LECTURE III.
June
11th, 1924.
The
earthly and cosmic forces of which I have spoken work in the
processes of Agriculture through the substances of the
Earth. And we shall only be able to pass on to the difficult
practical applications during the next few days if we occupy
ourselves rather more closely with the question of how these
forces work through the Earth's substances. But first we must
make a digression and enquire into the activity of Nature
in general.
One
of the most important questions that can be raised in
discussing production in the sphere of Agriculture is
that concerning the significance and influence of nitrogen. But
this question concerning the fundamental nature of the action
of nitrogen is at present in a state of the greatest confusion.
When one observes nitrogen today in the ordinary way one
is only looking at the last offshoots, as it were, of its
activities, its most superficial manifestations. We
overlook the natural interconnections within which
nitrogen is at work; nor indeed can -we help so doing if we
remain enclosed within one section of Nature. To gain a proper
insight into these connections we must bring within our survey
the whole realm of Nature, and concern ourselves with the
activity of nitrogen in the Universe. Indeed — and this
will emerge clearly from my exposition — while nitrogen
as such does not play the primary part in plant-life, it is
nevertheless supremely necessary for us to know what this
part is, if we wish to understand plant-life.
In
its activities in Nature nitrogen has, one might say, four
sister-substances which we must learn to know if we wish to
understand the functions and significance of nitrogen in the
so-called economy of Nature. These four sister-substances are
the four substances which in albumen (protein), both animal and
vegetable, combine with nitrogen in a way which is still a
mystery for present-day science. The four sister-substances are
carbon, oxygen, hydrogen and sulphur. If we wish to understand
the full significance of albumen, it is not enough to mention
the ingredients hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen and carbon: we must
also bring in sulphur, that substance the activities of which
are of such profound importance for albumen. For it is sulphur
which acts within the albumen as the mediator between the
spiritual formative element diffused • throughout -the
Universe and the physical element. Indeed, if we want to follow
the path taken by the spirit in the material world, we shall
have to look for the activity of sulphur. Even if this activity
is not so visible as those of other substances it is still of
the utmost importance because spirit works its way into
physical nature by means of sulphur: sulphur is actually the
bearer of spirit. The ancient name “sulphur” is
connected with the word “phosphor,” (which means
bearer of light) because in the old days men saw spirit
spreading out through space in the out-streaming m the light or
the Sun. Hence, they called the substances which are linked up
with the working of light into matter, like sulphur and
phosphorus, the “light bearers.” And once we have
realised how fine (delicate) is the activity of sulphur in the
economy of nature we shall more easily understand its
fundamental nature when we consider the four sister-substances
— carbon. hydrogen, nitrogen and oxygen, and the
part they play in the workings of the Universe. The modern
chemist knows very little about these substances. He knows what
they look like in a laboratory, but is ignorant of their inner
significance for cosmic activities as a whole. The
knowledge which modern chemistry has of these substances
is not much greater than the knowledge we might have of a man
whose external appearance we had noticed as he passed us in the
street, and of whom we had perhaps taken a snapshot, whom
we call to mind with the help of the snap-shot. For what
science does with these substances is little more than to take
snap-shots of them, and the books and lectures of to-day about
them contain little more than this. We must learn to know the
deeper essence of these substances.
Let
us therefore start with carbon. The bearing which these things
have upon plants will soon be made clear. Carbon, like so many
beings in modern times, has fallen from a very aristocratic
position to one that is extremely plebeian. All that people see
in carbon nowadays is something with which to heat their
ovens (coal) or something with which to write graphite. Its
aristocratic nature still survives in one of its
modifications, the diamond. But it is hardly of very great
value to us today, in this form, because we cannot buy it.
Thus, what we know of carbon is very little in comparison with
the enormous importance which this substance possesses in the
Universe. And yet, until a relatively recent date, a few
hundred years ago, this black-fellow. — let us call him
so — was regarded as worthy to bear the noble name of
“Philosopher's Stone.”
