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Rudolf Steiner e.Lib
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Man: Hieroglyph of the Universe
Rudolf Steiner e.Lib Document
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Man: Hieroglyph of the Universe
Schmidt Number: S-4105
On-line since: 17th July, 2002
To understand the world without understanding Man is impossible. That
is the net result to be derived from our studies here. And for that
very reason I wish today to contribute a little more to the
understanding of Man. Let us then start from the disparity between the
organisation of the head and that of the limb man — a subject on
which we have already frequently spoken here.
First of all I would remind you that the head-organisation, as it
meets us in the life between birth and death, is the outcome of all
those formative processes which have been undergone from the last
death to the earthly embodiment of this present life. From this we
must conclude that everything connected with the head-organisation
does not, in its conformity to law, follow those rules and forces to
which we are adapted as earthly beings. Through the bodily
organisation which we receive in this particular incarnation we are
adapted to Earth-life. We have spoken a little of how this is
manifested. We complete one revolution, of taking nourishment and
digesting it, every 24 hours. Thereby we are adjusted with respect to
the cycle of nourishment and digestion to the movement of the Earth in
24 hours. Something is accomplished in us, as it were, resembling what
takes place in the processes of the Earth within the Universe. Our
head, however, we virtually bring with us in its organisation at
birth; therefore the head is primarily adjusted not to earthly
relationships, but to such as are really from beyond the Earth.
The head therefore is in a peculiar position in relation to the rest
of man. A comparison may serve to make clear the position of man's
head during the early epochs of his Earth-life.
Suppose we were on board a ship. The ship makes various movements in
different directions. If we have a compass, we see that the set of the
magnetic needle does not follow the movement of the ship, but points
always to the magnetic North Pole. It is independent of the movements
of the ship. The ship's movements can indeed be themselves regulated
by the constant position of the magnetic needle. In a sense it is the
same with the human head. Man does many things in the physical world
with the rest of his organism: the head in a sense has no part in what
he does in earthly life. It is always organised with its inborn forces
in accordance with the extra-earthly. It is a very important fact that
we have in the human head something organised in this way for the
extra-earthly. Nevertheless there is always an interaction between the
organisation of the head and that of the rest of man. This interaction
is only gradually brought to completion in the course of the time that
passes between birth and death. The head, as we receive it from the
super-earthly worlds at birth, is organised primarily for the life of
ideation. It is in a sense so constructed that the life of ideas can
use it as an instrument. If it were to develop only on the basis of
the forces which it receives on leaving the super-earthly worlds, it
would develop solely as an organ of ideation or thought; our
connection with the world through the head-organisation would in
course of time be entirely lost. We should, as it were, so pass
through earthly life with our consciousness as to develop by means of
the head ideas only — that is, no more than pictures of earthly
life. We should become more and more conscious of extending beyond our
organisation which is connected with the Earth-being, of extending
beyond it with our head; as though through our head we were beings who
were strange to the Earth and developed only pictures of all that is
connected with earthly life.
This is not so, and precisely for the reason that the rest of the
organism sends its forces into the head. If we enquire into the
quality of these forces, which from childhood onwards are more and
more directed from the rest of the organism into the head, if we wish
to describe them, we must look for them particularly in the forces of
the Will. The rest of the organism is continually impregnating the
Thought-nature of the head with Will-forces. Thus we can say, in
effect, speaking diagrammatically, that we acquire the head as the
bearer of ideas, as the result of the foregoing incarnation; while the
Will-forces are sent into it from the rest of the organism. What has
just been said takes place not only in the life of soul, but shows its
effects in the bodily life also.
As head-man we are born in this earthly world as beings of thought and
ideation, and the forces of ideation are at first very powerful. They
ray out from the head into the rest of the organism, and it is they
which during the first seven years of life enable the forces which
manifest in the second dentition to work out of the rest of our
organism, these same forces consolidate in us also the life of
Thought, which is not consolidated until we acquire the second teeth.
