Lecture 1
Spiritual Science and Language
Berlin,
20th January 1910
It is of some interest to observe from the point of view of
spiritual science in the sense that the word is used here, the various ways
by which the human being expresses himself.
[ 1 ]
For in approaching human life
from different sides, as it were, and observing its different aspects as we
have done in these lectures, a comprehensive view of it can be gained. Today
let us deal with that universal expression of the human spirit which is
manifest in language; and next time, under the heading “Laughing and
Weeping”, we will then look at a variation, as it were, of human
expression which is connected with language but is fundamentally different
from it all the same.
When we speak of
human language, we feel sufficiently how all the significance, dignity and
the whole of the human being are connected with that which we call language.
Our innermost existence, all our thoughts, feelings and impulses of the will
flow outward to our fellow human beings and unite us with them through
language. Thus we feel the possibility of expanding our being infinitely, the
ability to make our being extend into our environment through language. On
the other hand, anyone who can enter into the inner life of significant
personalities will be able to feel particularly how language can also become
a tyrant, a force which exercises power over our inner life. We can feel how
our feelings and thoughts, those things of a special and intimate nature
which pass through our soul, can be expressed only poorly and inadequately in
the word, in language. And we can also feel how even the language within
which we are placed forces us into specific modes of thinking. Everyone must
be aware how the human being is dependent on language as far as his thinking
is concerned. It is words to which our concepts are generally attached; and
in an imperfect stage of development the human being will readily confuse the
word or that which the word inculcates in him with the concept. Here lies the
cause for the inability of some people to construct for themselves a
conceptual framework which reaches beyond what is contained in the words
commonly used in their environment. And we are aware how the character of a
whole people who speak a common language is in a certain way dependent on
that language. The person who observes national character more closely, the
character of languages in their context, must realise that the way in which
the human being is able to transform the content of his soul into sounds in
turn acts back on the strengths and weaknesses of his character, on the way
his temperament is expressed, even on his conception of existence as a whole.
The configuration of a language can tell much about the character of a
people. And since a language is common to a people, the individual is
dependent on a common element, an average quantity, as it were, which
prevails among that people. He is thus subject to a certain tyranny, to the
rule of commonality. But if one realises that language contains on the one
hand our individual spiritual life and on the other the spiritual life of the
community, then one comes to see what might be called the “secret of
language” as something of special significance. A considerable amount
can be learnt about the soul-life of the human being if one observes how this
being expresses itself in language.
The secret of
language, its origin and development at different periods, has always been
the subject of investigation by certain specialist scientific disciplines.
But it cannot be said that these disciplines have been particularly
successful in our century in uncovering the secret of language. That is why
today we will try to illuminate aphoristically so to speak, in broad outline,
language, its development and its connection with the human being from a
spiritual-scientific point of view as we have been applying it to man and his
development.
It is this
connection which in the first instance seems so mysterious when we use a word
to describe an object, an event, a process. What is the link between a
particular combination of sounds which form a word or sentence and that which
is within us which the object, expressed as word, means? In this respect
outward science has tried to unite a wide range of observations in all kinds
of ways. But the unsatisfactory nature of such a method has also been felt.
The question is quite simple, and yet it is so difficult to answer: why did
the human being, when faced with some object or event in the outside world,
produce this or that particular sound from within himself as an echo of that
object or event?
From a certain point
of view the matter was thought to be quite simple. It was thought, for
example, that language was originally formed by an inner ability of our
speech organs. This imitated those things which were heard outwardly as sound
— the sounds of certain animals for example, or something knocking
against something else; rather like when the child hears the dog bark
“bow-wow” it calls the dog a “bow-wow”. Such word
formation is called onomatopoeic, an imitation of the sound. This was held by
certain directions of thought to be the original foundation of sound and word
formation. Of course the question how the human being came to name beings
which did not emit a sound remains unanswered. The great linguistic
researcher Max Müller,
[ 2 ]
realising the unsatisfactory nature of such a
theory, ridiculed it by calling it the “bow-wow” theory. He set
up another theory which his opponents in turn called “mystical”
(giving the word a sense in which it should not be used). For Max Müller
holds the view that each object contains within itself, as it were, something
which is like a sound; everything in a certain sense has a sound, not only
the glass which is dropped, not only the bell which is struck, but
everything. And the ability of the human being to establish a relationship
between his soul and this expressive element, which is like the essential
nature of the object, calls forth the ability in the soul to express this
inner sound-being of the object. Thus the essence of a bell can be
experienced in the sounding of the “bim-bam”. And Max
Müller's opponents returned his ridicule and called his theory the
“bim-bam” theory. A more detailed examination would show that
something unsatisfactory always remains in trying to characterise outwardly
in this way the things which the human being experiences of the nature of
things like an echo in his soul. A deeper penetration of the inner being of
man is required.