A
great deal of nonsense has been spoken about what was really
meant by this name. For when the old Alchemists and their
kind spoke of the Philosopher's Stone they meant carbon in
whatever form it occurs. And they only kept their name secret
because if they had not done so, all and sundry would have
found themselves in possession of the Philosopher's Stone. For
it was simply carbon. But why should it have been carbon?
A
-view held in former days will supply us with the answer, which
we must come to know again. If we disregard the crumbled
form to which certain processes in nature have reduced carbon
(as in coal and graphite) and grasp it in its vital activity in
the course of serving the bodies of men and animals and as it
builds up the body of the plant from its own inherent
possibilities, the amorphous and formless substance which we
generally think of as carbon will appear as the final outcome,
the mere corpse of what carbon really is in the economy of
Nature. Carbon is really the bearer of all formative processes
in Nature. It is the great sculptor of form, whether we are
dealing with the plant whose form persists for a certain time
or with the ever-changing form of the animal organism. It bears
within it not only its black substantiality, but, in full
activity and inner mobility it bears within it the formative
cosmic prototypes, the great world-imaginations from which
living form m Nature must proceed. A hidden sculptor is at work
in carbon, and in building up the most diverse forms in Nature,
this hidden sculptor makes use of sulphur. If, therefore, we
regard the activities of carbon in Nature in the right
way, we shall see that the cosmic spirit which is active
as a sculptor “moistens” itself, as it were,
with sulphur, and with the help of carbon builds up the
relatively permanent plant form and also the human form which
is dissolved at the moment it is created. For what makes the
human body human, and not plant-like, is precisely the fact
that at each moment, through the elimination of carbon, the
form it has taken on can be immediately destroyed and replaced
by another, the carbon being united to oxygen and exhaled as
carbon-dioxide. As carbon would make our bodies firm and stiff
like a palm tree, the breathing process wrenches it out of its
stiffness, unites it with oxygen and drives it outwards. Thus,
we gain a mobility which as human beings we must have. In
plants, however (and even in annuals) carbon is held fast
within a fixed form.
There is an old saying that “Blood is a very special
fluid.” We are right in saying that the human ego
pulsates in the blood, and manifests itself physically in
doing so; or speaking more strictly it is along the tracks
provided by the carbon, in its weaving and working, and forming
and unforming of itself that the spiritual principle m man,
called the ego, moves within the blood, moistening itself with
sulphur. And just as the human ego, the essential spirit of
man, lives in carbon, so also does the world-ego live (through
the mediation of sulphur) in that substance that is eyer
forming and unforming itself — carbon. The fact is
that in the early stages of the Earth's development it was
carbon alone which was deposited or precipitated. It was not
until later that, for example, lime came into existence,
supplying man with the foundation for the creation of a
more solid bony structure. In order that the organism which
lives in the carbon might be moved about, man and the higher
animals provided a supporting structure in the skeleton which
is made of lime. In this way, by making mobile the carbon form
within him, man raises himself from the merely immobile mineral
lime formation which the' earth possesses and which he
incorporates in order to have solid earth-matter within his
body. The bony lime structure represents the solid earth within
the human body.
Diagrams
for Lecture II
Let
me put it in this way: Underlying every living being there is a
scaffolding of carbon, more or less either relatively permanent
or continually fluctuating, in the tracks of which the
spiritual principle moves through the world. Let us make a
schematic drawing of this so that you can see the matter quite
clearly before you.
(Drawing No. 6)
Here is such a scaffolding
which the spirit builds up somehow or other with the help of
sulphur. Here we have either the continuously changing carbon
which moves in the sulphur in highly diluted form, or else we
have, as in the plants? a more or less
solidified carbon structure which is united with other
ingredients. Now as I have often pointed out, a human or
any other living being must be penetrated by an etheric
element which is the actual bearer of life. The carbon
structure of a living being must therefore be penetrated by an
etheric element which will either remain stationary about
the timbers of this scaffolding or retain a certain mobility.