They are the actual forces which produce the teeth; so that when we
have the teeth, these forces are set free, and can assert themselves
in the life of ideas. They can then form ideas, and in a corresponding
way build the power of memory. Clearly outlined ideas can begin to
find a place in our thought. As long however as we are employing the
forces in the formation of the teeth, they cannot show themselves as
true consolidating forces in the life of ideas.
As we grow beyond the seventh or eighth year, the Will which is
essentially bound up with the lower man and not with the head, begins
to manifest, and now comes the time when it would, as it were, shoot
its forces up into the head. This cannot however come about so easily;
for our head, which is organised for the extra-earthly, would not be
able to receive these strong forces which the metabolic system, as
vehicle of the Will, wishes to send forth to it. These forces must
first be stemmed; they must make a halt until sufficiently filtered,
toned down, given more of a ‘soul’ character, to make their
influence felt in the head. This halt is made at the end of the second
septennial period. When the Will-forces are arrested in the
organisation of the larynx — for that is the way they
manifest; in the male organisation they suddenly break forth in the
change of voice. In the female organisation they manifest differently.
These are the Will-forces coming to a standstill, as it were, before
they reach the head. Thus we may say that at the end of our second
septennial period, the Will-forces are arrested in the speech
organisation. At that time they are sufficiently filtered and
“souled” to make their influence felt in the
head-organisation. Having reached the age of puberty, and the change
of voice which runs parallel with it, we have reached the point when
the faculty of thought and ideation can work together with the Will in
the head.
Here we have an example of how with our Spiritual Science we can point
concretely to events. The abstract philosophies which make their
influence felt in modern times — Schopenhauer's The World as
Will and Idea for instance — all remain in the abstract.
Schopenhauer took pains to describe the world in its ideal character
on the one hand, and its will character on the other; but he remains,
as it were, in the mere abstract. So also does Eduard von Hartmann.
They all remain in the abstract. To be concrete is to observe how,
through these two halts — at the first and second septennial periods
— in quite definite and distinct ways Idea and Will meet in the cosmic
system of the human head. The essential thing is that we can point to
that which is of the soul and spirit and show how it manifests and
reveals itself in the outer physical world. So too, we see the forces
of the head, which are sent forth to the body and manifest therein in
the forming of the teeth, work together with the forces of the body
sent to the head, which prepare themselves, by what they undergo in
the formation of speech, to become true soul-will. In the formation of
speech they are arrested and held back and only then do they press
forward into the head.
Thus we must understand Man in his process of formation, and look at
what actually goes on with him. I have said that the human head is no
more adjusted to the earthly relations of man than is the magnetic
needle to the movements of the ship. The needle is independent of
them, and the human head is in the same way independent of the earthly
connection.
Here we have something which gradually leads to the physiological
concept of freedom. Here we have the physiology of what I have set
forth in my
Philosophy of Spiritual Activity,
namely, that one can only understand freedom by grasping it in
sense-free thinking — that is to say, in the processes taking
place in man when he directs pure thinking by his Will and orientates
it in accordance with certain defined directions.
We see how man comes step by step to study rightly the mutual
relationship of the soul-and-spirit and the physical-corporeal, and
how the process of speech-formation can be really understood by
conceiving of it as a product of two sources from which the human
being is supplied — the sources which are in the head-man on the
one hand and in the limb-man on the other.
We can now experience more fully how impossible it is to say that some
kind of communication of the will is carried from the brain through
the motor nerves. The brain only derives its full power of volition
from the rest of the organism. Of course you are not to imagine this
as if you could draw it in a diagram, for the process of
speech-formation not only was prepared earlier, but is something which
goes through the whole of life and only appears in its most
characteristic feature in the special time of transition. Thus we must
understand clearly how man is adapted to an earthly as well as
an extra-earthly life.
