to be used there and the other in another direction. This is what the astral body accomplishes. It selects certain substances to dispatch to the lungs, spleen, larynx and other organs. A wise distribution is at work within. The astral body is immensely wise, much wiser than we. The most educated person today would not know how to send the proper substances into the lungs, larynx or spleen; he would not even know what to say about it. But internally man can do this through his astral body.

The astral body, however, can become stupid—not as stupid as the human being can become, but stupid in comparison to its own cleverness. Let us assume that it thus becomes stupid. Man is born with a certain predisposition and is inwardly endowed with certain forces. The activity that the astral body develops for food substances occurs even if somebody sits down all day, immobile like an Oriental idol. His astral body still remains active, but that is not enough. We must also do something externally, and if we have no work to do we must go for a stroll; the astral body demands that we at least walk around. This differs with each individual. One person needs more physical activity, another less.

Let us suppose now that someone has certain predispositions from birth that make him into a sedentary person. It pleases his stupid head—or we could say his stupid ego—to sit around a lot. Now, if he is predisposed to sit around, but the astral body is predisposed to walk about, then his astral body will become stupid. This will also happen if somebody overexerts himself walking. In both cases the astral body will become stupid and will no longer accomplish things correctly. It will no longer properly sort out the food substances and transmit them to the appropriate organs; it will do all this clumsily instead. The astral body becomes too disorganized to send the right substances to the heart or larynx. Substances improperly transmitted to the heart, for example, will remain somewhere else in the body. They are not put in the organ where they belong but, since they are basically useful, neither are they eliminated with the feces. Instead, they are deposited somewhere else in the body. But a man cannot tolerate having something deposited in his body that is not part of its proper activity; he cannot stand that.

So what happens with these improper deposits due to the malfunctioning astral body? What happens to us on account of that? Well, suppose we have in our body certain deposits that should have been directed to the larynx. Because someone's astral body does not function properly, “larynx refuse” is secreted everywhere in his body. The first thing that happens is that his larynx becomes weak. The organ does not receive sufficient sustenance, and thus the person suffers from a weakened larynx. But apart from that, his body contains larynx refuse, which is dispersed everywhere. As I have already told you, the human body is ninety percent water, and the refuse dissolves in this whole fluid organization. The pure, animated fluid that a man requires within him is now polluted. This is what happens so often within ourselves. Deposits meant for certain parts of the body dissolve in our fluid organization, contaminating it.

Say that the refuse of the larynx is dissolved in us and comes into contact with the stomach. It cannot cause damage there, because the stomach has what it needs and was not deprived of anything. But the bodily fluids flow everywhere in the human organism and penetrate into the area of the larynx, which is already weakened. It receives this polluted fluid, this water in which the larynx refuse is dissolved, and specifically from this the organ becomes diseased. The larynx refuse does not affect the other organs, but it does cause the larynx to become afflicted.

Let us now consider a simple phenomenon. A sensitive person finds it pleasant to listen to another person speak beautifully. But if someone crows like a rooster or grunts like a pig, he will not find this so pleasant to hear, even if he understands what is being said. It is not at all pleasant to listen to a person crowing or grunting. Listening to someone who is hoarse is a particularly uncomfortable and constricting experience. Why do we experience such sensations while listening to another? It is based on the fact that in reality we always inaudibly repeat whatever the other is saying. Listening consists not only in hearing but also in speaking faintly. We not only hear what another says but also imitate it with our speech organs. We always imitate everything that someone else does.

Now imagine that you are near a person who is sick with flu, and though you may not be listening to him and inwardly imitating his speech, you feel sorry for him. This makes you quite susceptible and sensitive to him. The flu patient's fluid organization contains many dissolved substances, which contaminate the pure, living fluid I told you about and make it instead unhealthy for him. I even describe the nature of such a contaminated fluid organization.

Imagine that you have a piece of ground where you plant various things. Not everything thrives in every kind of earth, but suppose you want to plant onions and garlic in this particular spot. Should the earth be unsuitable, the onions would be small and the garlic buds still smaller, so you should also add to this soil something that contains sulphur and phosphorus. Then you would have the healthiest onions and garlic buds, and they would smell strong, too!

Now, when a man has influenza refuse within his body, the same substances are dissolved in his fluid organization that had to be added to the ground in order to produce the finest onion and garlic plants, and before long, the sick person begins to smell like these plants. Now, I associate with this, though I may not even be aware that I am sitting in this odour of onion or garlic, because it need not be strong. The odour exuded by a person who is sick with the flu causes the patient's head to feel dull, because a certain organ in the head, the “sensorium,” is not properly supplied with the substance it needs. As a result of having flu refuse within us, an organ in the mid-section of the head is not properly supplied. This odour is always like that of onions or garlic and can be detected by one with a sensitive nose. Just as we tune in on and imitate a shrill and rasping voice, so do we join in with what an ill person evaporates. As a consequence, our own astral body, our own activity, becomes disorganized. This disorder causes a chemical basis that in turn makes us contract the flu. It is like making soil suitable for onions and garlic. At first, then, the illness has nothing to do with bacteria but simply with the relation of one person to another.

If you want to plant predominantly onions and garlic in a garden, and you add to the earth substances containing phosphorus and sulphur, you can now wait and say, “Well, I've done my duty. I want to harvest onions and garlic, and so with some kind of organic fertilizer I have added sulphur and phosphorus to the garden.” But it would be foolish to think that this is all it would take to grow the onions. You would first have to plant the bulbs! Likewise, it would be foolish to maintain that in man's interior, bacteria are already growing in the environment that is being prepared.

They first have to be introduced into it. Just as the onion bulb thrives in soil rich in phosphorus and sulphur, so do the bacilli thrive within a sulphuric environment in the body. Bacilli are not even necessary for one person to catch the flu from another. Instead, by imitating with my fluid organization what is happening in the patient's fluid organism, I myself produce a favourable environment for the bacilli; I myself acquire them. The sick person need not bombard me with them at all.

When we look at the whole matter, we must reply in quite a specific way to the question, “What is it that causes us to be stricken with a certain disease?” We become sick when something injures us, and even in the case of internal illnesses something is actually injuring us. The impure fluid, in which substances are dissolved that should have been digested, injures us; it injures us internally.

Now we can turn our attention to illnesses like hayfever. The incidence of hayfever depends much more on the time of year than on the pollen in the air. More than anything else, what makes a man susceptible to catching hayfever is the fact that his astral body is not properly excreting; it is not properly executing its activity that is directed more to the external surface. As a result, when spring approaches and everything begins to thrive in water, a person makes his whole fluid organization more sensitive and thus susceptible to this illness by dissolving certain substances in it. By dissolving various substances in this fluid organization, the fluids in a man's body always become a little diluted. The fluid organization in a man who has a tendency toward hayfever is always somewhat too large. The fluids are being pushed aside in all directions by what is dissolved in them. That is how a person becomes sensitive to everything that makes its appearance in spring, especially to pollen, those particles from plants that are now particularly irritating.

If the nose were not enclosed, hayfever could be induced by many other irritants. Pollen does enter the nose, however, and it cannot be well tolerated if one already has hayfever. Pollen does not cause hayfever but it aggravates it.

Our hayfever remedy is based on drawing the extended fluid organization in the body together again so that it becomes a bit cloudy and once again secretes what it had initially dissolved. It is really quite simple and based on nothing more than contracting the fluid organism to its normal size. It first becomes a little cloudy, and you have to watch that what is secreted from the fluidity is not later retained in the body. That is why it is beneficial for a person to perspire somewhat after having been inoculated with the remedy; it is good if he can move about and do something that induces perspiration right after the inoculation. The inoculation is always somewhat problematic when given to a person who is suffering from constipation, and the patient should first be asked if he is constipated. Otherwise, if the fluid organization is contracted, things accumulate too much and are not eliminated right away. This, of course, is not good. A person who is constipated should be given a laxative along with the inoculation.

Healing entails not only applying a medication but also adjusting life accordingly, so that the human body reacts in an appropriate manner to what has been given it. This naturally is of tremendous significance; otherwise, the person can be made even sicker. If you inoculate somebody with a remedy that is quite effective, even exceptionally good, but you do not see to it that the patient's digestion functions properly and that everything the remedy brings about is eliminated, you naturally drive him further into the illness.

With truly effective remedies it is important that the doctor know not only what medicine cures what disease but also what questions to ask the patient. The greatest medical art lies in asking the right questions and in being familiar with the patient. This is extremely important. Yet it is strange, for example, that we meet doctors who frequently have not even asked the patient his age, though this is significant. While he may use the same remedies, a doctor can treat a fifty-year old in a manner completely different from the way he treats one who is forty, for example. They should not be so schematic as to say, “This medication is right for this illness.” For instance, it makes a great difference if you want to cure someone who is constantly afflicted with diarrhoea or someone who has chronic constipation. Such remedies could be tested, and here experiments with animals would be much less objectionable than they are in other areas. Regarding constipation or diarrhoea, you can easily learn how some remedy reacts in the general physical organism that men have in common with the animals by giving the same medicine to both a dog and a cat. The dog regularly suffers from constipation, and the cat from diarrhoea. You can acquire a wonderful knowledge by observing the degree of difference in the medication's effect in the dog or the cat. Scientific knowledge really is not attained by university training in how to do this or that with certain instruments. True science results, rather, when common sense is aroused a little; then people know how they must conduct their experiments.

In sum, it is of prime importance to realize that an illness has its basis in the whole human organization. The individual organ becomes afflicted because the activity of the astral body directs substances to it that have been precipitated from within. The development of certain inner diseases like influenza, hayfever and even typhoid fever becomes comprehensible when we understand how substances improperly deposited in our bodies are dispersed in our fluid organism.

We are not only a “material man” but also a “water man,” and, as I have already explained to you, we are also an “air man,” whose form changes every moment. One moment the air is outside, and the next it is within.

Just as the solid substances that we contain within our bodies as refuse dissolve in the water, so does that water itself constantly evaporate within us. Within the muscles of your little finger, for example, are minute evaporations of water. Water constantly evaporates throughout your whole body. Furthermore, what is evaporating in the fluid organism penetrates into what you inhale as oxygen, which is also a vapor or gas. When water on the ground evaporates, it rises up into the atmosphere, and when water constantly evaporates in delicate processes within the fluid man, it penetrates into the air that we inhale. We cannot tolerate solid substances being dispersed in the fluids, and neither can we tolerate fluids evaporating into the air organism.

Take the case of a person whose lungs have become afflicted because something has occurred like the process that I have just described. This person can become afflicted with a lung disease, which can be cured if it arose from the wrong substances being deposited in the water man. But let us assume that the lung's affliction is not pronounced enough to become apparent. After all, the human organs are sensitive. The condition does not reach the point where the lungs become so strongly afflicted that they are inflamed, but they do become a little indisposed. The person can tolerate this slight indisposition, but substances now enter into his fluid organism that really should penetrate the lungs. In this case, the fluids within the lungs have the wrong kinds of substances dissolved in them; and these substances evaporate, especially if the lungs are not completely well.

Thus, in the case of the quite obvious internal diseases, the water man receives something inappropriate from the solid substances, and in this case something inappropriate reaches the point of evaporation and mingles with the oxygen that is inhaled. The fact that water evaporates inappropriately and unites with oxygen damages the nervous system in particular, because the nerves require healthy oxygen, not oxygen that has evaporations in it from the contaminated fluid of the water man. Contaminated fluid evaporates into the lungs, and this fluid may be responsible for their slight indisposition. Something that should not evaporate does, and this is damaging to the nervous system. The person does not become radically ill, but he does become insane.

It can be said that internal physical illnesses are based on something in man that causes improper substances to be dispersed in his fluid organism. But so-called mental illnesses are in reality not mental at all, because the mind or spirit does not become ill. Mental illnesses are based on body fluids evaporating improperly into oxygen and thereby disturbing the nervous system. This can happen when some organ is so slightly impaired or indisposed that it cannot be detected externally. You see, then, that man must continually process substances correctly so that nothing inappropriate disperses in his fluids and that his fluids in turn do not improperly evaporate. But even in everyday life there is a process that causes improper evaporation of water, and this becomes noticeable when we are thirsty. We cure the thirst by drinking; we free our water, so to speak, from what is inappropriately evaporating within it and wash away what is incorrect.

So we can say that in hunger there is actually the tendency to physical illness, and in thirst there is the predisposition to mental illness. If a man does not properly nourish himself, he forms the basis for organic diseases, and if he does not quench his thirst rightly, he may bring about some form of mental illness. In some circumstances, the improper quenching of thirst is difficult to detect, especially if it occurs in infancy. At this stage one cannot clearly distinguish between assuaging thirst and hunger since both are satisfied by milk. Therefore, if through the mother's milk or that of a wet nurse something harmful comes into the organism, this can much later cause the fluid organism to evaporate incorrectly and thus lead to some mental disorder. Or let us say a person is wrongly inoculated. An ill-chosen inoculation with one or another cow lymph or diseased human lymph can afflict the organs that work upon the water, even though the water itself does not become directly diseased. As a result of an inappropriate inoculation, a person's evaporation processes may not function correctly, and later he may be disposed to some kind of mental illness.

You will have noticed, gentlemen, that nowadays a great many people become afflicted with dementia praecox, so-called “youthful insanity,” which extends, however, quite far beyond the years of youth. This illness, in which people begin mentally to deteriorate in their youth, originates in great part from the wrong kind of feeding during the earliest years of childhood. It is not enough merely to examine chemically the baby's milk; one must look into completely different aspects. Because people have ceased to pay attention to feeding in our age, this illness arises with such vehemence.

You will have realized from all this that it does not suffice simply to train doctors to know that a certain remedy is good for a certain illness. One must rather seek to make the totality of life healthier, and for that one must first discover all that is related to a healthy life. Anthroposophy can provide this understanding. It aims at being effective in the field of hygiene and seeks to comprehend correctly questions of health.

Questions are raised concerning pregnancy and the possible effects of outer events during pregnancy.

Dr. Steiner: Gentlemen, these are extremely important aspects of life. Generally, no significant influence can be exerted on the child during pregnancy except indirectly by way of the mother, since the child is connected with the mother, as I have said here already, by numerous delicate blood vessels. The unborn child receives everything it requires, including its nourishment, from its mother. Later, it acquires a completely different breathing process.

We can best consider the matters that you have brought up if we deal further with the general basis of human states of illness and health. In pregnancy, it is even more difficult than in the case of common hunger and thirst to say where the inclination toward illness begins and where it ends. Other things also enter into pregnancy that prove beyond doubt that the mother's condition of soul has an extraordinary influence on the developing child. You only have to observe what happens, for example, if the mother, especially in the early months of pregnancy, is badly frightened. As a rule, the child will be affected for its whole life. Naturally, you cannot say that a physical change occurs in the child but only that the mother suffers a fright. How can a mother's fright affect the child?

Modern science basically gives the most inadequate answers here, because it really knows nothing, or claims to know nothing, of what influences the human soul and spirit. We can best approach these difficult questions—and they are indeed complicated—if we focus on two phenomena of life that man experiences primarily in illness, that is, fever and shock. These are two opposite conditions that man undergoes, fever and shock.

What is fever? You know that man's normal body temperature is 98.6°. If it rises any higher, we say that he has a fever. The fever is visible outwardly through a person becoming hotter. What is shock? Shock is actually the opposite condition. Shock occurs when a person is incapable of developing sufficient warmth within. If you take an overdose of a poison such as henbane (Hyoscyamwus niger), for example, which is also used as a remedy, you risk the danger of going into shock. The reaction is that, through the shock, all the membranes in the abdomen of the mother, where the child must also be developing—therefore, the membranes of the intestines but also those of the organ in which the child rests during pregnancy, the so-called uterus, the womb, in other words, all the membranes through which a substance is introduced into the body—become slack. It is as if a sack were stretched too far, becoming worn out and unable to hold anything any longer. With the introduction of henbane, undigested food backs up, and the proper functioning of the abdomen, which I described recently, is disrupted. A large amount of food accumulates in a man's abdomen that he cannot assimilate.

In order to understand what is at work here, we must take a closer look at the human organism. What actually happens when the abdomen does not work properly? Although it is the abdomen that isn't working properly, you will find that something is actually wrong with the front portion of the brain. A very interesting relationship!

Consider the human being—the abdomen, the chest, the diaphragm, which is about here (Rudolf Steiner sketched on the blackboard). There we have abdomen, chest, and head. If something is out of order in the abdomen, then something is not functioning properly also in the front part of the brain. The two therefore belong together. In the human being they belong inwardly together, the forebrain and abdomen. We can also say that the heart with its arteries, as I have described them to you, is connected with the midbrain. Finally, the chest with the lungs and the breathing process is related to the back portion of the brain.

Every time something is amiss with the breathing, something is also wrong in the back part of the brain. Whenever a person has difficulty breathing and doesn't receive enough oxygen, one can observe that something is wrong with the back of the brain. When a person suffers from disorders of the heart, especially if the rhythm of the heart's activity is disrupted so that the pulse is irregular, then something is wrong in the midbrain. In a disorder of the abdomen, one always finds some irregularity in the forebrain. Everything is remarkably related in the human being.

You see, people often don't want to believe these things, because in the formation of the forehead they see the noblest aspect of the human being and the less noble in the abdomen. And if one speaks the truth about these things, such people find it unworthy of man. You will have realized from my lectures, however, that the digestive system is in turn related to the limb system in such a way that it represents a most significant aspect of the human being.

Once I knew a man who had quite an unusual forehead. A Greek forehead is different (sketching). In Greek statues we find foreheads that slope backward. This man actually had a pronounced bulge, and his forebrain was actually pushed out. I am convinced that this man, whose brain was pushed forward so much, possessed a particularly well-formed abdomen and never suffered from diarrhea or constipation, for example; he never suffered from stomach aches and the like. The man in question was, in fact, a person of unusual sensitivity, but this sensitivity depended on his always feeling inwardly comfortable. This indicates that his powerful, protruding forehead never permitted disorders of the abdomen. You can see from this that a man's forehead is related in a remarkable way to his abdomen.

If I give someone too large a dose of henbane, he goes into shock. What causes this shock? Something goes wrong with the forebrain, because everything possible collects in his abdomen. Oddly, however, when a person complains of a stomach ache, caused perhaps by mild constipation, I can give him henbane in highly diluted form, and he will become healthy. He gets a slight fever and becomes well.

Here you see a strange fact. If I give too much henbane to a perfectly healthy person, he goes into shock. He will suffer severe abdominal distress, his head will feel cold, his abdomen will swell, the intestines will slacken, and the abdominal functions will cease. What do you see from this? You see that I have introduced too much henbane into the stomach. The stomach should react with vastly increased digestive activity, because henbane is extremely difficult to digest. Being poisonous simply means that a substance is difficult to digest. The stomach therefore must become furiously active. The brain is not strong enough, the front part of the brain. These things thus are related in the human body. The brain is not strong enough to stimulate the stomach sufficiently; the brain becomes cold and the person goes into shock.

What happens now if I give a person a minute, diluted dose of henbane? In this case, the stomach has less to do, and the brain is strong enough to regulate this minor task. Through introducing a minute amount of henbane, which the brain can manage, I have stimulated the brain into working harder than before. If the brain can overcome it, it is like asking a person to do a job that he can manage; then, he does it well. If I ask him to do a job in one day that actually requires ten, he would be ruined. This is the case with the brain. It contains, as it were, the workman in charge of the abdomen. If I ask too little of the brain, the workman remains lazy; if he is stimulated through his activity, he does well; if I ask too much of the abdomen, however, he refuses to participate and the person goes into shock.

What is the cause of fever? Fever is actually the result of an over-activity of the brain, which penetrates the entire human being. Assume that a person suffers from a disorder in some organ, say the liver or the kidneys, or especially the lungs, in the way I discussed with you recently. The brain begins to rebel against it. If the lungs no longer function correctly, the back portion of the brain rebels and stimulates the front part into rebelling against this lung disease, and hence fever occurs.

This shows that man becomes warmer from his head downward and colder from below upward. This is very interesting. The human being actually is warmed downward from above. With fever we are concerned with our head. If there is an inflammation in the big toe, we produce the ensuing fever with the head. It is interesting that what lies farthest down is regulated by the foremost parts of the brain. Just as in the case of the dog, whose tail is regulated by his nose, so it is with the human being. If he struggles with a fever in his big toe, the activity that begets this fever lies entirely in the front of his brain. It is no slight to his dignity that, if man has an infection in his big toe, the fever originates entirely from the front, from a point above his nose. The human being thus always becomes warmer from above and colder from below.

This is related to why shock can be induced if excessively large doses of certain substances are administered to the human being but why a healing rise in temperature can be produced if we do not overtax the brain but stimulate its activity only with small doses. The activity of the brain, however, is stimulated all day not only by substances that we introduce into the brain; what we see and hear also stimulate it constantly. Also, when you eat, you not only fill your stomachs, but you taste your food as well. Taste is stimulated, as is the sense of smell, all of which stimulates the brain.

Consider a woman who is pregnant. The child is in the first period of the pregnancy, which entails a tremendous increase in the mother's abdominal activity. Except during pregnancy, such activity in the abdomen is never necessary; in men, it doesn't occur at all. The abdominal activity thus is increased in an unprecedented way. When abdominal activity is increased, the sensory nerves above all are stimulated, because the abdomen and the forebrain belong together.

What does it mean when a person is hungry? I have explained to you that here a certain activity that really should be continuous cannot be performed. When hungry, a person craves food, which means that at the same time he longs for the stimulation of his taste buds. He can alleviate this by eating.

When a woman is pregnant, however, and must provide in her abdomen something for the growing child, much is stimulated also in the brain, particularly in the sensory nerves, the nerves of taste and smell. Eating does not satisfy these nerves of taste and smell, because the food doesn't go directly to the child but to the stomach. An excess of activity is required. The abdomen must work overtime in a certain way, and so the need arises in the head for beyond-normal smells and tastes. The best care for the unborn child naturally requires an understanding of these matters.

Pregnant women thus often are not at all satisfied when they obtain what they momentarily crave; as soon as they have it, they crave another taste. Being also extremely moody, their taste is subject to abrupt change. One can appease them, however, by being kind to them and paying heed to what, in one's own opinion, is only a figment of their imagination. In the early months of pregnancy, women live in fantasies of tastes and smells. If you simply say to a pregnant woman, it is just your imagination, it is a real emotional slap to her. What is developing in her quite naturally due to the connection between the brain or head and the abdomen is repulsed. But if one cheers her up by being attentive, neither denying her wishes nor taking them literally, it is much easier to satisfy her. If, for example, one buys her something with vanilla flavor the second she craves it, by the time it is brought to her it may no longer be the right thing; she might say, “Yes, but now I want sauerkraut!” It is well that it should be so! You must realize that if something so extraordinary is to take place in her abdomen it is because the child's development must demand it, and the pregnant woman must therefore receive special consideration.

Indeed, this shows us a lot more. It shows us that a powerful influence is exerted on the child by the environment of soul and spirit in which the mother lives. With some insight, the following can be understood. There are children who are born with “water on the brain,” that is, with hydrocephalus. In most cases this can be traced back to the fact that the mother, who perhaps rightly sought stimulation in life, was bored stiff during the first months of pregnancy, particularly the first few weeks. Perhaps her husband frequently went out alone to the local pub and she, being left at home, was extremely bored. The result was that she lacked the energy required to influence the brain cells. Boredom makes her head empty; the empty head, in turn, imparts emptiness to the abdomen. It does not develop sufficient strength to hold the forces of the child's head together properly. The head swells up, becoming hydrocephalous. Other children are born with abnormally small heads, particularly the upper portion of the head, that is, with acrocephaly. Most of these cases are connected with the fact that during the first weeks of pregnancy the mother engaged in too much diversion and amused herself excessively. If such matters are observed properly, a relationship can always be noted between the child's development and the mother's mood of soul during the early weeks of pregnancy.

Naturally, much is accomplished with medicine, but regarding these questions we have as yet no real medicine today but only a kind of quackery, because the many relationships are not correctly discerned by a merely materialistic science. These relationships require individual observation in most instances, and during the embryonic life of the human being, and therefore during pregnancy, they can be observed particularly well. Consider the significantly increased abdominal activity during pregnancy; the abdomen must be terribly active. This, in turn, calls for the strongest possible activity of the forebrain. It is not surprising, therefore, that some mothers actually become a little crazy during the first stage of pregnancy. They become a little crazy, because the abdomen and the forebrain, which actually thinks, are closely related. One arrives at very remarkable and interesting results if one looks for the relationships between the abdomen and what humanity accomplishes spiritually. It is curious and funny that spiritual science must call attention to these matters, whereas materialistic science completely fails in this area.