But the main thing is that the etheric element is in both cases
distributed along the scaffolding.
This etheric element could not abide our physical earth world,
if it remained alone. It would slide through instead of
gripping what it has to grip in the physical earthly world, if
it were without a physical bearer. (For it is a peculiarity of
earth conditions that the spiritual must always have physical
bearers. The materialists regard the physical bearer
only, and overlook the spiritual. To an extent, they are right,
because it is indeed the physical bearer which is first met
with. But they overlook the fact that it is the spiritual
which makes necessary everywhere the existence of a
physical bearer). The physical Dearer of the spiritual which
works in the etheric element (we may say that the lowest level
of the spiritual works in the etheric); this physical bearer
which is permeated by the etheric element, and
“moistened” as it were with sulphur, introduces
into physical existence not the form, not the structure, but a
continuous mobility and vitality. This physical carrier which,
with the help of sulphur, brings the vital activities out of
the universal ether into the body is oxygen.
Thus, the part which I have coloured green in my sketch can be
regarded, from the physical point of view, as oxygen, and also
as the brooding? vibrating etheric element which
permeates it. It is in the track of oxygen that the etheric
element moves with the help of sulphur.
It
is this that gives meaning to the breathing process. When
we breathe, we take in oxygen. When the present-day materialist
talks of oxygen all he means is the stuff in his test-tube when
he has decomposed water through electrolysis. But in oxygen
there lives the lowest order of the supersensible, the etheric
element; it lives there when it is not killed, as e.g. in the
air around us. In the atmosphere around us the living principle
in the oxygen has “been killed in order that it may not
cause us to faint. Whenever too great a degree of life enters
into us, we faint. For any excess of the ordinary growing
forces within us, if it appears where it should not be, will
cause us to faint or worse. If therefore we were
surrounded by an atmosphere which contained living oxygen, we
should reel about as though completely stunned by it. The
oxygen around us has to be killed. And yet oxygen is from its
birth the bearer of life, of the etheric element. It becomes
the bearer of life as soon as it leaves the sphere in which it
has the task of providing a surrounding for our human external
senses. Once it has entered into us through breathing, it comes
alive again. The oxygen which circulates inside us' is not the
same as that which surrounds us externally. In us it is living
oxygen, just as it also becomes living oxygen immediately it
penetrates into the soil, although in this case the life m it
is lower in degree than it is in our bodies. The oxygen under
the earth is not the same as the oxygen above the earth. It is
very difficult to come to any understanding with physicists and
chemists on this subject, for according to the methods they
employ the oxygen must always be separated with its connection
with the soil. The oxygen they are dealing with is dead, nor
can it be anything else. But every science which limits itself
to the physical is liable to this error. It can only understand
dead corpses. In reality oxygen is the bearer of the living
ether and this living ether takes hold of the oxygen through
the mediation of sulphur.
We
now have pointed out two extreme polarities: On the one hand
the scaffolding of carbon within which the human ego —
the highest form of the spiritual given to us here on earth,
displays its forces or with the case of plants the
world-spiritual which is active in them. On the other hand, we
have the human process of breathing, represented in man by the
living oxygen which carries the ether. And beneath it we have
the scaffolding of carbon which in man permits of his movement.
These two polarities must be brought together. The oxygen
must be enabled to move along the paths marked out for it
by the scaffolding; it must move along every track that may be
marked out for it by the carbon, by tne spirit of carbon; and
throughout Nature the oxygen bearing the etheric life must find
the way to the carbon bearing the spiritual principle. How does
it do this? What here acts as the mediator?
