The Rudolf Steiner Archive

I tried yesterday to give certain indications about the constitution of the human being, and at the end it was possible to show that a really penetrating study of human nature is able to build a bridge between the external constitution, and what it unfolds through self-consciousness, and the inner life. As a rule no such bridge is built, or only very inadequately built, particularly in the science current today. It became clear to us that in order to build this bridge we must know how the human constitution is to be regarded. We saw that the solid or solid-fluid organism — which is the sole object of study today and is alone recognized by modern science as organic in the real sense — we saw that this must be regarded as only one of the organisms in the human constitution; that the existence of a fluid organism, an airy organism, and a warmth organism must also be recognized. Naturally, up to the warmth organism itself, everything is to be conceived as physical body. But it is paramountly the etheric body that takes hold of the fluid body, of everything that is fluid in the human organism; in everything airy, the astral body is paramountly active, and in the warmth organism, the Ego. By recognizing this we can, as it were, remain in the physical but at the same time reach up to the spiritual.

We also studied consciousness at its different levels. As I said yesterday, it is usual to take account only of the consciousness known to us in waking life from the moment of waking to the moment of falling asleep. We perceive the objects around us and reason about these perceptions with our intellect; we also have feelings in connection with these perceptions, and we have our will impulses. But we experience this whole nexus of consciousness as something which, in its qualities, differs completely from the physical which alone is taken account of by ordinary science.

It is not possible, without further ado, to build a bridge from these imponderable, incorporeal experiences in the domain of consciousness to the other objects of perception studied in physiology or physical anatomy. In regard to consciousness too, we know from ordinary life that in addition to the waking consciousness, there is dream consciousness, and we heard yesterday that dreams are essentially pictures or symbols of inner organic processes. Something is going on within us all the time, and in our dreams it comes to expression in pictures. I said that we may dream of coiling snakes when we have some intestinal disorder, or we may dream of an excessively hot stove and wake up with palpitations of the heart. The overheated stove symbolized irregular beating of the heart, the snakes symbolized the intestines, and so forth. Dreams point us to our organism. The consciousness of dreamless sleep is, as it were, an experience of nullity, of the void. But I explained that this experience of the void is necessary in order that we feel ourselves connected with our bodily nature. As an Ego we would feel no connection with our body if we did not leave it during sleep and seek for it again on waking. It is through the deprivation undergone between falling asleep and waking that we are able to feel ourselves united with the body. So from the ordinary consciousness which has really nothing to do with our own essential being beyond the fact that it enables us to have perceptions and ideas, we are led to the dream-consciousness which has to do with actual bodily processes. We are therefore led to the body. We are led to the body even more strongly when we pass into the consciousness of dreamless sleep.

Thus we can say: On the one hand our conception of the life of soul is such that it leads us to the body. And our conception of the bodily constitution, comprising as it does the fluid organism, the airy organism, the warmth organism and thus becoming by degrees more rarefied, leads us to the realm of soul. It is absolutely necessary to take these things into consideration if we are to reach a view of the world that can really satisfy us.

The great question with which we have been concerning ourselves for weeks, the cardinal question in one's conception of the world, is this: How is the moral world order connected with the physical world order? As has been said so often, the prevailing world view — which relies entirely upon natural science for knowledge of the outer physical world — can only resort to earlier religious beliefs when it is a matter of any comprehensive understanding of the life of soul. In modern psychology there really is no longer any such understanding — this world view is unable to build a bridge. There, on the one side, is the physical world; according to contemporary views this is a conglomeration from a primeval nebula and everything will eventually become a kind of slag heap in the universe. This is the picture of the evolutionary process presented to us by the science of today, and it is the one and only picture in which a really honest modern scientist can find reality.

Within this picture there is no room for a moral world order. It is there on its own. One receives the moral impulses into oneself as impulses of soul. But if the assertions of natural science are true, that first everything was astir with life, then finally the human being emerged out of the primeval nebula and only then the moral ideals well up within. And when, as is alleged, the world becomes a slag heap, this will also be the graveyard of all moral ideals. They will have vanished. — No bridge can possibly be built, and what is worse, modern science cannot, without being inconsistent, admit the existence of morality in the world order. Only if modern science is inconsistent can it accept the moral world order as valid. It cannot do so if it is consistent. The root of all this is that the only kind of anatomy in existence is concerned exclusively with the solid organism and no account is taken of the fact that the human being also has a fluid organism, an airy organism, and a warmth organism. If you picture to yourselves that as well as the solid organism with its configuration into bones, muscles, nerve fibers and so forth, you also have a fluid organism and an airy organism—though these are of course fluctuating and inwardly mobile — and a warmth organism, if you picture this you will more easily understand what I shall now have to say on the basis of spiritual-scientific observation.

Think of a person whose soul is fired with enthusiasm for a high moral ideal, for the ideal of generosity, of freedom, of goodness, of love, or whatever it may be. That person may also feel enthusiasm for examples of the practical expression of these ideals. But nobody can conceive that the enthusiasm which fires the soul penetrates into the bones and muscles as described by modern physiology or anatomy. If you really take counsel with yourself, however, you will find it quite possible to conceive that when one has enthusiasm for a high moral ideal, this enthusiasm has an effect upon the warmth organism. — There, you see, we have come from the realm of soul into the physical!

Taking this as an example, we may say: Moral ideals come to expression in an enhancement of warmth in the warmth organism. Not only is one warmed in soul through what is experienced in the way of moral ideals, but one becomes organically warmer as well — though this is not so easy to prove with physical instruments. Moral ideals, then, have a stimulating, invigorating effect upon the warmth organism. You must think of this as a real and concrete happening: enthusiasm for a moral ideal — stimulation of the warmth organism. There is more vigorous activity in the warmth organism when the soul is fired by a moral ideal.

Neither does this remain without effect upon the rest of one's constitution. As well as the warmth organism there is also the air organism. We inhale and exhale the air; but during the inbreathing and outbreathing process the air is within us. It is of course inwardly in movement, in fluctuation, but equally with the warmth organism it is an actual air organism in us. Warmth, quickened by a moral ideal, works in turn upon the air organism, because warmth permeates the whole human organism, permeates every part of it. The effect upon the air organism is not that of warming only, for when the warmth, stimulated in the warmth organism, works upon the air organism, it imparts to it something that I can only call a source of light. Sources of light, as it were, are imparted to the air organism, so that moral ideals which have a stimulating effect upon the warmth organism produce sources of light in the air organism. To external perception and for ordinary consciousness these sources of light are not in themselves luminous, but they manifest in the astral body. To begin with, they are curbed — if I may use this expression — through the air that is within us. They are, so to speak, still dark light, in the sense that the seed of a plant is not yet the developed plant. Nevertheless we have a source of light within us through the fact that we can be fired with enthusiasm for moral ideals, for moral impulses.