It would be extraordinarily interesting, for example, to consider the following. You see, there were a great many philosophers in England—Hobbes, Bacon, Locke, Hume. These philosophers, even including John Stuart Mill, led essentially to the great rise of materialism. These philosophers all had such heavy thoughts that they could not penetrate the spiritual with their thoughts. They clung to matter with their thoughts. It would be extraordinarily interesting to examine the digestions of all these philosophers, these many philosophers. I am convinced they all suffered from constipation! Starting with Hobbes in the seventeenth century, and proceeding all the way into the nineteenth, this whole philosophy that brought us materialism was actually caused by the constipation of individual philosophers! This materialism could have been prevented—what I say now is not in earnest, I only wish to make a joke!—if one had given Hobbes, Bacon, Locke, and the others regular laxatives in their youth. Then all this materialism most likely would not have arisen.

It is indeed odd, you see, that something that people frequently call materialistic must be pointed out by spiritual science. But the reason for this is that when the human being is really observed, the spirit is revealed where others see only matter. Anthroposophy does not assume that the abdomen is only a chemical factory. I once told you that the liver is a wondrous organ, that the kidney with its functions is also a marvelous organ. Only by comprehending these organs will one find the spirit everywhere. If you stop finding the spirit in some area, if you think that digestion is a process that is too materialistic to be studied in a spiritual way, you then become a materialist. Indeed, materialism came into being through spiritual arrogance. I have told you this before, though it sounds remarkable: when the ancient Jews of the Old Testament had bad thoughts during the night, they did not blame the bad, unhealthy thoughts on their heads but on their kidneys. When they said, “This night God has affected my kidneys,” they were more correct than today's medicine. The ancient Jews also said that God reveals Himself to man not through man's head but directly through the activity of his kidneys and generally through his abdominal activity.

Considering this viewpoint, it is most interesting, though I don't know if you gentlemen have seen it, to watch an Orthodox Jew pray. When a devout Orthodox Jew prays, he does not take his phylactery out of a pocket that he wears over his heart or that hangs over his head. He wears his phylactery over his abdomen and prays with it in this position. People today naturally no longer know what the relationship is here, but those who long ago gave the ancient Jews their commandments were aware of the relationship. In western regions of Europe, people don't have much opportunity anymore to see this, but in eastern European regions it makes quite a special impression to observe how the old Jews pray. When they prepare for prayer, they take the phylactery out of the slit in their trousers; it then hangs around them and they pray.

This knowledge that humanity once possessed by means of various dreamlike, ancient clairvoyant forces has been lost, and humanity today is not advanced enough to rediscover the spirit in all matter. You can comprehend nothing if you simply take your ordinary thoughts into a laboratory and mechanically execute experiments, and so on. You are not thinking at all while doing this. You must experiment in such a way that something of the spirit emerges everywhere; for that to happen, your experiments must be arranged accordingly. And so one can say that it is funny that anthroposophy, the science of the spirit, has to point out how the human brain, the so-called noblest part, is connected with the lower abdomen, but it is simply so. Only a true science leads to these facts. Similarly, any number of things can cause a disorder of the heart, for example. It can come through an internal irregularity, but in most cases an irregular activity of the heart can be traced to some disorder in the midbrain, where the feelings are particularly based (see sketch, Diagram 1). It is interesting to discover that just as the abdomen is related to the forebrain, so this forebrain is related, from the viewpoint of the soul, to the will, and the midbrain is related to feeling. Actually, only the back part of the brain is related to thinking. If we look into the brain, we see that the hindbrain is related to breathing and to thinking. Breathing has, in fact, a pronounced relationship to thinking.

Picture the following case. A person lacking the benefits of Waldorf education, in which these things are frequently discussed, develops in his youth in such a way that he turns out to be a scoundrel. His feelings are confused, causing him to be malicious. What does this mean? It means that the soul does not work correctly in the midbrain. If the soul is not properly nourished, the heart's rhythm becomes irregular. You can cause an irregular rhythm of the heart and all sorts of diseases of the heart by developing into an ill-tempered person.

Naturally, if a woman in early pregnancy goes into a forest, let us say, and has the misfortune of discovering a person who has hanged himself from a tree and is already dead—if he is still twitching, it's even worse—she sustains a terrible shock. It becomes an image in her, and probably, unless other measures can be taken—usually by life itself, not by artificially induced means—she will give birth to a child who is pale, with a pointed chin and skinny limbs, and who is unable to move around properly. With a pregnant woman, just one such frightening sight suffices to affect the unborn child. In later life, when one is eighteen, nineteen, or twenty years old, to be a scoundrel only once won't hurt; one must become a habitual scoundrel, and that takes longer. With a pregnant woman, however, a single incident is enough.

The results of such experiments can reach much further. Imagine a young mother-to-be who is busy with her work. She hasn't been told that army maneuvers are being held nearby. Cannons begin to thunder, and her ears are given a frightful shock. Since hearing is strongly connected with the hindbrain as well as with the breathing, such a fright can cause a disorder of the breathing system of her developing child.

You might ask, “What is he saying? Why, he wants us to pay attention to every little detail in life!” Yes, gentlemen, if a healthy educational system and healthy social conditions existed, you wouldn't have to think at all about many of these things, since they would develop by force of habit like other routine matters. I don't believe that there are many men who, when they habitually beat their wives in the middle of every month, give it too much thought. They do it out of habit. There are such husbands. Why do they beat their wives? Because they have run out of money, they cannot go down to the local pub, so they amuse themselves at home by abusing their wives. These are habits that are formed. Well, gentlemen, if we had a sound educational system for everybody, we would acquire different habits. Were it known, for example, that army maneuvers would be held one morning and that there would be explosions, it should as a matter of course be called to the attention of any pregnant woman in the area. Something like this can become a habit. Sound education and socially acceptable conditions can give rise to a number of habits that need not be thought about any longer but simply carried out. This is something toward which we must work. Essentially, however, this can be accomplished only through proper education.

This is why the science of the spirit in particular will be in a position to explain the material world correctly. Materialism only looks at the material realm but is ignorant of all that lives in the material. It observes fever but does not know that fever is called forth by tremendously expanded brain activity. Materialism is always greatly astonished by shock but does not rightly recognize that shock comes from a drop of body temperature, because the proper “internal combustion” [Verbrennung] can no longer continue. Thus we can say that the way the head of a pregnant woman is stimulated is strongly connected with the child's development.

People pay no heed to what is contained in spiritual culture. A sound education will also gradually permeate everything we read and are told. Someday, for example, when people pay attention to what anthroposophy says, novels will perhaps be published for pregnant women. When pregnant women read them, they will receive impressions of ideal human beings. As a result, beautiful babies will be born who will grow to be strong, fine-looking human beings. What a woman does with her head during pregnancy becomes the source of the activity taking place in her abdomen. She shapes and forms the child with what she imagines, feels, and wills.

Here, spiritual science becomes tangible to the point where one can no longer say that the spirit has no influence on the human being. For the rest of his life, unless education sets it right later on, a person is under the influence of what his mother did during the first months of pregnancy. The later months are not as particularly important, because man has already been shaped, and definite forms have become fixed, but the first months are of particular importance and are full of significance. When one sees the physical origin of the human being in the womb, something reveals itself that in every respect points to spiritual science.

If one thinks reasonably, one can say to oneself that the warmth streaming down from above and the cold streaming up from below must always meet in the right way in the abdomen. One must care for the abdomen in the right way. This is something that must be seen, so that what comes from above can meet what comes from below in the right way. When we are clear that a person is so strongly influenced by his mother's experiences of soul and spirit that he can end up with a large or a small head, a ruined heart or breathing system, then we see that a person is, in fact, completely influenced by soul-spiritual considerations.

It can also happen that a mother-to-be, in the first or second months of pregnancy, could run into somebody with an unusually crooked nose, the likes of which she has never seen before. Unless some corrective measure is taken, in most cases the child will receive a crooked nose. You will even be able to see that in most cases if the woman was startled by the sight of a person whose nose was twisted to the right, the child will be born with a nose twisted to the left. Just as a man's right hand is connected with the left speech center in the brain, just as everything is reversed in the human being, so the twist of the nose is also reversed. We can conclude that if someone has a crooked nose, he most likely has it because his mother was frightened by someone with a crooked nose. A person has many other features. Materialistic science, when it doesn't know something's origin, always talks of heredity. If one has a crooked nose—well, that's inherited; the red skin tone of another—that's inherited, too. Things are not like this, however. They arise from causes such as I have related. The concept of heredity is one of the most ambiguous held by modern science. If you look at a person and see a twisted nose or a birthmark, this does not necessarily indicate that the mother saw the same birthmark. She might have seen something else that caused the child's blood to flow in the wrong direction. These are all deviations from the normal human form, but there is indeed a normal human form.

One cannot say simply that deviations from the normal human form do not come from bodily but from spiritual experiences while still maintaining that the entire human being comes merely from the belly of the mother, from that which is within the material realm! If one wishes to explain deviations spiritually, one must explain the entire human being spiritually. Naturally, the mother no more than the father can produce a human being spiritually. To do so would require the production of something impossible, that is, the art of being human, which is infinite. We are led to understand, therefore, that man already exists prior to birth as a spiritual being, and as soul he united with what is made available to him corporeally. Only regarding abnormal features can the embryo be influenced spiritually. It is much more remarkable, however, that I have a nose in the middle of my face or that I have two eyes! If I am born with a crooked nose, that is an abnormal feature, but recall the nose in the middle of the face with its marvelous normal form, which I recently explained to you, and the eye—what a wonder-filled thing! All this does not grow out of the mother's womb; it is something that already exists in the soul realm before the human being arises in the womb.

Here, correctly understood, natural science points to what human life is like in the spiritual world before conception. Today's materialists will naturally say that this is fantasy. Why do they say this? All the ancient people who, in primordial human times, still possessed certain dreamlike perceptions, which we no longer have, knew that man exists before he appears on earth. Throughout the Middle Ages, however, it was forbidden by decree of the Church to think of so-called pre-existence, which means pre-earthly existence; the Church forbade it. When a materialist agitates today, the rostrum is only the continuation of the medieval pulpit, and though he no longer speaks the language of those preachers, using instead the words of an agitator, he only says what medieval sermons stated long ago. Materialism has simply taken over the medieval preachings, and, though they are not aware of. it, today's materialists basically elaborate on what the Church taught. Materialism stems basically from the Church of the Middle Ages. Then, no soul was permitted to have existed before its earthly life. The intention was to teach people that God creates the soul when conception takes place. If a couple were in the mood to let conception occur—we know that in many instances this can be a mood of the moment—the Good Lord had to move quickly and create a soul for them! This is what the Church edict really implied and what one was supposed to believe.

It is not a sensible viewpoint, however, to make God the servant of the moods of human beings, so that he must hurriedly produce a soul when they happen to be in a mood to let conception take place. If you give this some thought, you discover what is actually contained in the materialistic viewpoint, which undermines human dignity. A real and true knowledge of the human being leads us instead to the realization that the soul is already there, has always lived. It descends to what is offered it through the human seed and its fertilization.

Anthroposophy has not, therefore, arrived back at the spirit because of some arbitrary fantasy but simply because it must, because it takes scientific knowledge seriously, which the others do not. People study natural science, which would lead to the spirit, but they are too lazy to come through natural science to the spirit on their own. That would require a little effort on the part of their heads. Instead, they allow some old teachers to deprive them of the spirit, and yet they still manage to be religious! Then they are dishonest, however; it is like keeping two sets of books. A person who is consistent in his reckoning must ascend from nature to spirit, and matters such as those we have discussed today, for example, will lead us there.

This was the first lecture given to the workmen after the burning of the Goetheanum. As a demonstration of their sympathy, all present stood when Rudolf Steiner entered.

Dr. Steiner: It is difficult to put into words the sorrow I feel. I know of your deep sympathy, so let me be brief. May I take this opportunity to call attention to the fact that as early as January 23, 1921, here in this hall, I read from a brochure a statement made by an opponent, indeed, one can already say an enemy, that went like this:

There are plenty of spiritual sparks of fire that strike like lightning against the wooden mouse trap. It will require quite a bit of cleverness on Steiner's part to work in a conciliatory manner so as to prevent a real spark of fire from bringing the Dornach grandeur to an inglorious end some day.

You see, with such inflammatory talk it is not surprising when something like the fire occurs, and in view of such vehement hostility it was something that could easily be feared. You can understand why it was easy to fear. It is true, however, that even now one can see what certain groups think about the matter. We need only consider the antagonism contained in the poor taste of newspapers, which now, after the Goetheanum has been destroyed, ask, “Didn't that `clairvoyant' Steiner foresee this fire?” That such attitudes are also evidence of a great stupidity is something I don't wish to talk about now. It points to a malicious degree of hostility, however, that some people find it at all necessary to publish such statements! One learns from this what people think and how crude things are today. It is indeed crude!

You can be sure, however, that I will never let anything divert me from my path, come what may. As long as I live, I shall represent my cause and will continue in the same way as I have done up to now. Also, I naturally hope that there will be no interruption here in any area, so that in the future we can work together here at this location in the same way as we have before; at least, that is my intention. Come what may, my thought is that the building will have to be reconstructed in some form; to be sure, no effort will be spared toward that end. We must therefore go on in the same way as before; this is simply an inner commitment.

Today, I wish to make use of our time by saying a few things to you that relate to the subject we discussed a little before this sad event. I tried to show you that a true science must work toward recognizing again the soul-spiritual aspects of the human being. I don't believe you have any idea of how emotionally charged is the reaction that this matter calls forth today within scientific circles. These scientific circles, as they call themselves today, which are taken to be something special by the layman, are the very ones that stand ready to make common cause with all existing hostile forces when it is a matter of proceeding against the anthroposophical movement. You must see that the hatred against the anthroposophical movement is by no means a slight matter. During the days when the tragedy took place, a report reached me, for example, of the formation of an association that calls itself “The Association of Non-Anthroposophical Experts on Anthroposophy.” They are people who naturally have nothing to do with the accident here but who are part of the whole opposition. The report concludes with the words, “This calls for a life-or-death struggle. The side that has the Holy Spirit will gain victory.”

It is obvious from the idiotic things said by these people, who want a life-or-death struggle, that the spirit—leaving the Holy Spirit completely aside—is not with these people. That is evident at once from the minutes of their meeting. Nevertheless, the spirit of hatred that exists is expressed in the sentence, “This calls for a life-or-death struggle.” People do wage this struggle, and the number of opponents is indeed not small. So-called scientific groups participate in these affairs today and in a most intensive way at that.

You see, I must continue to stress this, because the authority of science is so strong today. In order to know something, one turns to a so-called scientific expert, because this is the way things are arranged. Laymen don't know the means by which such persons become “experts” and that one can be the greatest idiot and yet be an “expert” with certifications, etc. These matters must be fully comprehended, and it is therefore important to get to the bottom of things and understand what really lies at their foundation. The very first sentences taught little children in school today—not directly, but indirectly—are mostly rubbish! Things that are considered self-evident today are in fact rubbish.

One is attacked from all sides today if one says, it is nonsense that the brain thinks, for it is agreed everywhere that the brain thinks and that where there is no brain, there can be no thinking, that there are no thoughts where no brain exists. Well, from my lectures you will have seen that the brain naturally plays its part in, and has a significance for, thinking. But if those people, who in fact make little use of their brains, claim that the brain is a sort of machine with which one thinks, then this is mere thoughtlessness. It is not surprising when a simple, uneducated person believes this, because he is not in possession of all the facts and so he adheres to the voice of the authority. No logic and real thinking, however, are contained in the statement that the brain thinks, and today I shall give you a number of examples to prove it.

If you look at a small beetle, you can easily see that it has a small head. If you dissect the head of such a beetle—the burying beetle, for instance—you discover nothing like a brain, which is supposed to be the thinking apparatus. Naturally, the tiny beetle has no brain in this sense but only a little lump, a lump of nerves, you could say. It does not have even the beginnings of a complete brain.

Now, I will relate a scene to you as an example, but before I give you this example I must tell you that these burying beetles always follow the lifelong habit of laying their eggs, and maggots hatch from them that only later change into beetles. As soon as they have emerged from the eggs, these tiny maggots require meat for their nourishment. They could not live without it. So, what does the burying beetle do? It searches in the field for a dead mouse or a dead bird or a mole, and having discovered one—a dead mouse, for example—it runs home again, only to return not alone but with a number of other beetles. These beetles that it has returned with run all around the mouse. Picture the mouse here (sketching); the beetle has discovered it; it runs off and then returns with a number of other burying-beetles. You see them run all around it. Occasionally, you notice that they all run away. At other times, you will see the beetles arrive, run around the dead mouse, and then start digging. First, they dig the ground under the mouse and then all around it. The mouse gradually sinks deeper and deeper into the earth as they continue digging. They dig until the mouse finally falls into the ground. They then fetch the females, who lay their eggs in it. Finally, they cover the hole completely so that passersby wouldn't notice it. I mentioned earlier that sometimes you can observe the beetles leave without returning. When you look into this, you find that the ground is too hard to dig. The beetles seem to have realized that here they could do nothing. Whenever they stay and begin digging, the ground is soft.

It is unbelievably strange but true that only ten or twelve beetles return with the one that makes the discovery, never forty or fifty. Only as many beetles return as are required to do the work. The first beetle doesn't bring more helpers than it needs, nor does it bring fewer. It arrives with just the right number to do the job. This sounds unbelievable, but what I am telling you is not a fairy tale. People have been able to demonstrate this phenomenon with all kinds of experiments. It's absolutely true.

The person who first described the activity of these beetles wasn't a superstitious person but one who had sound judgment. He was a friend of the botanist, Gleditsch, and was a scientist in the first half of the nineteenth century, an age when science was still on a sounder basis. He was involved in experimental work and once used toads in his experiments. These tests were intended for something completely different—you know that electricity was first discovered through work on a frog's thigh—and he needed to dry a dead toad. What did this natural scientist do? He took it outside and pinned the dead toad to a small piece of wood to let the sun dry it quickly. After a while he returned to check it and found a number of beetles around it hard at work. He decided to leave the dead toad alone and watch what these fellows, the beetles, were up to. What did they do? They continued digging until the wood fell and the toad had a place in the ground, in the hole; then the females were allowed to lay their eggs in it. That done, the beetles covered the toad and the wood it was pinned to with earth. Now, if a human being were to do that, one would think he also buried the stick in order to hide every trace. So you see, the burying beetles do exactly what a clever human being would do; indeed, I am convinced that a number of stupid people wouldn't do any—where near as well. You see, therefore, that what is called cleverness, intelligence, is present without the beetles possessing it.

One might call this nonsense and say that it need not be looked upon as intelligence, that it is stupid to say it is intelligence since it is simply instinct. Of course, I consider it stupid for a person to use the word “instinct” in this case, thus getting on the wrong track. One needs a word, however, and “instinct” is used for everything, so that one need not think at all. I must learn to know the issue itself—it is all the same what I call it—I must learn to know the issue. Still, one might object by saying, “All right, but what he has told, us is still nonsense. The beetles are born with this ability; they pass it on genetically; one need not think of intelligence here. It is inherent in their physical nature, and there is no need to think that these beetles possess intelligence.”

Now I shall tell you another story that was told by a person of incontestable authority, a story that has also been reported by others but above all by Darwin, an incontestable source; after all, people swear by Darwin, don't they? He observed this activity in wasps, not beetles. Wasps have brains that are no larger than those of beetles. Their larvae also require meat as soon as they hatch. Now, these wasps are weaker than beetles, even when they band together, so they cannot handle moles or dead toads but prefer smaller creatures that they can handle without help. This is why such wasps gather little animals like flies and such for their young.

Darwin, who is considered to be the greatest natural scientist of the nineteenth century, observed a wasp who needed such an animal, a female wasp, heavy with eggs, looking for an insect into which to lay them. Finding a fly, a dead fly, on the ground, she tried to fly away with it, but it was too difficult for her. What did the wasp do? It bit off the fly's head and hind quarters and flew off with the breast and wings, which it could manage. Without the head and hind quarters of the fly, the wasp could now fly. Now—as I said, Darwin watched all this—a strong breeze was blowing and the wasp could not fly forward because the fly's wings caught the wind. The two wings caught the wind, and it could not fly forward. Again, what did the wasp do, laden with the fly? It landed on the ground, bit off the two wings, and flew away with the fly's breast without the wings.

In this case it is impossible to say that this is anything else but deliberate, since the wasp, after all, accommodated itself to the wind. This cannot be inherent in the wasp, to bite off the wings. It must be what is called intelligence that motivates the insect. The wasp tells itself that if the wings are discarded, the wind won't catch in them. It is impossible for this to be inherited; what exists there is what one calls deliberation; consequently, one must admit that intelligence is really at work here. Here intelligence is at work.

Now you can see how scientists proceeded in the nineteenth century. I purposely mentioned to you Darwin, who observed this. What was his conclusion, however? Darwin said that everything that confronts us in animals is produced only through heredity and through natural selection, and so forth.

In order to set up theories, people simply suppress what they themselves know. This is the essential point, that people suppress what they know to set up convenient theories. Such theories are by no means scientific and only throw sand in the eyes of the public. Darwin was certainly a great man, and nobody has acknowledged his positive accomplishments in a more kindly way than I. I have written everything possible in Darwin's favor, but, oddly enough, we must realize that even those who have made significant contributions have suffered from the malady of having no eyes for facts. In spite of the great scientific triumphs made in the external world, it is characteristic of scientists of the nineteenth century that people completely lost their sense for facts, and the facts were simply suppressed.

Now, let's go further. Let's consider other insects. In these matters one must study insects, because they can illuminate our subject particularly well; we can be quite sure that in their case they do not owe their intelligence to having a large brain, because this they certainly don't have. Therefore, one must study insects in this matter. Indeed, not only are they able to illuminate the things I have just described but many others as well. Insects lay their eggs, and a mature insect never emerges from them but only little worms. With butterflies, which are insects, it is even more complicated. First, a little worm appears, a caterpillar; it pupates, and finally from the chrysalis emerges the butterfly. This is certainly quite a transformation, but this transformation actually occurs with all insects. You see, there are some insects that, when they are fully mature, feed only on plants. I am not agitating for vegetarianism, as you know, gentlemen, but these insects are vegetarians. They eat only plants. The strange thing is that their larvae, the maggots, require meat when they hatch. These insects therefore have a great peculiarity, that they are born with a completely different food preference from that which they later acquire. They convert to plant food only when they are fully developed insects. When they are still little children and look completely different—like maggots or worms—they feed on meat.

What do these mature insects do? They seek out other insects, mostly caterpillars, and lay their eggs on their backs. They themselves no longer have an appetite for meat, but they know that maggots requiring meat will hatch from their eggs. Therefore, they lay their eggs in the body of such a caterpillar or some such animal. Though one can marvel at this cleverness, there is much more. One can even say that these newly hatched maggots are already clever. Consider that some maggot species depend on living flesh for food. When it is time to lay the eggs, this insect, which has a stinger, punctures another living insect that is larger and lays many eggs within it. Sometimes numerous eggs are thus deposited, filling the caterpillar's body, and from which the maggots hatch. The maggots are then within the body of this other insect. These eggs are only deposited in live insects, because if the animal in which the eggs are laid were to die, the eggs would be lost, since the maggots can only survive on living flesh. Consider, therefore, that if a maggot were to destroy a vital organ in the host insect, thus causing its death, all the other maggots hatching from the eggs would perish. These little creatures are so clever, however, that nothing is ever eaten in the living caterpillar except those parts not needed for its survival. All vital organs are spared, and the caterpillar stays alive. Regardless of how many eggs are deposited, only so much is consumed as to ensure the host insect's life.

You see, these things are known but are simply suppressed. People know it but suppress it, and it isn't well received, naturally, when one points them out, because this not only shows up the incapability but the downright dishonesty of official science.

In the case of animals and insects you can see that it is possible to say that they certainly do not possess intelligence, because they have no apparatus for intelligence, that is, brains. Nevertheless, intelligence is working in what they do, and it must be admitted that intelligence is there. The animals do not deliberate; deliberation would require a brain; animals don't deliberate, but what takes place in their activities is intelligent. Indeed, it happens that animals even have something similar to memory. They have no recollection but something akin to it. You can observe this, for instance, if you are a bee keeper. Here stands a beehive. The bees hatch. For the sake of an experiment, you move the hive to a nearby spot. The bees return to the first location; naturally, this is “instinct,” and there is no need to be surprised about it; they fly in the direction from which they flew away. Now, however, they begin to look everywhere for the hive and fly around seeking it. They arrive at the new location but do not enter the hive immediately. Instead, they swarm around it for a long time, and one can definitely conclude that they are examining it to see if it is their own! The burying beetle does the same when it examines the ground to see if it is hard or soft. While bees have no recollection, the above incident shows that they nevertheless possess something similar to memory; namely, they must determine whether it is the same beehive. We do this with our memory; bees do it with something similar.

You see, what works as intelligence through the human head is at work everywhere. Intelligence is at work everywhere; even in insects there is marvelous intelligence. Picture the wonderful intelligence at work when the larvae that hatch inside the caterpillar's body do not feed immediately on its stomach. If they did, all the maggots would perish. Compared with the tactics employed by humans during war, the intelligence ruling the insect arouses respect and exposes the foolishness of human beings. In this regard, human beings have no reason to claim sole possession of intelligence.