He is so adapted to earthly life that certain forces which the animal
brings to their conclusion, man does not bring to a conclusion in his
purely natural organisation. The animal is, as it were, born
ready-equipped for all its functions. Man has to be taught to acquire
these functions for himself. What thus takes place in man is really
only an outer expression of something that takes place in him
organically If we study the metabolism of the animal correctly, we
find that it goes further than that of man. The metabolism of man must
be held back at an earlier halting place. What in the animal is
carried to a certain stage — must in man be arrested at an
earlier stage. Superficially expressed, man does not carry digestion
so far as the animal; the digestive process ceases earlier. He
retains, through the arrested digestion, forces which become the
vehicle for what he sends to the head through the Will.
As you see, human nature is complicated; and if one does not wish to
take the trouble really to study its complications — why then,
one arrives at a science such as we have in the external science of
today! One does not arrive at the real nature of Man. The essential
nature of Man will only be revealed when Spiritual Science is allowed
to illuminate natural science. If however, it is with Man as I have
described, and the connection between Man and the extra-human world
outside him is as we have described it in these studies, then you will
see that the extra-human world can only exist for Man if it has a
certain resemblance to him, to his organisation. We have seen that as
limb-men we are adapted to earthly relationships, but that through the
head-organisation we have removed ourselves as it were out of earthly
relations, like the ship's compass on the ship. Now something of this
kind must take place also in the extra-human world. There must, for
instance, be adaptation to the human limb-nature. Something must lift
itself out beyond, there must be something that does not belong.
How does modern natural science study Man? It studies him as though he
had no head. Of course it studies the head too, but how? As a kind of
appendage to the rest of his organism. What natural science produces
for the comprehension of human nature is only calculated to explain
the part outside the head, not the human head itself; that must be
explained from the spiritual world.
I might have used the following comparison. I might have said — I have
already spoken of it recently — that the human head sits upon the rest
of the human organism as people sit in a railway carriage. They take
no personal part in the movement. They sit still and allow the
carriage to move. In the same way, the human head sits at ease. It
regards the rest of the organism which is adapted to the outer world,
as its coach, and allows itself to be carried. It is itself organised
for a very different world. And this is how it must be in the outer
world also. A natural history of man, such as we have today, really
speaks of a headless man, it does not understand his true nature at
all. And an astronomy constructed on the same principles would not
correspond to the whole extra-earthly world, but only to a certain
part of it; the other part that is withdrawn from this main part, is
not considered at all. As a matter of fact the trend of natural
science for the last three or four centuries has been such that it has
developed the movements of the Universe, disregarding a certain
content of this Universe, just as the rest of natural science
disregards the human head. Therefore astronomy has derived forms of
movements such as ‘The Earth revolves in an elliptical path round
the Sun’, which are as little correct for the Universe as the
natural science of today is for the whole being of Man. They do not
correspond to the actual facts. Hence we must so often point out that
the Copernican view must be fructified by Spiritual Science. Many
mystics, and theosophists too, are fond of preaching: ‘The world
of senses around us is Maya.’ But they do not draw the ultimate
logical conclusion, otherwise they would have to say: ‘Even the
world of the Copernican system, this movement of the Earth around the
Sun is maya, is an illusion, and must be revised.’ For we must
realise that within it is something which can no more be recognised on
the basis of the hypothesis employed by Copernicus, Galileo — or
even Kepler — than the whole nature of Man can be understood from
the principles of modern science.
Now when we come to treat of a subject like this, we must at the same
time point to something which has already taken place in human
evolution. If we call to mind what we have often said — that in
olden times there was a kind of primeval wisdom of which man had but a
dreamy atavistic consciousness, but which in its content far surpassed
what we have since acquired — if we remember all this, we shall
not find it difficult to bear in mind also that the idea of the world
which was held in olden times was quite different from any cosmology
possible today. For what was the cosmology of our forefathers —
that is, of ourselves in our former Earth-lives? What was it?