We also have within us the fluid organism. Warmth, stimulated in the warmth organism by moral ideals, produces in the air organism what may be called a source of light which remains, to begin with, curbed and hidden. Within the fluid organism — because everything in the human constitution interpenetrates — a process takes place which underlies the outer tone conveyed in the air. I said that the air is only the body of the tone, and anyone who regards the essential reality of tone as a matter of vibrations of the air, speaks of tones just as he would speak of a person as having nothing except the outwardly visible physical body. The air with its vibrating waves is nothing but the outer body of the tone. In the human being this tone, this spiritual tone, is not produced in the air organism through the moral ideal, but in the fluid organism. The sources of tone, therefore, arise in the fluid organism.

We regard the solid organism as the densest of all, as the one that supports and bears all the others. Within it, too, something is produced as in the case of the other organisms. In the solid organism there is produced what we call a seed of life — but it is an etheric, not a physical, seed of life such as issues from the female organism at a birth. This etheric seed which lies in the deepest levels of subconsciousness is actually the primal source of tone and, in a certain sense, even the source of light. This is entirely hidden from ordinary consciousness, but it is there within us.

Think of all the experiences in your life that came from aspiration for moral ideas — be it that they attracted you merely as ideas, or that you saw them coming to expression in others, or that you felt inwardly satisfied by having put such impulses into practice, by letting your deeds be fired by moral ideals — all this goes down into the air organism as a source of light, into the fluid organism as a source of tone, into the solid organism as a source of life.

These processes are withdrawn from the field of our normal consciousness but they are active nevertheless. They become free when we lay aside our physical body at death. What is thus produced in us through moral ideals, or through the loftiest and purest ideas, does not bear immediate fruit. For during the life between birth and death, moral ideas as such become fruitful only insofar as we remain in the life of ideas, and insofar as we feel a certain satisfaction in moral deeds performed. But this is merely a matter of remembrance, and has nothing to do with what actually penetrates down into the different organisms as the result of enthusiasm for moral ideals.

So we see that our whole constitution, beginning with the warmth organism, is, as a matter of fact, permeated by moral ideals. And when at death the etheric body, the astral body, and the Ego emerge from the physical body, these higher members of our human nature are filled with all the impressions we have had. Our Ego was living in the warmth organism when it was quickened by moral ideas. We were living in our air organism, into which were implanted sources of light which now, after death, go forth into the cosmos together with us. In our fluid organism, tone was kindled which now becomes part of the Music of the Spheres, resounding from us into the cosmos. And we bring life with us when we pass out into the cosmos through the portal of death.

You will now begin to have an inkling of what the life that permeates the universe really is. Where are the sources of life? They lie in that which quickens those moral ideals which fire us with enthusiasm. We come to the point of saying to ourselves that if today we allow ourselves to be inspired by moral ideals, these will carry forth life, tone and light into the universe and will become world-creative. We carry out into the universe world-creative power, and the source of this power is the moral element.

So when we study the whole human being we find a bridge between moral ideals and what works as life-giving force in the physical world, even in the chemical sense. For tone works in the chemical sense by assembling substances and dispersing them again. Light in the world has its source in the moral stimuli, in the warmth organisms of human beings. Thus we look into the future — new worlds take shape. And as in the case of the plant we must go back to the seed, so in the case of these future worlds that will come into being, we must go back to the seeds which lie in us as moral ideals.

And now think of theoretical ideas in contrast to moral ideals. In the case of theoretical ideas everything is different, no matter how significant these ideas may be, for theoretical ideas produce the very opposite effect to that of moral ideals They cool down the warmth organism — that is the difference.

Moral ideas, or ideas of a moral-religious character, which fire us with enthusiasm and become impulses for deeds, work as world-creative powers. Theoretical ideas and speculations have a cooling, subduing effect upon the warmth organism. Because this is so, they also have a paralyzing effect upon the air organism and upon the source of light within it; they have a deadening effect upon tone, and an extinguishing effect upon life. In our theoretical ideas the creations of the pre-existing world come to their end. When we formulate theoretical ideas a universe dies in them. Thus do we bear within us the death of a universe and the dawn of a universe.

Here we come to the point where he who is initiated into the secrets of the universe cannot speak, as so many speak today, of the conservation of energy or the conservation of matter. It is simply not true that matter is conserved forever.[1] Matter dies to the point of nullity, to a zero-point. In our own organism, energy dies to the point of nullity through the fact that we formulate theoretical thoughts. But if we did not do so, if the universe did not continually die in us, we should not be human in the true sense. Because the universe dies in us, we are endowed with self-consciousness and are able to think about the universe. But these thoughts are the corpse of the universe. We become conscious of the universe as a corpse only, and it is this that makes us human.

A past world dies within us, down to its very matter and energy. It is only because a new universe at once begins to dawn that we do not notice this dying of matter and its immediate rebirth. Through our theoretical thinking, matter — substantiality — is brought to its end; through our pictorial thinking, matter and cosmic energy are imbued with new life. Thus what goes on inside the boundary of the human skin is connected with the dying and birthing of worlds. This is how the moral order and the natural order are connected. The natural world dies away in man; in the realm of the moral a new natural world comes to birth.

Moral Ideals

stimulate the warmth organism.
producing in the air organism — sources of Light.
producing in the fluid organism — sources of Tone.
producing in the solid organism — seeds of Life. (etheric)

Theoretical thoughts

cool down the warmth organism.
paralyze the sources of Light.
deaden the sources of Tone.
extinguish Life.

Because of unwillingness to consider these things, the ideas of the imperishability of matter and energy were invented. If energy were imperishable and matter were imperishable there would be no moral world-order. But today it is desired to keep this truth concealed and modern thought has every reason to do so, because otherwise it would have to eliminate the moral world-order — which in actual fact it does by speaking of the law of the conservation of matter and energy. If matter is conserved, or energy is conserved, the moral world-order is nothing but an illusion, a mirage. We can understand the course of the world's development only if we grasp how out of this 'illusory' moral world order — for so it is when it is grasped in thoughts—new worlds come into being.

Nothing of this can be grasped if we study only the solid component of man's constitution. To understand it we must pass from the solid organism through the fluid and airy organisms to the warmth organism. Our connection with the universe can be understood only if the physical is traced upwards to that rarefied state wherein the soul can be directly active in the rarefied physical element, as for example in warmth. Then it is possible to find the connection between body and soul.