I'll tell you something else now. You are all familiar with paper. You all know that the paper we have today was invented no earlier than four or five hundred years ago. Before this, parchment and all sorts of materials were used for writing. Civilized man discovered so-called rag paper just four or five centuries ago. Before this, man wrote on leather and so on. How was paper discovered? One had to discover how to mix together certain substances in a specific way. Perhaps one of you has been in a paper factory. At first, the paper is liquid; it is then solidified, etc. It is produced in a purely artificial way through various chemical and mechanical means. Perhaps you've not only seen paper but also now and then a wasps' nest. A wasps' nest is built like this (sketching). It is attached to something and formed so the wasps can fly into it. It is grey, not white—but paper can be grey, too—and this wasps' nest is real paper. If one asks, what is a wasps' nest made of chemically, chemically it is identical with paper. It is real paper.

Wasps, however, have been building their nests for thousands and thousands of years, not just four or five hundred. You can see, therefore, that wasps manufactured paper much earlier than humans. That's simply a fact: the wasps' nest is made of paper. If, thousands of years ago, people had been clever enough to examine the substance of a wasps' nest, they would have discovered paper then. Chemistry was not that advanced, however; neither was writing, through which some things have also come about that do not exactly serve man. In any case, the wasp has made paper for an immeasurably longer time than the human being has.

Naturally, I could go on, not for hours but for days, to speak of how intelligence pervades everything and is found everywhere. Man simply gathers this intelligence that is spread out in the world and puts it to use. Owing to his well-developed brain, he can put to his own use what permeates the world. Thanks to his brain, he can utilize the intelligence contained in all things for his own benefit.

Our brain is not given us for the purpose of producing intelligence. It is sheer nonsense to believe that we produce intelligence. It is as stupid as saying, “I went to the pond with a water pitcher to fetch water. Look, it contains water now; a minute ago there was none; the water, therefore, materialized from the walls of the pitcher!” Everybody will say that is nonsense. The water came from the pond; it was not produced by the pitcher. The experts, however, point to the brain, which simply collects intelligence because it is present in everything, like the water, and claim that intelligence emerges from within it. It is as foolish as saying that water is produced by the pitcher. After all, intelligence is even present where there is no brain, just as the pond does not depend on the water pitcher. Intelligence exists everywhere, and man can take hold of it. Just as the water from the pitcher can be put to use, so man can make use of his brain when he gathers the intelligence that is present everywhere in the world. To this day, however, he is not making use of it in a particularly outstanding manner.

You can see that it is a matter of correct thinking. But those who never think correctly—for they show that they cannot think correctly—claim that intelligence is produced by the brain. This is as foolish as claiming that water from a pond is produced by its container. Such foolishness, however, is science today. Actually, these matters should be obvious; one should simply realize that intelligence is something that must be gathered together.

Now, you can take your brain and resolve to gather intelligence somewhere. It doesn't collect intelligence any more than the empty water pitcher, which, when you put it away, remains empty. By itself the water pitcher cannot fetch water, nor does the brain collect intelligence by itself. You cannot leave the brain to its own devices and expect it to function any more than the water pitcher. What must be present so that the brain can gather intelligence? The empty water pitcher alone can be compared to the belief that man consists only of blood, nerves, and brain. Something else must be present that does the collecting and that gathers intelligence by means of the brain. It is the soul—spiritual element of man that does the collecting. It enters man as I described recently in the lecture on embryonic development. It has previously existed in the soul—spiritual world and only makes use of the physical. If the facts are not suppressed, if one sees that intelligence, like water, pervades everything and, like water in a pitcher, must be gathered together, then—if one is a serious scientist and not a charlatan—one must search for the gatherer. This is simply what follows from the use of clear reason. It is not true that the anthroposophical science of the spirit is less scientific than ordinary science; it is much more scientific, much more scientific.

The day before yesterday, one could see the kind of logic people employ. As you know, a natural scientific course was recently held here. I have already told you of experiments conducted in Stuttgart concerning the task of the spleen. We confirmed that the spleen has the task of serving as a sort of regulator of the digestive rhythm. The blood circulation has a definite rhythm, as found in the pulse with its seventy—two beats per minute. These are related to the intake of food. People also pay a little heed to a rhythmic intake of food; they are not too good at it, however, and frequently have no set mealtime. Worse yet, people indiscriminately partake of foods that are useful for them and those that are not. There is no regularity here as there is in the blood. If, for example, I eat at one o'clock instead of two o'clock, this is an irregularity. The blood circulation, after all, doesn't work that way and doesn't produce a different pulse when it requires nourishment. This is where the spleen takes over. We have tried to demonstrate this with experiments and have been successful to a degree. More experiments are needed and must be done soon, but we have been able to show to some extent that the spleen is a regulator. Though we might have irregular eating habits, the spleen keeps food in the intestines as long as the blood needs it. If we don't starve ourselves too much—if we starve ourselves too much even the spleen would be unable to function properly—the spleen supplies the blood with fat taken from our own body.

You see, because we were completely honest, Dr. Kolisko quite honestly stated in her book that in my medical course I indicated that the spleen has this task, and she then proceeded with experiments to confirm this. Then a professor in Munich said that this was easy; she had already received the indications from anthroposophy and so had them in her pocket. It is not supposed to be hypothetical-deductive science if one starts with indications and then conducts experiments. He therefore said that this isn't hypothetical-deductive science.

Why does the professor say that? Because people do not wish to work with a thought as their guideline. Instead, they want a lot of material delivered to their laboratories, and they blindly begin to experiment until they happen on some result. They call this hypothetical-deductive science, but there is no hypothesis in it at all. Occasionally, the most significant discoveries are made by chance. Then, well—even a blind dog sometimes finds a morsel! How could we progress, however, if in our laboratories our work did not follow our ideas?

The professor in Munich says that it is not hypothetical-deductive science for one to work with indications. Now, imagine that somewhere experiments had been conducted that proved the spleen's function but that a fire had destroyed the reports of the work. Only the final result would be known. Couldn't somebody come along and say that he would repeat these experiments? It would not be any different from our starting out with these indications. The same professor would also have to object to that as being unscientific. Now, wouldn't that be absurd? The only difference here is that I have made my indications by tracing the spiritual course of the matter, but I have done it in such a way that it can readily be followed according to anatomical science. Then, through experiments, another person seeks affirmation of what had been precisely indicated. Our task here was simply to show correct physical proof for what I had said. There is no logical difference between my knowledge acquired by spiritual scientific means and what another person has already found earlier by means of experiments.

What does it indicate when someone considers it to be hypothetical-deductive science when something has been discovered by physical means, though the descriptions of the tests may have been burned, while anything done by anthroposophy is not considered hypothetical-deductive science? It indicates that one is not honest and that from the first one denounces anything coming from anthroposophy. People aren't really concerned about hypothetical-deductive science; they are so foolish that they don't notice that this is logical nonsense. They say that ours is not hypothetical-deductive science not because it would be logical to say so but only because it derives from anthroposophy. People are too foolish to comprehend what comes from anthroposophy. Naturally, their lack of comprehension makes them angry, and therefore they denounce it. The real reason anthroposophy is considered heresy is that those who are engaged in so-called science do not think and cannot understand anthroposophy. This is an aspect of our entire civilization. It is possible today to be a great scientist or scholar without being able really to think. In the future, one must truly cultivate honesty, an honesty that takes into account all the facts, not only those that conveniently fit one's pet theory, thus throwing sand in the eyes of the public.

The hatred of anthroposophy is based in large part on anthroposophy's honesty, something people don't want to grant it. If people had a keener sense for truth, they would often stop writing after the first sentence. Since all their arguments against anthroposophy would collapse, however, if anthroposophy were properly studied, they invent all kinds of fabrications concerning it. People inventing fabrications about anthroposophy don't care about truth, and once they start telling lies, they go further. The serious defamations of anthroposophy thus arise. What is the result? A person who cannot see through all this believes that anthroposophists engage in devilry. Such a person cannot see through this, because he naturally believes the authorities, who do not speak the truth. Anthroposophy suffers most of all from these lies that are circulated about it, whereas its one aim is to focus on the facts and be a real science.

In view of the painful tragedy that has struck here, we must at least look into the real state of affairs and realize how anthroposophy is being slandered out of a spirit of pure falsehood.

I myself am absolutely opposed to any agitation coming from our side. Naturally, I cannot stop everything, but when I speak to you, I am strictly pointing out facts. This is all I have done today, and from these facts I have drawn a general characterization of scientific life. You must admit to yourselves that where such facts are ignored there is no desire to create real science but only a desire to throw sand in the eyes of the public, even if in a quite unconscious way. People would have to be much more clever to see through this.

We shall continue on Monday. If you have something to ask, I would like you to speak entirely from your hearts. I, for one, don't wish to be deterred by the great tragedy that has struck here. This is why I didn't want to waste my time lamenting but wanted to tell you something useful.

Dr. Steiner: Does anyone have a question on his mind?

A question is asked concerning alcohol, its negative effects, etc.

Do you mean the extent to which alcohol generally is detrimental to health? Well, alcohol's initial effect is quite obvious, because it influences what we have been describing in man all along, that is, the entire constitution of the soul. In the first place, through alcohol, a person suffers a form of spiritual confusion so strong that he becomes subject to passions that otherwise are weak in him and can easily be suppressed by his reason. A person thus appears more sensible if he has had no alcohol than if he drinks. To begin with, alcohol has a stimulating influence on the blood, causing an increased circulation of the blood. This, in turn, arouses a person's passions; for example, he may more readily become furious, whereas otherwise he can control his anger more easily. So you can see that the first effect of alcohol is exercised on man's reason—indeed, on his whole life of soul.

After alcohol has remained for a certain length of time in the organism, it causes another symptom that you know well, called a hangover; the appearance of a hangover shows you that the entire organism objects to the initial effect of alcohol. What does it mean for a person to have a hangover? As a rule, it appears in the morning after an evening of too much drinking. Due to the drinking the night before, the circulation of a person's blood is strongly agitated. The increased movement that otherwise would have taken its course at a much slower pace uses up a lot of energy.

Pay close attention to this! Let us assume that the body accomplishes a certain activity within twenty-four hours. When somebody consumes a goodly amount of alcohol, the same activity is completed in perhaps twelve or even six hours. The body thus deprives itself of inner activity. People who are in the habit of drinking every once in a while, therefore, instinctively do something before the hangover appears: they eat heartily. Why do they do this? They eat heartily either to avoid a hangover altogether or so that its effects the next day are at least milder so that they can work.

What happens, say, if a person has drunk himself into a visible state of intoxication and then consumes, let us say, a large hotdog? He stimulates again what has been used up by the previous excessive activity. But if, because he is not a habitual drinker, he doesn't do this—habitual drinkers do eat—and he forgets to eat that hotdog, he then will suffer the hangover, basically because his body is no longer able to engage in increased inner activity. When the body does not function correctly, however, waste products, in particular uric acid, are deposited everywhere. Since the head is the most difficult to supply, the waste products are deposited there. If a person has, through alcohol consumption, depleted the inner activity of the body during the night, he walks around the next morning with his head in the condition that is normal for his intestines, that is, filled with refuse. An immediate revolt by the body is brought about when, through the intake of alcohol, too much activity is demanded of it.

As I have mentioned to you before in these lectures, man has a much higher tolerance—I don't mean only regarding alcohol but generally—and can take much more abuse than is normally assumed. He is capable of readjustment for a long time. Some people even make use of a most deceptive, most questionable antidote against a hangover. When they come home or arise the next morning with a powerful hangover, what do they do? Surely, you have seen this; they continue drinking, making the morning pint into a special cure.

What does this continued drinking signify? During the night, through the agitation of the blood, the body has been deprived of activity. This activity is now missing in the morning. Through renewed drinking, the body is stimulated once again, so that the last remnants of activity are consumed. Since these last remnants dispose of the major part of the refuse, the hangover disappears to a degree from the head but remains that much more in the rest of the body. People are, however, less aware of that. Additional drinking in the morning thus unconsciously transfers the hangover to the rest of the organism. Only now, when this occurs, does the real misery for the body begin. Those alcoholics who drive away a hangover with more drinking are in the worst shape, because gradually, as this is repeated, the entire body is ruined.

Still, however, because man can endure a good deal, it is almost impossible to ruin the body that quickly. Therefore, the first thing that happens to a real alcoholic is that he suffers from a form of delirium. This does not as yet indicate total ruin. When delirium tremens, as it is called in medicine, sets in, people see certain kinds of animals, mice and the like, running all over the place. They suffer a form of persecution complex. Delirium tremens is connected with the phenomenon of people seeing themselves surrounded and attacked from all sides by small animals, especially mice. This is something that even has a historical background. There are structures called “mice towers” (Mäusetürme). Usually, they have come by their name through somebody in some earlier time having been incarcerated in them who suffered from delirium tremens, and, though some real mice might well have been there too, this person was plagued by thousands upon thousands of mice that he merely imagined all around himself.

You can see, therefore, that the ruinous effects of alcohol can only slowly be driven into the body; the body resists these effects that are produced by alcohol for a long time.

What happens when people who have been drinking heavily for some time are suddenly bothered by their conscience and, having some energy left, stop drinking? It is an interesting fact that if they had not suffered from delirium tremens before, now, after abstaining from alcohol, they sometimes get it. Here we find something of interest, when people's consciences suddenly stir. They have been drinking for a while, let us say, drinking since early in the morning, and then suddenly the conscience stirs and they stop drinking. What happens then? If they had not had delirium tremens earlier, they struggle with it now. This is the interesting fact, that sometimes those who have been drinking for a long time begin suffering from delirium tremens when they stop drinking.

This is one of the most important signs that man must be viewed in such a way that the head is seen to work differently from the rest of the body. In the last lectures I mentioned many aspects of this to you. As long as a person suffers only in his head from the side effects of drinking, his overall condition is still tolerable; the effects have not yet permeated the entire body. When they have penetrated, however, and the person leaves off alcohol, the rest of the body really revolts by way of the brain and he suffers from delirium tremens just because he discontinued drinking.

One thus can say that the bodily counterpart for the most important functions of the soul is found in human blood. You probably know that some people suffer from persecution complexes, seeing all sorts of figures that are not there. Particularly in earlier times, such persons were bled—not a bad remedy, really. You must not believe that all people in the past were as superstitious as is generally assumed today. Blood-letting was not something derived from superstition. People were bled primarily by applying leeches somewhere on the body that drew off blood. The blood thus was less active. Not necessarily in the case of alcoholics, but for other attacks of insanity blood was less active, and the person fared better.

As I have mentioned, the nervous system is very closely related to the foundations of the properties of the soul, but it is much less important for the human will. The nervous system is important for reason, but for the human will it has much less significance than the blood.

Now, when you see that alcohol pre-eminently attacks the blood, it is clear from the body's strong reaction against alcohol's effects that the blood is well protected against alcohol. The blood is extraordinarily well protected against the assault of alcohol in human beings. By what means is the blood so strongly protected against this assault? We must ask further, then, where do the most important ingredients of the blood actually originate?

Remember that I told you that blood consists of red corpuscles containing iron, which swim around in the so-called blood serum, and it also consists of white corpuscles. I have told you that the most significant components of blood are the red and white corpuscles. We shall now disregard the corpuscles connected with the spleen's activity, which, in our tests in Stuttgart, we termed the “regulators.” There are many components in the blood, but we want now to focus only on the red and white corpuscles, asking where in the body these corpuscles originate. These corpuscles originate in a most special place. If you examine the thigh bone from the hip to the knee, if you think of the bone in the arm, or any long bone, you will find in these bones the so-called bone marrow. The marrow is in there, the bone marrow. And you see, gentlemen, the red and white corpuscles originate in this bone marrow and migrate from it first into the arteries. The human body is arranged in such a way that the blood, at least the most important part of it, is produced in the inner hollows of the bones.

If this is the case, you can say to yourself: in so far as its production is concerned, the blood is indeed well protected from harm. In fact, alcohol must be consumed for a long time and in large quantities to damage the bone to the point of penetrating it to the innermost part, to the bone marrow, and destroying the bone marrow so that no more red and white corpuscles are produced. Only then, after the effects of drinking alcohol have reached the bone marrow, does the really ruinous process begin for the human being.

Now, it is true that regarding their intellects and soul qualities, humans are in many ways alike; regarding the blood, however, there is a marked difference between man and woman. It is a difference that one is not always aware of but that is nevertheless clearly evident. This is that the influence on human beings of the red and white corpuscles that are produced within the hollows of the bone is such that the red corpuscles are more important for the woman and the white are more important for the man. This is very important: the red corpuscles are more important with the woman and the white with the man.

This is because the woman, as you know, every four weeks has her menstrual period, which is actually an activity that the human body undertakes to eliminate something that must be eliminated, red corpuscles. A man, however, does not have menstrual periods, and you also know that his semen is not derived directly from red blood. It has its origin in white corpuscles. Although considerably transformed, in the end they turn into the main ingredient of semen. Thus, regarding what affects human reproduction, we must go to the protected bone marrow to investigate the means by which the human reproductive capacity can be influenced physically. Indeed, the human reproductive capacity can be physically affected precisely through the bone marrow within the bone.

After having been produced in the bone marrow, the red and white corpuscles naturally enter the blood stream. When a woman now drinks alcohol, it is the red corpuscles that are particularly affected. The red corpuscles contain iron, are somewhat heavy, and possess something of the earth's heaviness. When a woman drinks, it affects her in such a way that there is too much heaviness in her. When a pregnant woman drinks, therefore, her developing child becomes too heavy and cannot inwardly form its organs properly. It does not develop properly inwardly, and its inner organs are not in order. In this round-about-way, gentlemen, the harmful influence of alcohol is expressed in the woman.

In men, alcohol primarily affects the white corpuscles. If conception takes place when a man is under the influence of alcohol, or when his system is generally contaminated by the effects of alcoholism, a man's semen is ruined in a way, becoming too restless. When conception takes place, the tiny egg is released from the mother's organism. This can only be seen with a microscope. From the male, a great number of microscopic sperm are released, each one of which has something resembling a tail attached to it. The seminal fluid contains countless numbers of such sperm. This tail, which is like a fine hair, gives the sperm great restlessness. They make the most complicated movements, and naturally one sperm must reach the egg first. The one that reaches the egg first penetrates it. The sperm is much smaller than the egg. Although the egg can be perceived only with a microscope, the sperm is still smaller. As soon as the egg has received it, a membrane forms around the egg, thereby preventing penetration by the rest of the sperm cells. Generally, only one sperm can enter the egg. As soon as one has penetrated, a membrane is formed around the egg, and the others must retreat.

You see, therefore, it is most ingeniously arranged. Now, the sperm's restlessness is greatly increased through alcohol, so that conception occurs under the influence of semen that is extraordinarily lively. If the father is a heavy drinker when conception occurs, the child's nerve-sense system will be affected. The woman's drinking harms the child's inner organs because of the heaviness that ensues. The man's drinking harms the child's nervous system. All the activities are damaged that should be present in the right way as the child grows up.

We therefore can say that if a woman drinks, the earthly element in the human being is ruined; if a man drinks, the element of movement, the airy element that fills the earth's surroundings and that man carries within himself, is ruined. When both parents drink, therefore, the embryo is harmed from two different sides. Naturally, this is not a proper conception; while conception is possible, however, proper growth of the embryo is not. On the one hand, the egg's tendency toward heaviness tries to prevail; on the other, everything in it is in restless motion, and one tendency contradicts the other. If both parents are alcoholics and conception occurs, the masculine element contradicts the feminine. To those who understand the entire relationship, it becomes quite clear that in the case of habitual drinkers exceedingly harmful elements actually arise in their offspring. People do not wish to believe this, because the effects of heavy drinking in men and women are not so obvious, relatively speaking. This is only because the blood is so well protected, however, being produced, after all, in the bone marrow, and because people must do a lot if they are to affect their offspring strongly. Weak effects are simply not admitted by people today.

As a rule, if a child is born with water on the brain, one does not investigate whether or not, on the night conception occurred, the mother was at a dinner party where she drank red wine. If that were done, it would often be found to be the case, because wine causes an inclination toward heaviness, so that the child is born with hydrocephalus. If, however, the baby has a congenital twitch in a facial muscle, one normally does not check to find out if the father had perhaps been drinking too much the evening conception occurred. Seemingly insignificant matters are not investigated; people therefore assume that they have no effect. Actually, alcohol always has an effect. The really disastrous effects, however, occur with habitual drinkers. Here, too, a striking, a very remarkable thing can be noted.

You see, the children of a father who drinks can develop a weakness somewhere in their nervous systems and thus have a tendency toward tuberculosis, for example. What is inherited by the children need not be connected with the effects felt by the alcoholic father. The children need not have a tendency toward mental confusion, for example, but instead, toward tuberculosis, stomach ailments, and the like. This is what is so insidious about the effects of alcohol, that they are communicated to totally different organs in the human being.

In these matters, the great effect on human development of minute amounts of substances must always be taken into consideration. Not only that, but in each instance, one must consider how these substances are introduced into the human being. Consider the following example. Our bones contain a certain amount of calcium phosphate. Our brain also contains some phosphorus, and you will recall from earlier lectures that phosphorus is most useful since without phosphorus the brain actually could not be used for thinking. We therefore have phosphorus in us. I have already told you that phosphorus has a beneficial effect when the proper amount is consumed in food so that it is digested at a normal rate. If too large an amount of phosphorus is introduced too quickly into the human stomach, it is not useful but rather harmful.

Something else must also be considered, however. You know that in earlier days, matches were made with heads of phosphorus, but they are rarely seen anymore. If one has had an opportunity to observe something like what I did as a boy, the following can be experienced. When I was thirteen, fourteen, and fifteen years old, I had an hour's walk from our home to school every day. There was a match factory about halfway where phosphorus matches were manufactured by workmen. At any time, one could see that a number of these workmen had corroded jaws—this was in the 1870s—and, radiating out from the jaw, their bodies were gradually destroyed. Beginning with the upper and lower jaws—especially the upper—the bones were eaten away.

Knowing the harmful effect that phosphorus can have on humans, one realizes that such a match factory is actually about the most murderous place one can have. In matters pertaining to the progress of human civilization, it is always necessary to look at the numerous harmful effects that man can suffer in this way. I always saw a number of these workmen going into this match factory with bandaged jaws. That is where it started, and then it spread. Of course, phosphorus obviously was already contained in the upper jawbone, but what kind of phosphorus was it?

You see, the phosphorus that first enters the stomach along with food and then travels internally through the body into the jaws is not harmful, provided the amount is not too large. Matches, however, are manufactured first by cutting long wooden strips into tiny sticks; these are then fitted into frames so that one end sticks out. They are dipped first into a sulphur solution and then into a phosphorus solution. The workman who dipped the matches simply held the frame in his hand and always got splattered. Just think how often in a day a person who cannot wash his splattered hands might touch his face during working hours. Though the amounts of phosphorus with which the person comes in contact in this way are minute, they nevertheless penetrate his skin. This is a mystery of human nature: a substance that is often extraordinarily useful when taken internally and assimilated first through the body can have the most poisonous effect when it comes in contact with the body from outside. The human organism is so wisely arranged inwardly that an overdose of phosphorus is eliminated in the urine or feces; only the small amount required is allowed to penetrate the bones; the rest is eliminated.

There are, however, no provisions for the elimination of externally absorbed influences. This problem could, of course, have been alleviated. Remember that in the last century little thought was given to humanitarian considerations. It would have helped if bathing facilities had been made available so that every workman could have had a hot bath before leaving work. A great deal could naturally have been accomplished by such an arrangement, but it simply was not done.

I only mention this to you to illustrate how the human body works. Minute, detrimental influences from outside, even substances that the body otherwise needs to sustain itself, can undermine human health, indeed, can undermine generally the entire organization of the human being.

Man can withstand a good deal, but beyond a certain point the organism fails. In the case of drinking alcohol, the organism fails at the point at which alcohol prevents the correct functioning of the life-sustaining activities, the invisible life-sustaining activities.

When a person is exposed to phosphorus poisoning, the inner activity that otherwise would assimilate phosphorus is undermined. It is undermined from outside. It is actually quite similar in the case of alcohol. When a person drinks too much alcohol, drinking always more and more, so that imbibing alcohol is no longer merely acute but has become chronic, the alcohol works directly as alcohol in the human being. What is the direct effect of alcohol? Remember that I once told you that man himself produced the amount of alcohol he requires. I told you that in the substances contained in the intestines, a certain amount of alcohol is constantly produced by ordinary food simply because man needs this small amount of alcohol. What do we need it for? Remember that in an anatomy, lab specimens are preserved in alcohol, because otherwise they would decompose. The alcohol prevents what was a living body from decaying. The alcohol produced in the human being works in the same way in the human organism; that is, it prevents decay of certain substances needed by man. Man through his inner organization really prescribes how much alcohol he should have, because he has certain substances that would otherwise decay and must be conserved.