From the point of
view of spiritual science the human being is fundamentally a very complex
being. He has his physical body, which is governed by the same laws and has
the same constitution as the mineral world. Then, from a spiritual-scientific
aspect, the human being has a second, higher member of his being, the ether
body or life body. Then there is the astral body, the bearer of pleasure and
pain, joy and sorrow, of instincts, desires and passions; this is just as
real a member of the human being for spiritual science, if not more real,
than the one which one can see with the eyes and touch with the hands. And
the fourth member of the human being we called the bearer of the ego. We
further saw that at his present stage the development of the human being
consists of the ego working on the transformation of the other three members
of his being. We also pointed out that at a future time the ego will have
transformed these three members in such a way that nothing will remain of
what nature, or the spiritual forces which are active in nature, has made of
these three human members.
For the astral body,
the bearer of pain and pleasure, of joy and sorrow, of all the surging power
of the imagination, feelings and perceptions, was created initially without
our participation, that is, without any contribution by our ego. But now the
ego has become active and it works in such a manner that it purifies and
cleanses and subordinates all the qualities and activities of the astral
body. If the ego has worked only a small amount on the astral body, the human
being is dominated by his instincts and desires; but if it purifies the
instincts and desires into virtues, if it orders muddled thinking by the
thread of logic, then a part of the astral body has become transformed. It
has become transformed from a product in which the ego takes no part into a
product of the ego. If the ego fulfils this work consciously, of which today
only a start has been made in human evolution, we call this part of the
astral body which has been consciously transformed by the ego the
“spirit-self”, or, using a term from Oriental philosophy,
“Manas”. When the ego works not only on the astral body, but in a
different and more intensive way on the ether body, we call this part of the
ether body transformed by the ego the “life-spirit”, or, with a
term from Oriental philosophy, “Budhi”. And when finally the ego
has become so strong — and this will happen only in the far distant
future — that it transforms the physical body and regulates its laws
and permeates it so that it rules over everything which lives in the physical
body, we call this part of the physical body “spirit-man”, or
also, because this work begins with controlling the breathing processes, with
a term from Oriental philosophy, “Atman”.
(Cf. German “atmen” — to breathe.)
Thus we see the
human being initially as a four membered being, consisting of a physical
body, an ether body, an astral body and an ego. And similarly to the three
members of our being which derive from the past, we are able to speak of
three members of the human being developing into the future, created by the
work of our ego. We can therefore speak of the seven-membered human being by
adding to the physical body, ether body, astral body and ego the spirit-self,
life-body and spirit-man. But when we consider these last three members as
something distant, belonging to the future evolution of mankind, it must be
added that the human being is prepared for such a development in a certain
way already in the present. Consciously the human being will work with his
ego on the physical, ether and astral bodies only in the far distant future;
but in the subconscious, that is, without full consciousness, the ego is
already transforming these three members of its being on the basis of a still
dulled activity. The results are already in existence. What we described in
previous lectures as inner members of the human being were only able to come
about because of this work by the ego. From the astral body it fashioned the
sentient soul as inner mirror-image, as it were, of the sentient body. Whilst
the sentient body transmits gratification (sentient body and astral body are
synonymous as regards man; without the sentient body we would have no
gratification), this is mirrored internally in the soul as desire — and
it is desire which we then ascribe to the soul. Thus the two things belong
together: the astral body and the transformed astral body or sentient soul,
as gratification and desire belong together. In a similar way the ego was
working in the past already on the ether body. This created internally in the
soul of the human being the intellectual or mind soul. Thus the intellectual
soul, which is also the bearer of memory, is linked with the subconscious
transformation of the ether body by the ego. And finally, the ego has been
working in the past also on the transformation of the physical body in order
to enable the existence of the human being in his present form. The result of
that transformation is the consciousness soul, which permits the human being
to gain knowledge about the things of the outside world. The seven-membered
human being can therefore be characterised as follows: through the
preparative, subconscious activity of the ego the three soul members have
been created; the sentient soul, the intellectual soul and the consciousness
soul.