However many treatises on psychology may be written — if they are based upon what is studied today in anatomy and physiology it will not be possible to find any transition to the life of soul from this solid, or solid-fluid bodily constitution. The life of soul will not be revealed as such. But if the bodily substance is traced back to warmth, a bridge can be built from what exists in the body as warmth to what works from out of the soul into the warmth in the human organism.

There is warmth both outside and inside the human organism. As we have heard, in the human constitution warmth is an organism; the soul, the soul and spirit, takes hold of this warmth organism and by way of the warmth all that becomes active which we inwardly experience as the moral. By the ‘moral’ I do not of course mean what Philistines mean by it, but I mean the moral in its totality, that is to say, all those impulses that come to us, for example when we contemplate the majesty of the universe, when we say to ourselves: We are born out of the cosmos and we are responsible for what goes on in the world. — I mean the impulses that come to us when the knowledge yielded by Spiritual Science inspires us to work for the sake of the future. When we regard Spiritual Science itself as a source of the moral, this, more than anything else, can fill us with enthusiasm for the moral, and this enthusiasm, born of spiritual-scientific knowledge, becomes in itself a source of morality in the higher sense. But what is generally called 'moral' represents no more than a subordinate sphere of the moral in the universal sense.

All the ideas we evolve about the external world, about Nature in her finished array, are theoretical ideas. No matter with what exactitude we envisage a machine in terms of mathematics and the principles of mechanics, or the universe in the sense of the Copernican system — this is nothing but theoretical thinking, and the ideas thus formulated constitute a force of death within us; a corpse of the universe is within us in the form of thoughts, of ideas.

These matters create deeper and deeper insight into the universe in its totality. There are not two orders, a natural order and a moral order in juxtaposition, but the two are one. This is a truth that must be realized by us today. Otherwise we must ever and again be asking ourselves: How can any moral impulses take effect in a world in which a natural order alone prevails? — This indeed was the terrible problem that weighed upon thinkers in the nineteenth century and early twentieth century: How is it possible to conceive of any transition from the natural world into the moral world, from the moral world into the natural world?—The fact is that nothing can help to solve this perplexing, fateful problem except spiritual-scientific insight into Nature on the one side and into the Spirit on the other.

With the premises yielded by this knowledge we shall also be able to get to the root of something that is presented as a branch of science today and has already penetrated into the general consciousness of mankind. Our worldview today is based upon Copernicanism. Until the year 1827 the Copernican conception of the universe which was elaborated by Kepler and then diluted into theory by Newton, was tabooed by the Roman Catholic Church. No orthodox Catholic was allowed to believe it. Since that year the prohibition has been lifted and the Copernican view of the universe has taken root so strongly in the general consciousness that anyone who does not base his own worldview upon it is regarded as a fool.

What is this Copernican picture of the universe? — It is in reality a picture built up purely on the basis of mathematical principles, mathematical-mechanical principles. The rudiments of it began, very gradually, to be unfolded in Greece[2] where, however, echoes of earlier thought — for example in the Ptolemaic view of the universe — still persisted. And in the course of time this developed into the Copernican system that is taught nowadays to every child.

We can look back from this world-conception to ancient times when the prevailing picture of the universe was very different. All that has remained of it are those traditions which in the form in which they exist today — in astrology and the like — are sheer dilettantism. That is what has remained of ancient astronomy, and it has also remained, ossified and immobilized, in the symbols of certain secret societies, Masonic societies and the like. There is usually complete ignorance of the fact that these things are relics of an ancient astronomy. This ancient astronomy was quite different from that of today, for it was based, not upon mathematical principles but upon ancient clairvoyant vision.

Entirely false ideas prevail today of how an earlier humanity acquired its astronomical-astrological knowledge. This was acquired through an instinctive-clairvoyant vision of the universe. The earliest Post-Atlantean peoples saw the heavenly bodies as spirit forms, spirit entities, whereas we today regard them merely as physical structures. When the ancient peoples spoke of the celestial bodies, of the planets or of the fixed stars, they were speaking of spiritual beings. Today, the sun is pictured as a globe of burning gas which radiates light into the universe. But for the people of ancient times the sun was a living Being and they regarded the sun, which their eyes beheld, simply as the outward manifestation of this Spirit Being at the place where the sun stands in the universe; and it was the same in regard to the other heavenly bodies — they were seen as Spirit Beings. We must think of an age which came to an end long before the time of the Mystery of Golgotha, when the sun out yonder in the universe and everything in the stars was conceived of as living spirit reality, living Being.

Then came an intermediary period when people no longer had this vision, when they regarded the planets, at any rate, as physical, but still thought of them as pervaded by living souls. In times when it was no longer known how the physical passes over by stages into what is of the soul, how what is of the soul passes over by stages into the physical, how in reality the two are united, people postulated physical existence on the one side and soul existence on the other. They thought of the correspondences between these two realms just as most psychologists today — if they admit the existence of a soul at all — still think, namely that the soul and the physical nature of the human being are identical. This, of course, leads thought to absurdity; or there is the so-called ‘psycho-physical parallelism’, which again is nothing else than a stupid way of formulating something that is not understood.

Then came the age when the heavenly bodies were regarded as physical structures, circling or stationary, attracting or repelling one another in accordance with mathematical laws. To be sure, in every epoch there existed a knowledge — in earlier times a more instinctive knowledge — of how things are in reality. But in the present age this instinctive knowledge no longer suffices; what in earlier times was known instinctively must now be acquired by conscious effort. And if we inquire how those who were able to view the universe in its totality — that is to say, in its physical, psychical and spiritual aspects — if we inquire how these people pictured the sun, we must say: They pictured it first and foremost as a Spirit-Being. Those who were initiated conceived of this Spirit-Being as the source of the moral. In my Philosophy of Spiritual Activity I have said that 'moral intuitions' are drawn from this source — but drawn from it in the earthly world, for the moral intuitions shine forth from us, from what can live in us as enthusiasm for the moral.

Think of how greatly our responsibility is increased when we realize: If here on the earth there were no soul capable of being fired with enthusiasm for true and genuine morality, for the spiritual moral order in general, nothing could be contributed towards the progress of our world, towards a new creation; our world would be led towards its death.

This force of light that is on the earth (diagram VII) rays out into the universe. This is, to begin with, imperceptible to ordinary vision; we do not perceive how human moral impulses ray out from the earth into the universe. If a grievous age were to dawn over the earth, an age when millions and millions of people would perish through lack of spirituality — spirituality conceived of here as including the moral, which indeed it does — if there were only a dozen people filled with moral enthusiasm, the earth would still ray out a spiritual, sun-like force! This force rays out only to a certain distance. At this point it mirrors itself, as it were, in itself, so that here (diagram VIII) there arises the reflection of what radiates from humans. And in every epoch the initiates regarded this reflection as the sun. For as I have so often said, there is nothing physical here. Where ordinary astronomy speaks of the existence of an incandescent globe of gas, there is merely the reflection of a spiritual reality in physical appearance.