Take now the case of a person who drinks too much alcohol. Substances that should be eliminated are retained in the body; too much is preserved. If a person repeatedly exposes blood that circulates in the body to alcohol, he conserves this blood in his body. What is the consequence? This blood, having a counteracting influence, blocks the canals in the bones; it is not eliminated quickly enough through the pores and so forth. It remains too long in the body. The marrow in the hollows of the bone is consequently stimulated too little to make new blood, and it becomes weak. It so happens that, in the so-called chronic alcoholic, the bone marrow in time becomes weakened and no longer produces either the proper red corpuscles in the woman nor the proper white corpuscles in the man.

Now, at a point such as this, I always have to make the following observation. Certainly, it is very nice when people come up with social reforms such as the prohibition of alcohol and so forth. It certainly sounds fine. But even such a learned man as Professor Benedict—I told you about his collection of skulls of criminals and how Hungarian convicts objected to having their skulls sent to Vienna because they would be missing from the rest of their bones on Judgment Day—even Professor Benedict said, and rightly so, “Here people speak against alcohol, but many more have perished from water than from alcohol.” Generally, that is quite correct, because water, if it is contaminated, can be present in much larger quantities. Considered simply from a statistical point of view one can naturally say that many more people have died from water than from alcohol.

Something else must be taken into consideration, however. I would like to put it like this. The situation with alcohol is like the story contained in Heinrich Seidel's Leberecht Hühnchen. I don't know whether you are familiar with it, but it is the tale of a poor wretch, a poor devil who only has enough money to buy one egg. He also has a great imagination, however, and so he thinks, “If this egg had not been sold in the store but instead had been allowed to hatch, a hen would have developed from it. Now, when I eat this egg, I am actually eating a whole hen.” And so he imagines, “Why, I, who have a whole hen to eat, am really a rich fellow!” But his imagination is not satisfied there, so he continues, “Yes, but the hen I am now eating could have laid any number of eggs from which hens again would hatch, and I am eating all these hens.” Finally, he calculates how many millions and millions of hens that would amount to, and he asks himself, “Shouldn't that be called gorging myself with food?”

You see, this is the case with alcohol, not in a funny sense as in this story but in all seriousness. Certainly, if you take the time from 1870 to 1880, and you investigate how many people died throughout the world from water and from alcohol, statistics would show that more people died from impure water. In those days, people died more frequently from typhoid fever and related illnesses than today, and typhoid can, in many instances, be traced to contamination of the water. So, in this way, gentlemen, it is easy to conclude that more people die from drinking water.

One must think differently, however. One must know that alcohol gradually penetrates the bone marrow and ruins the blood. By harming the offspring, all the descendants are thus harmed. If an alcoholic has three children, for example, these three are harmed only a little; their descendants, however, are significantly hurt. Alcohol has a long-term negative effect that manifests in many generations. Much of the weakness that exists in humanity today is simply due to ancestors who drank too much. One must indeed picture it like this: here is a man and a woman, the man drinks too much, and the bodies of their descendants are weakened. Now think for a moment what this implies in a hundred, and worse, in several hundred years! It serves no purpose to examine only a decade, say from 1870 to 1880, and to conclude that more people died from water than from alcohol. Much longer periods of time must be considered. This is something that people don't like to do nowadays, except in jest as did the author of Leberecht Hühnchen, who naturally was looking over a long span of time when picturing how to wallow in so much food.

If this matter is examined from the social viewpoint, consideration must go beyond what is nearest at hand. Now, it is my opinion that the use of alcohol can be prohibited, but when it is, strange phenomena appear. You know, for example, that in many parts of the world the sale of alcohol has been restricted or even completely prohibited. But I call your attention to another evil that has recently made its appearance in Europe, that is, the use of cocaine by people who wish to drug themselves. In comparison to what the use of cocaine will do, particularly in damage to the human reproductive forces, alcohol is benign! Those individuals who take cocaine do not hold cocaine responsible for the damage it does, but you can see from the external symptoms that its use is much worse than that of alcohol. When a person suffers from delirium tremens, it becomes manifest in a form of persecution complex. He sees mice everywhere that pursue him. A cocaine user, however, imagines snakes emerging everywhere from his body. First, such a person seeks an escape through cocaine, and for a while he feels good inside, because it brings about a feeling of sensual pleasure. When he has not had any cocaine for some time, however, and he looks at himself, he sees snakes emerge everywhere from his body. Then he runs to have another dose of cocaine so that the snakes will leave him alone for a while. The fear he has of these snakes is much greater than the fear of mice that is experienced by an alcoholic suffering from delirium tremens.

Certainly, one can prohibit this or that, but people then hit on something else, which, as a rule, is not better but much worse. I therefore believe that enlightening explanations, like the one we presented today regarding the effects of alcohol, for example, can be much more effective and will gradually bring human beings to refrain from alcohol on their own. This does not infringe on human freedom, but understanding causes a person to say to himself, “Why, this is shocking! I am harmed right into my bones!” This becomes effective as feeling, whereas laws work only on the intellect. The real truths, the real insights, are those that work all the way into feeling. It is therefore my conviction that we can arrive at an effective social reform—and in other spheres it is much the same—only if true enlightenment in the widest circles of people is made our concern.

This enlightenment, however, can come about only when there is something with which one can enlighten people. When a lecture is given nowadays on the detrimental effects of alcohol, these things are not presented as I have done today—though that should not be so difficult, because people know the facts. But they do not know how to think correctly about these facts that are familiar to them. The listeners come away from a lecture given by some dime-a-dozen professor, and they do not know quite what to make of it. If they are particularly good-natured, they might say, “Well, we don't have the background to comprehend everything he said. The educated gentleman knows it all. A simple person can't understand everything!” The fact is that the lecturer himself doesn't fully comprehend what he is talking about. If one has a science that really goes to the bottom of things and considers their foundations, however, it is possible to make it comprehensible even to simple people.

If science is so unreal today, it is because true humanness was excluded from it when it originated. An individual rises from lecturer to assistant professor [in German, “extraordinary professor”] to full professor. The students are in the habit of saying, “The full professor knows nothing extraordinary, and the assistant professor knows nothing fully.” [“Ein ordentlicher Professor Weiß nichts Außerordentliches, und ein außerordentlicher Professor, der weiß nichts Ordentliches.”] The students sense this in their feelings, gentlemen; the sorry state of affairs thus continues. Regarding social reforms, science essentially accomplishes nothing, whereas it could be effective in the most active way. A person who is sincerely concerned about social life therefore must emphasize again and again that dry laws on paper are much less important—though naturally they too are needed—but they are much less important than thorough enlightenment. The public needs this enlightenment; then we would have real progress.

Particularly facts like those that can be studied in the case of alcohol can be made comprehensible everywhere. One then arrives at what I always tell people. People come and ask, “Is it better not to drink alcohol, or is it better to drink it? Is it better to be a vegetarian or to eat meat?” I never tell anyone whether or not he should abstain from alcohol, or whether he should eat vegetables or meat. Instead, I explain how alcohol works. I simply describe how it works; then the person may decide to drink or not as he pleases. I do the same regarding vegetarian or meat diets. I simply say, this is how meat works and this is how plants work. The result is that a person can then decide for himself.

Above all else, science must have respect for human freedom, so that a person never has the feeling of being given orders or forbidden to do something. He is only told the facts. Once he knows how alcohol works, he will discover on his own what is right. This way we shall accomplish the most. We will come to the point where free human beings can choose their own directions. We must strive for this. Then only will we have real social reforms.

If I am here on Wednesday, we will be able to have the next lecture.

Dr. Steiner: Much knowledge is required really to answer a question like the one posed last time, and we have already considered it from a number of different angles. Because anything relating to reproduction of living beings must be thoroughly understood, I wish to make use of the time today to speak a bit more about this question from a completely different perspective.

There's something peculiar about a remark recently made by an American who came to the conclusion, based on statistics—a favorite innovation of our time that is increasingly pursued in America—that the people who acquire the greatest intelligence are always born in the winter months. Naturally, these statistics should not be taken to mean that a person born in the summer months would have to be stupid. The statistics refer only to the majority. In any case, this American made the statement that, according to statistics, those born between December and the middle of March grow up to be the smartest people.

Something is indicated here that is difficult to study in humans, because with human beings everything possible can interfere. It does indicate, however, that living beings in general—and man is first of all a living being—depend in a certain respect on the course of the year and its influence on them.

Statements like the one made by this American surprise people today only because they know far too little about the real processes of nature. Perhaps this American will meet the same fate as that of a certain professor who once measured human brains; he drew up statistics and found in every instance that women's brains are smaller than those of men. Since, in his opinion, a smaller brain indicates less intelligence, he concluded that all women have less intelligence than men—now he was a famous man! He became famous for finding that the brains of women are smaller than those of men. Now, sometimes autopsies are performed on famous people after death, just because they are famous, and this happened to the professor. His brain was removed, and it turned out that the brain of this man was much smaller than all the women's brains he had examined!

Similarly, if he were not embarrassed to make it known, it might turn out that this American was himself born in the summer. If he were born in the summer, one would have to say that according to his own theory he could not be too clever; therefore, his theory could not be particularly valuable. But you see, there is something behind all these matters after all, and this something can lead to the most significant issues when studied in the right way.

I wish to tell you something today that definitely pertains to the question posed by Mr. R. You see, the conditions relating to reproduction can actually be studied only in animals and plants, because in humans they depend on so many other factors that they cannot be studied properly. If you take what I told you the day before yesterday, that is, that humans, women as well as men, influence the egg cell or semen through drinking, you will see that this alone makes it impossible to study their reproduction correctly. Now, animals are rarely in the habit of getting drunk. In them, conditions thus remain much more pure, and one can study the matter more purely. The most important aspects of the problem are such that dissection of animals for the purpose of such study is quite unnecessary. Through dissection one really discovers the least of all. To begin with, I shall tell you something that is not based on dissection but on positive results that were obtained by men who did not work according to theories but with practical experience. What I will relate to you has to do especially with the beavers in Canada.

These beavers can be encountered around here only in zoos or, stuffed, in laboratories, and they actually appear to be rather clumsy. Such a beaver has a rather clumsy head and body, the front legs are quite thick, and the hind feet are webbed so he can swim. Its strangest feature is its tail, which looks almost like an instrument; it is quite flat and is, in fact, the beaver's most ingenious aspect. What he has behind him is his most ingenious tool. People who have observed beavers do not know at first what they use these tails for, and they have thought up all sorts of incorrect ways of explaining them.

The beaver is a most unusual animal. When one becomes acquainted with a beaver in his own habitat, it is found to be an extremely phlegmatic animal, something that is also evident in those in our zoos. It is so phlegmatic that one cannot really do anything with it. You can attack a beaver, grab for it, but it will not defend itself. The beaver itself will never attack no matter how much it is provoked. It is a completely phlegmatic creature.

These beavers live mainly in such areas as large swamps or short rivers, and they live in a most remarkable way. When spring arrives, a beaver looks for a spot near a lake or river, digs a burrow in the mud, and spends the entire summer living like a true recluse alone in this burrow. This beaver sits the whole summer in this reclusive summer dwelling like a phlegmatic monk passing the time in his summer house! It is only a hole that he digs in the earth, but he does it in total isolation.

When winter approaches—already when late fall comes—the beavers emerge from their burrows and congregate in groups of two to three hundred. They come in all their “phlegmatic-ness” (“Phlegmatischheit”) and form communities. Naturally, those that had mated earlier are among them. A female beaver had prepared her isolated home so that it was suitable for children; the male lived nearby in his own burrow. Now, all these families gather together.

In their slow, phlegmatic way, the beavers proceed to look for a suitable locality. Though it is sometimes difficult to observe because of their phlegmatic temperament, one group will prefer a lake, another a short river, which they follow downstream to a point that appears particularly suited to their purposes. After they have investigated the area, the whole group gathers together again. Near the lake or river, there are usually trees. It is really remarkable how these clumsy beavers now suddenly become extraordinarily skillful. They make use of their front feet—not their hind feet, which are webbed so they can swim—more cleverly than a man handles his tools. Using their front paws and sharp teeth, they gnaw branches off trees and even cut through tree trunks. Then, when a group of them has enough branches and felled trees, they drag them either into the lake they have chosen or into the river.

These animals then push the branches and trees in the lake to the selected spot. Those who have dragged their trees into the river know full well that the river itself will carry them. They only steer the branches so that they won't drift to the side. In this way, all the branches and trees are transported to the spot they have chosen either on the lake's shore or alongside the stream.

Having arrived there, those who have chosen a lake—having transported the trees to the shore—immediately begin constructing so-called lodges. The others, who have picked a river, do not begin with the building of lodges; they first proceed to construct a network of branches. These are interlaced with each other (sketching) until they form a proper network. When the beavers have built up such a wall, they add a second by fetching more branches, all of the same length; in this way, they make a wall two meters or more thick. Thus, you see, the animals dam up the river; the water must flow over it, and underneath it they have free space. Only now, having finished their dam, this wall, do they build their lodge into the wall so that the river flows over it.

When the beavers have accumulated enough branches, and their wall appears thick enough to them, they haul in other material such as ordinary chunks of earth. They fashion a kind of loam from it and putty up the dam on all sides. The beavers first erect a wall, just like real architects. Those who select the lake site, however, don't need a dam and therefore don't try to build one.

After this wall is built—in the case of those who choose the lake, it begins immediately—the beavers begin constructing little lodges from the same material. They look like clay barrels (sketching), but they are real little houses, constructed like braided mats. They are puttied up so well that the small amount of water that seeps into the space can do the beavers no harm. Such a beaver lodge is never constructed in a part of the stream where the water freezes. Imagine how ingenious this is! As you know, water only freezes on its surface; if one dives deep enough, one comes to still or flowing water, neither of which freezes at that depth. Precisely at the level where the water never freezes, these beavers build their dwellings.

Each of these lodges has two floors. There is a floor built in here (sketching), and below it is the entrance. The beavers can run up and down in the lodge; they live upstairs and keep their winter supplies downstairs. They haul in the food they need for the winter, and when it is all stored, the beaver family moves into this lodge, remaining always near the other families.

There the beaver families live until spring, when they once again move to their solitary dwellings. During the winter, the food supplies are brought up from the lower floor, and in this way the beavers sustain themselves. As I said, when summer comes, they seek out their solitary burrows, but during the winter they are together. They lead their social life in beaver villages on the bottom of lakes or in streams by the side of the dam they have so skillfully constructed.

From all that has been observed, even beavers in zoos work solely with their teeth and front paws, never with their tails. Although it is formed most ingeniously, the tail is never used for work. There are many descriptions that claim that beavers employ their tails in working on their constructions, but that is a delusion; it is simply not true. Beavers do possess especially well-developed front legs and teeth, and they use them more cleverly than a man uses his tools.

You know that natural history classifies the various animal species, and among the mammals are the beasts of prey, bats, the ruminants, and so forth. Among the mammals are also the so-called rodents. Our rats, for example, are rodents. The beaver's structure actually puts it in the rodent family.

In any book on natural history, you will find that the rodents are described as the most stupid of mammals; hence, the beaver as individual animal is reckoned among the least intelligent mammals. One can say that the beaver, when studied as a single animal, appears above all as a terribly phlegmatic little rascal. Its phlegmatic temperament is so great that it can appear about as clever as phlegmatic humans appear: they show no interest in anything. The beaver is therefore awfully stupid, but it also accomplishes all these extraordinarily clever feats! For beavers, then, one can say that Rosegger's saying concerning man does not apply: “One is a human being, two are folks, if there are more, they are dumb animals.”¹ Rosegger said this not about beavers but about human beings. He means that when many people meet together, they become stupid. There is something true in this. In a crowd, people become confused and do make stupid impressions, though there certainly are intelligent people among them!

We can say that the opposite is the case with beavers. One is stupid, but several are a little cleverer.² When two or three hundred gather together in the autumn, they become most clever, they become real architects. Though we humans do not tend to be particularly sensitive to the special beauty of the constructions of beavers, this is due to our human taste, but the beaver lodge is really as trim as the beaver is clumsy.

Now, much research can be done on why the beavers are so clever when they congregate. An important indication lies in the fact that the beavers begin their activity in the fall; by day, however, one sees little of this activity. The construction of such a dam and beaver village—it is really an entire village that they lay out—takes place very quickly and is often finished in a matter of days. They are seen doing little during the day, extraordinarily little, but they work feverishly at night. Thus, the beaver's cleverness is brought about first by winter and second by night. Here lie the real clues for the study of this whole matter.

When people study, however, the first principle should be to avoid too much speculative thinking. This might sound strange, but you will understand what I mean. Man does not become especially intelligent through speculation. As a rule, if he ponders over something that he has observed, nothing particularly clever will result. If one wishes to understand the phenomena of the world, therefore, one should not rely too much on speculation; one's speculation is not at all the important thing. Should the facts call for it, one should think, but one's main attention should not be directed toward brooding over something one has observed as a means of figuring it out. Instead, other facts should be looked at, compared with the problem at hand, and a connection sought between them. The more one connects various facts, the more one learns to recognize in nature. People who have only brooded over nature have really not discovered anything more weighty than what they knew in the first place.

When a person becomes a materialist, he speaks materialistically about nature, because that is what he is to begin with. He does not discover anything new. When a man speaks idealistically about nature, he does so because he is an idealist to begin with. In almost all instances, it can be proven that through speculation people discover only what is made evident through what they had already become. Correct thinking only results when one simply allows the facts to guide one.

Now I will add another group of facts to those concerning the beaver, facts that will lead you to the correct clues, not through speculation but simply through a comparison of the facts. I have already referred to the wasps and told you of an observation about wasps made by Darwin. Today, I would like to point this out again.

The wasps make ingenious nests for themselves. Though faintly resembling beehives, the walls of these wasps' nests do not consist of wax but of actual paper. Secondly, the whole process differs from that of the bees. There are wasps' nests, for example, that are built first by digging up the ground; then something resembling a pouch is made. It is constructed somewhat like a beaver lodge, but it is put together with tiny twigs or whatever wood the wasps can find, which they work and shape in the right way so that they end up with a covering, a pouch-like covering that is somewhat thick. It is in this that they build their little nest. There they build their different floors. The cells are hexagonal, just like the bee's honeycomb, and are enveloped by a paper covering. They are like the floors in a building, and there are sometimes many of them, one above the other.

Everything inside the nest is fashioned of paper. The pouch-like outer covering, however, is not made of paper but of other materials, that is, of tiny twigs or bits of wood that are first split before being used. All this is woven into a network and then puttied up. That is what the outer covering consists of, and it is either built in a hole in the ground or fastened with putty to something up in the air. Within the pouch are the individual cells, into each of which an egg will be laid.

This is the story, then, with wasps. You can imagine that wasps are extraordinarily susceptible to the weather. Only some of one year's wasps survive until the following spring, but it doesn't matter if the others don't survive as long as one or two females from a nest remain. In winter they seek out a sheltered little nook where they as females can live scantily, and they hibernate there. In spring, these females emerge from their hiding places and are ready to lay their eggs. Interestingly enough, a special variety of wasps hatches from all these eggs in spring. These wasps that are hatched in spring, growing very quickly and not yet having cells, proceed immediately to construct such cells. Flying around in whole swarms, they look everywhere for materials with which to build a nest properly. This work continues all summer long. These wasps construct the cells there.

The wasps that hatch from eggs laid in spring have a specific characteristic; that is, they are all sterile and cannot reproduce. With these wasps there is no reproduction. Their reproductive organs are so stunted that reproduction is out of the question. So, the first thing the wasp does in spring is to produce an army of workers for itself that are sexless and terrible drudges; they toil throughout the summer.

I have known natural scientists who considered it a goal worth striving for to manipulate humans so as to produce sexless individuals. They would not have families and would only toil, leaving reproduction to a select few as with the wasps.

Well, the fact is that the sexless wasps toil away all summer. When summer is over, the female begins to lay eggs that produce males and females. As a rule, it is the same female that laid the sexless eggs earlier. Now she lays eggs from which, in autumn, males and females emerge.

The males develop into rather puny creatures. By comparison, the sexless wasps are quite robust workers. The males turn out to be stunted and cannot do much of anything. They have just enough time to feed for a while, mate, and then die. Truly, these male wasps play a rather sorry role. They are hastily hatched in fall, they must feed a little, and then they impregnate the females; after that, having accomplished their goal, they die. That is the last thing they do.

Among some types of wasps, the males are a bit hardier. Here things are really curious. Though it is only an exception, it resembles the behavior of certain spiders. With certain spiders, something remarkable is the case. You see, the female spiders consider the males good for nothing but fertilizing them. The males are permitted to approach the females only when they are ready for fertilization, never before. Before, the females generally don't permit the males to come near them; first they must be mature enough for the fertilization. Now, as I said, the following also occurs occasionally, as an exception, among wasps. Among spiders, which are, after all, lower creatures, when a female notices a greedy little male approaching, she places herself in a spot that is not easily accessible to him and even more difficult for him to leave. There the female waits for him, lets fertilization occur, and then lets him try to leave. When he comes up against an obstacle, the female quickly pursues him and bites him until he's dead. Here, the female spider herself sees to it that the male dies. Such is the case with some spiders. Just imagine, when the male has carried out his function, he must be killed, because he no longer serves a purpose.

Among wasps, however, the males die as a rule by themselves, because they have expended so much energy during their mating activity that they have no strength left and so perish. The sexless wasps die at the same time. After toiling all summer, they all die in the fall. The sexless and the male wasps die, and only the females remain. Of these, many also succumb to the cold of winter. Only those few survive that have found a secure shelter. They make it through to spring, lay eggs, and the whole cycle starts anew. So, in spring and summer only sexless wasps are born. Not until late fall, approaching winter, can the sexually active wasps be born.

These are the facts, you see, that must be observed. It is very important to connect these with other facts, since this shows us how much the sex life of animals is connected with the seasons of the year. The sex life of animals is very strongly connected with the course of the year.

Let us assume that it is summer. The earth is extraordinarily exposed to the sun's effects. The sun sends down light and warmth to the earth. Direct exposure to sunlight causes one to sweat; one notices the sun's effects by one's own condition. Neither the beaver nor the female wasp expose themselves directly to sunlight; they are always in some cave-like dwelling. In their holes they benefit from the sun's light and heat only indirectly through the earth. Thereby, as winter approaches they receive quite definite qualities. Just think, toward winter the wasps receive a quality that makes them capable of producing sexually active offspring.

What does this signify? The female wasp is exposed throughout the summer to the sun's heat and light and produces sexless wasps. You can therefore say that the effects of the sun are such that they actually destroy the sexuality of the wasps. It is quite obvious from this fact that the sun with its light and heat, which are reflected by the earth, has the effect of destroying the reproductive tendencies. This is why, when spring comes and warmth and sunlight prevail, the wasps produce sexless offspring. Only when winter approaches, when therefore the sun's heat and light no longer have the same intensity, do the wasps gain the strength to produce offspring with reproductive organs. This clearly demonstrates that the seasons of the year have a definite influence.

Now, if we turn from the wasps to the beavers, we must say to ourselves, the beaver is an extremely stupid, phlegmatic animal! It is stupid and phlegmatic to the highest degree. Wonderful. But where does it spend the summer? It stays in the ground in its solitary burrow, allowing heat and light that comes into the burrow to penetrate its body, so that it actually absorbs all the summer sunlight and warmth. When this absorption is completed in the fall, the beaver begins to look for other beavers, and together they become clever. It employs a cleverness that it does not possess as a single animal. Now, suddenly, as they gather together, the beavers become clever. Naturally, as single animals they could never construct all those beaver villages. The first step of choosing a suitable site is already clever.

This clearly illustrates what I pointed out last time: the cleverness that is in a creature must first be gathered, just as water is collected in pitchers. What does the beaver do while as a single animal it lives like a hermit in its summer house? The beaver gathers sunlight and the sun's warmth for itself—or so we say, because all we can perceive is the sun's light and warmth. In truth, the beaver gathers its intelligence. Along with sunlight and warmth, intelligence streams from the cosmos down upon the earth, and the beaver gathers it for itself; now the beaver has it, and it builds. With the beaver you can see in reality what I recently presented to you as a picture.

Something else now becomes comprehensible: the beaver's tail. Compare it with what I said about the dog's tail, the dog's tail being its organ of pleasure and therefore the soul organ of the dog. The dog wags its tail when it is happy. In the beaver's case it is so that within its tail, which the animal does not use as a tool but which is formed most ingeniously, the beaver has its accumulated intelligence. With it the animal directs itself. This means that the beaver is really directed by the sun's warmth and light. They are contained in the tail and have become intelligence. This is really the communal brain of this beaver colony.

These tails are the means by which the sunlight and warmth produce cleverness. The beaver does not employ its tail as a physical instrument; it uses its front paws and teeth as physical instruments. The tail, however, is something that has an effect; it has an effect just as when a group is being driven forward by somebody from behind. In that case, it is somebody driving them. Here it is the sun, which, through the beavers' tails, still has an aftereffect in winter and constructs the beaver village. It is the intelligence that comes down from the sun to the earth with light and warmth that does the building.