The cosmology that man had in those times consisted far more than it
does now in what man brought into the world at physical birth. We may
still find in children, if we understand how to observe them aright,
something like a picture of the world in which man lived before
descending to physical life. In later life however, and indeed very
early in later life, this picture vanishes. In olden times this
picture endured. What existed in earlier epochs of spiritual evolution
as an astronomical description of the solar or planetary system and
its relation to man, was something man felt within him, although he
experienced it in a dream-like state. Today we look back upon those
times of our ancestors with a certain arrogance, yet they were times
when we really knew there was something within ourselves that had
connection with Mars, Mercury, and so on. That was part of the inner
consciousness of the human being. It disappeared however as man
developed further. In primeval times he saw only the outer
constellation, but felt within himself an inner constellation, an
inner cosmic system. Not only did he perceive a cosmic system
outside him; but in his own head, which today is merely the vehicle of
the — shall I say — indefinite life of ideas, there within,
shone the Sun, with the planets circling round. In his head man
carried this cosmic picture, and it had an inner force which worked
upon the rest of the organism and influenced what he received at
birth, or rather at conception, from the Earth-forces; that too was
influenced, so that the rest of man was also drawn into this
adaptation to the planetary forces.
And now we can carry the thought a little further. Man is born into
this world, and as a heritage he receives — let us say — in
the first place, the power to acquire his teeth, the milk-teeth. These
are completed approximately in the circle of the first year. The
second teeth need seven times as long; they are brought forth by the
human organism itself. This points in the deepest sense to the fact
that a certain rhythm which we bring with us at birth and which
relates to the yearly revolution is slowed down by seven times in our
earthly life. By seven times is the yearly revolution slowed down, and
this is expressed in the fact that man has introduced into his
division of time the relation of one to seven — day and week. The
week is seven times as long as the day. This is an expression of how
something takes its course in man which goes seven times slower than
what he brings into physical existence at birth. Man will not
understand the actual processes in the human being until he is able to
see quite clearly and exactly how something within him which, as it
were, was brought in from conditions outside the Earth, has to be
slowed down by seven times during the earthly period.
The ancient Mystery teaching spoke much of these facts. If I were to
express in our language what the old Mystery teachings — the
ancient Hebrew Mystery teaching, for example — said from their atavistic
knowledge of these matters, I should have to put it in this way.
— The old Hebrew teachers explained to their pupils: Jehovah, who
is the true Earth God, who added the Earth-organisation to that of
Saturn, Sun and Moon — Jehovah has the tendency to slow down
seven times what comes from the Moon-organisation. In relation to the
course of the Earth something in the human being wants to go at
accelerated speed. I might even say that the old Hebrew Mystery
teacher said to his pupils: Lucifer runs seven times as fast as
Jehovah. This points to two movements, two currents in human nature.
These two currents also exist in extra-earthly nature — only
there they are present in a somewhat different form. The thought
however, which we here approach, is one not very easy to understand.
We can perhaps gain insight into it by starting from social
relationships, and then coming back to the cosmic-tellurian
relationships.
I have often spoken in public lectures of something I should like to
express here. When we contemplate the misery of the present time, we
find the peculiar fact that the whole intelligence of modern humanity
has developed in a way that is quite estranged from reality. It is a
peculiar fact that, in practical life, we find more inefficient people
than efficient. This is patent, for instance, as I have shown, in the
fact that in the nineteenth century there was much discussion
concerning the effect of the gold-standard upon international economic
relations. You can go through the Parliamentary reports of that
century, and try to form an idea from them of what people then thought
would be the result of mono-metalism, the gold-standard. They regarded
it as something which would make free trade possible unhindered by
imposition of duty. Throughout the united economic domains of the
world this was predicted wherever the gold-standard was extolled. What
has actually come about? The imposition of duty. Little by little the
actual relations have developed in such a way that everywhere duties
have been imposed. That is the actual outcome.
