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Rudolf Steiner e.Lib
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The Riddle of Humanity
Rudolf Steiner e.Lib Document
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The Riddle of Humanity
Schmidt Number: S-3252
On-line since: 29th July, 2002
Dornach, 2 September 1916
Recently we have had repeated occasion to cite a result of
spiritual-scientific investigation that, in fact, is of most
far-reaching significance. You will remember how we described the
relationship of the human head and the rest of the human body to the
whole cosmos, and how this then shows the way the head is related to
the rest of the body. We said that the shape and structure of the
human head and all that pertains to it is a transformation, a
metamorphosis. The head is a transformation and reconstruction of the
entire body from the previous incarnation. So, when we observe the
entire body of the present incarnation, we can see how it contains
forces that are capable of transforming it into nothing but a head, a
head with all that pertains to it: with the twelve pairs of nerves
that originate in it, and so on. And this head that is developed from
our entire body will be the head we bear in our next incarnation. The
body of our next incarnation and everything to do with it, on the
other hand, will be produced during the time after our present life is
over, the time between death and the birth which begins our next
incarnation. In part it will be produced during the time between death
and a new birth from the forces of the spiritual world, and in part
from forces of the physical world during the time between our
conception and birth into the next incarnation.
These facts should be viewed as truths that testify to their own
inherent validity, truths that point to connections of major
significance; they should not be treated like the truths of everyday
life or of normal science. The truths of everyday life consist more or
less in descriptions of ourselves and our surroundings; but truths
like those we have just mentioned provide us with the light by which
we are able to read the cosmic significance of our surroundings and
ourselves. The truths of ordinary life and ordinary science are like
descriptions of how the shapes of a row of letters are combined into
words or, at most, they are like a clarification based on grammatical
laws. But understanding the kind of truths we have been describing is
comparable to reading without first having to resort to a special
description of the shapes of the letters or to a grammatical
consideration of how they are combined into words. Just consider how
different is the content of what we read from what our eyes see
written upon the page. And so it is that, when we cite truths such as
those we have just been discussing, we have before our eyes not only
what is now being said, but also the whole, far-reaching significance
of such things for the role of humanity in the cosmos. Thereby we are,
so to speak, able to read profound, living, spiritual truths that have
nothing to do with the shape of the body or the head as it is studied
by an anatomist or physiologist, or as one refers to it in ordinary
life. It is not enough to describe the human being in the manner of
ordinary life and ordinary science; only if one can read man can he be
understood.
In the light of the foregoing considerations, and in the sense they
indicate, I want to turn yet again to what we have been considering
during the past few weeks. I want to direct your attention to the
twelve senses of man
(see Note 30).
Let us once more allow these twelve senses to pass in review before us.
The I sense: Again I ask you to remember what has
been said about this sense of the I . The sense of
I does not refer to our capacity to be aware of our
own I . This sense is not for perceiving our own
I , that I which we first
received on Earth; it is for perceiving the I of
other men. What this sense perceives is everything that is contained
in our encounters with another I in the physical
world.
Second, comes the sense of thought: Similarly, the sense of thought
has nothing to do with the formation of our own thoughts. Something
entirely different is involved when we ourselves are thinking; this
thinking is not an activity of our sense of thought. That still
remains to be discussed. Our sense of thought is what gives us the
ability to understand and perceive the thoughts of others. Thus this
sense of thought does not, primarily, have anything to do with the
formation of our own thoughts.
The sense of speech: Once again, this sense has nothing primarily to
do with the formation of our own speech or with our ability to speak.
It is the sense that enables us to understand what others say to us.
The sense of hearing, or tone: This sense cannot be misunderstood.
The senses of warmth, sight, taste, smell and balance: I have already
characterised these senses on previous occasions, as well as in this
course of lectures.
The senses of movement, life and touch.
Those are the twelve senses, the senses that enable us to perceive the
external world while we are here in the physical world. As you know,
materialistic thinking speaks of only five senses, for it only
distinguishes the sense of hearing, the sense of warmth which
it throws together with the sense of touch the sense of sight,
the sense of taste and the sense of smell. But it must be said that
the physiology of our more recent science has now added the senses of
balance, movement and life, and also distinguishes between the senses
of warmth and touch. But the physiology of our ordinary science still
does not refer to a special sense of speech, or to a special sense of
thinking or thought. Nor, because of the nature of the thinking
it employs today, is it able to speak of a special ego sense.