The question may now
be asked: are not the physical body, ether body and astral body complex
entities? What a miracle of construction is the physical human body! And if
we examined it more closely, we would find that this physical body is much
more complex than that part alone which the ego has transformed into the
consciousness soul and which can be called the physical form of the
consciousness soul. Similarly the ether body is much more complex than that
which might be called the form of the intellectual or mind soul. And the
astral body too is much more complex than the form of the sentient soul.
These parts are poor in comparison to what was in existence before the human
being had an ego. That is why in spiritual science we speak of the human
being as having developed in the distant past from spiritual beings the first
predisposition for a physical body. To this was added the ether body, then
still later the astral body, and finally the ego. The physical body of the
human being has thus passed through four stages of development. First there
was a direct correspondence with the spiritual world; then it developed and
was interwoven and transfused with the ether body. It therefore became more
complex. Then it became interwoven with the astral body which made it more
complex again. Then the ego was added. And only the work of the latter on the
physical body transformed part of the physical body and made it into the
bearer of human consciousness: the ability to gain knowledge of the outer
world. But this physical body has more functions than providing us with a
knowledge of the outside world by means of our senses and our brain. It has
to fulfil a number of activities which form the basis of our consciousness
but which take place completely outside the sphere of the brain. The same
applies to the ether body and the astral body.
If the fact is now
quite clear that everything which surrounds us in the outside world is
spirit, that there is a spiritual foundation to everything material, etheric
and astral, as we have emphasised so often, then we have to say: the ego
works as a spiritual being from the inside outwards, as the human being
develops the three members of his being; in a similar manner — whether
we call them
spiritual beings
or
spiritual actions
is not important — must have been
working on our physical, ether and astral bodies before the ego emerged,
which then took over this development. We are looking back at a time in which
the same action on our astral body, ether body and physical body occurred as
today is done by the ego outwards into these three members. That is to say,
before the ego was ready to establish itself within them, spiritual creation,
spiritual actions, worked on our sheaths and gave them form, movement, shape.
There are spiritual actions in the human being which occur before the
activities of the ego, if we exclude for a moment all that which our ego has
transformed in the three members of our being as sentient soul, intellectual
soul and consciousness soul, and regard the construction, the inner movement
and action of these three sheaths of the human being.
That is why in
spiritual science we talk of the human being as he is today as being an
individual soul, a soul transfused with an ego, which makes every human being
into a self-contained individuality. Before the human being became such a
self-contained ego-being, he was part of a “group-soul”, part of
a quality of soul which we still refer to today in the animal world as
group-soul.
[ 3 ]
What occurs in the human being as individual soul in each
person, that occurs in the animal world as the basis of the whole species or
family. A whole species of animal has a common group-soul. The individual
human soul is equivalent to the soul of the species in the animal. Thus
before man became an individual soul another soul was working in the three
members of his being of which we have knowledge today only through spiritual
science, a soul which was the precursor of our individual ego. And this
precursor of our ego, which then passed on to the ego the physical body,
ether body and astral body in order that the ego might continue to transform
them, this group-soul also transformed from within itself the physical body,
ether body and astral body and ordered them according to itself. And the
final activity of the human being before he was endowed with an ego, the
final influence which lies before the birth of the ego, is present today in
what we call human
language.
When we therefore consider what preceded the life of our consciousness
soul, our intellectual or mind soul and our sentient soul, we come across an
activity of the soul which is not yet transfused by the ego and its result is
present today in the expression of language.
What is the outward
appearance of the four members of the human being? How are they expressed
purely outwardly in the physical body? The physical body of a plant looks
different from the physical body of a human being. Why? Because in the plant
only the physical body and the ether body are present, whereas in the human
physical body the astral body and the ego are present as well. This inward
activity forms and refashions the physical body correspondingly. How is the
physical body affected when it is permeated by an ether or life
body?