Judging superficially one might say: Well, those people must have been
very stupid! But they were not at all stupid; among those who had
pledged themselves to the promotion of free trade by the
gold-standard, were very able and clever persons, but they had no
sense of reality, they reckoned only according to logic. They could
not dive into the true relationships, any more than can our modern
scientists comprehend the organisation of the heart, liver, spleen and
so on. They make abstract theories and hold on to them; although they
are materialists they remain rooted in the abstract. That is why such
an occurrence is possible as that related in the following anecdote,
which is founded on fact and is really very illuminating.
In a certain Academy of science there was a physiologist, a learned
man, who developed a theory as to the varying length of time
particular birds can fast. He made out a beautiful schedule. He had
large cages of birds placed in his corridor and he starved those birds
to ascertain how long they could live without food. He registered the
times and obtained some lovely big numbers as a result. He elaborated
these in a paper which he read at an Academical Meeting. Now in the
same house there lived on the floor above another physiologist who did
not apply the same methods. After the learned treatise had been read,
he rose and said: ‘I must unfortunately object that these figures
are not correct, for I had such pity on the poor birds that I fed them
in passing.’ Now things do not always have to happen just like
this! This is an anecdote. But it is founded on fact; and really much
of the material underlying our exact science has been obtained in a
like way. Someone in the background has ‘fed the birds’
instead of their having starved as long as the schedule showed. If one
has a sense for reality, one cannot very well work with statistical
methods of that kind; they do not hold out much promise. But this
sense for reality is wholly lacking in modern humanity. Why is this
so? It is due to a certain necessity of the evolution of humanity; and
we can understand the matter as follows:
Picture it to yourselves in this way. The man of ancient times looked
into this outer world. By means of all that he bore within him, he
viewed the relationships and connections of the world outside. He
formed also his theory of the stars from out of his own inner stellar
system. He had ‘a sense for reality’ and he carried it in
his senses. This sense for reality has disappeared in the course of
man's evolution. It will have to be developed again, it will have to
be developed to the same degree inwardly as it formerly was outwardly.
We must really cultivate this sense for reality in our inner being by
the training we receive in Spiritual Science; only then shall we be
able to develop it in the world outside. If man were to keep straight
on in the path in which he has been evolving with modern
intellectuality, he would at length be quite unable to perceive what
is going on around him, and then it could easily happen that while the
cry is heard, ‘Free Trade is coming!’ in reality it will be
Customs restrictions that are being established. This is continually
happening in the various domains of so-called practical life. What
happened then in a big thing happens today in small things everywhere.
The ‘practical’ man predicts one thing, the opposite
happens. It would be interesting to keep an account of what
‘practical’ men have predicted as ‘certain to
happen’ during the last years of the war. Always the opposite
came about, especially in the later years, precisely because there was
no longer any sense for reality among the people. This sense however,
can arise in no other way than by developing it first within. In
future times no one will be considered a practical man or a thinker
attuned to reality, who disdains to educate himself in his inner being
through Spiritual Science, in a manner that cannot be done through the
outer world today. We must carry into the world outside what we
develop within. Hence the necessity for Spiritual Science; for people
cannot arrive at the relation of the heart to the liver if they do not
first acquire the method for it by means of a training in Spiritual
Science. In earlier times people could say: the heart is related to
the liver somewhat as the Sun to Mercury in the outer world; and man
knew something of how this relationship of Sun to Mercury was drawn
from the super-sensible world into the sense world. This is now no
longer understood, nor can it ever be thoroughly understood if the
foundation, the basic impulse for this comprehension, be not acquired
from within. It is not through clairvoyance alone that man can make it
his own. By clairvoyance the facts of Spiritual Science are
investigated; but man acquires this sense when he enters with his
whole thought and feeling into what has already been discovered by
clairvoyant methods, and regulates his life accordingly. That is the
essential point. What is of moment is to study the conclusions of
Spiritual Science, not to satisfy a curiosity for clairvoyance.