Naturally, what descends here as soul and spirit from the universe affects all the other creatures, including the wasps. How does it affect the wasps? When the female is exposed to the sun—meaning the sun's earthly effect, which it enjoys in its earthen hole—the force in the wasp's offspring that can bring forth more offspring is destroyed. The wasp can produce only sexless insects under the sun's influence. Only when the wasp is not so strongly exposed to the sun's heat, in autumn, and is still full of vitality—not subdued as in winter—does the force develop in it to bring forth sexually active wasps. This once again demonstrates plainly that what comes from the earth produces the sexual forces, whereas that which comes from the universe produces intelligence and kills the sexual forces. In this way a balance is brought about. When the wasp is more exposed to the earth, it develops sexual forces; when the wasp is exposed more to heaven—if I may use this word here—it does not develop sexual forces but produces sexless wasps instead. These sexless insects have in themselves the cleverness to construct a whole wasps' nest. Who, in fact, builds this nest? The sun builds it through the sexless wasps!

This is a most important point, gentlemen. In truth, the wasps' nests, as well as all the beavers' construction, are built by the cleverness that flows to earth from the sun. This is plain to see when all the facts are brought together. That is why I said to you that all speculation indulged in after something has been observed doesn't do a bit of good. Only when facts are compared and related to each other is a sound opinion gained.

People simply look at the isolated facts; this is why there is so much that is not to the point. They think to themselves, “Now, when one observes beavers, one observes beavers, and afterward one speculates about beavers. When one observes beavers, what does one care about wasps?” But one discovers nothing if one fails to observe something that is seemingly so far removed from the beaver as the wasp. If one were to look at the wasp, one would see that wasps' nests are also constructed through the cleverness that comes to us from the sun.

The sun's effects can still be observed in a tame beaver in a cage, although the animal need not be tame, because it is so phlegmatic, but needs only to be in captivity. When the sun's effects cease to be so strong and instead the earth influences it, even the caged beaver begins its winter activities. It tries to bite through the wires of its cage. This is said to be the beaver's instinct. Anybody can say “instinct”; that is just a word. Such words are like empty containers into which everything is poured that one knows nothing about. If one wishes to explain something like instinct, however, one reaches the point where one must say: it is indeed the sun! Gentlemen, it really is so. In this manner, through the pure facts, one comes to recognize how the cosmic surroundings of the earth affect living beings.

Now it is no longer so surprising that some American comes to say that those humans born in the months from December to March most readily acquire intelligence. In the case of human beings, matters have become quite complicated. Everything in man tends toward his becoming independent from all that animals are still dependent upon. You must therefore consider the following. Persons born between December and March were conceived between March and May. Their births date back to conceptions that took place in the spring nine months earlier, between March and May, and hence to a time approaching summer. According to everything I have explained today, the sun's effects are always stronger then. So, what does the sun do? It subdues human sexual forces just a little—not completely, because man is more independent than the animals—and these subdued sexual forces become forces of intelligence. That is why such a person has an easier time of it, while those born in summer must work somewhat more at acquiring their cleverness. That can happen, but it is true that humans have different predispositions. Those conceived in spring and born the following winter tend to acquire forces of intelligence more easily than those born at other times.

All this must be known so that these differences can be compensated for through education. In man, this can be done. Wasps, however, cannot be educated to produce sexless offspring that build nests in winter, nor can beavers be educated to overcome nature, as we say, to a certain degree. You can see from this that to overcome something is different for man from what it is for animals. In the animals, the soul-spiritual element depends completely on cosmic development. It simply depends on the sun for wasps' nests and beaver lodges to be built.

Something else can be seen in the beaver. In fall, these beaver hermits that have spent the entire summer in seclusion come together in groups of two and three hundred, and only then, as groups, can they employ the intelligence bestowed by the sun. They can use it as groups, not individuals. Individually, they could never accomplish this; it must be the work of the group.

With human beings much can be accomplished by the individual that animals can only accomplish in groups. This is why in anthroposophy we say that with animals the soul life exists only in groups—hence, group souls. Man, however, has his individual soul.

Now, this is most interesting. I once told you what the human thigh bone looks like, for example. In the beaver, it really is not the same, but a human thigh bone looks like an extraordinarily delicate, beautiful work of art. In it there are beams, quite ingeniously constructed. A human being is actually built up in such a way that, when observing him correctly, one can say: he builds everything in himself that the beaver builds outwardly. By nature, he builds everything in himself that the beaver builds outwardly. The question then arises: where does all that is so wisely and ingeniously constructed within a human being originate? If the beaver construction originates from the sun and its surroundings, the human organization also originates from the sun. We are, indeed, not earthly beings but sun beings and have only been placed on the earth. What for? You can see when you consider this matter.

From the earth the wasps have the power to produce sexual offspring. Man must be on the earth in order to have his reproductive force. By comparison, he has another force that is more rational, which he gets from the cosmic surroundings. We can see quite clearly that man gets his intelligence from the cosmic surroundings, and the reproductive force he gets from the earth. One could go further and show how the moon is related to the earth, but there is no more time today. We can go into that another time. You can see, however, that if facts are viewed correctly they lead you to realize that the world is really a unity and that we are dependent also upon the earth's surroundings, which consist not merely of a shining, warming sun but also of a clever sun, an intelligent sun. This is extremely important, because the individual questions that you pose can be answered better in this way. You see that the reproductive force, which I described to you last time, is related to drinking. Why are they related in such a way that a little drinking does not make such a difference but heavy drinking does? You can figure this out from the following.

What is alcohol? Wine demonstrates what alcohol actually is, because wine, which only wealthy people can afford to drink, has the most harmful effect. Beer is less harmful for the reproductive organs than wine. Beer affects other organs more—the heart, kidneys, and so forth—but the alcohol in wine and, of course, especially the alcohol in hard liquor, affects the reproductive organs.

Where does the substance contained in wine and hard liquor originate? It originates through the influence of the sun's forces! This substance needs the whole summer to mature. Now you can see why it becomes harmful to the reproductive organs. When one drinks, the reproductive organs are subjected to what has been absorbed inwardly in the way food is, to what should be absorbed solely by way of the sun itself, the sun's shining. This takes its toll. Man drinks something that the sun produces outside of him. It becomes a poison through this. When the warmth of the sun is taken into the system in the right way, however, the organism itself produces the small quantity of alcohol it. needs, as I have explained. In drinking alcohol, man really admits an enemy into his system, because what is introduced in the right way from outside turns into a poison when it is consumed inwardly, and vice versa. I have demonstrated this to you in the case of phosphorus. So, what works in alcohol is what the sun has produced in it, because the sun has matured it. When the sun shines on us, it is the other way around; then we must absorb warmth and light from outside. When we consume alcohol, however, we warm ourselves inwardly. The same force that is our friend when we make use of it outwardly becomes our enemy when we use it internally.

The same is also true in nature. There are forces in nature that work beneficially from one direction, but when they work from the opposite direction they work as poisons. We can gain comprehension only when we examine this in the right way.

I wanted to add this so that you could understand better everything that relates to Mr. E's question. Now think all this over. Should you wish to ask further questions, I hope to be here next Saturday.

• 1. Note by translator: In the German text, this saying by the Austrian poet, Peter Rosegger, is rendered in untranslatable Austrian dialect: “Oaner is a Mensch, zwoa san Leit, san's mehra, san's Viecher.”
• 2. Here Rudolf Steiner mimics the same Austrian dialect and says, “Oaner is dumm, und mehra san a bissel gescheiter.”

A question is raised concerning the effects of vegetarian and meat diets, and of nicotine.

Concerning conception, how is it possible that women bear sons if none of the ancestors had sons? How can the birth of two sets of twins be explained?

What influence does absinthe have on semen?

What is the difference between the ages of wasps and bees?

Dr. Steiner: The matters I have discussed regarding bees naturally refer only to bees and not to wasps. Bees differ from wasps, so my statements refer to bees, not wasps.

Now we shall try to go into these questions. The first asked about the influence of nicotine and therefore of the poison that is introduced into the human body through smoking and through tobacco in general. First, we must be clear how the effect of nicotine shows itself. The effect of nicotine shows itself above all in the activity of the heart. Through nicotine, an increased, stronger activity of the heart is called forth. The heart is not a pump, however, but only indicates what goes on in the body: the heart beats faster when the blood circulates faster. Nicotine therefore actually affects the blood circulation, animating it. One must therefore be clear that through the introduction of nicotine into the human body, the blood circulation is stimulated. This, in turn, calls forth a stronger activity of the heart.

Now, this whole process in the human organism must be traced. You must be clear that everything occurring in the human organism is actually strictly regulated. One of the most important points regarding the human organism, for example, is the fact that the pulse rate of the adult is 72 beats a minute, and this holds true even into old age.

By comparison, as I have mentioned to you before, man takes about 18 breaths a minute. When you multiply 18 by 4, you get 72. This means that on the average the blood substance pulses four times as quickly through the body as does the breath. Of course, these are average figures; they differ slightly in each human being. The fact that this ratio varies in people accounts for the differences between them, but on the average it is 1:4; that is, the blood circulation is four times stronger than that of the breathing rhythm.

If I now introduce nicotine into the human organism, I can do it for two reasons—first, because of a strong liking for tobacco, and second, as a remedy. Every substance that is poisonous is also a remedy. Everything, one can say, is both poisonous and healing. If, for example, you drink several buckets of water, they naturally have a poisonous effect, whereas the proper amount is a means of sustenance, and when it is introduced in unusually small amounts, it can even be a remedy. As a matter of fact, water is generally a potent remedy when certain methods are employed. It can therefore be said that even the most commonplace substances can be poisons as well as remedies. This is why the effect that a given substance has on the human organism must be known.

If I introduce tobacco into the human organism, it first stimulates the blood circulation. The blood becomes more active, circulating more vigorously. Breathing, however, is not stimulated to the same degree by tobacco; the breathing rhythm remains the same. The blood circulation is therefore no longer synchronized with the breathing. If man were to introduce nicotine into his body, he would need a blood circulation different from the one he ordinarily has.

Let us say, for example, that there were a person whose system was adjusted to the exact average of 18 breaths and 72 pulse beats (there aren't any such persons, but let's assume there were one). Now, nicotine causes his pulse rate to increase to, let us say, 76 beats. The correct ratio between the pulse and the respiration thus is altered. The result is that the blood doesn't receive enough oxygen, since a certain amount is supposed to be absorbed into the blood with each pulse beat. The consequence of nicotine poisoning, therefore, is that the blood demands too much oxygen. The breathing process does not supply enough oxygen, and a slight shortness of breath occurs. This shortness of breath is, of course, so negligible that it escapes notice; after all, as I have told you, the human body can take a lot of abuse. Nevertheless, the use of nicotine always calls forth a definite, very slight shortness of breath. This slight shortness of breath causes with each breath a feeling of anxiety. Every shortness of breath causes a feeling of anxiety. It is easier to control a normal sensation of anxiety than this terribly slight anxiety, of which one is completely unconscious. When something like anxiety, fear, or shock remains unnoticed, it is a direct source of illness.

Such a source of illness is constantly present in a person who is a heavy smoker because, without realizing it, he is always filled with a certain anxiety. Now, you know that if you suffer from anxiety, your heart pumps more quickly. This leads you to realize that the heart of a person who constantly poisons himself with nicotine continuously beats somewhat too fast. When it beats too quickly, however, the heart thickens, just as the muscle of the upper arm, the biceps, grows thicker when it is constantly strained. Under some circumstances, this is not so bad, as long as the inner tissue doesn't tear. If the heart muscle—it is also a muscle—becomes too thick from over-exertion, however, it exerts pressure on all the other organs with the result, as a rule, that beginning from the heart the blood circulation becomes disturbed. The circulation of the blood cannot be initiated by the heart, but it can be disturbed when the heart is thickened.

The next consequence of a thickened heart is that the kidneys become ill, since it is due to the harmonious activities of heart and kidneys that the entire human bodily organization is kept functioning properly. The heart and kidneys must always work in harmony. Naturally, everything in the human being must harmonize, but the heart and kidneys are directly connected. It quickly becomes apparent that when something is amiss in the heart, the kidneys no longer function properly. Urinary elimination no longer works in the right way with the result that man develops a much too rapid tempo of life and comes to wear himself out too quickly. A person who takes into his body too much nicotine in relation to his bodily proportions therefore will slowly but surely deteriorate. Actually, he gradually perishes from a variety of inner conditions of anxiety that influence the heart.

The effects of states of anxiety on the activities of the soul can easily be determined. In people who have introduced too much nicotine into their bodies, it becomes noticeable that gradually their power of thought is also impaired. The power of thought is impaired, because man can no longer think properly when he lives in anxiety. Nicotine poisoning, therefore, can be recognized by the fact that such people's thoughts are no longer quite in order. They usually jump to conclusions much too quickly. They sometimes intensify this overly rapid judgment to paranoid thoughts. We can therefore say that the use of nicotine for pleasure actually undermines human health.

In all such matters, however, you must consider the other side. Smoking is something that has only come about in humanity's recent evolution. Originally, human beings did not smoke, and it is only recently that the use of tobacco has become fashionable. Now let us look at the other side of the coin.

Let us assume that a person's pulse beats only 68 instead of 72 times per minute. Such a person, whose blood circulation is not animated enough, now begins to smoke. You see, then, his blood circulation is stimulated in the right direction, from 68 to 72, so that his blood circulation and breathing harmonize. If, therefore, a doctor notices that an illness is caused by weak blood circulation, he may even advise his patient to smoke.

As was said before, when the blood circulation is too rapid relative to breathing, one is dealing with terrible conditions of anxiety, which, however, do not become conscious. If for some reason a person's blood circulation is too weak, however, this makes itself felt by the fact that he goes around wanting to do something but not knowing what. This is also a characteristic phenomenon of illness; there are people who go around wanting something, but they do not know what it is that they want. Just think how many people go around without knowing what they want! One commonly says that they are dissatisfied with life. They are the people, who, for example, somehow drift into some profession, which then does not suit them, and so forth. This is really due to a blood circulation that is too weak. With such a person one can actually say that it is beneficial to administer nicotine to cure him. If smoking is agreeable to him, one need not prescribe nicotine in medicinal form, but one can advise him to smoke, if previously he wasn't a smoker.

It is actually true that in recent times people who really do not know what they want have become more and more numerous. It is indeed easy in our modern age for people not to know what they want, because, since about three or four centuries ago, the majority of them have become unaccustomed to occupying themselves with something spiritual. They go to their offices and busy themselves with something they actually dislike but that brings in money. They sit through their office hours, are even quite industrious, but they have no real interests except going to the theater or reading newspapers. Gradually, things have been reduced to this. Even reading books, for example, has become a rarity today.

That this has all come about is due to the fact that people don't know at all what they want. They must be told what they want. Reading newspapers or going to the theater stimulates the senses and the intellect but not the blood. When one must sit down and read some difficult book, the blood is stimulated. As soon as an effort has to be made to understand something, the blood is stimulated, but people do not want that anymore. They quite dislike having to exert themselves to understand something. That is something quite repugnant to people. They do not want to understand anything! This unwillingness to understand causes their blood to thicken. Such thick blood circulates more slowly. As a result, a remedy is constantly required to bring this increasingly thick blood into motion. It is brought into motion when they stick a cigarette into the mouth. The blood doesn't become thinner, but the blood circulation becomes ever more difficult. This can cause people to become afflicted with various signs of old age at a time in life when this needn't yet occur.

This shows how extraordinarily delicate the human body's activity is. Diagnostic results are obtained not only when the blood is examined but also when the manner in which a person behaves—whether he thinks slowly or quickly—is studied. You therefore can see, gentlemen, that if you wish to know something about the effect of nicotine, you must be thoroughly familiar with the entire circulatory and breathing processes.

Now, remember what I recently told you about how the blood is produced in the bone marrow. Essentially it comes from there. If the blood is produced in the bone marrow and the blood is made to circulate too quickly, then the bone marrow must also work faster than it should. As a result, the bones cannot keep up with their work, and then those creatures develop within the bones, those little creatures that devour us. Doctors such as Metchnikoff believed that these osteoclasts, as such little fellows are called, are the cause of human death. Metchnikoff said that if there were no osteoclasts, we would live forever. He held that they literally devour us. The fact is that the older we get, the more osteoclasts are present. It is true that our bones are gradually eaten by the osteoclasts, but from the other side it is like fertilizing a field well—more will grow on it than if it were badly fertilized. For man, the introduction of nicotine into the body has a detrimental effect on the bones, but for these cannibalistic bone-devourers, the osteoclasts, it creates the best environment possible.

This is how it is in the world. A lazy thinker assumes that the world is fashioned by the Good Lord and so all must be well. Then one can ask why God allowed the osteoclasts to grow alongside the bones? If He had not allowed the osteoclasts to grow, we would not be slowly devoured throughout life. Instead, we could abuse our bones so terribly that something else would finally make them deteriorate. In any case, they could last for centuries if these little beasts were not contained within them.

It serves no purpose, however, to think lazily this way. The only useful thing is to go truly into the facts, to know that the delicate forces instrumental in building up the bones have their adversaries. These osteoclasts, too, are part of creation, and we have them within us by the millions. The older you get, the more of these osteoclasts you have. You have cannibals, though they are minute, always within you. Actual cannibals are not the most clever; the cleverest are those that we carry around within us in this way, and they find fertile ground when nicotine is introduced into the body.

You can recognize the extraordinary importance of thoroughly understanding the entire human being in order to determine how a given substance works in the human body. Now, man constantly eats. He eats animal substances and he eats those of plants. I have told you before that I have no intention of promoting one or another form of diet. I only point out the effects. Vegetarians have frequently come to me saying they are prone to slight fainting spells, and so on. I have told them that it is because they don't eat meat. These matters must be viewed quite objectively; one must not desire to force something. What is the “objective view,” however, regarding eating plants and eating meat? Consider the plant. A plant manages to develop the seed that is planted in the earth all the way to green leaves and colorful flower petals. Now, you either receive your nourishment directly from grains, or you pluck a cabbage and make soup or something. Compare what you get from the plant with what is present in meat, usually an animal's muscle. Meat is a completely different substance from the plant. What is the relationship between these two substances?

You know that there are some animals that are simply gentle vegetarian beings. There are animals that do not eat meat. Cows, for example, eat no meat. Neither are horses keen on meat; they also eat only plants. Now, you must be clear that an animal not only absorbs food but is also constantly shedding what is inside its body. Among birds you know that there is something called moulting. The birds lose their feathers and must replace them with new ones. You know that deer drop their antlers. You cut your nails, and they grow back. What appears outwardly so visible here is part of a continuous process. We constantly shed our skins. I have explained this to you once before. During a period of approximately seven to eight years, our entire bodies are shed and replaced with new ones. This is also the case with animals.

Consider a cow or an ox. After some years the flesh within it has been entirely replaced. With oxen the exchange takes place even faster than with human beings. A new flesh is therefore made. From what did this flesh originate, however? You must ask yourselves this. The ox itself has produced the flesh in its body from plant substances. This is the most important point to consider. This animal's body is therefore capable of producing meat from plants. Now, you can cook cabbage as long as you like, but you won't turn it into meat! You do not produce meat in your frying pan or your stew pot, and nobody has ever baked a cake that became meat. This cannot be done with outer skills, but, taken fundamentally, the animal's body can accomplish inwardly what one can't do outwardly. Flesh is produced in the animal's body, and to do this, forces must first be present in the body. With all our technological forces, we have none by which we can simply produce meat from plants. We don't have that, but in our bodies and in animal bodies there are forces that can make meat substance from plant substance.

Now, this is a plant (sketching) that is still in a, meadow or field. The forces that have been active up to this point have brought forth green leaves, berries, and so forth. Imagine a cow devours this plant. When the cow devours this plant, it becomes flesh in her. This means that the cow possesses the forces that can make this plant into meat.

Now imagine that an ox suddenly decided that it was too tiresome to graze and nibble plants, that it would let another animal eat them and do the work for it, and then it would eat the animal. In other words, the ox would begin to eat meat, though it could produce the meat by itself. It has the inner forces to do so. What would happen if the ox were to eat meat directly instead of plants? It would leave all the forces unused that can produce the flesh in him. Think of the tremendous amount of energy that is lost when the machines in a factory in which something or other is manufactured are all turned on without producing anything. There is a tremendous loss of energy. But the unused energy in the ox's body cannot simply be lost, so the ox is finally filled with it, and this pent-up force does something in him other than produce flesh from plant substances. It does something else in him. After all, the energy remains; it is present in the animal, and so it produces waste products. Instead of flesh, harmful substances are produced. Therefore, if an ox were suddenly to turn into a meat eater, it would fill itself with all kinds of harmful substances such as uric acid and urates.

Now urates have their specific effects. The specific effects of urates are expressed in a particular affinity for the nervous system and the brain. The result is that if an ox were to consume meat directly, large amounts of urates would be secreted; they would enter the brain, and the ox would go crazy. If an experiment could be made in which a herd of oxen were suddenly fed with pigeons, it would produce a completely mad herd of oxen. That is what would happen. In spite of the gentleness of the pigeons, the oxen would go mad.

You see, such a matter naturally testifies against materialism, because if oxen only ate pigeons and if only the material element were effective, they would have to become as gentle as the pigeons. That would not be the case at all, however. Instead, the oxen would turn into terribly wild, furious creatures. This is proved by the fact that horses become extremely violent when fed a little meat. They begin to grow wild, because they are not accustomed to eating meat.

This, of course, applies also to human beings. It is very interesting that historically a part of Asia's peoples is strictly vegetarian. These are gentle people who rarely wage war. In the Near East, people began to eat meat and thus brought about the madness of war. The peoples of the Asian nations transform plants into flesh by making use of the forces that otherwise are left unused, unconscious. Consequently, these people remain gentle whereas the meat eaters of other nations do not remain so gentle.

We must be clear that people have only gradually become mature enough for such deliberations as we are presenting here. When people began to eat meat, it could not be considered in the way we have just done; it all arose from feeling and instinct.

You see, the lion continually devours meat; he is no plant eater. The lion also has very short intestines, unlike the plant-eating animals whose intestines are very long. This is also the case in humans. If a person is born into a certain race or people whose ancestors ate meat, then his intestines will already be shorter. They will be too short for pure vegetarianism. If, in spite of that, he eats only plants, he will have to practice all sorts of measures to remain healthy.

It is certainly possible to be a vegetarian today, and it has many points in its favor. One of the main advantages of eating only vegetables is that one does not tire as quickly. Since no uric acid and urates are secreted, one does not tire as quickly but will retain a clearer head and think more easily—if one is in the habit of thinking! A person who cannot think does not gain anything by freeing his brain from urates, because it is necessary for the whole human organization to harmonize. In any case, through self-control, a person can become a vegetarian today. Then he uses those forces that, in people who eat meat, are simply left unused.

Now, I wish to call your attention to a strange phenomenon. If you look around in the world, you will find that there is an illness that quickly undermines human health. It is so-called diabetes, the sugar sickness. First, sugar is discovered in the urine, and man soon succumbs to the body's deterioration, which is caused by an over-abundance of sugar. It is a truly fatal illness. Sugar is also what keeps the human being inwardly strong, when taken in the right way.

This can even be verified by statistics. Much less sugar is consumed in Russia than in England. This really accounts for the entire difference between the Russian people and the English. The English are self-conscious and egotistical; the Russians are unselfish and physically not as vigorous. This is related to the lower sugar consumption in Russia than in England, where a large amount of sugar is eaten in the food. The human body, however, requires the assimilation of an amount of sugar. Just as the bones support a human being, so the amounts of sugar circulating in his body sustain him. If, then, too much sugar is eliminated in the urine, too little is taken up by the body and the health is undermined. This is diabetes.

Diabetes is today more prevalent among Jews. Certainly others also have diabetes, but it occurs with particular frequency today among Jews. These people have a tendency to diabetes. The Jew has more difficulty absorbing sugar, yet on the other hand he requires it. The Jewish diet should therefore actually tend to make it as easy as possible for the human body to make use of sugar and not to eliminate it.

If you read the Old Testament, you will find a variety of dietary rules that to this day are observed in restaurants that serve kosher food. Kosher cooking follows the ancient Mosaic dietary laws. If you study these, you will find the essence lies in the fact that Jews should eat food that allows the greatest assimilation of sugar, since this people has difficulty absorbing it. Pork makes the assimilation of sugar extremely difficult—pork aggravates diabetes unusually in the human being—so the prohibition of pork was calculated particularly to prevent diabetes. You see, you must read the Old Testament even from a medical standpoint; then it becomes terribly interesting. It is fascinating to trace what the various prohibitions and kosher preparations of foods are intended to accomplish. Even the so-called “Schächten,” the special way of butchering and killing poultry, for example, is intended to retain just the right amount of blood in the meat a Jew consumes so he can assimilate from it the right amount of sugar.

In recent times, Jews have gradually neglected their dietary laws, although they still remain within their racial relationships. Since the dietary rules are really rules for a specific racial group, to abandon them is detrimental, and they therefore succumb more readily to diabetes than other people. That is how it is.