The glandular system
is the outward physical expression in man and animal of the ether or life
body; that is to say, the ether body is the architect of the glandular
system. The astral body formed the nervous system. That is why it is correct
to talk of a nervous system only in those beings where an astral body is
present. What, now, is the expression in the human being of his ego? It is
the circulatory system and specifically what might be called the blood under
the special influence of the inner life warmth. All the work which the ego
does on the human being when it transforms the physical body is channelled
via the blood. That is why the blood is of such special nature. When the ego
transforms the sentient soul, the intellectual soul and the consciousness
soul, then all the work that the ego achieves only penetrates into the
physical body because the ego has the ability to affect the physical body via
the blood. Our blood is the mediator for the astral body and the ego and all
their activity.
There can be no
doubt if we look at human life, even on a superficial level only, that the
human being transforms the physical body with the ego in the same way as he
transforms the consciousness soul, the intellectual soul and the sentient
soul. Who would deny that the physiognomy expresses what lives and works
inwardly. And who would deny that inward thinking, if it takes hold
completely of the soul, transforms the brain even in the course of one life.
Our brain is a tool which adapts to the requirements of our thinking. But if
we consider the amount which the human being can transform, artistically
fashion as it were, his outer being through the ego, it is very small. It is
very little which we can do with our blood by setting the blood in motion
with what we call our inner
warmth.
Those spiritual beings which preceded our ego managed to
achieve more, for they were able to make use of a more effective means; thus
the human form took shape under their influence in such a way that it is an
overall expression of what those forces made of the human being. These beings
used the substance of
air.
In the same way that we use the inner warmth to make our blood pulse
— thus making the blood active in our own form — the beings
working on us previous to our ego made the air serve their purpose. And the
work of these beings on us through air created what gives us our form as
human beings.
It might
seem strange that we speak of
spiritual forces working on the human being in the far distant past through
air. But it is not the first time I have said that it is a misjudgement to
think of the soul and spirit life of our inner being only as product of the
imagination, and not to realise that it has been taken from the outside world
as a whole. Whoever states that concepts and ideas could arise in us without
ideas existing in the outside world might just as well say that he can take
water from a glass in which there is none. Our concepts would be nothing more
than froth if they were anything other than what lives in outside things and
what is present in those things as their laws. We fetch that which we allow
to develop in our souls from our environment. That is why we can say:
everything material which surrounds us is interwoven with spiritual
beings.
Strange as it may
sound, what surrounds us as air is not merely the substance as shown by
chemistry, but spiritual beings and spiritual forces are active in it. And in
the same way that we can transform our physical body a small amount by the
warmth which streams forth from our ego — that is the essential element
— in the blood, the beings which preceded the ego formed in a powerful
way the outer form of our physical being by means of the air.
We are human beings because of our larynx and everything
connected with that.
The larynx, sculpted from outside into us as this wonderful artistic
organ and connected with the other vocal and speech organs, was created from
the spiritual element in the air. Goethe said very aptly with reference to
the eye: “The eye is fashioned by the light for the light!”
[ 4 ]
If, in the sense of Schopenhauer,
[ 5 ]
it is now stressed that without an eye
sensitive to light there would be no impression of light for us, then this is
only half the truth. The other half is that we would have no eye if
the light had not
sculpted, as it were, our eyes from undefined organs in the far distant past.
Light must therefore be seen not only as the abstract entity which is
described today as physical light; but in light we have to search for that
hidden being which is capable of creating the eye for itself.