The
mediator is nitrogen. Nitrogen directs the life into the form
which is embodied into the carbon. Wherever nitrogen occurs its
function is to mediate between life and the spiritual element
which has first been incorporated in the carbon
substance. It supplies the bridge between oxygen and
carbon — whether it be the animal and vegetable kingdoms,
or in the soil. That spirituality which with the help of the
sulphur busies itself within the nitrogen is the same as we
usually refer to as astral. This spirituality, which also forms
the human astral body, is active in the earth's surroundings
from which it works in the life of plants, animals and so on.
Thus, spiritually speaking we find the astral element or
principle placed in between oxygen and carbon; but the astral
element uses nitrogen for the purpose of revealing itself in
the physical -world. Wherever there is nitrogen there the
astral spreads forth in activity. The etheric life-element
would float about in every direction like clouds and ignore the
framework provided by the carbon were it not for the powerful
attraction which this framework possesses for nitrogen;
wherever the lines and paths have been laid down in the carbon,
there nitrogen drags the oxygen along; or more strictly
speaking, the astral in the nitrogen drags the etheric element
along these paths. Nitrogen is the great “dragger”
of the living principle towards the spiritual. Nitrogen is
therefore essential to the soul of man, since the soul is the
mediator between life, i.e. without consciousness and spirit.
There is, indeed, something very wonderful about
nitrogen. If we trace its path as it goes through the human
organism, we find a complete double of the human being. Such a
“nitrogen man” actually exists. If we could
separate it from the physical we should have the most beautiful
ghost imaginable, for it copies in exact detail the solid shape
of man. On the other hand, nitrogen flows straight back into
life.
Now
we have an insight into the breathing process. When he
breathes, man takes in oxygen, i.e. etheric life. Then comes
the internal nitrogen, and drags the, oxygen along to wherever
there is carbon, i.e. to wherever there is weaving and changing
form. The nitrogen brings the oxygen along with it in order
that the latter may hold on the carbon and set it free. The
nitrogen is thus the mediator whereby carbon becomes
carbon-dioxide and as such is breathed out. Only a small part,
really of our surroundings consists of nitrogen, the
bearer of astral-spirituality. It is of immense importance to
us to have oxygen in our immediate surroundings, both by day
and by night. We pay less respect to the nitrogen around us in
the air which we breathe because we think we have less need of
it, and yet nitrogen stands in a spiritual relation to
us.
The
following experiment might be made: One could enclose a man in
a gas-chamber containing a given volume of air, and then remove
a small quantity of nitrogen, so that the air would be slightly
poorer in nitrogen than it normally is. If this experiment
could be carefully carried out it would convince you that the
necessary quantity of nitrogen is at once restored, not from
outside, but from inside the man's body. Man has to give up
some of his own supply of nitrogen in order to restore the
quantitative condition to which the nitrogen is
“accustomed.” As human beings, it is necessary that
we should maintain the right quantitative relation between our
whole inner being and the nitrogen around us; the right
quantity of nitrogen outside us is never allowed to become
less. For the merely vegetative life of man a less quantity
than the normal will do. because we do not need nitrogen for
the purpose of breaming. But it would not be adequate to the
part it plays spiritually; for that the normal quantity of
nitrogen is necessary.
This shows you how strongly nitrogen plays into the spiritual
and will give you some idea of how necessary this substance is
to the life of the plants. The plant growing on the ground has
at first only its physical body and etheric body but no astral
body; but the astral element must surround it on all
sides. The plant would not flower if it were not touched from
outside by the astral element. It does not take in the astral
element as do men and the animals but it needs to be touched by
it from outside. The astral element is everywhere, and
nitrogen, the bearer of the astral, is everywhere; it hovers in
the air as a dead element, but the moment it enters into the
soil it comes to life again. Just as oxygen comes to life when
drawn into the soil, so does nitrogen. This nitrogen in the
earth not only comes to life but becomes something which has a
very special importance for Agriculture because —
paradoxical as it may seem to a mind distorted by materialism
— it not only comes to life but becomes sensitive
inside the earth. It literally becomes the carrier of a
mysterious sensitiveness which is poured out over the whole
life of the earth. Nitrogen is that which senses whether the
right quantity or water is present in any given soil and
experiences sympathy; when water is deficient it experiences
antipathy. It experiences sympathy when for any given soil the
right sort of plants are present, and so on. Thus, nitrogen
pours out over everything a living web of sensitive lire. Above
all nitrogen knows all those secrets of which we know nothing
in an ordinary way, of the planets Saturn, Sun, Moon and so on,
and their influences upon the form and life of plants, of which
I told you yesterday, and in the preceding lectures.
