LECTURE I
Dornach, January 2, 1924
I should like, first of all, to speak to
you about certain principles in medical study. Medical study
today is based upon a scientific conception of the world, or,
better said, upon scientific interpretations, which do not
lead to the human being in his reality and which at the
present time are not capable of giving a true description of
the human being.
And so young
physicians approach a sick human being without having any
real picture of a healthy human being. For if, after having
studied anatomy and physiology, we picture the essence of the
human organism to be the organs, systems of organs, bones,
muscles, all with their definite contours, and get into the
habit of looking at these systems within rigid contours, we
have an entirely erroneous view of the human being. All that
is drawn and pictured in this way and then becomes the
content of knowledge, is in reality involved in a perpetual
process of becoming, in a perpetual process of build-up and
breakdown (anabolism and catabolism). There is perpetual
becoming, perpetual arising, and passing away. If we think
deeply about this process of arising and passing away, it is
at once apparent that we must pass over from what has
contours within the human organism to what is fluid and has,
therefore, no contours. We realize that the human being must
be pictured as the product of streamings — which
persist at certain locations — and that we must add to
the solid body (which is, after all, the smallest part of the
human being) the fluid man, if I may so express myself, the
being who is no longer subject to the laws to which the
bodies with definite contours are subject. The conceptions
arising from modern anatomy and physiology usually give rise
to the opinion that if fluid is taken to quench thirst and
then more and more fluid is taken, the fourth or fifth
glassful passes through the same process in the organism as
does the first. But this is not the case. Up to the point
where the thirst is quenched, the first glass of water passes
through a complicated process; the second glass of water,
when the thirst is no longer so intense, passes through the
organism without this process, much more rapidly than the
first. It does not go through the complicated ways of the
first, and in the case of the second glass of water, what
takes place is simply a kind of increased streaming of the
fluid man, if I may put it so.
A true
knowledge of the human being must, therefore, reckon, to
begin with, with the sharply outlined organs but also with
what is in flow in the organism. Physiology does, of course,
also speak of what is in flow, but the flowing fluids in the
human organism are only investigated from the point of view
of the laws of dynamics or mechanics. The truth is that the
moment the fluid man comes into consideration, we must
realize that the so-called etheric body is working in this
fluid man.
The drawings
to be found in books on anatomy have merely to do with the
human physical body. The streaming of the fluids in the
organism is left out of account. This streaming of fluids
within the organism is not dependent upon earthly forces,
fundamentally speaking. It is dependent upon planetary
forces. Therefore, we must realize that as long as we are
concerned with rigidly outlined organs and systems of organs,
earthly forces, pure and simple, come into consideration. The
moment we are concerned with what is in circulation, whether
it be the circulation of the digestive juice or of the
digestive juice that has already been transformed in the
blood, the ruling forces are not earthly but planetary. We
will go into this more closely. It is merely a question, now,
of the principle.
Thus, the
physical laws of the physical body apply to the solid man;
while the laws of the etheric body rule the fluid Man. But
the aeriform, the gaseous, also plays a part in the human
organism, a greater part, indeed, than is conjectured.
Insofar as the gaseous works within and enlivens the human
organism, it is entirely dependent upon the astral body.
Human breathing, for instance, in its physical manifestation,
is a function of the astral body.
I spoke of
the physical man (physical body), of the fluid man (etheric
body), of the gaseous man (astral body). So far as the fourth
man, the warmth man, is concerned, there is not the slightest
doubt that differentiated warmth is present in the space
physically occupied by the human being, and even beyond this.
If you put a thermometer behind the ear or under the armpit
you will find evidence of differentiation in the warmth
organism; the degrees of warmth are everywhere different. As
the liver has its definite place in the organism, and the
intestinal organs have theirs, so do they also have quite
different temperatures. The liver temperature is quite
different, for the liver has a very special kind of warmth
organization. This warmth organization is subject to the ego
organization.
Now, and
really for the first time, you can picture the human being,
insofar as he bears within himself the substances that exist
on the earth in the solid, fluid, aeriform, and warmth
conditions. The warmth is ruled from the ego organization.
When something or other is in a certain condition of warmth,
this condition of warmth has an effect upon what it is
permeating. And here we come to how things really are as
regards the ego organization. What the ego organization does
in the human organism is done by way of the warmth
organization. Suppose I am walking, simply walking. When I am
walking, I take hold of my warmth organization with my ego
organization. What the warmth does within the fluids which
fill out the solid constituents of the legs is, indirectly, a
consequence of the ego organization, but the ego organization
only takes direct hold within the warmth organization. In the
whole organism, in the solids, fluids, gases, and warmth,
therefore, we see the intervention of the ego organization,
but the intervention takes place by way of the warmth
organization. The astral body also intervenes in the whole
organism, but the astral body takes direct hold only in the
aeriform organization, and so on. You can work out the rest
for yourselves.