We therefore can say that a meat diet produces unused forces in the human being that work in the human body improperly to produce waste. Naturally, this waste can then be eliminated again, but it is often a quite complicated task. One can say that when some matters are rightly expressed, they look quite peculiar. Some people work in their own particular way all winter long and eat in their own way, too. They consume with pleasure just enough food to give them a slight stomach upset every day, which they keep under control by drinking the necessary amount of alcohol. Come April or May they are ready for Karlsbad or some other health spa, since by that time they have accumulated a goodly amount of waste in their organisms, in their bodies. What they really need now is a thorough cleansing. The system must be cleaned out. They go to Karlsbad. You know that the waters of Karlsbad cause vigorous diarrhea, which purges the system. This done, they can return home and begin all over again. As a rule, no more is necessary than to go to Karlsbad every year, but if they are kept from going once, they suffer from something like diabetes or some related problem.

From the standpoint of an affluent society, it does not sound too bad to say that so-and-so is going to Karlsbad. In reality, it means using manure buckets to put one's body back in order; this is what drinking the waters and taking the baths at Karlsbad accomplish. The system is thoroughly purged and is then all right for a while.

Naturally, this is no way to raise the level of national health. Ultimately, the quality of all foods processed and sold on the market is geared to the eating habits of a person who can afford to go to Karlsbad or a similar spa. One who cannot afford to go to Karlsbad also has to eat, but he can't be purged without the money. No other foods are available to him. Therefore, a start must be made in medicine to set social life on the right course.

Naturally, one could expound on this subject much longer. If I have forgotten something today, however, I shall try to tell you about it in the course of time.

Concerning absinthe, I only wish to add that it actually works quite similarly to the alcohol in wine, for example. The difference is that while wine directly ruins the physical substance—sleep evens matters out somewhat—absinthe also ruins the sleep. With absinthe, a person gets a hangover during sleep, and he is therefore prevented from sleeping well. One must sleep, however, if one drinks alcohol. Ordinarily, too much drink must be slept off—this is testified to by the expression, “to sleep it off.” Sleep has a beneficial effect on alcohol intake and evens matters out. For this reason, absinthe is more damaging than ordinary alcohol, because even sleep is ruined.

Now you need to consider how our hair, for example, grows more rapidly during sleep. A person who shaves knows that when he sleeps particularly late on a given day, he is more in need of a shave when he wakes. Have you noticed this? (Answer: “Oh yes!”) When the soul activity is absent from the body, whiskers grow very quickly. Sleep is there to stimulate the growth forces in the physical body. Absinthe, however, extends its effects even into sleep, and with absinthe-drinkers sleep does not neutralize these effects. The red corpuscles of the blood are even ruined in sleep in women who drink absinthe, and in men the white corpuscles are ruined. Something else comes in here. Since absinthe works all the way into sleep, a woman's monthly period is very strongly influenced. Irregularities then occur that become even more pronounced in her descendants. The result is that ovulation, which should occur every four weeks, takes place irregularly.

The main thing that. can be said about absinthe is, therefore, that it works similarly to the ordinary alcohol in wine, beer, or cognac, but it even ruins sleep. Though one could go into more detail, I wish to say something concerning the other question that was asked about twins.

In identical twin births, fertilization occurs just as it does for single births. A male sperm penetrates the female egg cell, which then closes itself off; all the other processes take place within it. The number of offspring derived from this egg is determined by something quite other than the number of male sperm. Only one sperm enters the egg, whereas the whole world has an influence on the offspring. They are created by the forces of the entire universe.

What I have to say now sounds somewhat curious, but it is the truth. It can happen that shortly after fertilization the woman is subjected again to the same influences from the cosmos. This is what I mean: let us assume that fertilization occurs during the time of the waning moon. The woman is then exposed to certain forces in the cosmos that originate from a certain segment of the moon. Now, in the first three weeks after fertilization the initial processes are completely indefinite. Nothing can yet be determined. After three weeks, the human being is just a minute little fish-like thing. Before that, everything is indefinite. The three weeks run their course, always in such a way that almost anything can develop from the human germ, and if things are just right and the woman now comes under the influence of the waxing moon, then the same influences are again present externally. Some effects have already been present from the waning moon; now the waxing moon also has an influence, and the birth of twins can come about.

It can also be possible that a woman might consciously be eager to have a child, but subconsciously she harbors a certain antipathy, perhaps a totally unconscious antipathy, toward bearing children. She need only have a certain antipathy toward the man she has married. Such antipathies also exist. Then she herself holds back the rapid development of the so-called embryo, the human germ. The influences that should have an effect once work several times from the cosmos, and thus triplets can result. Even quadruplets have been born. All this is never caused by the fertilization, however, but by the other influences, the outer influences. If identical twin births were to occur at fertilization, the twins would certainly turn out to be different from each other since they would have had to originate from different sperm. Twins can indeed also come from two eggs rather than one. But the striking feature of identical twins is that they are alike even in unusual characteristics; even what comes about at a later age, for instance, develops in the same way in twins. The reason is that they emerge from one egg. So you must realize that fertilization is not different in the case of identical twin births, but rather outer influences play their part here.

A question is raised concerning why, in one family, four mute children were born along with normal children. In his youth, the father of the children tore the tongues out of birds. Could the four mute children be his punishment?

Another question: Influenza, in which people suffer from double vision, is so frequent now. What is the cause of this?

Dr. Steiner: Were the children who cannot speak born one after the other in this family, or were the children who could speak born in-between?

The Questioner: The mute children were born one after the other.

Dr. Steiner: It is difficult to speak about such a case when one is not thoroughly familiar with it. We shall take up the question about influenza later. This first case, however, is difficult to judge when one is not familiar with the details. Much depends, for example, on whether a speaking child was born between the mute children; whether, after a certain moment in time, the speaking children were born and the mute children after, or whether the mute children were born first and the normal children after, or whether they were born alternately. Muteness in children naturally can be caused by any number of factors. If these children can hear and are only mute, not deaf—mute—something about which one can sometimes be in error of course—if they truly hear, and the problem therefore lies in the speech apparatus, then one must figure out how the father or mother could have influenced it.

Without thoroughly knowing this case, however, it is really risky to talk about it. One would have to know the age of both parents. Much depends on whether both parents were already old when they had the children or whether they are still young. Another factor is whether the mother or the father is the older. Much depends on all this.

Then, the character of both parents also plays a part. Whether or not it is important that the father tore out the tongues of birds in his youth, as you say, can be determined only after all the other questions have been answered. Such a consideration depends on whether the man was perhaps cruel in his youth. The characteristic of cruelty as such does come into consideration. To speak of a punishment, however, is out of the question here. First, punishments do not exist and second, if they did, this certainly would not be a punishment for the father! To say that the children were born mute to punish the father for his cruelty reminds me of the story of the boy whose hands froze and who said, “This serves my father right for not buying me gloves!” When somebody is as terribly afflicted as these four children, it is not a punishment for the father; he is much less affected than the four children, although his cruelty must be considered.

Again, certain other definite matters must be considered here. In relation to children's age you can see that if a person develops a quality as a youth—let us say one develops a quality of cruelty or something similar at age eleven, for example—the onset of such a tendency always recurs after about three and a half years. This individual would then express cruel tendencies again at fourteen and a half or fifteen, then again at eighteen, at twenty—one and a half, and so forth.

Imagine, if conception occurs during the period when such a tendency recurs, the conception itself can be a kind of cruelty and naturally can work harmfully. In this roundabout way, all such matters naturally can come under consideration. A connection can only be claimed, however, if all other factors have been excluded. I have told you what a difference there is between winter births and summer births. One would have to determine from the ages of these children whether the earlier births perhaps occurred in the summer or in the winter, and so forth.

This is why I say that to approach the problem conscientiously, one must know all the details. When you become acquainted with the whole case, we can talk about it. I would be glad to do so. You do not know, for example, whether the four mute children were the older or the younger ones. It must definitely be established whether or not this tendency to bring forth mute children was later cured or whether it appeared only after the four speaking children were born, in which case, the reason would have to be discovered somewhere after the birth of the fourth child. So, we would first have to be familiar with all the factors.

Regarding the question about the flu, it is related to all the diseases, such as bronchitis, that can afflict the human head or the organs of the upper chest, but I will refer particularly to illnesses such as diphtheria and influenza that are so widely prevalent just now. These diseases afflict the upper part of the human body, and they have a definite peculiarity. They can best be studied by examining diphtheria; here one really can learn the most.

You know well that those who study medicine in the ordinary sense today do not know much about the flu; therefore, the descriptions given by doctors of the symptoms that appear with the flu are quite inexact. When I see people suffering from influenza, I must always turn my attention to something other than the symptoms that the doctors pay heed to, because the flu is actually a kind of brain illness. The flu is really an illness of the brain! I shall say more about this later.

The following points especially must be taken into consideration regarding diphtheria. First, if you look at a child suffering from diphtheria—adults can also suffer from it, you know—you can see a membrane in the throat. This membrane, this formation of tissue, is usually what can cause suffocation in diphtheria. This formation of tissue is thus the first important factor. The second thing one notices in diphtheria is that the heart of a diphtheria patient is always assaulted. The heart does not function properly. The third aspect of diphtheria is that even if the patient is not strongly afflicted by the membrane in his throat, he nevertheless has a hard time swallowing because of a kind of paralysis of the throat that occurs in addition to the membrane. Finally, the same symptom that is nowadays observed in those suffering from influenza also appears in diphtheria patients: their eyes begin to cross and they see double. These are the most important symptoms of diphtheria that can be noted in the upper part of the body. A form of kidney ailment, unobserved in those who suffocate and die, appears as an aftereffect in the diphtheria patients who recover.

What does diphtheria really consist of? Diphtheria can be understood only when one knows that man is actually kept alive from two directions—from the outside in and from the inside out. Man lives first from within his skin. The skin is a tremendously important organ, and man really lives within the skin, within his surroundings. It is like this (sketching).

[IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW]

Here is the skin; I have already talked about it. The skin is constantly in contact with the outer air, with the external world, which causes it to become calloused. In humans it only becomes a little calloused and then sloughs off. The skin all over man's body constantly sloughs off. Man is continuously sloughing off his entire body. He is continuously exchanging his physical body because of outside influences. You can imagine what a tremendous influence the air has on the living body when you consider the following. Think of a being that lives entirely in water. The skin it forms will be quite soft. The water itself causes it to form skin that is quite soft. Particularly through the influence of sunlight, the soft skin is pulled forward, and the being in the water becomes a fish. You can hardly see the jaw of a fish, because it is entirely covered with skin. Now imagine that this creature does not live in water but in the air. If this being lives in the air, it cannot form the soft skin. If this being who has lived in the water could not form the soft skin, his jaw would no longer be inside; the whole inner jaw would lie outside, and he would be a bird. The jaw of the fish in the water is simply covered with soft skin. By virtue of living in the air, the bird is equipped with an exposed jaw, a jaw lying completely outside. Thus you see the influence exerted on a creature from outside. Man, however, can form soft skin with other organs, but this soft skin is always being sloughed off, worked off.

[IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW]

Aside from this life proceeding from the outside in, there is also a life going from inside out, particularly from the kidneys. Both must be active in the human being. Activity both from the skin inward and from the kidneys outward must be at work. The heart occupies a position in between and is highly sensitive to too much activity from outside or inside. The heart can sense when the kidneys begin to be overly active, and it also senses when the skin's activity begins to be too strong or too weak.

Now, what happens in the case of diphtheria? In diphtheria, the skin suddenly becomes weak and subdued. The activity of the skin is too weak, so a person with diphtheria suffers from too little exchange of air through the skin. Indeed, this is the main problem. The skin, including the skin of the nose exposed to the external surroundings, does not breathe enough, and it becomes too weak. The in-streaming activity, indicated in my sketch by the arrows, no longer functions properly, and the heart senses this. The heart also senses that the kidneys work upward. What is it that the kidneys are doing? The heart can no longer restrain the activity of the kidneys, which shoots upward. Long before inflammation of the kidneys, that is, nephritis, sets in, the activity of the kidneys is already shooting upward. Because the skin activity is no longer working effectively from outside, superfluous skin forms on the inside. Because the, skin's activity from the outside is not working properly, a superfluous skin is formed, filling everything out, because the kidneys' activity is too strong.

When a person becomes afflicted with shrunken kidneys, which can occur when the kidneys' activity is deficient, you can see an indentation here on the head. There is a connection between the kidneys and this section of the head. As soon as the kidneys' activity is not working properly, this indentation occurs. You can see in every person who has kidney disease this indentation in the head. Beneath it lie the optic nerves. When the indentation occurs, the optic nerves become inactive. In the case of ordinary kidney shrinkage, the patient begins to see unclearly. When shrinkage does not occur but nephritis sets in instead, the kidney activity shoots up into the head and exerts an influence on the optic nerves.

[IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW]

Now, you see, the optic nerves are such that when the head is viewed from above, they proceed back from the eyes. They cross in the brain, the two optic nerves, and continue on to the hindbrain. The optic nerves must be in good condition if we are to see well, because we see with both eyes. The moment these optic nerves that cross are not working properly, we see double. The optic nerves only need to be a little numbed and the crossing not made properly for us to see double. You know how a person who enjoys drinking can tell whether or not he is still functioning when he gets home: he places his hat at the foot of the bed, gets in bed, and if he sees one hat he is still all right, but if he sees two, he is not! This is easily done. So, because the blood circulates too fast, too much alcohol numbs the optic nerves, with the result that a person who has drunk too much has double vision.

The kidneys' activity also has a stimulating effect on the optic nerves. If the optic nerves do not interact properly at the point where they cross, man will see double. This is the case, for example, in diphtheria. You can see, therefore, that diphtheria is caused by a disorder in the skin's activity. Therefore, a future, more successful cure for diphtheria will consist above all of treating the patient in the right way with baths; he will have to be given such baths that will immediately stimulate vigorously the skin's activity. Then the formation of membranes will cease, and the patient's skin will begin to function properly again.

Treatment with modified virus vaccine is effective in the case of diphtheria, because the body is thus given a strong impulse to become active, but it has unfavorable aftereffects. Particularly if a child is treated with vaccine, it will later suffer a hardening of its organization. One therefore must strive actually to replace treatment with vaccine with that of bathing, especially in the case of diphtheria, which is based primarily on the defective activity of the skin. One can see how skin actually must receive special consideration. It is indeed true that diphtheria is more frequent now than in former times. Of course, one must consider centuries, not decades. According to all that is known of earlier ages, however—though many diseases naturally existed then that were much worse; people were afflicted with bubonic plague and cholera—diphtheria was more rare. This is connected with the fact that, in general, the European way of life increasingly leads in a direction in which the skin's activity is no longer supported. Certainly, people who have money bathe a lot, and so forth. The point, however, is what a person bathes in. Here you can see the ill effect of civilization in the fact that bald-headed people are much more numerous today than in former days. The growth of hair is also an outer activity. Just as plants grow from the soil, so the growth of hair is affected from outside. Not enough attention is paid today to the skin's activity. Do not assume that bathing with cold water, as practiced by Englishmen nowadays, has such good effects. What counts is what a person bathes in. Of course, it is also wrong for a person to cause too strong an activity of the skin by superfluous bathing. At any rate, in the case of diphtheria, one must try above all to bring about a proper activity of the skin.

This is also connected with a factor that affects people's offspring. Take a mother or father whose skin is too sluggish and doesn't slough off easily enough. This is most difficult to determine and takes a very sensitive insight into human peculiarities. The average layman cannot easily judge whether or not a person has callous skin, but some people do possess a much tougher skin than others. This is difficult to determine, because the skin is actually transparent. As it sloughs off, it appears to be colored differently because of what is underneath. Our skin is really transparent. If the father has a skin that is much tougher than it should be, the activity of the bones is also influenced thereby. As you know from what I have recently explained, the production of the blood depends on the activity of the bones. If the father has such callous skin that it reminds you of hippopotamus hide, he will produce white corpuscles that are too weak. This, in turn, influences his sperm, and his children will be weak from the beginning. So, one can say that if the father is a “hippopotamus,” it is possible for his children to be born with rickets—an English illness—for the children to be born weak and to be susceptible to tuberculosis. This is how these things are related.

If the father's skin is too soft, something that can be noted particularly when anxiety and so on easily cause blushing, then his bones become too hard, but this has little ill-effect.

If, however, the mother's skin is too soft, alternating between blushing and paling, her bones become too hard and she does not produce red corpuscles properly. Her child will acquire already at an early age, tendencies to all kinds of ailments such as rheumatism and particularly illnesses like measles, scarlet fever, and so on, diseases that are related to the metabolic system. These facts are all related.

[IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW]

Now, as for the flu, it really comes from a brain ailment. The lower part of the brain, located under the optic nerves, suffers a form of paralysis. The flu consists of a paralysis of that portion of the brain that lies quite near the optic nerves. Since this is a very significant part of the brain, an influence is actually exerted on the entire body. Proceeding from this paralysis in the brain, something in the human being becomes ill in the case of ordinary flu. Above all, the spinal cord is affected, since this part of the brain goes right into the spine, from which the nerves extend to all the limbs. The person thus gets aches and pains in his limbs, and so on.

Recently, an interesting case of flu occurred that is most instructive. I have told you that the brain not only consists of solid substances but that it is also surrounded by cranial fluid. Particularly in the vicinity of this part here (pointing to sketch), which is incapacitated during flu, much cranial fluid is present. This recent case of flu was extraordinarily interesting, because the patient had one illness after another as aftereffects: pneumonia with high fever, then a fall in temperature, followed by pleurisy with high fever, and then again a drop in temperature. This was followed by peritonitis with high fever that finally fell, then a kind of general paralysis, and so on. This case of flu took a different direction from that of the usual flu. What happened here? You see, when studying this with the ordinary means available to medicine, it is extraordinarily difficult to figure out. The patient, a seventeen-year-old girl, was asked when she recuperated to tell what went through her mind during the time of her illnesses. Quite strangely, the following was determined.

Her parents and the doctor freely discussed her condition in the room in which she was resting, thinking it was all right to do so since she was constantly delirious. Indeed, during her delirium she did not appear to be aware of anything, but when she became well, she could repeat everything that had been discussed in her room. She knew and could relate it. This could be confirmed. Comprehension was therefore absent while she suffered from this severe case of flu and the subsequent illnesses; the conversations, however, remained in her memory. Much is retained in the memory after all, that at the moment may not be comprehended. This shows that it was not the solid part of the brain that was affected but the surrounding fluid. This influenced the rest of the body even more, because, when the solid part is partially numbed, the ensuing symptoms must be brought about through the working of the solid part of the brain on the spinal cord. The fluid, however, constantly flows up and down through the spinal canal here (see sketch on p. 103). Hence, if the fluid in the brain is afflicted, afflicted fluid also appears in the spinal canal, and from here it passes into all the limbs. It thereby gradually causes inflammation everywhere. Because it was the cranial fluid that was inflamed, and not the solid part of the brain, however, a more counteractive, healing force was present and—though in this case it was almost like a miracle—the girl recuperated in spite of having suffered from every possible illness.

Although various remedies must also be administered, in such illnesses it is essential that the body be given adequate rest and quiet. The patient must therefore lie in bed, and care should be taken to keep the room at a constant temperature and with even lighting, because rest is brought about not only by stretching out on a bed. One is also made restless by being hot one moment and frozen the next. But if the body is left totally to its own devices with steady warmth and light, it can itself endure even the worst attacks of pneumonia, pleurisy, and peritonitis. The human being is capable of that. Even with the worst illnesses that display the symptoms mentioned, it is more a matter of proper nursing care than of remedies. In general, proper care has great value.

You can recognize the significance of proper care from the following. When a limb is inflamed or injured, the best thing to do is simply to put a ligature on it somewhere above the affected area; it must be done correctly, however. In this way, the more delicate activity of the body, the etheric activity, is brought into play, and healing begins. So, when a hand or finger is ulcerated, a ligature is applied between it and the body, and then it heals quickly. The forces of healing must be summoned everywhere within the body itself. Naturally, cases vary. One must always consider the individual and know him well if one wishes to cure him; one must have insight into how a person is. In dealing with a patient suffering from diphtheria, for instance, it is under certain conditions best to place him in a rosemary bath so he can smell the rosemary. Repeated long rosemary baths will strengthen the activity of his skin. Sufficient rosemary must be added to the water, however, so that the patient constantly smells it during the bath. The activity of the skin is stimulated, and the patient will improve without being treated with vaccine. It really depends upon being able to arouse in the right way with the remedies the patient's own bodily resistance.

Of course, if a remedy isn't effective one time, people immediately consider it to be a bad remedy. You must realize, however, that with some people there is nothing to be done. Often, the remedy is used when it is too late to do anything, or else the dose would have to be increased so much that it would be enough for a horse; the patient wouldn't be able to tolerate it and would die of the remedy.

One must remember that the flu actually has its origin in an ailment of the brain. You will have perceived that a flu patient is always in a kind of doze, because the most important areas of the brain under the optic nerve are numbed. Thus he comes to doze. Now you can also grasp that when paralysis is located in the upper sections of the brain, the point of the intersection of the optic nerves is affected and the person sees double. All this shows you that double vision can come about quite naturally in influenza.

This should by no means be taken lightly. I once had a friend who at that time was thirty years old, ten years younger than me. He was cross-eyed, but here you have the opposite problem. In flu or diphtheria, a person becomes temporarily cross-eyed because something is internally out of order, but my friend was permanently cross-eyed and, of course, was unhappy about it because not everyone is totally without vanity. There was something in his body that caused his left and right sides to work inharmoniously. This is what caused his crossed eyes; his eyes were crossed, and he also stammered. Both afflictions had the same origin. On some occasions he overcame his crossed eyes and stammer quite well, but there are those who have little compassion for such people and complain about their afflictions. Once, for example, a person who was not too tactful said to my friend, “Tell me, Doctor, do you always stammer, or only occasionally?” The man could barely come out with, “N-n-not always, o-o-only w-when I m-meet a p-person, whom I find t-t-t-totally d-disagreeable!” This same man could recite long poems without stammering, and he didn't stammer when he was full of enthusiasm about something. The stammering is not the point, however; I only mention it because it is connected with this man's crossed eyes.

Now, my friend was a bit vain and wished to correct his condition. As you know, that leads to an operation, because crossed eyes are corrected by cutting one of the eye muscles. Crossed eyes are eliminated by this operation. Since, in my friend's case, his crossed eyes were so deeply rooted in his organism that he also stammered, I was terribly concerned when he decided to be operated on. I knew that when some brain ailment occurs a person can be temporarily cross-eyed, but when a person is permanently cross-eyed, as was my friend, his brain has become adjusted to this condition. If an eye muscle is cut when the problem is so deep-seated that a stammer is also present, then the opposite effect is brought about. By trying to correct the crossed eyes with an operation, a brain ailment is produced by that part of the brain being ruined where the optic nerves intersect.

Well, my friend was not to be deterred, and so he underwent the operation. If I had expressed my reservations concerning such an operation, those who imagine themselves to be real medical authorities would have been ready to call me an idiot, since one who asserts something that is not found in their books is called an idiot. As you can imagine, I naturally tried in some way to deter my friend from having this operation, but I could not come right out and say, “If you go through with this operation, you may possibly suffer a brain ailment.” He would not have believed me since all the doctors had told him it was a simple operation. Since he knew that I was not really happy about his intention to have the operation, he told me nothing about it. One day, he visited me with a black patch on his eyes, which he removed and said, “Now look, aren't my eyes straight now?” They were, but I remained apprehensive. Well, two weeks hadn't passed before he fell ill with a brain ailment. Naturally, this brain ailment was not diagnosed as such by the doctor; what do ordinary doctors know of these relationships! How did the brain ailment manifest itself? There was some blood in his feces indicating that it made its appearance in the guise of an intestinal illness. The man became afflicted with an intestinal illness, but it was none other than the brain ailment because, as I have explained, the intestines and the brain are connected.

When this happened, I knew it was caused by the operation, and I lost hope for him. The most famous doctor in town was called. He diagnosed typhoid. What else could he say, when the contents of the intestines showed blood and had the peculiar consistency of pea soup? If he has blood in his feces and intestinal contents with the consistency of pea soup, he must have typhoid! It was not typhoid, however; it was the illness—really of the brain—that was the result of the inappropriate operation for his crossed eyes.

So here the opposite case occurred. This man died soon afterward. The doctor who had treated him for typhoid fever had admitted him to the hospital. I went there after his death and met his medical attendant. As such people are wont to do, he immediately greeted me with, “The Professor wrote `typhoid' on the chart. He is supposed to have had typhoid? Well, that's how much our doctors know!” After all, the attending personnel believe what the doctors proclaim least of all!