Similarly we can say
in another respect that the air is full of beings which were able at certain
times to create in the human being the intricate organ of the larynx and all
that is connected with it. And the rest of the human form to the smallest
detail has been formed and sculpted in such a manner that man in his present
stage is a further development of his speech organs, as it
were. The speech organs are something decisive for the
human form in the first instance. That is
why it is speech that transcends man above the animals. For the spiritual
being which we call the spirit of the air
also fashioned the animals, but not to such a level where they
could develop the facility of speech such as the human being has it. We see
that the human being had internally already developed his speech organs by
the time that he developed his present thinking, his feelings and his will,
that is to say, everything connected with his ego. Now it can be understood
why these spiritual forces could only work on the physical body in such a
manner that the human being finally became like an appendix to his speech
organs, because they developed the astral body, ether body and physical body
through the influence, the configuration of the air. After the human being
had become capable of having within him an organ which corresponded to what
we have called the spiritual beings of the air, in the same way that the eye
corresponds to the spiritual beings of the light, he could fashion into this
what the ego developed in itself as reason, as consciousness, feeling,
emotion. Thus there is a threefold activity in the subconscious; activity on
the physical body, the ether body and the astral body which existed previous
to the ego. We can recognise this if we know that it was the
group-soul and that the
group-soul worked in an imperfect manner in the animal.
This has to be taken
into consideration if we regard the work of the spiritual forces occurring
before the ego in the astral body. We have to exclude everything concerning
the self and observe the work done by the group-self from dark
foundations. Desire and gratification
face each other in the astral body on a level of imperfection.
Desire was able to become a soul quality, an inner faculty, because it
already had a precursor in the astral body of the human being.
Similar to desire
and gratification in the astral body,
imagery, symbolism, and
outer stimulus face each other in the ether
body. It is most important to distinguish the activity of our ether body
preceding the ego from the activity of the ego in the ether body. When the
ego is active as intellectual or mind soul, then, at the present stage of
development of the human being, it seeks a truth which is as nearly as
possible a true picture of the outer world. Those things which do not exactly
correspond to outward things are not called “true”. The spiritual
activities which lie before the advent of our ego do not work in this manner;
they work more symbolically, in the image, rather like a dream works. A dream
works in the following manner, for example, that someone dreams of a shot
being fired; and when he wakes up he sees that the chair next to the bed has
fallen over. What is outer happening and outer impression — the falling
over of the chair — is transformed into an image in the dream, into the
shot. In this way the spiritual beings preceding the ego work symbolically in
the same way that we will work again when we achieve a higher spiritual
activity by initiation; here we try — but this time with full
consciousness — to work towards a symbolic view, an imaginative
conception, away from the purely abstract outside world.
Then the spiritual
beings working in the human physical body transformed it into what might be
called a correspondence of outer events, outer facts, and
imitation. Imitation is something
which we find in the child, for example, when the other soul members are
still hardly developed. Imitation is something that belongs to the
subconscious human nature. That is why education should start with imitation,
because before the ego begins to create order in the human being, the drive
to imitate is present as a natural drive.
The drive to imitate
in the physical body in contrast to outer activities,
symbolising in
the ether body in contrast to outer stimulus, and the correspondence of
desire and gratification
in the astral body all have to be considered as having been created with
the aid of the tool of
air
— and having been created in such a manner that a sculpted, an
artistic impression
as it were, has been created in our larynx and in the whole of the
speech apparatus.
It can then be said: these beings preceding the ego worked on the human
being in such a manner that they formed and ordered him such that the air
could come to expression in him in this threefold direction.
For when we look at
language capability in the true sense of the word, we have to ask: does it
consist of the sound which we utter? No, it is not the sound. Our ego sets in
motion what has been created into us by the air. In the same way that we move
the eye to take in the outward light, whilst the eye itself exists to take
light in, our ego within us sets in motion those organs which have been
formed by the spiritual beings in the air.
We set the organs in motion by the ego; we activate the
organs which correspond to the spirit of the air and we have to
wait until the spirit of the air who formed the organs sounds
back at us the tone as an echo of our action on the air.
We do not produce the tone,
just as the individual parts of a pipe do not produce the tone. Our ego
develops activity by the use of those organs which have been created from the
spirit of the air. Then we have to wait for the latter to set the air in
motion again such that the word sounds by the original activity which
produced the organs.
Thus we can indeed
see that human language must rest on the threefold correspondence which was
mentioned. How does this correspondence work?
Imitation in the
physical body rests on the speech organs imitating those things which are
outward activities, outward objects which make an impression on us, and
producing them as sound in the same way that a painter imitates a scene which
consists of quite different constituents than paint, canvas, light and dark.