This helps
you to understand something else. If you take what is
presented to you today in physiology and anatomy all that is
so beautifully drawn and is regarded as being the whole man,
if you take this, you will never be able to pass over from
this human being (who in reality does not exist in this form)
to the soul, let alone to the spiritual. Just tell me where
and how the soul or spirit could possibly be connected with
the human being as pictured by physiology or anatomy today?
This is the reason why all kinds of apparently
well-thought-out theories have arisen concerning the
interactions that take place between the soul and spirit and
the body. The most ingenious of them — No, I ought to
say the most nonsensical — is that of psycho-physical
parallelism. It is said that the life of soul and spirit and
the bodily life run their courses simultaneously and parallel
to each other. No attempt is made to find a bridge. But the
moment you pass on to the differentiation of the warmth and
see therein the intervention of the ego organization, you
realize: Yes, it is conceivable that the ego organization
intervenes in the warmth ether, and by way of the warmth
organization in the whole human being, down to the sharply
outlined physical organization.
The reason
why the bridge between the physical nature and the life of
soul in the human being could not be found was because no
account was taken of the existence of these organizations of
which the soul and spirit take hold in successive stages. It
is a known fact that the simple psychical condition of fear,
for example, affects the bodily warmth. It is inconceivable
that the psychical experience of fear should be capable of
actually making the legs tremble. The thing is inconceivable,
so a theory like that of psycho-physical parallelism has
arisen. But it is conceivable that the organization of soul
which is anchored in the warmth ether should be affected by
fear, and then that the fear should live itself out in the
corresponding change of the warmth, the warmth organization
communicates itself to the airy organization, the fluid
organization, and downwards to the solid body of the human
being. Only in this way is it possible to build a bridge from
the physical to the life of soul.
Unless you
have this insight into the healthy human being you will never
get insight into the sick human being. Take, for example,
some part of the human organization, such as the liver or
kidneys. In the so-called normal state, the liver or kidney
receives impulses from the ego organization inasmuch as these
impulses of the ego organization take hold, first of all, of
the warmth organization and then pass down to the liver or
kidney with its definite outlines. If we understand this
process, it is possible to conceive that this intervention on
the part of the ego by way of the warmth organization may
cause the ordinary process of this warmth organization to be
inwardly intensified, to deviate from its ordinary process,
in such a way that the ego organization works too strongly
upon the warmth organization in the liver or the kidneys. A
certain state of balance must prevail in the organism in
order that the ego organization can work in it. If this
balance is upset, the organism may fall ill. But the organism
as pictured by modern anatomy and physiology is, in reality,
incapable of illness. From whence could the condition of
illness possibly proceed? Somewhere or other the possibility
of illness must exist in the organism. Now, the ego
organization must work in with a certain strength upon the
heart, that is to say, by way of the warmth organization upon
the heart. Suppose it happens through some circumstance or
other, and remember that in the external world, too, warmth
can be guided to some other place where it is not desirable
— suppose it happens that what ought to work by way of
the warmth organization upon the heart works in the kidneys
or liver. Something happens that must happen, but here it is
out of place, has gone astray — and then the
possibility of illness arises.
Only by
remembering this principle will you begin to understand the
possibility of illness; otherwise you will not understand.
You will have to say to yourselves: Everything that goes on
in the human organism is a process of nature. Illness is,
however, also a process of nature. Where does a healthy
process cease? Where does a process of disease begin? These
questions are unfortunately unanswerable if you go no further
than the teachings of orthodox physiology and anatomy. You
can only get a conception of the possibility of illness when
you know that what constitutes illness when it takes place in
the liver, may be healthy when it takes place in the heart
and so on. For if the human organism, working from out of the
ego organization, could not bring forth the warmth that must
be present in the region of the heart, the organism would,
for example, be unable to think, to feel. But if these same
forces were to invade the liver or kidneys it becomes
necessary to drive them out again, to put them back, as it
were, within their original boundaries. Now, in external
nature there are substances and activities of substances
which can take over, in the case of every organ, the activity
of the etheric body, of the astral body, of the ego
organization. Suppose the ego organization is taking too
strong a hold of the kidneys. By giving equisetum
arvense in a certain way, you enable the kidneys to do
what the ego organization is doing in this abnormal,
pathological condition. In this pathological condition, the
ego organization is taking hold of the kidneys but in the way
that ought only to happen in the heart, not in the kidneys.