Nitrogen that is everywhere abroad, knows these secrets very
well. It is not at all -unconscious of what emanates from the
stars and becomes active in the life of plants and of the
earth. Nitrogen is the mediator which senses just as in the
human nerves and senses system, it also mediates sensation.
Nitrogen is in fact the bearer of sensation. Thus, if we look
upon nitrogen, moving about everywhere like fluctuating
sensations, we shall see into the intimacies of the life in
Nature. Thus, we shall come to the conclusion that in the
handling of nitrogen something is done which is of enormous
importance for the life of plants. We shall study this further
in the subsequent lectures.
In
the meantime, there is, however, one thing more to be
considered. There is a living co-operation of the spiritual
principle which has taken shape within the carbonic
framework with the astral principle working within nitrogen,
which permeates that framework with lire and sensations, that
is, stirs up a living agility in the oxygen. But in the earthly
sphere this co-operation is brought about by yet another
element, which links up the physical world with the expanses of
the cosmos. For the earth cannot wander about the Universe as a
solid entity cut off from the rest of the Universe. If the
earth did this it would be in the same position as a man who
lived on a farm, but wished to remain independent of everything
that grew in the fields around him. No reasonable man would do
that. What to-day is growing in the fields around us tomorrow
will be in human stomachs, and later will return to the soil in
some form or another. We human beings cannot isolate ourselves
from our environment. We are bound up with it and belong
to it as much as my little finger belongs to me. There must be
a continuous interchange of substances, and this applies
also to the relation between earth with all its creatures and
the surrounding Cosmos. All that is living on earth in physical
shape must be able to find its way back into the Cosmos where
it will be in a way purified and refined. This leads us to the
following picture.
(Drawing No. 6)
We
have in the first place the carbon framework (which I have
coloured blue in the drawing), then the etheric oxygenous
life-element (coloured green) and then, proceeding from
the oxygen and enabled by nitrogen to follow the various lines
and paths within the framework, we have the astral element
which forms the bridge between carbon and oxygen. I could
indicate everywhere here how the nitrogen drags into the blue
lines which I have indicated schematically with the green
lines. But the whole of the very delicate structure which
is formed in the living being must be able to disappear again.
It is not the spirit which disappears, but that which the
spirit has built up in the carbon and into which it has drawn
the etheric life borne in the oxygen. It must disappear not
only from the earth, but dissipate into the Cosmos. This is
done by forming a substance which is allied as closely as
possible to the physical, and yet is allied as closely as
possible to the spiritual; This substance is hydrogen. Although
hydrogen is itself the most attenuated form of the physical
substance, it goes still further and dissipates physical
matter which, borne by sulphur, floats away into that
cosmic region in which matter is no longer
distinguishable. One may say then: Spirit has first become
physical and lives in the body at once in its astral form and
reflecting itself as ego. There it lives physically as
spirit transformed into something physical. After a time, the
spirit begins to feel ill at ease. It wishes to get rid of its
physical form. Moistening itself once again with sulphur it
feels the need of yet another element by means of which it can
yield up any kind of individual structure and give itself over
to the cosmic region of formless chaos where there is no longer
any determinate organisation. This element, which is so
closely allied both to the physical and to the spiritual, is
hydrogen. Hydrogen carries away all that the astral principle
Has taken up as form and life, carries it out into the expanses
of the Cosmos, so that it can be taken up again from thence (by
earthly substance) as I have already described. Hydrogen in
fact dissolves everything.