Similar to the painter who imitates with light and dark we imitate the
environment with our organs which were formed from elements of the air. That
is why what we produce in sound is a true imitation of the essence of an
object; and our vowels and consonants are nothing but images and imitations
of those things which make an impression on us from the outside.
The next thing is
the image in the ether body, what we might call symbolism. The first elements
of our language were created by imitation, but then this developed further by
tearing itself away, as it were, from outward impressions. The ether body
assimilates — such as in the dream — those things which no longer
correspond to outer experiences; that is the
developing element in sound.
Initially the ether body assimilates the pure imitation; then the imitation
is transformed in the ether body so that it becomes something independent
and, because it has been through an internal process, corresponds to outward
impressions only symbolically as image: we are no longer merely imitators.
And thirdly, desire,
emotion, everything which lives internally is expressed in the astral body.
This works in such a manner that it continues to transform the sound. The
internal experiences flow from the inside into the sound: pain and pleasure,
joy and sorrow, desires, wishes; all these things stream into the sound and
bring the
subjective element
into it. What started as pure
imitation was then transformed into the language symbol in the independent
sound or word image and is now transformed further by the infusion of the
human being's internal experiences. It always has to be an outward
correspondence which provokes the sound in the soul; when the soul expresses
its inward experiences, pleasure and pain, joy and sorrow and all the others,
in sound it has to
search
for a corresponding outer form. At the first stage the outer impression
is imitated. The inner sound image or the creation of the symbol is the next
step. But the inner experiences, such as joy and sorrow, by their nature have
no outer equivalent. This correspondence between outer being and inner
experience can be observed with children as they learn to speak. One can see
how the child begins to transform a feeling into a sound. When the child
initially calls “ma” or “pa” then this is only the
inner transformation of an emotion into sound. It is only the expression of
something inward. But when the child expresses itself in this way and the
mother, for example, comes, the child notices how its inward feeling of
pleasure, which is transformed into the sound “ma”, corresponds
to an outer event. Of course the child does not enquire
how
it happens that in this case there is a
correspondence with the coming of the mother. The inner experience of
pleasure or pain is allied with an outward impression and thus what streams
out from the inside is
united
with the outer impression. That is the third way in which language acts.
It is therefore true to say that language originated equally by internal
imitation of the outside and by outward reality being linked to our inner
experience. The process which happens in innumerable cases, and which is
completed when the inner expression “ma” or “pa” is
formed into the words “mama” or “papa”, and is
satisfied when the father or mother responds. Every time that the human being
realises that something happens as a result of an inner expression, the
expression of that inner event unites for him with something
outward.
All this takes place
without any participation by the ego. It is only at a later stage that the
ego takes over this activity. Thus the forces in existence previous to the
ego were at work in the configuration which lies at the base of the human
language ability. And because the ego took over when the basis for human
language had already been created, language then ordered itself according to
the ego. Therefore the expression connected with the sentient body is
transfused by the
sentient soul;
the images and symbols connected with the ether body are transfused by the
intellectual soul:
the human being fills the sound with the experiences of the
intellectual soul, and similarly he fills it with the experiences of the
consciousness soul,
which were initially only imitation. By this process gradually those
areas of our language came into existence which represents
inner experiences
of the soul.
That is why,
regarding the nature of language, it must be quite clearly understood that
there is something in us which was there before the ego, which was then
developed by the ego. But then, also, it cannot be claimed that language
directly represents the ego, that it represents the spiritual aspect in us,
everything which is intimate to our personality; but it must be understood
that we can never see in language an immediate expression of the ego. The
spirit of language works symbolically in the ether body, imitatively in the
physical body; and this is linked with its creative activity in the sentient
soul, forcing the inward experiences from it in such a manner that the sound
is an expression of the inner life. In sum, language did not develop
according to the conscious ego as it is today, but, if the development of
language is to be compared to anything at all, its development can only be
compared to
artistic
creation. Just as we cannot demand that the imitation of the artist
corresponds to reality, we cannot demand that language copies those things
which it is meant to represent. Language only imitates the outside world in a
way similar to the picture, to the way that the artist as such imitates
outside reality. Before the human being was a self-conscious being in the way
that he is today, an
artist
was at work in him, active as the
spirit of language,
and our ego is embedded in a place where
previously an artist was at work. This in itself is put rather in the form of
an image, but it expresses the truth in this field. We observe an unconscious
activity and feel that here there is something which created the human being
as a work of art. In this respect we must not forget that we can only examine
each work of art as permitted by the methods of that art. If this were born
in mind, it would preclude from the beginning such pedantic works as Fritz
Mauthner's “Kritik der Sprache”.