Materialistic thinking is happy to restrict its view of the world to
only those things that can be perceived by the senses. Of course,
there is a certain contradiction in saying perceived by the
senses, because the realm of the sensibly perceptible has been
arbitrarily restricted namely to what can be perceived by the
five senses. But all of you know what is meant when one says,
Only what can be perceived by the senses is valid according to
the ordinary materialistic point of view, so it also investigates the
organs of perception that belong to these senses. Since there
are no apparent organs to be found for perception of another's
I , or for thought or speech, nothing, for
example, that would correspond to them as the ear corresponds to the
sense of hearing or the eye to the sense of sight it makes no
mention of the sense of another I , the sense of
thought or of the sense of speech. For us, however, a question arises:
Is there really an organ for the I sense, for the
sense of thought and for the sense of speech? Today I would like to
investigate these matters more exactly.
So the I sense gives us the ability to perceive the
I of others. One of the especially restricted and
inadequate views of modern thinking is the view that we always more or
less deduce the existence of another ego, but do not ever perceive it
directly. According to this line of thought, we deduce that something
we encounter is the bearer of an I : We see it
walking upright on two legs, putting one leg after the other or
placing one next to the other; we see that these two legs support a
trunk which has, hanging from it, two arms which move in various ways
and carry out certain actions. Upon this trunk is placed a head which
produces sounds, which speaks and changes expression. On the basis of
these observations so goes the materialistic line of thought
we deduce that what is approaching us is the bearer of an
I . But this is utter nonsense; it is really pure
nonsense. The truth is that we actually perceive the
I of another just as we see colours with our eyes
and hear sounds with our ears. Without a doubt, we perceive it.
Furthermore, this perception is independent. The perception of another
I is a direct reality, a self-sufficient truth that we arrive at
independently of seeing or hearing the person; it does not depend on
our drawing any conclusions, any more than seeing or hearing depend on
drawing conclusions. Apart from the fact that we hear someone speak,
that we see the colour of his skin, that we are affected by his
gestures apart from all of these things we are directly
aware of his I . The ego sense has no more to do
with the senses of sight or sound, or with any other sense, than the
sense of sight has to do with the sense of sound. The perception of
another I is independent. The science of the senses
will not rest on solid foundations until this has been understood.
So now the question arises: What is the organ for perceiving another
I ? What is our organ for perceiving an
I , as the eyes perceive colours and the ears
perceive tones? What organ perceives the I of
another? There is indeed an organ for perceiving an
I , just as there are organs for perceiving colours
and tones. But the organ for perceiving an I only
originates in the head; from there it spreads out into the entire
body, in so far as the body is appended to the head, making of the
entire body an organ of perception. So the whole perceptible, physical
form of a human being really does function as an organ of perception,
the organ for perceiving the I of another. In a
certain sense you could also say that the head, in so far as the rest
of the body is appended to it and in so far as it sends its ability to
perceive another I through the whole human being,
is the organ for perceiving another's I . The
entire, immobile human being is the organ for perceiving an
I the whole of the human form at rest, with
the head as a kind of central point. The organ for perceiving another
I is thus the largest of our organs of perception;
we ourselves, as physical human beings, constitute the largest of our
organs of perception.
Now we come to the sense of thought. What is the organ for perceiving
the thoughts of others? Everything that we are, in so far as we are
aware of the stirrings of life within us, is our organ for perceiving
others' thoughts. Think of yourself, not with regard to your form, but
with regard to the life you bear within you. Your whole organism is
permeated with life. This life is a unity. In so far as the life of
our entire organism is expressed physically, it is the organ for
perceiving thoughts that come toward us from without. We would not be
able to perceive the I of another if we were not
shaped the way we are; we would not be able to perceive the thoughts
of another if we did not bear life in the way that we do. Here I am
not talking about the sense of life. What is in question here is not
the inner perception of our general vital state of being and
that is what the sense of life gives us rather is it the extent
to which we are bearers of life. And it is the life we bear within us,
the physical organism that bears the life within us, that is the organ
by which we perceive the thoughts that others share with us.