It really is quite upsetting to see the human organism treated in such a one-sided manner. If I were to tell a doctor what I have just told you concerning the appearance of an illness resembling typhoid that was a masked ailment of the brain and the result of an operation for crossed eyes, he would consider it pure nonsense. He wouldn't believe it, because he doesn't truly know the relationships within the body but is only familiar with theoretical relationships. As a result, such things will happen as in this anecdote I'll tell you. It is only an anecdote, but it has truth in it. A person is brought to the hospital. The doctor who is chief of staff examines him, assigns him to a certain ward, and gives an order concerning treatment to his assistants, saying, “When I return tomorrow, this patient will be dead.” He no longer concerns himself with this case until a few days later. Then he says, “There is still a patient in Room 15; he must be dead.” “No,” he is told, “that patient feels better and is getting well.” The doctor replies, “Then you've treated him the wrong way!”

Of course, this is a joke. But it is like this when theory is put in the place of true practice. Practice means learning to judge each case on an individual basis. The moment a question is raised concerning the connection between double vision, which is always a form of crossed eyes, and the flu, attention must be drawn to how, on the one hand, a form of double vision is caused by flu, which is a kind of brain ailment and, on the other, how the brain ailment can come about when a person is cross-eyed and the problem is so deeply rooted that left and right do not fit together.

All processes in the human being proceed outward from within and inward from without. If a person is crossed-eyed for internal reasons and this condition is externally corrected, he can become ill inwardly; in man, one never deals with a single activity but with two activities that meet in the heart. The heart is in-between and is affected when one does away with crossed eyes externally. The heart is also affected if something is not working properly inside. The heart is not a pump but a most delicate apparatus, which really perceives everything that is out of order, as it were.

Let us assume that I injure my knee externally or that by some circumstance, perhaps through drinking, I become afflicted with rheumatism. Then, internal activities are out of order, and inflammation results in that area. The processes that begin within are out of order. In such cases the heart is always influenced and doesn't work properly. Therefore, the heart's function can be influenced from within as well as from without. In all illnesses in which this is the case—that is, when something is wrong with a process that keeps it from running its course outward from within or inward from without—it will be noted that it comes to expression in the heart. One must know the correct relationship, however, between what is an outer process and what is an inner process when a person is cross-eyed or stammers, if one wishes to weigh the consequences of eliminating the condition. Operations for crossed eyes must always be weighed as to whether one should or should not do them. That is the important point.

Dr. Steiner: Good morning, gentlemen. Have you thought of something else you would like to ask me?

A question is asked concerning the relationship between human breathing and the pulse. Wouldn't this have been completely different in earlier times?

Dr. Steiner: You mean in the human being himself? Well, let's quickly review how things stand today. We have on the one hand the breathing. Man is connected to the outer world through breathing, because he is constantly inhaling and exhaling air. It can thus be said that man today is constituted in such a way that he absorbs the healthy air and expels the air that would make him ill. The expelled air contains carbon dioxide. The circulation of the blood, on the other hand, is an internal process in which the blood flows through the body itself. I shall not discuss whether it is accurate to say that the blood circulates in the body, but the force of the blood circulates through the body. Now, although it varies slightly in each individual, a person takes approximately eighteen breaths per minute. As for the blood, the pulse rate is seventy-two beats per minute. So, one can say that breathing is related to blood circulation in an adult today in such a way that his pulse is four times faster than his breathing.

Now, we must be clear what is really involved in the human being when breathing is considered in relation to his blood circulation. First, we must be clear that man breathes chiefly through the lungs—the nose, mouth, and lungs—but this is only his primary way of breathing. Indeed, with the human being, functions primarily carried out by one part of his body are also actually carried out to a lesser degree by his whole body. Hence, air, or particularly the oxygen in the air, is constantly absorbed through the surface of his skin. Man therefore also breathes through his skin, and along with the ordinary breathing process of his lungs one can also speak of his skin's breathing. If, for example, the holes of his skin, called pores, are clogged, the skin absorbs too little air. Something is not right with the skin's breathing. Man's skin must always be in such shape that he can breathe through it.

Now, in the case of human beings, all outer processes can, as it were, also be found to exist inwardly. Making a sketch of a human being, we can say that breathing occurs through the entire surface of the skin but most particularly through the lungs in eighteen breaths per minute. All this, however, requires a counterbalance in the human being, and something quite interesting makes its appearance. Man cannot breathe properly through his lungs nor through his skin, but especially not through his skin, if this counterbalance is not present.

You know that a magnet has not only a north pole, a positive pole, but also a south pole, a negative pole. If man has his lungs and skin for breathing, then he also needs an opposite, and that opposite is located in the liver. We have already familiarized ourselves with the liver from various standpoints; now we must learn to view it as the opposite of the skin-lung activity; the liver and the skin-lung activity balance each other. One could say that the liver's constant purpose is to bring into order internally what man acquires through breathing in his relation with the outer world. That is what the liver is for.

Consider a disorder of the liver that may occur at any time, even in older people. It is quite difficult to diagnose when the liver is not in order, and frequently one is unaware of it because the liver is the organ, the single organ, that doesn't hurt when something is wrong with it. Man can suffer for a long time from a liver ailment without knowing of it. No one can diagnose it, because there is no pain. This is because the liver is related to the most outer aspects of the human being, the skin and lungs. Internally, the liver is really something like an outer world. Man does not sense it within when a chair is broken, nor does he sense it when the liver is being destroyed. It is as if the liver were a segment of the outer world. In spite of this, it is of terrible importance to the human being.

Now imagine that the liver malfunctions. When this happens, all the activity of the lungs and skin is also thrown out of balance, and then a specific problem arises. You see, from the heart, the veins reach everywhere into the lungs and the skin. Through quite delicate blood vessels, the blood circulation reaches everywhere into the skin, into the lungs, and also into the liver. The following now takes place. If the liver's function is impaired, the blood cannot flow properly in and out of the liver. If, because of a liver problem, the blood flows into it too strongly and the liver becomes overactive, too much bile is produced and the person becomes jaundiced. Jaundice occurs in man when too much bile is produced, when, therefore, the activity of the liver is too strong. Jaundice therefore results when overactivity of the liver pervades the body.

What happens, however, when the liver's activity is too weak? The blood's activity on the surface of the skin is not compensated for. The blood, which flows everywhere, wishes to be compensated, and the blood in the liver investigates, as it were, whether or not the liver is behaving properly. If the liver isn't behaving properly, the blood rushes to the surface of the body to replenish itself there. What happens? Smallpox is the result. This is the connection between smallpox and the blood circulation, which, due to a defective liver, has something wrong with it.

The blood reaches everywhere where I have drawn a line in blue (see sketch); there is also a red line signifying that oxygen from the air reaches everywhere. The circulation of the blood rightly makes a point of contact there with the breathing, and whether this occurs in the lungs or the skin really does not matter, because it balances itself out. If the air that enters through the breathing process does not make contact with the blood in the correct way, however, smallpox results. What is smallpox? Smallpox is really the result of the development of too much respiratory activity on the body's surface or in the lungs. A person becomes too active on his surface area, and this activity causes inflammation everywhere.

What can be done under these circumstances? Well, people already do the only thing that can be done in such cases. They vaccinate with cowpox vaccine. What is really accomplished through cowpox vaccine? The vaccine inwardly permeates the body, because the blood circulates everywhere. Whereas the blood is otherwise compensated for on the body's surface, it now has to cope with the vaccine. The overactivity on the surface thus is prevented. Smallpox inoculation does indeed have a certain significance. The blood, which is not properly engaged by the liver, is now busy with the vaccine. Generally, there is good reason for all methods of inoculation. You have perhaps heard that a large part of our healing is based on inoculation, because an activity occurring in the wrong place can thereby be directed to another part of the human body.

Inoculation against rabies is especially interesting. Though rabies comes from something altogether different, it is basically the same response as that I explained concerning smallpox. Imagine that a person is bitten by a rabid dog or wolf. Such an animal has actual poison in its saliva. This poison now enters the victim through the bite, and the person becomes involved in detoxifying the poison. He may be too weak to do it, and he might succumb to the poison, but something else is really the basis for death. You know that a man first develops rabies before he succumbs to the poison. What is the reason for this?

Let us assume that I am bitten by a rabid dog. Now I must direct all my inner activities to this spot, and I must let them flow here to use up the poison. This surge of activity is sensed by my spinal cord as though I had received a shock. This is how it affects my spinal cord. Since my body must suddenly develop such extreme activity because of the dog's bite, my spinal cord suffers a shock through which I become ill.

What must now be done to offset this shock? You know that when a person freezes in horror, he can be brought to his senses by being slapped a few times. The spinal cord also needs to be slapped, but one must first get to the spine. This can be accomplished by giving a rabbit rabies. It is then killed and its spinal cord removed and dried for approximately twenty minutes at about 20° C. This substance is then injected into the rabid person.

Now, oddly enough, all substances have a way of going to specific parts of the body. The dried spinal cord of the rabbit, which retains the rabies poison for a short time—about fifteen minutes—before becoming ineffective, is quickly injected into the human being. It goes into his own spinal cord, which thereby suffers a countershock. It is just as if you shake a person who is paralyzed with fear and he snaps out of it. In the case of rabies, man's spinal cord recovers from the shock by means of an inoculation with the rabid rabbit's dehydrated spinal cord.

You see, therefore, that when an activity develops in the human being in the wrong place and he becomes ill, he can be cured if almost the same process is developed in a different place. These are some of the complicated relationships of the human organism.

Now, if you consider respiration and the activity of the blood, these two processes are related in today's adult in a ratio of one breath to four pulse beats. The blood stream flows faster; after three pulsations man inhales, and after three more, he inhales again. This is how air goes through his body. The blood moves through the body: one, two, three, and with the fourth we inhale; one, two, three, and with the fourth we inhale again. This goes on throughout our body.

All this produces carbon dioxide. Now, most of this carbon dioxide is exhaled, but if all of it were exhaled, we would be the worst dopes. A part of the carbon dioxide must continuously enter our nervous system, which needs carbon dioxide, because it must be continuously deadened. The nervous system requires this deadening carbon dioxide. Through inhaling air it therefore rises up continuously in me and supplies my nervous system.

What does this mean? Nothing other than this, that since carbon dioxide is a poison, I continually require a poison in my system for my thinking. This is a most interesting point. Unless a continuous poisoning process took place in me, with which I must continuously struggle, I could not use my nervous system. I would be unable to think. Man is really in the position of having constantly to poison himself by inhaling air, and by means of the poison in the breath, he thinks. Carbon dioxide constantly streams into my head, and with this poisonous air I think.

Today, man simply breathes air. The air contains oxygen and nitrogen. Man absorbs the oxygen, omitting the nitrogen.

When we study man today, the following is discovered. The human head today requires carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide is a combination of carbon that is produced in the human body and oxygen. Man omits the nitrogen contained in the air. If one studies the human head today, one discovers that this human head is so organized that it can think quite well because of the absorption of carbon dioxide and therefore of carbon and oxygen. This human head, through the carbon dioxide, which is a poison and rises fleetingly to the human head from the organs, is constantly exposed to damage. It is as if we were always to inhale a bit of carbon dioxide instead of oxygen. You really always inhale a bit of carbon dioxide into your head. This is of great significance, because we constantly take in something that actually destroys life. This is also the reason that we must sleep, that we require a time during which the head does not absorb this minute amount of carbon dioxide as vigorously and thereby is able to restore its organs.

Studies of the head show that in its present condition it can make use of this poison, carbon dioxide, by repeatedly sustaining a little damage and then restoring itself through sleep, then again being damaged, again restoring itself, and so on. In very ancient times, however, man did not as yet have a head. It came about through evolution. Man would never have acquired a head if he had inhaled only carbon dioxide. The fully evolved head can tolerate carbon dioxide, but if man had always inhaled carbon dioxide, he would never have acquired a head. Therefore, he must have breathed something else long ago. Now we must ask ourselves what man used to breathe. If all human evolution is studied in detail, one discovers that during embryonic development in the womb, the human being uses something other than mere carbon dioxide. It is an interesting fact that in the mother's womb man is almost all head. The rest of the embryo, if you study it in the early stages, is minute (see sketch) and still is almost all part of the head; the rest is terribly small. The whole embryo is then surrounded by the walls of the womb.

You see, man is almost all head, but he must still develop, and for that he requires nitrogen. He requires nitrogen, and this is supplied by the mother's body. If man did not have access to nitrogen in the womb, a substance he later rejects in the air, not allowing it to enter him, it would be impossible for him to develop. We would not acquire a proper head if it were not for nitrogen. In an early stage of evolution, when his head was only beginning to develop, man must not have absorbed oxygen but nitrogen. The essential elements for man must, therefore, have been carbon and nitrogen instead of today's carbon and oxygen.

Just as man inhales oxygen today, he once must have inhaled carbon combined with nitrogen—in other words, he must have absorbed nitrogen. But what is carbon plus nitrogen? It is cyanogen, and when it is present as an acid, it is hydrocyanic acid. This means that conditions must have been such at one time that man did not absorb oxygen from the air but nitrogen, with which he internally produced cyanogen, an even stronger poison. This even stronger poison is what has enabled man to think today with carbon dioxide. At that time he fashioned the organs with an even stronger poison.

Going back in time, we come to a point in ancient evolution when, unlike today, man produced cyanogen, and instead of exhaling carbon dioxide as he does today, he exhaled hydrocyanic acid, a much stronger poison. Thus, from man and his present-day respiration, we go back to an ancient condition in which the air was filled with hydrocyanic acid just as it is today permeated with carbon dioxide.

In 1906, I gave lectures in Paris, and because of various suggestions from the listeners I was prompted to tell them that even today there are cosmic bodies that possess the ancient cyanogen atmosphere rather than that of the earth. If the earth were viewed from the moon or particularly from Mars, one would be able to perceive traces of carbon dioxide everywhere in the earth's atmosphere by means of the spectroscope. Had the ancient earth been viewed from space when man was only beginning to acquire his head, however, one would have perceived traces of hydrocyanic acid instead of carbon dioxide. To this day there are cosmic bodies that have retained the earth's condition of former ages; these are the comets. The comets are what the earth was like when man acquired his head. Hence, they must contain cyanogen. I said in 1906 that the main characteristic of comets is that they contain cyanogen; if one studies a comet with a spectroscope, one must see lines of cyanogen. Soon after this a comet appeared; they only appear rarely. I was in Norway at the time, and there was much talk about it—curiously enough, people actually observed the cyanogen line.

People always say that when anthroposophy becomes aware of something that is based on spiritual insight, one should be able to prove it afterward. There are indeed numerous things that have later been proved. When proof arises, however, people overlook or suppress it. The truth is that, on the basis of this change in the breathing process, I stated prior to its having been observed with the spectroscope that comets contain cyanogen. This is the same substance that man needed in order to acquire his head at a time when the earth was still in a comet-like condition.

Now, imagine for a moment that I were to breathe nitrogen instead of oxygen; something other than human blood would naturally arise. As you know, the blood that has become blue combines in the lungs with oxygen and becomes red. Now, when man inhales oxygen he absorbs oxygen into his blood; when he inhales nitrogen, he absorbs the nitrogen into his blood. The way our blood functions today in a healthy person, it never contains uric acid, but if even a little nitrogen is absorbed into the blood, if something is only slightly amiss with the human being, uric acid appears in the blood.

In the age when man acquired his head, his blood consisted completely of uric acid, since nitrogen continuously combined with the blood instead of oxygen. His blood was only uric acid. As an embryo today, the human being swims in the amniotic fluid and thus has uric acid readily accessible. Uric acid is everywhere in his environment. In this early state the embryo needs uric acid for its development. In the past, when man was acquiring his head and exhaled hydrocyanic acid, he swam around in uric acid. In other words, he made use of cyanic acid, combining nitrogen and carbon and inwardly producing uric acid. Hydrocyanic acid surrounded him everywhere. The world was once in a condition in which uric and hydrocyanic acids actually played as big a role as water and air do today.

Even today, living creatures exist that can survive on something other than oxygen. There are, for example, creatures that are minute, since everything that was formerly large has become small today. The tiniest, smallest living creatures were once giants. But there are living creatures that cannot tolerate oxygen at all. They avoid oxygen and absorb sulphur instead. They are the sulphur bacteria that live by means of sulphur. This shows that oxygen is not the only necessity for life. Likewise, man didn't need oxygen to stay alive in earlier ages but instead required nitrogen, and through that he was formed. Man was fashioned during a comet-like formation of the earth, and the relationship between breathing and the blood was completely different in those earlier ages.

Let's now consider what we have learned in connection with the world itself. If we focus on the fact that we take one breath to four pulse beats—one, two, three, breath of air; one, two, three, breath of air—the same rhythm can also be found in nature: spring, summer, fall, winter. One: spring; two: summer; three: fall; four: winter. Here we have the correlation between what's outside in the universe and what you have within man. So we can say, if we behold the entire earth, that our inner rhythm can be found outside on earth as well. People pay no heed at all to these circumstances regarding the earth.

You see, there is snow outside now. In summer there is no snow. What does that really mean? What is outside as snow now you find at other times as water. Water is completely dependent on the earth, and man must certainly sense that. The water around here in the Jura mountains contains calcium. Everything within the earth is also in the water. People who are especially sensitive to this develop goiters from what is contained in the water in the Jura region. The water is dependent on the earth. In spring, it begins to become dependent, it is most dependent in summer, and it ceases somewhat to be dependent in fall. In winter—well, gentlemen, the earth does not form the snow! The snow, consisting of myriads of delicate crystals, is formed by the universe, from out of the cosmos. Unlike in summer, the earth in winter doesn't abandon itself to the warmth of the world but rather to the formative forces. The water turns away from the earth in winter and receives the coldness of universal space. So we have discovered an interesting rhythm in the universe. One: spring; two: summer; three: fall; four: winter, and the water no longer directs itself to the earth but to the universe. Again, one, two three—spring, summer, fall; then four: the water follows the universe, no longer the earth.

Now compare this rhythm with the blood and the breathing process. One, two, three pulse beats, the blood is directed to the body's interior; four: breath of air, the blood is directed to what is outside. Here you have the same activity with the earth as in the human being. If you compare the blood with the earth's water, the blood directs itself accordingly. The first three pulse beats are inwardly a little like spring, summer, and fall; four, now comes earthly winter, and aha, we breathe, now comes the breath, just as with the earth itself. Inwardly, man is attuned completely to the earth's breathing process. It can therefore be said that what runs its course in one year in the earth takes place quickly, eighteen times in one minute, in man. What takes a year for the earth takes place eighteen times in one minute in man. Man actually is always filled with this rhythm, but it is much faster than with the earth. When we consider the earth in the light of our discussion today, we realize that the condition of the earth was formerly quite different, and it comes to acquire for us a certain similarity to the comets. Now, when a comet disintegrates, the pieces, which contain iron, fall to earth as meteors. An entire comet, which falls to earth when it splinters, therefore contains iron.

This is also something that we still contain within ourselves. When our corpses disintegrate, the iron from our blood is left behind. Here we have retained something of our ancient comet nature, and we actually act as comets do. We have iron in our blood through developing the ancient cyanogen activity in ourselves—that is, our external bodies, the blood of which it may no longer enter though it was once allowed to. This means nothing more than that today we withdraw our inner spring, summer, fall, and winter from the outer spring, summer, fall, and winter. Our dependency on the outer seasons has become minimal.

You need not go terribly far back into the past, however, to find that things had a totally different character then. Although things are changing now, if one grew up in a country village as I did, one knows that there used to be people who were very dependent on spring, summer, fall, and winter; there are fewer now because everything is becoming more uniform in the world. One could even notice it in their whole life of soul. They were in a totally different mood in summer than in winter. When they encountered you in winter they were always a little outside their beings; they were much more like apparitions than people. They came into their own only in summer and then were really themselves. This means that they were dependent upon the outer spring, summer, fall, and winter.

This demonstrates to us what man was like in earlier ages. When he breathed nitrogen instead of oxygen, he was completely dependent on the outer surroundings; he participated in the pulse beat and breathing of his comet body, which in my book, An Outline of Occult Science, I called the ancient Moon. The ancient Moon was a sort of comet-like body, and, as a participant in it, man was a part of a large organism that also breathed. It was as if man today were suddenly to have one pulse beat in spring, one in summer, one in fall, and would then take a breath in winter, and so on. This is the way man was when he breathed nitrogen; he was a member of the entire earthly organism.

So, you see, we come from a completely different direction and again reach the point we arrived at earlier when we considered the megatheria, sauria, and so forth. We arrive at the same point by a different path.

This is the remarkable thing about spiritual science. Ordinary present-day scientific activity begins at some point and proceeds step by step, trotting along in a straight line without knowing where it is going. That is not the case with anthroposophical science. It can proceed in one or another direction from various points of departure, but just as a hiker always reaches the same summit regardless of where he starts at the foot of a mountain, so anthroposophy always arrives at the same goal. This is what is so remarkable. The more one honestly examines the world, the more the individual considerations fit together into a unity.

We have an example of this in exploring your question today. We proceeded from matters quite different from the earlier subjects, yet once again we arrived at the conclusion that man had his rhythm within the entire earthly organism when it was still comet-like; only now has he made it his own. Man existed as part of the earth just as he does today when he is still a germ within his mother. There he also takes part in her pulse and breathing activity.

Can it be proven that man today takes part in his mother's pulse and breathing activity? This is proven by what I said before, that smallpox develops from the blood's activity coming into connection with the breathing activity. This is interesting. If man does share the maternal blood and breathing activities while in the womb, a child in the womb should contract smallpox if the mother has it, and it does. When a pregnant woman contracts smallpox, her unborn child already has smallpox in the womb, because the child takes part in everything.

In the same way, when the earth was still the mother of the human being—although the earth was then a kind of comet—he participated in all that the earth underwent. His pulse beat and breathing were that of the earth's pulse beat and breathing. It therefore can be said that it is most remarkable when, if we go back into ancient times when human beings knew instinctively and were not clever as they are today, they always called the earth “mother”—Mother Earth and so forth. They spoke of Uranus, meaning the universe, and Gaea, the earth, and they viewed Uranus as the father in the universe outside an11 the earth as the mother.

So one can say that the part of the human organism in which the child develops, the womb, is really like a miniature earth that has remained behind and is still in the ancient comet-like state.

In that ancient comet-like state, man's breathing and that of the earth were together a breathing in the great universe. Not only did man absorb nitrogen, but the whole comet-earth received the nitrogen from the universe. Breathing in that age was also a form of fertilization. Only the process of fertilization in humans and animals remains of that today. In fertilization, therefore, something of the nitrogen breathing process still takes place, because the most important element in the human sperm is nitrogen. This is transmitted to the female organism and, as a nitrogen stimulus, brings about what oxygen could never accomplish, that is, the formation of the organs that must be present later when man is exposed to oxygen. So you see that we actually receive our breathing from the universe.

Now, let's try exploring something else. You see, the year's course is followed somewhat in the course of the day: 18 breaths per minute; 60 times that much per hour = 1,080; in 24 hours, one day, we have 24 times that much = 25,920. Hence, we take 25,920 breaths per day.

Now let me figure something else for you—the number of days in an average human life. As you know, the year has about 360 days. The average number of years a man lives is between 71 and 72. 72 times 360 makes 25,920. We take as many breaths per day as we have days in our human life. But a day, too, is in a certain sense a breathing. One day is also a breathing. When I go to sleep, I exhale my soul, and I draw it back in again when I awake: exhalation, inhalation. I exhale the spiritual and inhale it again. This rhythm in my breathing I therefore have throughout my life on earth in sleeping and waking. This is most interesting: 25,920 breaths per day, 25,920 days in the average human life.

Now we turn and look at the sun. When you observe the sun in spring today, it rises in the sign of Pisces, but it does not rise every year in spring in exactly the same spot. On March 21 in the spring of next year the sun will have moved a fraction. Year by year it moves a little. The point where it rises moves constantly and eventually comes full circle. Therefore, if the sun rises in the constellation of Pisces today—the astronomers think it is still in Aries where it was formerly, because they have not yet caught up with their notations—then it must have risen in primordial times in Pisces, too! When the number of years that it takes the sun to come full circle is calculated, the result is 25,920 years. It is the same ratio. Even the cosmic rhythm harmonizes with the faster rhythms of breathing and blood circulation. Just imagine how man stands with the cosmos! He is born completely from out the universe. His father and mother are originally in the universe.

One arrives at a completely different way of viewing man in relation to the universe than when one simply says that God created the world and man—a concept that doesn't require much thinking. But anthroposophy wishes to begin to think something in every instance. This is held against it. Why? Well, it takes no effort to say words that don't require thinking. In anthroposophy, however, one must exert oneself, and this makes people angry. One needn't strain oneself in today's science. All of a sudden here comes this upstart, anthroposophy, and one cannot sit as if in the cinema thoughtlessly watching a movie. People would even like to introduce movies into schools so that children wouldn't have to make an effort to learn. I am surprised that arithmetic has not been made into movies yet! Then along comes anthroposophy demanding that you don't sit around so idly but put your confounded skulls to use! And, that, no one wants to do.

Dr. Steiner: Good morning, gentlemen! Have you thought of something to ask me since the last time?

More detailed questions are raised concerning the effect of absinthe and also concerning bees and wasps.