Something is going on in the kidneys which ought not to be
there but which is there because the ego organization is
pouring in its activity too intensely. We only get rid of
this condition if we introduce artificially into the kidneys
an activity which is an equivalent of this activity of the
ego organization. That is what you can introduce into the
kidneys if you really succeed in making equisetum
arvense active in the kidneys. The kidneys have a great
affinity with equisetum arvense. The activity of
this substance throws itself into the kidneys, and the ego
organization is sent out. And when the ego organization is
given back to its own tasks it has a curative influence upon
the diseased organ. You can call up the higher bodies,
so-called, into health-giving activity when you drive them
out of the diseased organ and set them again at their own
proper tasks. Then, through a reactionary force which arises,
these higher bodies can actually work curatively upon the
diseased organ.
If we are to
understand such forces and the connection of the human
organism with the cosmos and with the three kingdoms of
nature around man on the earth, we must cultivate a different
kind of natural science from what is cultivated today. I will
give you an example.
You all know
that formic acid comes from ants. Certain things are
known by chemists and pharmaceutical chemists about formic
acid, but the following is not known. A forest in which no
ants are carrying on their work causes great harm to the
earth through the roots that are falling into decay. In the
organic fragments that are falling into dust the earth goes
to pieces. Just think of wood from which the vegetative
process has gone and which has passed over into a kind of
mineral condition; it is pulverized, is falling into dust.
But when the ants are doing their work, formic acid in an
extremely high potency is always present in the soil and in
the air within the area of the forest. This formic acid
permeates what is falling into dust and the connection of the
formic acid with the dust safeguards the development of the
earth; the dust is not just scattered away in the universe
but can provide material for the earth's further evolution.
Substances which seem merely to be the excretions of insects
or other forms of animal life are seen, in very truth, to be
the saviors of the further evolution of the earth when we
know what their true function is.
The way in
which the modern chemist investigates substances will never
lead to a knowledge of the cosmic tasks of these substances.
And without knowledge of the cosmic tasks of substances it is
quite impossible to know the tasks of substances that are
introduced into the human being. What formic acid does in
external nature, quite without being noticed, is going on all
the time within the human organism. And so I said in another
lecture that the human organism must always have a certain
quantity of formic acid in it because the formic acid
restores the physical substances that are succumbing to the
process of growing old. In certain cases it may be found that
the patient has too little formic acid in his organism. It is
essential to know that the different organs must each have
different quantities of formic acid. When we discover that
some organ has too little formic acid, this substance must be
introduced into the organism. There will be cases where the
introduction of formic acid gives no help, others again where
it is a very great help. There may also be a case where the
organism strongly resists the direct introduction of formic
acid but will be inclined, when its oxalic acid content is
increased, to manufacture formic acid itself, out of the
oxalic acid. In cases where nothing can be done with formic
acid, it is often necessary to apply an oxalic acid cure,
because formic acid is produced out of the oxalic acid in the
organism. This is only one indication of how necessary it is
not only to understand the nature of the organs with definite
contours but also the nature of the fluids, the fluid process
outside in the cosmos as well as within the human organism.
This must be known in all detail.
You see,
certain processes outside in nature which are occasioned by
man can be observed, but their whole significance cannot be
revealed by scientific interpretations. Let me tell you about
a very simple phenomena. Fig trees grow in the South. There
are fig trees which produce wild figs and specially
cultivated trees which produce sweet figs. People are shrewd
in the way they produce sweet figs. They do the following:
they cause a certain species of wasp to lay eggs in a fig, an
ordinary fig. A wasp maggot comes from this germ and passes
into the chrysalis stage. This process is interrupted and the
young wasp is caused to lay a second lot of eggs in the same
season. The result of this second lot of eggs from the wasps
which have been generated in the same year is that sweetness
is produced in the fig in which the second generation of
wasps has laid eggs. In the South, people take figs that are
nearly ripe, tie two together with string and hang them on a
branch. The wasps come and deposit the eggs in the figs; the
ripening process is very much accelerated through the fruit
being cut away from the tree and the first generation of
wasps develop very quickly; then the wasps go over to other
figs that have not been cut, and they become very much
sweeter.
This process
is very important because here, within the fig substance
itself, there takes place, in concentration, the same thing
that happens when wasps, or, if you will, bees, take nectar
from the flowers into the hive and produce honey. The bees
take the nectar from the flowers and then produce honey in
the hive. This same process takes place within the fig
itself. The people in the South set a honey-producing process
going in the fig by way of the young generation of wasps. A
honey-producing process is generated in the fig which is
inoculated by the young generation of wasps.