Furthermore, we are able to initiate movement from within ourselves.
We have the power to express all the movements of our inner nature
through movement through hand movements, for example, or by the
way we turn our head or move it up and down. Now, the basis for our
ability to bring our bodies into movement is provided by the physical
organism. This is not the physical organism of life, but the physical
organism that provides us with the ability to move. And it is also the
organ for perceiving speech, for perceiving the words which others
address to us. We would not be able to understand a single word if we
did not possess the physical apparatus of movement. It is really true:
in sending out nerves for apprehending the whole process of movement,
our central nervous system also provides us with the sensory apparatus
for perceiving the words that are spoken to us. The sense organs are
specialised in this fashion. The whole man: sense organ for the
I ; the physical basis of life: sense organ for
thought; man, in so far as he is capable of movement: sense organ for
the word.
The sense of tone is even more specialised. Even though the apparatus
for hearing includes more than physiology usually includes, it is
nevertheless more specialised. It is not necessary for me to discuss
the sense of tone. You only need to lay your hands on a normal
textbook on the physiology of the senses to find a description of the
organ on which the sense of tone is based. But today it is still
difficult to find a description of the organ for the sense of warmth
because, as I mentioned, it is still confused with the sense of touch.
But the sense of warmth is actually a very specialised sense. Whereas
the sense of touch is really spread over the whole organism, the sense
of warmth only appears to be spread over the whole organism.
Naturally, the entire organism is sensitive to the influence of
warmth, but the sense for perceiving warmth is very much concentrated
in the breast portion of the human body. As for the specialised organs
of sight, taste and smell, these are, of course, generally known to
normal observation, and can be found in what ordinary science has to
say.
Now it is possible to make a real distinction between the middle part,
the upper part, and the lower part of our sense life, and today I
would like to include some special observations with regard to this
distinction. Let us begin by observing the sense of speech. I said
that our organism of movement is what enables us to perceive words. It
provides the basis for our sense of speech. But not only are we able
to perceive and understand the words of others; it is also possible
for us to speak: we are able to speak, too. And it is interesting and
important to understand the connection between our ability to speak
and our ability to understand the speech of others. Please note that I
am not speaking about our ability to hear the tones, but about our
ability to understand speech. The senses of tone and speech must be
clearly distinguished from one another. Not only can we hear the words
another speaks, we ourselves can speak. How, then, is one of these
related to the other? How is speaking related to understanding speech?
If we use spiritual-scientific means to investigate the human being,
we discover that the things on which the capacity to speak and the
capacity for understanding speech are based are very closely related
to one other. If we want to look at what furnishes the basis of
speech, we can start by tracing it back to where every reasonable
person will agree its beginnings must undeniably be, namely, to
experiences of the human soul. Speaking originates in the realm of the
soul; the will kindles speech in the soul. Naturally, no words would
ever be spoken if our will were not active, if we did not develop will
impulses. Observing a person spiritually-scientifically, we can see
that what happens in him when he speaks is similar to what happens
when he understands something that is being spoken. But what happens
when a person himself speaks involves a much smaller portion of the
organism, much less of the organism of movement. Remember that the
entire organism of movement must be taken into account in the case of
the sense of speech, the sense of word the entire organism of
movement is also the organ for apprehending speech. A part of it, a
part of the movement organism, is isolated and brought into motion
when we speak. The larynx is the principal organ of this isolated
portion of the organism of movement, and speaking occurs when will
impulses rouse the larynx into motion. When we ourselves speak, what
happens in our larynx happens because impulses of will originating in
our soul bring the part of our movement organism that is concentrated
in the larynx into motion. The entire movement organism, however, is
the sense organ for understanding speech; but we keep it still while
we are perceiving words. And it is precisely for this reason,
precisely because we keep the movement organism still, that we are
able to perceive words and understand them. In a certain respect
everyone knows this instinctively, for every now and then everyone
does something that shows he unconsciously understands what I have
just been discussing. I will speak in very broad outlines. Suppose I
make a movement like this (a hand raised in a gesture of holding off).