Thus, we have these 5 substances which are the immediate
representatives of all that works and weaves in the realm of
the living and also in the realm of the seemingly dead, which
in fact is only transiently so: Sulphur, Carbon, Hydrogen,
Oxygen and Nitrogen, each of these substances is inwardly
related to its own particular order of spiritual entity.
They are therefore something quite different from which
our modern chemistry refers to by the same names. Our
chemistry speaks only of the corpses of these substances, not
of the actual substances themselves. These we must learn
to know as something living and sentient, and, curiously
enough, hydrogen, which seems the least dense of the five and
has the smallest atomic weight, is the least spiritual
among them.
Now
consider: What are we actually doing -when we meditate? (I am
compelled to add this to ensure that these things do not remain
among the mists of spirituality). The Oriental has meditated in
his own way. “We in Middle and Western Europe meditate in
ours. Meditation as we ought to practise it only slightly
touches the breathing process; our soul is living and weaving
in concentration and meditation. But all these spiritual
exercises have a bodily counterpart, however subtle and
intimate. In meditation, the regular rhythm of breathing, which
is so closely connected with man's life, undergoes a
definite if subtle change. When we meditate we always retain a
little more carbon-dioxide in us than in the ordinary everyday
consciousness. We do not. as in ordinary life, thrust out
the whole bulk of carbon-dioxide into the atmosphere where
nitrogen is everywhere around us. We hold some of it back.
Now
consider: If you knock your head against something hard,
like a table, you become conscious only of your own pain. But
if you gently stroke the surface of the table, then you will
become conscious of the table. The same thing happens in
meditation. It gradually develops an awareness of the nitrogen
all around you. That is the real process in meditation.
Everything becomes an object of knowledge, including the life
of the nitrogen around us. For nitrogen is a very learned
fellow. He teaches us about the doings of Mercury. Venus, etc.
because he knows, or rather senses them. All these things rest
upon perfectly real processes. And as I shall show in greater
detail, it is at this point that the spiritual working in the
soul activity, begins to have a bearing upon Agriculture. This
interaction between the soul-spiritual element and that which
is around us is what has particularly interested our dear
friend Stegemann. For, indeed, if a man has to do with
Agriculture it is a good thing if he is able to meditate,
for in this way he will make himself receptive to the
manifestations of nitrogen. If one does become receptive
in this way, one begins to practise Agriculture in quite a
different way and spirit. One suddenly gets all kinds of new
ideas; they simply come, and one then has many secrets in large
estates and smaller farms.
I
do not wish to repeat what I said an hour ago, but I can
describe it in another way. Take the case ox a peasant who
walks through his fields. The scientist regards him as
unlearned and stupid. But this is not so, simply because
— forgive me but I speak the truth — simply because
instinctively a peasant is given to meditation. He ponders much
throughout the long winter nights. He acquires a kind of
spiritual knowledge, as it were, only he cannot express it.. He
walks through his fields and suddenly he knows something; later
he tries it out. At any rate this is what I found over and over
again in my youth when I lived among peasant folk. The mere
intellect will not be enough, it does not lead us deep enough.
For after all Nature's life and weaving is so fine and
delicate that the net of intellectual concepts —
and this is where science has erred of recent years — has
too large a mesh to catch it.
Now
all these substances of which I have spoken, Sulphur, Carbon,
Nitrogen, Hydrogen are united in albumen. This will enable us
to see more clearly into the nature of seed formation. Whenever
carbon, hydrogen and nitrogen are present in leaf, blossom,
calyx or root they are always united to other substances
in some form or other. They are dependent upon these other
substances. There are only two ways in which they can become
independent. One is when the hydrogen carries all individual
substances out into the expanses of the Cosmos and dissolves
them into the general chaos; and the other is when the hydrogen
drives the basic element of the protein (for albumen) into the
seed formation and there makes them independent of each other
so that they become receptive of the influences of the Cosmos.