Here you have
the metamorphosis of two nature processes. The one is spread
out, so to say, over nature, when the bee fetches the nectar
from the flowers at a distance and produces honey from this
nectar in the hive. The other process is concentrated in the
same tree on which the two figs are hung. These figs ripen
more quickly, and the generation of wasps arises more
quickly; other figs are inoculated and these become sweet. We
must study such processes of nature for they are the
processes which come into consideration in medical work.
There are
processes at work within the human being of which modern
physiology and anatomy have not the slightest inkling because
their observation does not extend to nature processes such as
I have now described. We must observe the more delicate
processes in nature and then we shall unfold a real knowledge
of the human being. For all these things, my dear friends, an
inner understanding of nature is required and a comprehensive
view of the warmth, the streamings of air, the warming and
cooling of the air, the play of the sun's rays in this
warming and cooling of air, the water vapor in the
atmosphere, the wonderful play of the morning dew over the
flowers and plants, the marvelous process which takes place,
for example, in a gall apple which is also produced by a
wasp's sting and the laying of an egg. A sense for nature is
required in all these things. And this sense for nature is
certainly not present when, as in the modern way of
observation, everything is made dependent on what is seen
under the microscope where things are taken right away from
nature. There is a dreadful illusion here. What is the aim of
looking through the microscope? The aim is to be able to see
what cannot be seen by the ordinary eye. When the object is
enormously magnified people imagine that its workings will be
the same as they are in the minute. But in microscopy we are
looking at something that is untrue. Microscopy is only of
value if you yourselves have a sufficiently true sense for
nature to be able, with your own inner activity, to modify
the particular object to the corresponding minuteness. Then
the whole thing is different. If you see an object magnified,
you must be able to reduce it again, simply through its own
inner nature. This is not done in the ordinary way. As a
rule, people have no inkling of the fact that the magnitudes
of the things of nature are not relative. The theory of
relativity is great and fine and in most domains simply
incontestable. But when it comes to the human organism, that
is another matter altogether. Three years ago I was present
at a discussion among certain professors. They simply did not
understand when one said to them that the human organism
cannot be twice as large, for example, as it actually is, for
it could not endure such a size. The size of the human
organism is determined by the cosmos; its size is not
relative, but absolute. When the size is super-normal, as in
a giant, or subnormal as in a dwarf, this immediately brings
us to conditions of illness. And so when we see an object
under the microscope, we see a lie, to begin with. It is a
question of reducing objects back to truth, and this is
possible only when we have a sense for nature, a sense for
what is really happening outside in nature.
It is very
important to study a beehive. The single bee is stupid; it
has instincts, but it is stupid by itself. The beehive as a
whole, however, is exceedingly wise. Quite recently a very
interesting discussion took place with workmen at the
Goetheanum to whom, in normal times, I give two lectures a
week. We had been speaking of bees and a very interesting
question was put. People who keep bees know quite well that
when a beekeeper who is loved by the inhabitants of the hive
falls ill, or dies, the whole bee population falls into
disorder. This actually happens. One of the workmen who has
the typically modern way of thinking said that surely a bee
cannot see such a thing, it cannot possibly have any picture
of the beekeeper. How, then, can such a feeling of
interconnection arise? He also brought forward the point that
a beekeeper looks after the hive one year but the next year
there is quite a different population in the hive; even the
queen bee is another insect and all the bees in the hive are
young bees. How, therefore, can there be this feeling of
interconnection? I answered in the following way: It is
well-known that in certain periods all the substances in the
human organism are changed. Suppose we make the acquaintance
of someone who goes to America and comes back after ten
years. The person who comes back is really quite different
from the one who went away ten years ago. All the substances
in his organism have been exchanged for others. Things are
exactly the same as in the beehive, where the bees have
changed but the feeling of the interconnection between the
hive and the beekeeper remains. This feeling of
interconnection is due to the fact that there is tremendous
wisdom in the beehive. The hive is not merely a cluster of
single bees; the hive has an individual soul, a real
soul.
The
perception that a beehive has a soul is also something that
must form part of our sense for nature. Such perceptions are
part of a true sense for nature and can be applied in many
other things. We can only begin to understand the human being
in health and in disease when our knowledge is reinforced by
a sense for nature that is not only microscopic but also
macroscopic, if I may use the expression. We shall try to
understand health and disease in this way during the
lectures, my dear friends, and we shall consider, too, what I
will call the moral side of medical studies and medical
science.
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