That must be emphasised again and again. For in the whole development
of human culture, this application of the methods of Spiritual Science
to outer life and to the knowledge of the great world, the world
outside man, is of quite special importance.
When we consider what we thus have to look upon as the original
head-organisation, when we consider it in the course of our life, we
see how it gradually becomes permeated with all in our organisation
that is adapted to the world outside. Thus we must learn to understand
the world outside man from man's own organism, from the human
limb-organisation; and there, only such things as I have already
hinted at can help us. I have shown the contrast that exists between
the waking and sleeping conditions of man. These are contrasting
conditions, and when one condition is passing over into the other,
that is to say, when we wake up and when we go to sleep, then we pass
through a zero-point of our existence. The moment of awaking and the
moment of falling asleep must have something to do with one another.
This indicates that if we try to turn the day-course of man into a
geometrical figure, we can employ neither a circle nor an ellipse; for
if we were to ascribe to the sleep condition one part of the ellipse,
the conditions of awaking and falling asleep should fall apart; and
this they cannot do. We shall see how even in outer appearance they
present a similarity; they cannot fall apart. Thus we cannot draw the
geometrical figure which is to correspond with man's daily round in a
circular form nor in an elliptic form. We can only draw it as a looped
line, a lemniscate. When we say: Man falls asleep out of the waking
condition into the sleep condition, then with the lemniscate it is
possible to show him coming out of sleep again through the same
condition; and we have a curve, a line which truly corresponds to the
daily course of human life. There is no other line for the daily
course of life than the lemniscate, for no other line would lead the
awaking through the same point as the falling asleep.
There is more than this. If we give attention to human evolution in
childhood especially, we have to say: we wake up virtually the same as
we went to sleep. We wake up the same in respect of the principal
alternating conditions of
waking and sleeping. But if we rightly observe life, we cannot exclude
the sleeping condition from human life as a whole. We instruct our
children during the day. Out of all we bring to the child, much of it
is not his at once, but becomes so only the next day, after the Ego
and astral body have passed through the night-condition; only then
does the child duly receive what we have given him by day. We must
always have this in mind and regulate our teaching and education
accordingly. Thus in regard to the alternating condition of day and
night, we can say: we sleep, and on awaking come to the same place
where we fell asleep; but in regard to human evolution, we shall have
to say: we press forwards a little. We progress in another direction.
Hence we may not draw the line quite as a lemniscate; but in such a
way that we come out a little further on, and so attain a
progressive lemniscate. (A).
Thus when we observe the alternating conditions of waking and
sleeping, and continue the evolution, we obtain a spiral. This spiral
is ultimately connected with our evolution, and our evolution again is
connected with the whole cosmic system. Therefore we must seek this
same line as the basis of the movements of the Universe. If, instead
of abstract geometry, man had applied concrete geometry to celestial
space, the concrete geometry that proceeds from a study of the whole
man, he would have arrived at something different. For in the ancient
wisdom one had this line (A). And one did not speak of Mars as moving
along any other kind of line than this one. Gradually it was all
forgotten. Man calculated instead of knowing. What was the
result? It was a line which goes forward like this (B). But in that
line one can get no further.
So man took this line and set circles upon it (C) and acquired the
epicycloid theory.
The Ptolemaic theory is the last remnant of the old primeval wisdom.
On its foundation Copernicus made a further simplification, and modern
astronomy still speculates on that today — but in such a way that
it much prefers to consider ellipses and circles than that inwardly
curving line which presents a continuous spiral. Then people wonder
that the observations do not agree with the calculations, and that
fresh corrections have to be made continually.
Reflect how the whole theory of Relativity has been constructed
on an error in Mercury's time of rotation. Only, the correction was
attempted in a different way than would have been the case if one had
gone back to Man's relation to the whole Cosmos. Of this more in the
next lecture.
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