In the tiny seed, there is chaos, and in the wide periphery of
the Cosmos there is another chaos, and whenever the chaos at
the periphery works upon the chaos within the seed, new life
comes into being.
Now
look how these so-called substances, which are really bearers
of spirit, work in the realm of Nature. Again, we may say that
the oxygen and nitrogen inside man's body behave themselves, in
an ordinary way, for within man's body they manifest their
normal qualities. Ordinary science ignores it, because the
process is hidden. But the ultimate products of carbon and
hydrogen cannot behave in so normal a fashion as do oxygen and
nitrogen. Let us take carbon first. When the carbon, active in
the plant realm enters the realms of animals and man, it must
become mobile — at least transiently. And in order to
build up the fixed shape of the organism it must attach itself
to an underlying framework. This is provided on the one hand by
our deeply laid skeleton consisting of limestone, and on the
other hand by the siliceous-element which we always carry
in our bodies; so that both in man and in the animals carbon to
a certain extent masks its own formative force. It climbs
up. as it were, along the lines of formative forces of
limestone and silicon. Limestone endows it with the
earthly formative power, silicon with the cosmic. In man and
the animals carbon does not, as it were, claim sole authority
for itself, but adheres to what is formed by lime and
silicon.
But
lime and silicon are also the basis of the growth of plants. We
must therefore learn to know the activities of carbon in the
breathing, digestive and circulatory processes of man in
relation to his bony and siliceous structure — as though
we could, as it were, creep into the body and see how the
formative force of carbon in the circulation radiates into the
limestone and silicon. And we must unfold this same kind of
vision when we look upon a piece of ground covered with flowers
having limestone and silicon beneath them. Into man we cannot
creep; but here at any rate we can see what is going on. Here
we can develop the necessary knowledge. We can see how the
oxygen element is caught up by the nitrogen element and carried
down into the carbon element, but only in so far as the latter
adheres to the lime and silicon structure. We can even say that
carbon is only the mediator. Or we can say that what lives in
the environment is kindled to life in oxygen and must be
carried into the earth by means of nitrogen, where it can
follow the form provided by the limestone and silicon. Those
who have any sensitiveness for these things can observe
this process at work most wonderfully in all
papilionaceous plants (Leguminosae), that is, m all the
plants which in Agriculture may be called collectors of
nitrogen, and whose special function it is to attract nitrogen
and hand it on to what lies below them. For down in the earth
under those leguminosae there is something that thirsts for
nitrogen as the lungs of man thirst for oxygen — and that
is lime. It is ä necessity for the lime under the earth
that it should breathe in nitrogen just as the human lungs need
oxygen. And in the papilionaceous plants a process takes place
similar to that which is carried out. By the
epitheliumfissue in our lungs lining the bronchial tubes. There
is a kind of in-breathing which leads nitrogen down. And these
are the only plants that do this. All other plants are closer
to exhalation. Thus, the whole organism of the plant-world is
divided into two when we look at the nitrogen-breathing.
All papilionacae are, as it were., the air passages. Other
plants represent the other organs in which breaching goes in a
more secret way and whose real task is to fulfil some function.
We must learn to look upon each species of plant as placed
within a great whole, the organism of the plant-world, just as
each human organ is placed within the whole human organism. We
must come to regard the different plants as part of a
great whole, then we shall see the immense importance of these
Papilionacae. True, science knows something of this already,
but it is necessary that we should gam knowledge of them
from these spiritual foundations, otherwise there is a danger,
as tradition fades more and more during the decades, that we
shall stray into false paths in applying scientific
knowledge. We can see how these papilionacae actually
function. They have all the characteristics of keeping
their fruit process which in other plants tends to be higher up
in the region of their leaves. They all want to bear fruit
before they have flowered. The reason is that these plants
develop the process allied to nitrogen far nearer to the earth
{they actually carry nitrogen down into the soil) than do the
other plants, which unfold this process at a greater distance
from the surface of the earth. These plants have also the
tendency to colour their leaves, not with the ordinary green,
hut with a rather darker shade. The actual fruit, moreover,
undergoes a kind of atrophy, the seed remains capable of
germinating for a short time only and then becomes barren.