[ 6 ]
Here the critique of
language is based on quite wrong premises; namely, that if we regard human
languages they do not in any way represent objective reality. But is that
their function in the first place? There is just as little possibility for
language to represent reality as there is of the picture representing outward
reality in the colours on the canvas and the use of light and shadow. The
spirit of language which lies at the foundation of human activity has to be
grasped with artistic feeling.
Only a brief outline
of these things has been given. But if one knows that an artist who formed
language was active in mankind then one can understand — as different
as the various languages may be — that even in the individual human
languages the artistic element was at work in all sorts of differing ways.
Then it can be understood how the spirit of language — let us call this
being working in the air the spirit of language — when it reveals
itself on a relatively low level in the human being works in an atomistic way
by wanting to construct everything from the single parts. That is how it
comes about that the individual sounds combine to form a whole
sentence.
If, for example, we
take the sounds “shi” and “pian” in Chinese, we have
two atoms of language formation; the one syllable “shi” means
song, poem, and “pian” means book. If we combine the two sounds,
“shi-pian”, then this would be the same as creating the
combination “poem-book” in English; something results from the
particles which, seen as a whole, produces poetry book. This is only one
example of how the Chinese language forms its concepts and ideas.
If we reflect on the
things which we have considered today, we can also now understand how a
wonderfully formed language such as a Semitic one must be considered in its
essence. In Semitic languages we have certain sounds as a foundation which
are really only constituted of consonants. And then the human being inserts
vowels in between these consonants. If we thus take the consonants q, t, l,
just as an example, and insert an a and then another a, then, whilst the word
formed purely from the consonants is only an imitation of an outward sound,
the word “qatal”, to kill, is created by the addition of the
vowels.
We thus have a
noteworthy development in that “to kill” as a complex of sounds
comes about initially by the speech organs simply imitating the outward
process. Then the soul continues the process and the inward experience is
added with the vowels: the complex of sounds is further developed so that
“to kill” is referred back to a subject. This is basically the
constitution of the Semitic languages and in it is expressed the combination
of the various elements in language formation within the framework of
language. Symbolism (i.e. that which is found at work in the ether body as
the spirit of language), which is the primary agent in Semitic languages,
demonstrates the particular aspect of the Semitic languages which takes the
individual imitative sounds one step further and transforms them into symbols
by the insertion of vowels.
That is why
fundamentally all words in Semitic languages are formed in such a way that
they relate to the surroundings of the outside world as symbols. In contrast,
everything which appears in the Indo-Germanic languages is prompted more by
what we have called the inner expression of the astral body, the inner being.
For the astral body is something which is already connected with the
consciousness. When one faces the outside world one contrasts oneself with
it. If one faces the outside world from the point of view of the ether body
one fuses with it, is one with it. Only when things are reflected in the
consciousness does a difference exist between oneself and things. This
working of the astral body with all its inner experiences can be seen in the
Indo-Germanic languages in contrast to the Semitic languages in that they
have the verb “to be”: a reflection of independent existence.
That is possible because we are able to separate ourselves from outward
impressions with our consciousness. If, therefore, we want to say for example
“God is good” in Semitic, then this is not immediately possible
because there is no way of producing the word “is” as an
expression of being, for this originates in the contrast of astral body and
outside world. The ether body simply states. That is why in the Semitic
languages one would have to say “God the good”. The contrast of
subject and object is not a characteristic element. The languages which are
in contrast with the outside world, which contain as an essential element the
perception of an outside world, are particularly the Indo-Germanic languages.
They in turn affect the human being in such a way that they support
inwardness, i.e. all those things which provide the foundations for
developing a strong personality, a strong ego. This is already evident in the
language.