You see, therefore, how great is the distance separating the Copernican view of the world, and even the old astrology, from what was the inmost secret of Initiation. The best illustration of these things is provided by the fact that in an epoch when great power was vested in the hands of groups of people, who, as they declared, considered that such truths were dangerous for the masses and did not wish them to be communicated, one who was an idealist — the Emperor Julian (called for this reason ‘the Apostate’) — wanted to impart these truths to the world and was then brought to his death by cunning means. There are reasons which induce certain occult societies to withhold vital secrets of world-existence, because by so doing they are able to wield a certain power. If in the days of the Emperor Julian certain occult societies guarded their secrets so strictly that they acquiesced in his murder, it need not surprise us if those who are the custodians of certain secrets today do not reveal them but want to withhold them from the masses in order to enhance their power — it need not surprise us if such people hate to realize that at least the beginnings of such secrets are being unveiled. And now you will understand some of the deeper reasons for the bitter hatred that is leveled against Spiritual Science, against what Spiritual Science feels it a duty to bring to mankind at the present time. But we are living in an age when either earthly civilization will be doomed to perish, or certain secrets will be restored to mankind — truths which hitherto have in a certain way been guarded as secrets, which were once revealed to people through instinctive clairvoyance but must now be reacquired by fully conscious vision, not only of the physical but also of the spiritual that is within the physical.

What was the real aim of Julian the Apostate? — He wished to make clear to the people: You are becoming more and more accustomed to look only at the physical sun; but there is a spiritual Sun of which the physical sun is only the mirror-image! In his own way he wished to communicate the Christ-Secret to the world. But in our age it is desired that the connection of Christ, the spiritual Sun, with the physical sun, shall be kept hidden. That is why certain authorities rage most violently of all when we speak of the Christ Mystery in connection with the Sun Mystery. All kinds of calumnies are then spread abroad. — But Spiritual Science is assuredly a matter of importance in the present age, and those alone who regard it as such view it with the earnestness that is its due.

Notes:

1. The law propounded by Julius Robert Mayer (1814–1878).

2. Particularly by Aristarchos of Samos, the Greek astronomer, circa 250 B.C.

The first specialized course for medical practitioners given by Rudolf Steiner took place at Easter, 1920. Several medical students also participated: Helene von Grunelius (18971936), Manfred von Kries (1899-1984), Henk and Madeleine [‘Maddy’] van Deventer (1888-1983). At an advanced age, Madeleine van Deventer wrote an article in which she recorded her memories: Die anthroposophisch-medizinische Bewegung in den verschiedenen Etappen ihrer Entwicklung [The Anthroposophical Medical Movement in its Various Stages of Development] (Arlesheim, 1982). The following material was taken from her article and also from Wer war Ita Wegman [Who was Ita Wegman] Volume I, by J. E. Zeylmans van Emmichoven, 1990.[1]

From the beginning, a number of medical students took part in the medical courses. [...] During the third course which took place in the autumn of 1922 in Stuttgart, there were about fifteen students. We often gathered in the cafés of Stuttgart. Intense conversations took place there. It had been clear to us for quite some time already, that although Rudolf Steiner's medical lectures satisfied our need for knowledge, they did not meet our humanity. We had repeatedly asked the physicians of the Stuttgart Clinic to request of Rudolf Steiner that he give other lectures to deal with the more human-moral aspect. The answer was: “We can't do that because we haven't yet fully understood the value of what he has already given us.” Where-upon we answered: “We can't wait for that. Who knows how long Rudolf Steiner will still be among us.” We knew, with that assurance which youth may have, that his time was measured, and that it would be unpardonable if he did not hear the questions which would enable him to deal with the more intimate aspect of medical work. When we realized that the path via the ‘older physicians’ led nowhere, we decided to appeal to Rudolf Steiner directly. So after discussing it amongst ourselves we decided to submit the following question at the end of the Stuttgart Course, during the time set aside for questions: “Is it not possible to show us students a way of becoming anthroposophical physicians even while we are still students?” The paper with the question on it was ignored by the discussion leader. It floated down under the table. Rudolf Steiner asked, “What is that note?” He was told, “It is a question from some students.” The only thing left to us was to turn to Rudolf Steiner directly. After the discussion we asked for a meeting with him and were asked to come the next day. Of the fifteen students, only four of us were present the next day (October 29, 1922) in front of Rudolf Steiner's apartment [...]

We brought forth our concern as well as we could. We said quite openly that we weren't able to do much with the lectures in this cycle; they seemed to us to be directed entirely toward the older physicians. We hoped to be able to understand more later, but for now we were unable to find our way there. We were searching more for what was human and moral. One of us mentioned medical school experiences. To get anything positive out of the negative aspects of university teaching, a high level of spiritual knowledge was already necessary. Another voiced the hope that there might be lectures concerning what was generally human with the subtheme of ‘Medicine’, just as there had recently been the Pedagogical Youth Course [The Younger Generation, GA 217] which had dealt with the generally human from the perspective of world history.

Rudolf Steiner listened intensely and then said: “If you want to form a humanitarian group of people, effective in the culture as the pedagogues want to be, that is a contradiction in terms. You see, for the pedagogues, the pedagogy itself could be completely absorbed in what is generally human. That is not possible in your case. You can gather either as a humanitarian group with general cultural tasks, or as medical practitioners and physicians. Both together cannot exist in this form. You may not forget the purely medical within the purely human. Also, the pedagogues are in quite a different situation: through their profession they have maintained a much stronger connection to the living human being, the child. Through their work they really cannot lose touch with the human being. But the academic medicine of today is entirely dead, has no connection at all to the human being and has no idea what happens when it concerns itself with a sick person.

In your case it is actually an entirely different matter. You feel in yourselves a vast abyss across which you have to find a bridge. You must find the bridge from the medical-scientific to that which is moral, loving. You see, if, for example, I speak of that which I call the warmth organization of the human being, then for the moment that is an abstraction for you. But you must find the bridge, so that you experience this warmth organization in such a way that out of the experience of this warmth differentiation in the individual organs, you find your way to what is morally-warm. We will have to arrive at the point where that which we call a ‘warm heart’ can be felt into the physical realm itself. You must find the way out of the scientific-physiological into the spiritual-moral and out of the spiritual-moral to the anatomical-physiological. Such a group of people, that have a ‘warm heart’ and who know right into the physical sphere how the ego in themselves works on the warmth organization, such a group will then be able to affect its surroundings out of much deeper warmth forces; it will be able, through these forces of love, which work into the physical realm, to affect the culture. On the other hand, if such people sink down, in spite of all, to the level of philistines, of narrow-mindedness, then it will become clear that sclerotic and other forces will become effective in a most radically destructive manner, much more destructive than for others!