Now, even the smallest of movements is not just localised in one part
of the movement organism, but comes from the entire movement organism.
And when you consider this motion as coming from the entire movement
organism, it has a very particular effect. When another person
expresses something in words, I am doing what I need to do to
understand it by not making this gesture. Because I do not make this
gesture, but repress it instead, I am able to understand what someone
else is saying; my movement organism wakes up right to the tips of my
fingers, but I hold back the motion, delay it, block it. By blocking
this motion, I am enabled to understand what is being said. When one
does not wish to hear something, one will often make such a gesture to
show that one wants to repress one's hearing. This shows that there is
an instinctive understanding for what it means to hold back such a
motion.
Now, according to the original plan of the human constitution, it is
the whole of the organism of movement which is at the same time
the organism of the sense of word that belongs in the rightful
course of human evolution. At one time, in the Lemurian period, when
we were being released from our connection with the whole of the
cosmos, we were given a constitution that enabled us to understand
words. But that constitution did not enable us to speak words. You
will find it strange that we should be constituted so that we could
understand words, but not be able to speak words. But it only seems
strange, for our organism of movement is not so exactly constituted
for hearing the words of others, for understanding other men's words
rather is it adapted to understanding various other things.
Originally, we had a much greater gift for understanding the elemental
language of nature and for perceiving how certain elemental beings
rule over the external world. That ability has been lost; in exchange
for it we have received our own capacity to speak. This happened
because, during the Atlantean period, the ahrimanic powers set about
altering the organism of movement that had originally been given to
us. We have the ahrimanic powers to thank for the fact that we can
speak; they gave us the gift of speech. So we have to say that the way
in which a human being perceives speech now is different from the way
we were originally intended to understand it. Such a long time has
passed since the Atlantean period that we have grown accustomed to
what has happened, and we find it extraordinary to think that our gift
of understanding speech was originally for perceiving more or less the
whole of the other human being: it gave us the ability to perceive the
silent expression in the gestures and bearing of other men, and,
without using a physically perceptible speech, to communicate by
imitating it, using our own apparatus of movement. Our original way of
communicating was much more spiritual. But Ahriman took hold of this
original, more spiritual way of communicating. He specialised a part
of our organism, creating the larynx, which is designed to produce
sounding words. And he designed the part of the larynx that is not
used to produce words, so that it would enable us to understand words;
that is also a gift of Ahriman.
We are able to perceive the thoughts of others in so far as our
organism is alive. Once again, our present ability to understand
others' thoughts is much less spiritual than the gift we originally
possessed. Our original gift enabled us to feel another's thoughts
inwardly, to resonate with their life, simply by being in their
presence. The way in which we perceive each other's thoughts today is
a coarse physical reflection of the way it once was, and only through
the detour of speech is it possible at all. At most, we can experience
an echo of the kind of perception that was originally intended for us
by training ourselves to attend to others' gestures, to the play of
their features, and to their physiognomy. We were once able to
perceive the whole direction of another's thinking and to live in it,
simply by being in his presence, and the particular thoughts were
expressed in his particular gestures and in the play of his features.
And it is once again thanks to Ahriman that this more spiritual manner
of perceiving another's thoughts has, in the course of human
evolution, become more and more concentrated in external speech.
We do not have to look very far back in the development of humanity to
find a period when there was still a very highly developed
understanding for the way the life of thought was expressed through
the physiognomy, through the gestures, even through the posture
through the whole manner in which one human being presents himself to
another. There is no need to speak of Old India: we only have to go
back to the period before the Greco-Roman period, to the
Egypto-Chaldean period. There we still find a highly-developed
understanding of the life of thought. Humanity has lost this
understanding. Less and less of it has been retained, until now there
are very few who understand how the art and manner in which a person
meets us can enable us to listen in on the inner secrets of his
thinking. What a man says to us through the words we hear is almost
the only thing we listen to any more what these tell us about
his thoughts, about their content and their purpose. But, because this
has happened, we have been able to retain the ability to use our
organism of life and the apparatus of life as an instrument for
thinking. If there had been no ahrimanic intervention, if the things I
have been describing had never happened, we would not possess the gift
of thought. So you can see that, in a certain sense, our present
ability to speak is related to the sense of speech, to the sense of
the word. But it is related because of an ahrimanic deviation. And
again because of an ahrimanic deviation, our present ability to think
is related to the sense of thought.