All the things which
I have spoken about might be considered by some to be only unsatisfactory
indications for the simple reason that one would have to speak for two weeks
if one wanted to describe everything in this field in detail. Nevertheless,
those who have attended these lectures more regularly and who have penetrated
into the essential nature of the matter will see that such indications are
not unjustified. They are only intended to show how a spiritual-scientific
view of language can be provoked which fundamentally shows that language
cannot be understood in any other way than in an artistic sense, which must
be developed. That is why all scholarship must fail if it is not willing to
participate in the creative act which was undertaken by the forces creating
language in the human being before the ego became active in us. Only a
creative faculty can grasp the secret of language, because only a creative
faculty as such can recreate. No learned abstraction can ever bring about
comprehension of a work of art. Only those ideas illuminate a work of art
which are able to recreate in a fruitful way as ideas the things which the
artist expresses by other means paint, sound, etc. Creative feeling alone can
comprehend the artist, and a creative feeling for language alone can
understand the spiritual creativity in the origin of language. That is one of
the tasks which spiritual science is called upon to do in respect of
language.
The other task is
something which is of significance on a practical level. If we understand how
language originated from an inner pre-human artist, then we can also elevate
ourselves to make this creative feeling become active where we want to
express something of validity in language. But there is little feeling for
that in our present time, where not much progress has been achieved in
fostering a living feeling for language.
[ 7 ]
Today everyone who opens his
mouth feels that he is able to express all things. But it must be understood
quite clearly that we have to create again in our soul an immediate
connection between
what
we want to express and
how
we want to express it. We have to re-awaken the linguistic artist in us in all
areas. Today human beings are satisfied if what they want to say comes out in
any way, no matter what form it takes. How many people realise — which
is absolutely necessary in the field of spiritual science — that an
artistic feeling for language is necessary to express anything? If true
presentations of spiritual-scientific material, for example, are examined,
[ 8 ]
it will be found that the true spiritual scientists who have written
these things also seriously worked on them to form each sentence creatively,
that the position of the verb is not an arbitrary decision. Each sentence
will be seen as a birth, because it must be experienced inwardly in the soul
as immediate form, not simply as a thought. And the sentences are connected
not only consecutively, but the third one has to be formed in essence at the
same time as the first one because they are interconnected in their effect.
In spiritual science it is impossible to work without a creatively active
sense of language. Everything else is inadequate. It is important to free
oneself of being slavishly tied to words. But we cannot do that if we think
that any word is suitable to express a given thought; that already is an
error in our linguistic creativity. The expression of super-sensible facts
cannot be gained from words which are coined only with a view to the sense
world. If the question is asked “How is one to express the ether body
or the astral body in a concrete manner in reality by means of a word?”
nothing of this has been understood. Only the person has understood something
of this who says: I will understand what the ether body is if in the first
instance I investigate from one particular aspect and it is quite clear that
I am dealing with artistically formed reflected images; and then I
investigate three more aspects. The matter has then been presented from four
different sides. When it is thereafter expressed in language, in walking
round the topic as it were, we are presenting an artistic image of the
matter. If one is not aware of this, nothing will be achieved but
abstractions and a sclerotic reproduction of what is previously known. That
is why development in spiritual science will always be connected with what
might be called “development of the inward sense and the inward
creative power of language”. In this sense spiritual science will have
a fruitful effect on style in language, will transform the terrible
linguistic style of today which is ignorant of the creativity of language,
and fewer people, who can hardly speak and write, will embark on literary
careers. The awareness has been lost today, for example, that to write prose
is something much more elevated than writing in verse; only the prose which
is written today is on a much lower level. But it is the purpose of spiritual
science to act as a stimulus in those fields which are connected with the
deepest secrets of mankind. For spiritual science will be active in those
areas in such a way that it fulfils the visions of the greatest
personalities. Spiritual science will conquer the super-sensible worlds
through the thinking, will become capable of decanting the thought in such a
way into the sound structure that our language too can again become a means
of communication of the experiences of the soul in the super-sensible.
[ 9 ]
Then spiritual science will have become the agent which makes real what is
expressed about an important realm of the inner human being in the
words:
Unmeasurably
deep is the thought;
And its winged agent is the word.
[ 10 ]