Gather up fifty, sixty, seventy medical students who share your attitude, and bring them to me and I shall talk to you more of this. Naturally, they will have to be younger medical people, for you see, to the older ones, I really cannot speak of these things. But gather up fifty, sixty, seventy young medical students for me, they must be medical people, and young, of course not schematically according to age; for, indeed, there are old people, too, who are still young. Well, you understand what I mean, bring them to me and I will give a course for you to which one might give the theme: ‘The Humanizing of Medicine.’ ” (The quotations are unfortunately not exact. They were recorded later from memory.)

With that we were dismissed and the search for the young medical people began. [...] All inquiries flowed to Helene von Grunelius who carefully filtered and appraised them.

1923 saw several additional conversations with Rudolf Steiner in connection to our goals. I remember a meeting in the carpentry shop with Rudolf Steiner, Ita Wegman and the assistant physicians from the Clinic. Besides myself and my brother there must have been one or two other students there. The theme was Rudolf Steiner's indication that we ought to take a notebook and on the left hand side write what the professor says, or a good case history, while on the right hand side we were to transpose the medical symptoms into the language of the human sheaths. As an example, Rudolf Steiner gave the following: ‘The patient has edema of the lower half of the body’, would be transposed into: ‘Weak etheric in the lower half of the body’. It was advice which we did not follow enough, for we lacked confidence. [...]

Helene von Grunelius was, as van Deventer put it, ‘the soul’ of this group. That this was so can also be surmised from her invitation for medical students to the planned course which was to take place in Dornach in January, 1924:

Arlesheim, August, 1923

In the meantime you will have heard more about the incredibly significant lecture cycle held by Dr. Steiner from June 10 to 17, 1923, in Dornach [The Anthroposophical Movement, GA 258]. Through these lectures we anthroposophists should be moved to self-awareness. Why did we become members of the Anthroposophical Society, and are we conscious of the responsibility we have thereby taken on in relation to the spiritual world? If a society like the Anthroposophical Society is to be truly vital and capable of fulfilling its task in the world, then it must always follow a straight path toward its goals. That means that everything that is wanted and worked for in such a society must arise from the heart, the very center of Anthroposophy itself. Dr. Steiner emphasized this most particularly when he came to speak of the scientific tendencies which have sprung up within the anthroposophical movement in the last years. This is where our self-awareness must begin.

For a long time now, we younger physicians have felt that our medical movement is proceeding along a strongly intellectual track. We became particularly conscious of this during the medical course held in Stuttgart in October, 1922 [in Fundamentals of Anthroposophical Medicine, GA 314, Mercury Press]. With the exception of Dr. Steiner's lectures, these lectures, as regards the direction of their thoughts, might just as well have been given at any university. Inwardly, we rebelled against them because we perceived that the human being was not considered in his totality; warmth of heart and the pure will forces were ignored. We, however, really wanted to be able to stand within medicine as anthroposophists, meaning, as complete human beings. We perceived that all our medical work would get the proper impetus only if it arose directly out of the basic impulses of the anthroposophical movement.

We will find our way to true healing in the present time only if we really recall the core of what is anthroposophical. First of all, we must become conscious of our true humanity, and as physicians, especially of our will to heal. It is just Anthroposophy that gives us the possibility of acquiring those capacities which reveal the relation of every single thing in the outer world to the human being, so that we are then able to direct the forces of the outer world to the sick human being, so that they support his own forces of healing.

Another, no less important, task of the physician will be to accompany the human being as steady advisor, showing him how he can overcome the tendencies toward illness slumbering in him because of his onesided soul development, only by unfolding his entire human nature. For ruling the individual human being as well as all of contemporary culture are the destructive forces of the brain and of the intellect, striving toward decline. But if we want to be effective in the ascent of development we must develop in ourselves forces of the future, forces which will make us capable of true healing. We can only acquire perceptions of the human being which are necessary for such working by deepening our studies of the physical and chemical processes on the one hand, and on the other hand, by attempting to grasp, in a living way, the soul-spiritual in the other human being. Only then will we gain a real view of how these realms relate to each other in the human being. Then we will be able to see and to show how the soul-spiritual works into the physical structuring and differentiating, and how this physical in the human being can and must, in turn, be transformed into the soul-spiritual through the efficacy of moral impulses in the warm force of heart.

The task which we physicians must carry within the anthroposophical movement is so great, that only if we unite all our forces can we even attempt it. With the rebuilding of the Goetheanum, a new medical science must also be rebuilt, a humanizing of medicine.

If you would like to work with us in this way, please inform us in detail soon, so that we may begin our work together as soon as possible and meet during the fall or the Christmas holidays.[...]

On November 1, 1923, Helene von Grunelius wrote to her friend Madeleine van Deventer in Utrecht:

[...II was in Arlesheim from Friday evening until today (Thursday). I went there to inquire about the course, since we are now up to thirty-five people. After talking it over with Dr. Wegman, Dr. Steiner committed himself for eight days immediately after the Delegates Conference at Christmas (it will last from December 24 to January 1) in other words from January 2 to 9. I think this will be an opportune time for everyone. I gave him the list. He had no comment (about the names). Dr. Wegman thought he would consider it more closely in a few days, and comment on the individuals and ask questions. So he might cross people off the list if he has the impression that their attitude is not active enough and they're not really ready to follow through courageously on all he intends to bring (at least that's my impression). He expects total work from us. He said: initiative is necessary. There probably are individuals who have it, but it ought to come about that an entire group develops initiative. And that ought to be possible with a group of young people. Then he said how much the continuation and success of our work depends on its being spread in the outer world. We are now at a stage in the medical movement when it is mostly enthusiasm that can be effective, for we haven't much to show yet by way of success in healing.

[...] We can't say anything to the people yet about the course, because we have to wait to see whether Dr. Steiner will have anything to say about the list in the next few days. In any case, only people who have been invited by us or Dr. Steiner can take part in the course (we've already invited Steffen and Wachsmuth). If others ask us, we will say that we are not dealing with a 'medical course' but a particular study amongst a small group with Dr. Steiner. I gave my point of view about the Stuttgart physicians first and also mentioned how the medical conference in September had affected us, whereupon Dr. Steiner said: yes, they would actually be disturbing, if they were present. This judgment was very clear, as was the whole opinion he had of them, which wasn't exactly lofty. We agreed that we would not say anything about this statement, and if the Stuttgart physicians are insulted or complain, we, ourselves, will take the responsibility. I will try to prepare them as carefully as I can for the fact that we will not invite them to the course. [...]