Dr. Steiner: Well, we have already discussed the question of the effect of absinthe, which, as I told you, is similar to the general effect of alcohol. If we are to go further into these questions, I would like to say something about some broader influences on the human body. We must be clear that we cannot speak only about the solid components of the human organism, of the human body, since they amount to at most ten to twelve percent of the whole. When we find the human body sketched in a book, the sketch can, of course, only be made by outlining the solid components. So it is believed that man consists only of his brain, lungs, heart, and so on, that is, that he is really composed only of such solid components. As I have told you, however, the human body is approximately eighty-five percent fluid, a watery fluid.

It is therefore only partially correct to say that we drink water, for example, and the water, along with a number of dissolved substances, enters the stomach and from there the intestines, and so forth. This is only partly true. When a small glass of water is drunk, we can picture what I just said to be the case. With the second glass of water, however, what is in the water is absorbed by the body's fluid elements and does not pass first through all the organs in the way I described.

Now, it is a fact that the solid components in man are least exposed to the entire surroundings. Naturally, when the heart, for example, is observed, it expands and contracts with the pulse beats, but as a whole it retains the same size and remains as it is. If we consider that we are filled with fluids, we recognize that these fluids are open to any number of influences from the outside world. Even a small amount of fluid assumes the shape of a drop, since the world is round and affects each individual drop. Because we are fluid, the whole world affects us, and because modern science no longer takes into consideration the fact that man is really a column of fluid, it has simply forgotten that the whole world with all its stars has this influence on the human being.

When one recognizes that man is a mixture of fluids, one is not too far from realizing that he is air as well. I constantly draw in the air and then exhale it again; hence, I am also air. Owing to the constant motion of air within myself, I am truly a human being. It is only due to man's being composed in this way that it is possible for man really to be a soul-spiritual being. If we were only solid, we really could not be soul-spiritual beings at all.

Now, everything exerts a specific influence on the human being. We have already mentioned various poisons, and you will no doubt have heard of so-called lead poisoning. When too much lead is introduced into a person's body—such an overdose need only be a small amount, which, however, may be proportionately too much for the body—he becomes too hard. Then these solid components become calcareous, as it were. When man introduces a minute amount of lead into the body—and in lead poisoning it only takes a minute amount—the body becomes too solid. If one sees that a person is beginning to become too solid-man even ages due to lead poisoning, hence signs of aging are noted—then silver in some form must be given as a remedy. That will make man fluid again so that he can experience the effects of outer influences. Lead poisoning, therefore, can be counteracted by silver compounds, which must be chosen to fit the specific case. All manner of things thus have an effect on the human being.

As you know, the feminine and masculine natures differ greatly from one another. The feminine nature contains more of the fluid element, as it were, so one can say that the feminine nature is more susceptible to outer influences, because it is more fluid. The masculine nature is less open to outer influences, because it places more weight on man's solid element. One can therefore say that certain illnesses, like lead poisoning, can be more readily controlled in the feminine nature with the administration of less silver, whereas more silver must be prescribed for the masculine nature, because that constitution is not readily made fluid. You see, one must put great weight on everything in the human being, because only in this way is a true understanding of him reached. You see, every substance has a profound influence on the human being.

All this is connected in turn with that relationship of the masculine and feminine that is expressed in hereditary conditions. These hereditary conditions are extraordinarily complicated. You can see how complicated these hereditary conditions are in hemophilia; the blood in those afflicted with this illness doesn't coagulate immediately. In a normal person, the blood within the body coagulates immediately, as soon as it is exposed on the surface. The blood is liquid within the body; as soon as it reaches the surface it becomes compact, solid, it coagulates. In hemophiliacs, or bleeders as they are sometimes called, the blood does not coagulate immediately. It flows readily even from a small wound and sometimes even ruptures the skin. It is difficult to perform operations on bleeders. Whereas in normal people the blood immediately begins to coagulate as soon as an incision is made, with bleeders it pours out. Whereas as with others the blood becomes hard immediately, with hemophiliacs it remains fluid so that they can easily bleed to death during an operation, making such an undertaking extraordinarily difficult. Hemophiliacs are forever subject to hemorrhage.

Now, it is very strange that a man who is a hemophiliac can marry a woman who is not, and they will have healthy children without hemophilia. If they have sons, the hereditary conditions will not exhibit any detrimental effects in them. Should they have a daughter, however, she herself will not be a hemophiliac, but if she should marry even a perfectly healthy man they might have children who would be hemophiliacs. The odd thing about this affliction is that it doesn't surface in the feminine sex; the daughters don't get hemophilia, but the children of these daughters do, even if their fathers are completely healthy. Hence, hemophilia passes to the descendants by way of the woman, without the woman getting it herself.

Here we see the complicated ways in which the conditions in the human body become mixed with hereditary conditions. It is therefore the greatest risk for the daughter of a hemophiliac to marry, because hemophilia will then pass on to some of her children even if she is completely healthy. This shows you how important it is to take such conditions into consideration.

Now, such problems could be coped with if medicine were placed on a sound basis. What measures would it be proper to take with the daughter of a hemophiliac? Before she has any children, some remedy containing lead can be given prophylactically, as it is called in medicine. The husband should also receive this lead-containing medication. Then the children will be protected from getting hemophilia.

Naturally, if medical thinking is so muddled that one takes the stand of waiting until a person exhibits the symptoms of the illness before beginning a cure, then this will do no good. Medicine must develop a social conscience. It must change so that steps are taken to prevent threatening illnesses from occurring. This cannot be done, of course, as long as today's conceptions prevail. Naturally, people do not seek a cure for an illness that they do not as yet have but could contract due to hereditary conditions. It is especially important in pregnancy to administer a lead remedy if there is any possibility at all of hemophilia.

All this cannot be understood if one does not know that only the solid body of man is really physical and material. Only that portion is material. As soon as one comes to the fluid element, one finds a much more delicate substance at work. Since time immemorial this delicate substance has been called “ether.” Ether is present everywhere. It is more delicate than all other substances—more delicate than water, air, and even warmth. As little as ether can penetrate the solid components of the human being, however, the more active it is in his fluid element. Just as man possesses the ether in his fluid element, so he has the actual soul element in the aeriform. He has the actual soul element in the air he carries within him. When this is understood, that in the air one has the soul element, it becomes clear that man exhales the soul element with each breath, and with each inhalation he takes it into himself again. He really lives with the universe by means of this soul element, but because no consideration is given by modern science to the fact that he also possesses an aeriform organism, people lose sight altogether of the soul element and even believe it doesn't exist.

The soul element must be considered entirely by itself. Then, the effects of fluid substances, such as absinthe, can be discerned. You see, when I take a drink of absinthe, it is, of course, liquid at first and then it merges with the large quantity of the body's fluids. How does absinthe deal with these fluids, however? It makes these fluids rebellious against absorbing the aeriform in the right way. So, when I take absinthe into the body, the aeriform element can no longer penetrate all my parts in the right way. At the same time, something else happens. When I prevent the aeriform element from penetrating all the parts of my body, this aeriform element reacts in a most peculiar way. I will make clear to you how this aeriform element works by making a comparison.

Imagine, for example, a person who is employed in an office and works hard from morning till night. He goes in in the morning and he goes home in the evening. His co-workers say of him that he is simply somebody who comes and goes along with them. Now imagine another person who also works in the office, but this fellow is a clown. He doesn't work much but plays around with everybody from morning till night. He is quite popular with all the employees, who think of him as one of them and are always glad to see him. Of course, his superiors are not so overjoyed with him because the work suffers, but his colleagues enjoy his clowning.

Similarly, this is what happens when we block out the air with absinthe. It then rolls around the organs instead of properly penetrating them and filling the body. It remains distinct, stopping here, there, and everywhere. It is just like the funny fellow in the office. It causes pleasant feelings everywhere because it needn't do too much work. If the air is to penetrate the fluids correctly, it has work to do; otherwise, it doesn't supply the body correctly. When absinthe blocks out the air, however, it rolls around everywhere, and the person gradually comes to feel as jolly as a pig. A peculiarity of pigs is that they constantly fill themselves with air that is not properly absorbed. The pig is easily made short of breath.

Just as the ether is present everywhere in the fluid substances, so the soul element is present everywhere in the air; we also call it the astral element, because it is called forth by the influence of the stars. Man absorbs the soul element everywhere and feels a pleasant warmth or coolness in himself. Now when the air is rolling around in him, he feels good through and through. The soul element in the body is not there, however, merely for the purpose of serving man's pleasure. It is supposed to work on the organs in the right way so that the heart and all the other organs are correctly cared for. If instead, however, man blocks the soul element so that it amuses him in his body, then, although he feels “piggishly well,” [“sauwohl”] his organs are not cared for in the right way. In particular, those organs are shortchanged that contribute most to his having healthy offspring. Here we have a strange phenomenon. People who care for themselves with absinthe actually strive to feel “piggishly well” within, to have this feeling of sensual pleasure inside, but in doing so, they do not provide humanity with healthy descendants. This is the objection to absinthe.

Now you can also ask why the desire to drink absinthe actually arises in people in the first place. If you study the history of humanity, you will note that such vices occur most often in those whose development is declining and who are no longer in the full prime of life, that is, those whose bodies are inwardly already somewhat disintegrated. Then people let themselves be amused inwardly by the soul element. This is particularly the case in nations that are in a process of decline. In earlier times, when the Asians and Orientals were still on the ascent, they abhorred all this drinking. They only began to do things such as drink absinthe when they had already begun to decline.

This is also the case when we note what goes on today in instances in which these vices get out of hand, when people want to introduce all possible substances into the body. People even seek these effects with cocaine, as I told you recently. With cocaine, the soul element has the effect of pressing the body out, and I have described how such addicts experience something like snakes emerging everywhere from their bodies. The reason a person uses these poisons in this way is because the whole human being is no longer healthy, and he would like to enjoy the soul element as much as possible. In the decadent nations, those people who have the least to do are those who will seek this sensual experience of the body. This is connected with all the historical processes of the human race.

It is strange how, if we go west, people permit themselves to be enslaved, as it were, by proclaiming all kinds of laws against alcohol, absinthe, and the like. Even so, people try in any number of ways to get their hands on these sub stances. This demonstrates that today we stand amidst the greatest confusion in human life. on-the one hand, human beings want to live indulgently; on the other, as nations, they do not want to deteriorate completely. This lack of in sight is the cause of the really insane muddle created by the craving of individuals to subject their bodies to all kinds of substances and then again, the laws created to prohibit them from doing so. People need to gain some insight again.

I have explained before that the feminine is connected more with the influences of the universe, whereas the masculine closes itself off from these influences. When men become addicted to absinthe, therefore, they ruin those organs that normally produce offspring who would become people of inwardly firm and strong character. Absinthe will cause people to become weaklings. So, if absinthe is increasingly drunk by men, their children will turn out to be weaklings; they will become a weak race, they will have weak descendants. The males will become effeminate. If women become addicted to absinthe, things will reach a point where children will be born who will be extremely susceptible to all kinds of disease.

Such matters must be viewed in relation to the whole world. I would like to tell you something extraordinarily interesting. You can ask from whence much of what we know today is really derived. No attention is ordinarily paid to how much wisdom humanity possesses in the most simple, everyday aspects of life. As you know, we name the days of the week: Sunday after the sun; Monday after the moon; Tuesday after Mars—mardi in French is definitely named after Mars. While in German Wednesday [Note by translator: The English Wednesday is derived from Wotan's Day; Wotan is the Germanic name for the being called Mercury in Latin.] is Mittwoch, or mid-week, you only have to take the French mercredi and you have Mercury Day, after the planet Mercury. Thursday is after Thor, the thunderer, in German Donnerstag from Donor, but Donor (Thor) is none other than Jupiter. In French we still have jeudi, Jupiter Day. Friday is named after the German goddess Freia, who is the same as Venus; this is vendredi in French. [ Mention of Saturday was omitted by Rudolf Steiner. It is especially obvious in English that the day is named after Saturn.] Hence, the days of the week are named after the planets. Why is that? Because these names originated in a time when it was still known that man is dependent on the universe. Because man lives, all the planets have an influence on him. The days of the week were named accordingly. Today this is called superstition, but calling it superstition is nothing but ignorance. Actually, tremendous wisdom is contained in the naming of the days of the week. Yes, gentlemen, in all these matters there lies a tremendous wisdom!

Now, if we ask from whence this naming of the days of the week came, we go to Asia and find that two or three thousand years before the birth of Christ, extraordinarily clever people lived there. Among the Babylonians and Assyrians were very clever people who were able to observe the influence of the stars; they were the first to name the days of the week. Others than translated them into their own languages. We owe the names of the days of the week to the East, to the Babylonians and the Assyrians, where people were already clever, extremely clever, at a time when Europe looked entirely different. Let us ask what Europe was like around four thousand years ago in Asia, in Assyria and Babylonia, when there were people who really were much cleverer than we are. They were cleverer because they possessed a much greater wealth of knowledge. It is not true that humanity merely progresses smoothly forward. From time to time, humanity also takes steps backward.

Now, these people had a great wealth of knowledge. If people simply abandon their souls to such knowledge, however, it does not agree with them any more than money does. As funny as this comparison might sound, it is true. Too much money does people no good; neither does too much knowledge, if it is not counterbalanced by correctly employing it in the service of humanity and the world. The Asians had gradually accumulated a tremendous knowledge, but they didn't know what to do with it.

What Europe was like at that time, when the Asians still possessed such great knowledge, can best be seen here in these regions of Switzerland, for example. If you look at the rocks that have been brought down into the valleys by glaciers, you can tell from the appearance of these rocks that the glaciers have worked on them. These are glacial rocks. We can tell from their appearance that they have come down from the heights and that the flowing ice of the glaciers has affected them. From the way all the rocks around here look, we know that this whole region was once covered with ice. Indeed, the very ground we walk and feel most comfortable on was once covered with glaciers.

Again, if we go further north in Prussia and large parts of Germany, one can tell by the forms of certain rocks that all those areas were covered with glacial ice that flowed down from the far north. Just as the glaciers descend today to a certain level, so the glaciers moved from the far northern regions all the way into Germany, covering everything with ice.

Not so long ago, people had a special preference for large numbers, and so they said, “Oh, certainly Europe was once covered with glaciers, but that was twenty or thirty million years ago.” This is nonsense. It came about through a calculation that I shall illustrate for you with the following example.

Imagine that I observe a human heart today. This human heart constantly undergoes minute changes. If I observe it a year hence, it will have become a little less resilient, still less in two years, and I can now calculate how much less resilient it has become. Now, by adding it all up, I can calculate how much less resilient the heart will be in a hundred years and from this know also what it was like a century ago. I can certainly figure that out. I can take, say, a seven-year-old person; three hundred years ago, his heart was in such and such shape. There is only the one small matter of his not having been alive then. Similarly, if I figure out how his heart will have changed three hundred years hence, there again is that small matter of his not being alive then.

Such calculations have been made in order to figure out how it looked here in Europe, for example, twenty to thirty thousand years ago. The glacial period thus was pushed far back, but one cannot calculate like that. One must have a science that can show regarding the earth what one already knows regarding the human being, that in three hundred years he will no longer be living as a physical, earthly being.

In recent years the learned scientists have become more reasonable, and those with reason have realized that it was not so long ago that everything here was covered with glaciers; in fact, all of Europe was still iced over when people in Asia were as clever as I have described when the Babylonian and Assyrian cultures flourished. We need only go back a few thousand years—four or five thousand—to find that in Europe everything was still iced over. Only gradually, as the ice diminished, did human beings migrate here.

Well, these people did not have it as easy as people today. It was much harder on them, since they came from warmer regions where they were not constantly subjected to the cold and where they really fared better. Nevertheless, these people did move into regions that only recently had been covered with ice. Through this they were prevented from experiencing the sensual pleasure of wisdom that would gradually have been theirs in Asia. Because an influence was exerted on Europe from the universe, causing it to be covered with ice when the Asian culture enjoyed a warm climate, a better, more energetic culture developed in Europe than could have evolved in Asia. You see, entire civilizations depend on influences from the universe.

Moreover, when one thinks of a glass of ocean water, one sees it simply as water to which a little salt was added: sea water is salty, so when I add salt to plain water I get sea water. It is not as simple as that, however, if you look at the ocean—the Atlantic, for instance—if you could look at it from beneath the surface—here's the surface (sketching) and here's the water—then this is not merely salt water; a curious phenomenon would be observed. When summer comes, something reminiscent of falling snow would pass through the sea. Looking at this gigantic expanse of the ocean from below the surface, one would not say that it was just filled with sea water; indeed, one would see it snowing, as it were. What causes this? The sea contains countless minute creatures, all possessing tiny calcareous shells. These creatures are called foraminifera. As long as these creatures are alive, they swim around in the water fairly close to the surface. Now, when the time of year approaches in which they can no longer live, these creatures die, and their shells begin to sink. These shells are constantly falling, and it is truly like a snow storm. It is really like snow in the air. The entire ocean experiences a snowfall made by these foraminifera. When these foraminifera shells are finally deposited here on the bottom (sketching), their substance is altered and they turn into red clay. This is the ocean floor. These little creatures receive their life from the universe and then build up the ocean floor. It is exactly the same with us in this part of the world. We don't live in the ocean, we live in the air. And when it snows in winter, what is in the snow is what makes our ground as it is, for if there weren't the right snowfall, the plants couldn't grow. The ground is made by what is in the snow.

Gentlemen, it is not the solid components nor even the fluid components in our bodies that absorb the right influences, but only the aeriform components. This influence is absorbed by our breathing when it snows in winter. What the world of the stars sends down to us when it snows in winter, we absorb into ourselves and mold in the right way. To do this, however, our souls need to work in the right way on our organs; otherwise our organs atrophy. Now, when we load down our bodies with absinthe, we close ourselves off from the starry world. We can no longer absorb the influences of the starry world. The result is that we ruin our bodies by thus exposing them only to the earth's influence. You can see how tremendously significant it is, if we are to bring about the right kind of human evolution, that we not ruin our bodies with absinthe. We must realize that!

Now, you can easily picture how civilization progressed. In Asia there existed tremendously clever people who possessed strong soul natures. Gradually, however, they wanted to experience the soul element only as an inner coloring, an inner sensual feeling. Some of them migrated into the regions that earlier had been covered with ice. There they weaned themselves away from this inner sensual feeling and again strengthened their bodies. This is how the civilization of the Occident was added to that of the Orient. Even today, you can see from the glacial formations here on the mountain tops that the earth was once thoroughly cooled in this region, through which the people who moved here were thus able to strengthen their bodies.

You also find the reasons for the decline of the Roman Empire in these things. This dates back to the age when Christianity was first beginning to spread. Yes, gentlemen, if Christianity had spread only among the Romans, the result would have been pretty bad! The Romans, who possessed only the remnants of the Oriental, Asian culture, had become so effeminate that they could not accomplish anything. Then, the peoples of the northern, ice-covered regions arrived with their more sturdy bodies, and the Roman Empire consequently perished. These northern people with their more sturdy bodies then took over the spiritual life.

History describes this as the barbarian invasions in which the Romans perished when the Germanic tribes arrived. These are really today's Europeans—the Germans, French, and English—because they are all basically Germanic peoples. The French have only absorbed a little more of the Roman element than the Germans, for example. All this is based on the fact that these people came from regions where they could absorb the influences of the universe, whereas the other people with their wisdom lived only on the earth. These people that came from the north renewed the whole civilization. So you see, this is how nature is related to everything that takes place in history.

You also know, however, what a strong influence the Roman element still retained. Remember, for example, that not a word of German could be spoken in the universities of Central Europe until the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The professors lectured in Latin. Of course, it had gradually become an odd form of Latin, but everybody knew and understood Latin. Lecturing in the native language came about only slowly, but this tendency to hold on to what was declining because one felt more comfortable with it, even with the speech, continued for a long time.

Just think how long people who wished to give themselves airs chattered in French in all the German regions. This was for no other reason than that they wished to perpetuate the old Latin-Roman element, at least in the language. It is true that what continued on in the language was also perpetuated in other vices. The Romans began this craving to experience a sensual feeling within the body, to enjoy the soul element rather than to make use of it to build up the body. The legacy of this is still present in the craving to drink absinthe, indeed, even to enjoy cocaine and so on. These things will produce a weak race, weak descendants, and will gradually lead those who succumb to such vices to decline. You can enact all the social reforms you like; nothing will result from these social reforms if true insight is not achieved. Such insight can come about only when the materialism in science and religion is replaced by beginning to grasp something spiritual. When human beings begin to grasp the spiritual, they will perceive much of what is not only quite clear outwardly but that can then be penetrated if the spiritual can be contemplated in the right way.

The question of one of you gentlemen, who is an expert on bees, pointed to the distinction between the lives of bees and the lives of wasps. There is much that is similar. I recently described to you the life of wasps, and it is quite similar to that of the bees. The life of the beehive, however, is a remarkably strange one. What is its basis? You see, you cannot explain this if you don't have the possibility of looking into it spiritually. The life in a beehive is extraordinarily wise in its arrangement. Anybody who has observed the bees' life would agree to that. Naturally, one cannot say that bees have a science such as humans have, because they have nothing approaching the brain apparatus that man has. Bees thus cannot assimilate the overall universal wisdom into their bodies as human beings do, but the influences from the universal surroundings of the earth work powerfully on beehives. If all that lives in the surroundings of the earth, which has a very strong influence on the beehive, were taken into consideration, one could arrive at a correct comprehension of what the life of the bees is really like. Much more so than among ants and wasps, life in the beehive is based on the bees' cooperating with each other and accomplishing their tasks harmoniously. To figure out what causes this, one must conclude that bees have a life in which the element that expresses itself in other animals in their sexual life is suppressed to an extraordinary degree. In bees this impulse is extraordinarily suppressed.

You see, reproduction is actually taken care of among bees by a few select females, the queen bees. The sexual life of the others is really more or less suppressed. In sexual life, however, there is also the life of love. The life of love is an element of the soul. Only because certain organs in the body are affected by this soul element do they reveal and become expressions of this love life. Inasmuch as the love life is suppressed in bees and concentrated in only one queen bee, what would otherwise be sexual life in the beehive is transferred to the other activities that the bees develop. This is why the wise men of old, who knew of these matters in a way differing from that of today, associated this whole wondrous bustle of the beehive with the love life that is connected with the planet Venus.

So we can say that when one describes the wasps or the ants, they are creatures that withhold themselves from the influence of the planet Venus. The bees are completely given up to the influence of the planet Venus, developing a love life throughout their entire hive. It therefore becomes a wise life, and you can imagine how wise that must be. I have described something of the way successive generations of bees are produced. It contains an unconscious wisdom. This unconscious wisdom the bees develop in their outer activity. Therefore, the element that arises in us only when our hearts love can actually be found throughout the beehive as a substance. The entire beehive is actually permeated by a life of love. In most instances the individual bees renounce love and develop the love in the entire beehive. One can begin to understand their life when one becomes clear that the bees live as if in an atmosphere that is pervaded through and through with love.

It is most beneficial to the bee that it sustains itself actually by those parts of the plant that are completely permeated by the plant's love life. The bee sucks its nourishment, which it then turns into honey, out of those parts of the plant that are integral aspects of its love life. The bee thus carries the love life of the flowers into the hive. This is why the life of the bee must be studied from the standpoint of the soul.

This is much less necessary with ants and wasps. When their lives are traced, one will see that, instead of what I have described for bees, they tend to have more of a sex life. With the exception of the queen bee, the bee is really the one being that, in a manner of speaking, says, “We shall renounce an individual sex life and instead become bearers of the life of love.” They have indeed carried into their accomplishments in the hive what lives in flowers. If you really begin to think this through, you uncover the entire mystery of the beehive. The life of this sprouting, thriving love that is spread out over the flowers is then also contained in the honey.

You can investigate this further and ask what effect honey has on you when you eat it. What does honey do? Well, absinthe unites with the fluidity of man, driving out the air and with it the soul element, so that man experiences sensual pleasure. Honey generates sensual pleasure on the tongue. The moment the honey is eaten, it furthers the right relationship between the air element and the fluid element in man. Nothing is better for the human being than to add the right amount of honey to his food. In a marvelous way, the bee really sees to it that man learns to work on his organs with his soul element. By means of honey, the beehive gives back to man what he needs for energy of soul in his body. When man drinks quantities of absinthe, he wishes to enjoy his soul. When man adds honey to his meal, he prepares his soul element in such a way that it works and breathes properly in his body. Beekeeping is therefore something that really contributes significantly to civilization, because it makes man strong, whereas to indulge in absinthe is something that will gradually drive the human race to extinction.

When you consider that bees receive the greatest influence from the world of the stars, you realize that through the bees the right element can enter the human being. All living things work together in the right way when they are combined in the right way. When a person looks at a beehive, he should say to himself with something akin to exaltation that, by way of the beehive, the whole universe draws into human beings and makes them capable people. Drinking absinthe, however, produces incapable human beings. The knowledge of man thus becomes knowledge of the universe.