Indeed, these plants are so organised as to bring to special
perfection what the plant-world receives from Winter and not
from Summer. They have, therefore, a tendency to wait for
Winter. They want to wait with what they are developing for the
Winter. Their growth is delayed when they have a sufficient
supply of what they need, namely, nitrogen from the air which
they can convey below in their own manner. In this way
one can get insight into the becoming and living which goes in
and above the soil.
If
in addition you take into account the fact that lime has a
wonderful relationship with the world of human desires, you
will see how alive and organic the whole thing becomes. In its
elemental form as calcium, lime is never at rest; it seeks and
experiences itself; it tries to become quick-lime, i.e. to
unite with oxygen. But even then, it is not content; it longs
to absorb the whole range of metallic acids, even including
bitumen, which is not really a mineral. Hidden in the earth,
lime develops the longing to attract everything to itself. It
develops in the soil what is almost a desire-nature. It is
possible, if one has the right feeling in these matters,
to sense the difference between it and other substances, lime
fairly sucks one dry. One feels that it has a thoroughly greedy
nature and that wherever it is, it seeks to draw to itself also
the plant-element. For indeed everything that limestone wants
lives in plants, and it must continually turn away from the
lime. What does this? It is done by the supremely aristocratic
element which asks for nothing but relies upon itself. For
there is such an aristocratic substance. It is silicon. People
are mistaken in thinking that silicon is only present where it
shows its firm rock-like outline. Silicon is distributed
everywhere in homeopathic doses. It is at rest and makes no
claim on anything else. Lime lays claim to everything, silicon
to nothing. Silicon thus resembles our sense-organs which do
not perceive themselves but which perceive the external
world. Silicon is the general external sense-organ of the
earth? lime the representing general which desires;
clay mediates between the two. Clay is slightly closer to
silicon, and yet it acts as a mediator with lime. Now one
should understand this in order to acquire a knowledge
supported by feeling. One should feel about lime that it is a
fellow fall of desires, who wants to grab things for
himself; and about silicon that it is a very superior
aristocrat who becomes what the lime has grabbed, carries it up
into the atmosphere, and develops the plant-forms. There dwells
the silicon, either entrenched m his moated castle, as in the
horse-tail (equisetum), or distributed everywhere in fine
homeopathic doses, where he endeavours to take away what the
lime has attached. Once again, we realise that we are in the
presence of an extremely subtle process of Nature.
Carbon is the really formative element in all plants; it builds
up the framework. But in the course of the earth's development
its task has been rendered more difficult. Carbon could
give form to all plants as long as there was water below it.
Then everything would have grown. But since a certain period,
lime has been formed underneath, and lime disturbs the work,
and because the opposition of the limestone had to be overcome,
carbon allies itself to silicon and both together, in
combination with clay, they once again start on their
formative work.
How, in the midst of all this, does the life of a plant go on?
Below is the limestone trying to seize it with its tentacles,
above is the silicon which wants to make it as long and thin as
the tenuous water-plants. But in the midst of them is carbon
which creates the actual plant-forms and brings order into
everything. And just as our astral body brings about a balance
between our ego and etheric body, so nitrogen works in between,
as the astral element.
This is what we must learn to understand — how
nitrogen manages things between lime, clay and silicon,
and also between what the lime is always longing for below, and
what silicon seeks always to radiate upwards. In this way the
practical question arises: What is the correct way of
introducing nitrogen into the plant-world? This is the question
which will occupy us to-morrow and which will lead us over to
deal with the different methods of manuring the ground.
| Diagram 4 Click image for large view | |
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