Grunelius' unadorned language reflects the mood clearly. How things stood with those taking initiative for the first ‘Young Doctors' Course’ is evident. Their resistance to the older physicians was no doubt intensified by Dr. Steiner's remarks. On December 5, she wrote another letter to van Deventer with quotations from a letter of Ita Wegman's which show her attitude toward these students.

Dear Maddy, [...] Enclosed is the final (meaning, from our point of view, just about final) list. [...] Names underlined in red are those who have definitely committed themselves to the course. People responded very quickly and enthusiastically. [...] In the meantime, I did hear from Dr. Wegman. She says that, as regards the list, it is very difficult for her and also for Dr. Steiner, since both of them don't know all the people, to say whom they want and whom they don't want. Actually the organizers, meaning you and Maddy van Deventer, should choose the people, invite them and take responsibility for making sure that the people you have invited really understand what it's all about. [...] “What I gather from Dr. Steiner is that the emphasis of the course will be on the morally-human and the anthroposophical in medicine, in other words, mainly for those still studying, and for the young physicians, who, during their studies and the beginning of their practice did not find what they sought as satisfaction in their profession and their studies. So the main focus will be on this not-being-satisfied. Therefore, you must choose people who are really asking and seeking in this way. From what I can tell, not much by way of therapy will be given in this course.” [...]

By the way, we did not send a form letter, instead I wrote personally to everyone. In this case it surely was better and more effective. [...]

At the moment I am circulating the December, 1920 lectures [of December 17, 18 and 19 in GA 202, The Bridge between Universal Spirituality and Physical Man][2] and Hygiene [Health Care As a Social Issue, April 7, 1920 in GA 314][3] amongst the people, so that everyone will have read them by the time the course starts. [...]

Regarding The Bridge lectures [included in this volume] M. P. van Deventer has this to say:

In discussions between Helene von Grunelius and myself, we realized the significance of the lectures we had both heard in December 1920, which were later published and became known by the title The Bridge. The role of the warmth organization as mediator between soul and body appeared to us to be of fundamental significance. The Bridge lectures were available only in the Archives. However, upon being asked, Rudolf Steiner immediately gave us permission to duplicate and distribute them to all future participants for common preparation.

In late summer Rudolf Steiner asked me about the state of the preparations. In the course of the conversation he suddenly became very serious and requested that I tell him exactly what we really wanted. He demanded utter clarity of consciousness. I attempted to speak about the path which we already wanted to embark upon during our studies. I was too reticent, however, to speak about meditative practices. Afterwards I had the feeling as if I had failed an exam. I immediately wrote to Helene von Grunelius and asked her to go to Dornach as soon as possible and continue the discussion.

This continuation took place in late Fall 1923. Helene complained that it was impossible for her to follow the advice of keeping a notebook because she wouldn't know whether what she wrote on the right side was correct. Rudolf Steiner answered: “That doesn't matter. In the course of time you'll correct yourself; besides, you can send the notebooks to me. However, if you would like to gain greater certainty, I can give you a meditation.” Then he gave her the Warmth Meditation and told her that she could pass it on to all future participants. He himself would give it to Dr. Wegman. He called it a chain meditation (passed on from person to person by word of mouth), not a circle meditation. And he desribed it as the path of the physician towards beholding the Etheric Christ. [...]

In Dec. 1923 we could again report to Rudolf Steiner. By then we had unfortunately only found 30 participants. “Why shouldn't I speak to 30 people,” he said. As a date he gave us the week immediately following the Christmas Foundation meeting, beginning January 2. We wrote this to all participants and invited them at the same time to come already December 24 to participate in the Christmas Foundation meeting.

In this way, all were immediately united with the new stream which began with the new founding of the General Anthroposophical Society and the founding of the High School for Spiritual Science. The ‘Course for Young Doctors’ was thus the first event of the High School for Spiritual Science at the Goetheanurn in Dornach.

Notes:

1. The English translation of that book, and thus much of the text in this introduction, was done by Dorit Winter and has been published in 1994 by Mercury Press.

2. These three lectures are included in this book starting on p. 221.

3. Available from Mercury Press

From tomorrow onwards I want you to think about what questions you would like to ask, and then give these questions to me so that I may remember them as these lectures go on.

Today I want to say something in direct continuation of what was said in the two preceding lectures about the nature of the human being and his relation to the world. In our anthroposophical studies here it is useless to bother about the ‘views’ — in reality they are not ‘views’ at all — that are held by modern science in connection with the human being. It would be equally useless to make up our minds to deviate as little as possible from things that have become customary and habitual. For the state of affairs at present is that in certain great and significant directions the truth deviates very considerably from what has become customary. It deviates in an extraordinarily high degree. And so those who are striving after truth today will also need to have the courage to acknowledge many things that modern science would consider quite absurd. On the other hand, if you really want to heal, it will be necessary for you — not here, but in other places — to mix with those who set out to heal today by the methods customary in the external world. You will have to have dealings with science as it is in the modern world. Otherwise, among all the errors of the times, you will feel insecure with the truth you possess.

The current idea today is that there are about seventy to eighty substances on the earth, with certain forces of attraction and repulsion. These forces are supposed to work through certain atomic weights and the like. A number of theoretical laws of nature are then evolved according to which people try to find out how the substances are formed, and then, out of the different forces whose origin is looked for in the substances, a phantasmal picture is built up which is supposed to represent “man.”

But the truth is that neither in his form nor in the forces which maintain his processes of growth and nourishment is the human being subject only to the influences proceeding from the substances of the earth. In speaking of the etheric body, we found that it is entirely under the influence of forces which stream in from the periphery, from the cosmos. Taking these two kinds of forces — those which proceed from the substances of the earth, and those which stream in from the periphery — you will realize that a balancing, a harmonizing of these two kinds of forces, is necessary for each organ in the body. The several systems of organs in the human being differ very considerably in the way in which this balance is established.

Let us now consider the human head from this point of view. To begin with, attention must be called — and I have often done this—to the weight of the human brain which is very largely eliminated because the brain, with its definite outline, floats in the cerebral fluid. The brain floats in the cerebral fluid which circulates through the spinal column. The actual weight of the brain is about thirteen hundred to fifteen hundred grams. But when it is within the human being, it weighs much less — at most, twenty grams. This is because it floats in the cerebral fluid, and, according to the Law of Archimedes, every body, when it floats in fluid, loses as much of its weight as is equivalent to the weight of the volume of fluid displaced. In the fluid, the brain is subject to buoyancy so that only about twenty to twenty-five grams of its weight remains, and this is the weight with which the brain presses downwards. If it were to press downwards with its full weight there could be no blood vessels underneath it; they would be crushed. The earthly quality of heaviness is actually taken away from the brain. It is not the earthly quality of heaviness that enables us to be alive in the brain, but the buoyancy, the force that is in opposition to heaviness. In the case of the brain, this earthly heaviness amounts to, at most, twenty grams. The force of attraction exercised by the earth upon the human head is very little.