We were constituted, furthermore, so as to be able to be conscious of
another's I in a more subtle manner so that we would not merely
experience it, but would perceive it inwardly for our entire
human form is the organ of the sense of the ego. Ahriman is still hard
at work today, specialising the ego sense just as he has specialised
and remodelled the senses of speech and thought. In fact, that is
happening now, as is revealed by an extraordinary, related tendency
that is coming towards humanity. In order to talk about what I am
referring to, one is forced to say something quite paradoxical. As
yet, only the early stages of it are showing themselves, mainly in a
philosophical way. Today there are already philosophers who entirely
deny the inner capacity to perceive the I :
Mach
(see Note 31),
for example, as well as others. I have spoken about them in
a recent lecture concerned with philosophy. These men really have to
be described as holding the view that man is not able to perceive the
I inwardly, and that the awareness of the
I is based on the perception of other things. There
is a tendency to think along the following lines I will give
you a grotesque example of it. People are getting to the point where
they say to themselves, in the way I described earlier, I
encounter others who walk about on two limb-like appendages and from
this I conclude that there is an I within them.
And, since I look just like them, I apply this conclusion to myself
and decide that I must also possess an I .
According to this, one derives the existence of one's own
I from the existence of the I of
others. This is implied by many of the assertions of those about whom
I am speaking, when they come to describe how the ego is supposed to
develop as the result of our evolution during the interval between the
birth and death of a single incarnation. If you read our current
psychologists, you will already find descriptions of how our sense of
our own I is derived from other persons. We do not
have it to begin with, as children, but we are supposed to have
watched others and applied what we see them doing to ourselves. In any
event, our capacity to come to conclusions about ourselves on the
basis of other people seems to be growing ever greater! Just as the
capacity to think gradually developed out of the sense of thought, and
the capacity to speak out of the sense of speech, so the capacity to
experience oneself as belonging to the whole of the world is
increasingly developing alongside the ability to perceive another's
I . We are talking about fine distinctions, but they
must be grasped. To this end, Ahriman is very busy working alongside
humanity he is very much involved.
Let us look at the human being from the other side. There we find the
sense of touch. As I have said, the sense of touch is an internal
sense. When you touch something like a table, it exerts pressure on
you, but what you actually perceive is an inner experience. If you
bump into it, it is what happens within you that is the content of the
perceptual experience. In such an event, what you experience through
your sense of touch is entirely contained within you. Thus,
fundamentally the sense of touch can only reach as far as the
outermost periphery of the skin: we experience touching something
because the external world pushes against the periphery formed by the
skin, because inner experiences arise when the external world pushes
against us or otherwise comes into contact with us. So the sense of
touch is fundamentally an internal sense, even though it is the most
peripheral of these. The apparatus for touching is found mainly at the
periphery. From there it sends only delicate branches inward, and our
external scientific physiology has not been able to isolate these
systematically because it has not systematically distinguished the
sense of touch from the sense of warmth.
Our organ of touch is spread like a network over the whole outer
surface of our body; it sends delicate branches inward. What is this
network, really? (If I may use this word, for network is
inexact.) What was its original purpose? Our attention is immediately
caught by the fact that the sense of touch makes us aware of inner
experiences, even though it is now used to perceive how we come into
contact with the external world. This fact is as undeniable as it is
noteworthy and exceptional. And, as spiritual science shows us, it is
connected with the fact that the sense of touch was not originally
destined for perception of the external world. The sense of touch has
undergone a metamorphosis it was not originally intended to be
used, as it is today, to perceive the external world. The sense of
touch was really intended for an entirely spiritual perception, for
perceiving how our I , the fourth member of our
organism, spiritually permeates our entire body. What the organs of
touch really gave us, originally, was an inner feeling for our own
I , an inner feeling of the I .