We see from this that the earthly characteristic of the brain vanishes — vanishes because of the way man is organized. The human organization is such that the earthly forces vanish. The Law of Archimedes has taught humanity about buoyancy, but it is not always taken account of in technical contrivances. I am not sure whether people realize it, but it is quite obvious that they acknowledge laws which happen to suit them and ignore those which do not. What I have told you about heaviness disappearing applies not only to the human head but to the whole inner structure of the head. Something else happens as a result of the special

arrangement of the breathing process, of certain static conditions which hold sway between in-breathing and out-breathing. When we draw a breath, a force is exercised, and then comes a counter force when we breathe out again. The relationship between this force and counter force in breathing is similar to the relationship between gravity and buoyancy.

The curious thing is that when we are walking, the head, the brain, remains at rest. On account of buoyancy, the brain is not heavy, and its inner condition of rest, its inner static condition, is not changed when we are walking. Nor is this true only of our walking, but, in a curious manner, it is especially true also of the movement we make together with the earth. We only share in the movement with the rest of the body, not with the brain. The movement is quashed, so far as the brain is concerned. We may move the head itself as rapidly as the rest of the body, but even then the brain remains at rest. It is harder to conceive that something that is momentarily in movement is, in reality, at rest, than to conceive that something that is subject to gravity is, in reality, not heavy. But it is so, nevertheless. Thinking of the inner organization of the human being, we must say that the head remains at rest all the time. All the forces adjust themselves; there is a slight pull of gravity in the downward direction, in a proportion of twenty to fifteen hundred, and in the forward direction there is a very slight propelling force of movement. In essentials, however, the movement is balanced out.

We can, therefore, say that the human head, as regards its inner existence, is like a person who is sitting quietly in an automobile and not moving at all while the car moves forward. The experience of the human head is just as it would be if it had no weight. Neither does it move when the human being moves and when the earth is moving together with the human being. The head is, therefore, a very special organ, for it excludes itself, exiles itself from what is happening on the earth; the earth only participates to a small extent in the activities of the head. The head is an image of the cosmos. In its essential nature, it has nothing to do with the forces of the earth. The inner structure of the brain is an image of the cosmic forces. Its form cannot be explained from anything of an earthly nature but only from the in-working cosmos. I must speak rather crudely here, but you will understand me. The earth works only to this extent, that it breaks through the cosmic formation and inserts into the human being that which tends towards the earth. You can see this readily by looking at a skeleton. Take away the skull and you have taken away the part of the skeleton that is an image of the cosmos. The arrangement of the ribs is only half cosmic for here the skeleton is already impressed by the earthly forces. In the long bones of the legs and the long

bones of the arms, you have a purely earthly formation. The spinal vertebrae to which the ribs are connected have arisen from the condition of equilibrium between the cosmic and the earthly. In the head, with its covering skull you have a form in which the cosmos deprives the earthly forces of the possibility of taking shape; this form of the skull is an image of the cosmos. In this way we must study the forms of the human body.

When we study the forms of the human body in this way, knowing that the inner life of the head, the soft substances and fluids of the head remain at rest and in this state of rest are an image of the cosmos, we shall realize that anatomy and physiology, as presented today, cannot really be said to be true because they do not acknowledge the existence of cosmic influences. I have spoken of forces which proceed from the periphery and stream inwards. They stream in from all sides upon the human head. But it makes a difference if these forces are intercepted by the moon, by the sun, or by Saturn. There peripheric forces are modified by the planetary bodies standing in the heavens. The directions from which these forces stream in are, therefore, not without significance. The in-streaming is essentially modified according to the position of the constellation from which it comes.

This is a thought around which there is nothing but dilettantism today, but in olden times it was the basis of great astronomical wisdom. The dreadful treatises that exist on such subjects today give no picture at all of the reality. Understanding of what I have said is essential before we can have insight into the structure and make-up of the human being. For the fact that in his head the human being is subject entirely to the cosmos, and in the long bones of arms and legs entirely to the earthly forces, is an expression, right down into substance, of how the cosmic formative forces behave. You know that human bone contains calcium carbonate. But it also contains calcium phosphate. Both substances are very important for the bones. Through the calcium carbonate the bones become subject to the earth. If the bone substance was not permeated by calcium carbonate, the earth could not approach the bones. The calcium carbonate constitutes the substantial point of contact for the earth which is thereby able to shape the bones in accordance with its formative forces. The thigh bones could not have their extension from above downwards if this was not made possible by the calcium carbonate. But there would be no femoral head without CaPO3. This fact is not changed by the objection which anatomists will raise, that the quantities of CaCO3 and CaPO3 do not essentially differ in the shaft of a long bone and its neck or head. To begin with, this statement is not quite accurate, for minute research will reveal a difference, but something else comes into consideration here. The human organism must have within it both up-building processes and processes of demolition — processes out of which something is built up and processes by means of which what is not used in the up-building is separated off.

A very decided difference between these up-building forces and forces of demolition in substances themselves is shown, for example, by fluorine. The physiologist would say that fluorine plays a part in the up-building of the teeth and is also present in the urine. Fluorine, therefore, exists here and there in the human body. But that is not the point of importance. In the up-building of the teeth, the activity of the fluorine is a positive one. The teeth could not develop without fluorine. In urine, there is fluorine which has been broken down and is excreted. The essential thing is to distinguish between whether a substance is being eliminated at some place in the body or whether it is an absolute necessity in the up-building process. If part of a bone is built in from the cosmos, as it were, CaPO3 has here an up-building activity. In another part of a bone the CaPO3 is being eliminated. In the shafts of the long bones, CaCO3 builds up, but it is being eliminated in that part of the bone which is built in from the cosmos (head of the bone). The essential thing is not the actual presence, here or there, of a substance. The point of importance is what the substance is doing, what significance it has at some particular place in the organism.

I once tried to give a picture of these things by saying the following: Suppose I am going for a walk one morning at nine o'clock and see two men sitting together on a bench. At three o'clock in the afternoon I pass the bench again and the two men are together there again. These two facts in themselves really tell me nothing, because it may be that one of the men had taken his lunch with him and had remained sitting on the bench from nine o'clock until three o'clock, while the other had gone off for a walk and had come back again just before three o'clock. One of them is quite rested, the other terribly tired. In this respect there is an inner difference between them. The point of importance is not the presence of the one person or the other, but what each of them has been doing, how has life brought him to this particular place. Therefore, so far as understanding of the human being is concerned, the presence of some substance in an organ is not really a matter of importance. It is a question of knowing in what kind of process the substance is involved — a process of up-building or a process of demolition.