So now we have come to the inner perception of the
I . Here you must make a clear distinction. The
I that is within us and extends to the surface of
the sense of touch, really exists in its own right; it is a
substantial, spiritual being. And when the I
extends itself and comes into contact with the surface created by the
sense of touch, this produces a perception of the
I . If the sense of touch had remained in its
original form, the nature of which I have just indicated, it would not
provide us with the kind of perceptions it now provides. Certainly, we
would still bump into the things of the external world, but this would
be a matter of total indifference to us. We would not experience the
collisions through touch; nor, for that matter, would the sense of
touch be involved when we run our fingertips over things, as we are
fond of doing. We would experience our I through
such contacts with the external world; we would experience our
I , but would not speak of perceiving the external
world. In order for the organ which generated an inner perception of
the I to become an organ of touch, capable of perceiving the external
world through touch, it has been necessary for our organism to undergo
a series of alterations. These began in the Lemurian period and are to
be attributed to luciferic influences. They are deeds of Lucifer.
Through them, our sense of I was specialised so
that we could experience the external world through touch, but our
inner experience of the I , of course, was thereby
clouded. If, as we go about the world, it were not necessary for us to
pay constant heed to the things that bump into us and press against
us, to what is rough and what is smooth, and so on, we would have an
entirely different experience of the I .
In other words, by re-shaping the sense of touch, luciferic influences
were introduced into the experience of the I . In
this case, what is most inward has been adulterated by something
external, just as, in the sense of speech, what is external has been
adulterated by something internal. The sense of speech was designed
for the perception of words a sense perception, but not one
that depended on anything being expressed in sounds. Then the inner
activity of speaking was intermixed with this. So, in this case, the
original perception was internal, and external perception has been
added to it.
The sense of life: Luciferic influence has accomplished a similar
alteration in the organs of the sense of life. For these organs,
organs which enable us to experience our inner structure and inner
condition, were originally meant only for the perception of our astral
body as it works within our living organism. Now, however, the ability
to experience the internal condition of the body in feelings of
well-being or feelings of being ill has been intermixed with it. A
luciferic impulse has been mixed in with it. Here the astral body has
been linked to the feelings of well-being or illness that show the
condition of our body, just as the I has been
linked to the sense of touch.
And, again, our organism of movement was originally designed so that
we would only experience the interactions between our etheric body and
our organism of movement. The capacity to perceive and experience our
inner mobility, which is the sense of movement, properly speaking, has
been added to this. Once more, a luciferic impulse. Thus, alterations
in the fundamental nature of the human being are due to influences
from two sides, the luciferic side and the ahrimanic side. The sense
of the I , the sense of thought, and the sense of
speech have been altered by ahrimanic influences from the form which
was actually intended for the physical plane. Only through these
changes and through the changes wrought by luciferic influences on the
senses of touch, life and movement, have we become what, on the
physical plane, we now are. And there remains to us, free from these
influences, only an intermediate area. This, then, is a more exact,
more detailed presentation of our human organism.
It would be a good idea to consider what has been said thus far, so I
will wait until tomorrow before pursuing these matters any further.
Tomorrow we will see how fruitful these considerations are. We will
see how they expand that great and significant truth that is the key
to so many things: the truth about the relation of our head to the
body of our previous incarnation, the relation of the body of our
present incarnation to the head of our next incarnation, and what
follows from this regarding our relationship to the cosmos.
We can already see how necessary it is to pay attention to that state
of balance which needs to be established between the luciferic and the
ahrimanic forces in the world. This is the most essential and
significant thing. Just consider how the human I is
involved in the extremes of both sides: here, the I
without and, in the sense of touch, the I within.
(See the orange arrows in the drawing.) Similarly, the astral body is
involved both in thinking, and also, from within, in the life
organism. (Red arrows.) The etheric body is involved here, as long as
speech does not occur, but is also involved from within in the sense
of movement. (Blue arrows.) And, holding the middle, like the unmoving
hypomochlion at the centre of a pair of scales, we have a sphere that
is not so involved in the I touch I think I live
I speak I move. The more closely one approaches
this centre, the more immobile the arm of the scales becomes. To
either side, it is deflected. Thus there is a kind of state of balance
at the middle.
Here we see how the being of man is subject to significant influences
from two sides. In order to understand present-day human activity, and
the structure of the human being, it is necessary to have the correct
view of Lucifer and Ahriman.
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