We shall never find the transition from the quality of a substance that is necessary to the human organism, to a remedy, unless we keep this process in mind. This is the only way which will lead to the realization that the distribution of substances in the cosmos is quite different from what is usually thought. It is a striking fact — a fact to which no thought has been given for five or six centuries — that while certain analytical processes prove the existence of iron in the human organism (it can be said quite certainly that there is iron in the blood), attempts to prove the existence of lead in the human organism will fail, if the organism is in a normal state. Lead is only known in the form of lead ores, or heavy lumps. But just think of it — all metals which exist in the coarse, lumpy form as earthly substances were once present during the epochs of Saturn, Sun and Moon, in the fluid condition, even in the condition of warmth ether. Now, the human being — in a different form of course — was already in existence on Old Saturn. He has been involved in all these processes, among them the process whereby, out of a fluid, delicate etheric condition, iron has become what it is today. Man has been involved in the whole process of the world's evolution.

The strange thing is that the human being has taken iron and also magnesium into his own structure, but not lead. He has united the magnesium process with his own being. But he threw out the lead process. So far as the magnesium is concerned, therefore, we see that there are working, within the human being, the same forces as are working in magnesium in the external world; the human being has to master them inwardly. But before man was enclosed in his skin, when he was still a structure that was involved in a process of metamorphosis and united with the cosmos, he overcame the lead process and still has within him the forces for the elimination of the lead process. He has within him the up-building forces of magnesium and the forces for the elimination of the lead process.

What does this mean, in reality? You need only study what happens to the human organism in lead poisoning. It becomes inwardly brittle, sclerotic. It is therefore correct to say that the organism cannot tolerate lead and when there is lead poisoning there is lead within the organism. The organism begins to fight against the process that is contained in the lead substance — substances are always processes. Lead spreads out within the organic process, and the organism, exerting itself in opposition, tries to drive out the lead. When it succeeds it gets well. If the lead proves itself to be the stronger, the organism does not get well, and the well-known process of decay that is connected with lead poisoning sets in, because the organism can only tolerate those processes which overcome the lead process. It cannot tolerate the formative forces of lead. If we now try to find out what it means to the human being that he will not put up with having lead in his organism, we are led to the following: man is a being of sense. He perceives things around him and then thinks about them. He needs both forms of activity. He must perceive things in order that he may be connected with the world; he must also think about them. He must repress the act of actual perception and then unfold his own, independent activity. If we were only to perceive, we should lose ourselves all the time in acts of external seeing. But by retreating from the things themselves, by thinking about them — thereby, we become a personality, an individuality. We do not lose ourselves in the things. If we study the human etheric body, we find that it has within it a center for the forces which throw out lead. This center, approximately, lies where the hairs grow in a kind of vortex at the back of the crown of the head. That is the center of the forces which overcome lead. They stream into all parts of the organism in order that the formative forces of lead may not get into the organism. The forces which the body has developed for the overcoming of lead have great significance, for they are the same forces which enable me, when I am looking, say, at this piece of chalk, not to be entirely caught up in the simple act of looking at the chalk. Otherwise I should identify myself with the object of perception. But I make myself independent, I dampen down the perception of the object observed by means of those forces which overcome lead. It is due to these forces that the human being can be a self-contained personality; these forces enable the human being to separate himself from the world.

I will now speak of something that is very striking in connection with the forces which overcome lead. Not only have they a physical-etheric significance but also a psychical and moral significance.

The human being takes certain metallic substances into himself, unites them with his own bodily organism; other metallic substances he overcomes and has them within him only in the form of processes of rejection, processes which are master of these substances. Now why is it that in the course of his long evolution from the Saturn period and the Sun period, man has separated off certain external substances and has received others into his organism? In that man has this process of elimination within, he is able to receive into himself independent moral forces. We can imagine that the human organism, as constituted presently, may be unable to make use of lead but contains certain forces which compensate for lead; we can imagine the organism containing lead in the same way as it now contains iron. If this were so the human being would bring into himself semi-moral qualities; for it is so with lead. He would then have a morbid affinity (we should call it a 'morbid' or pathological affinity) to the impurities existing in the outside world. Such a person would always be on the lookout for vile-smelling substances and like to smell them. If we notice that some child has perverted instincts of this kind — and there are children who are partial to everything that smells, — they will sniff petroleum, for instance — then we may be sure that the quality of the blood that rejects lead is not present. And it is then a matter of calling up this lead-rejecting power by clinical methods or even by medicaments. It is possible to do this.

And now let us think of magnesium, a substance which plays a significant role in the human organism. There is something very interesting about magnesium. When speaking about education I have said many times that the first period of life, the period which lasts to the time of the change of teeth, must be sharply differentiated from the following periods. The second period lasts from the change of teeth until puberty. Magnesium, as well as fluorine, is necessary for the development of the teeth. But the process of the development of the teeth is not localized in the upper and lower jaws — the whole organism participates in it. The magnesium process takes place over the whole organism. And this is the most important process of all up to the time of the change of teeth. After the teeth have changed, magnesium has no longer its former significance. For the magnesium forces in the human being harden the organism; they enclose it in itself. This consolidation of the organism, this incorporation of the forces and substances, comes to an end at the second dentition.

Until then, the magnesium forces are exceedingly important for the organism. This organism, so far as its development is concerned, must now be considered a self-contained whole. It must contain and it must enfold the magnesium process, for if this process were absent the organism would lack the necessary forces of consolidation. The organism cannot cease generating the magnesium forces. This goes on after the change of teeth just as it did before. The magnesium forces must be worked upon in the organism, and after the change of teeth the essential thing in regard to magnesium is that it must be overcome, must be thrown out. It enters particularly into the secretion of milk, is excreted with the milk. The secretion of milk is connected with puberty, so you have here a periodic process. Up to the change of teeth magnesium is consumed, as it were, by the organism; after the change of teeth, up to the time of puberty, it is thrown off, separated. And magnesium, now a substance to be secreted, is one of the forces which form the milk. After puberty there is a kind of rebound and the magnesium forces are used for the more delicate consolidation of the muscles.

Substances are only a combination of processes. Lead is only in semblance the heavy, gray substance — with which we are familiar. It is nonsense to say that lead is a piece of coarse substance. In reality, lead is the process that goes on within the boundaries which mark the extent of the spread of lead. Everything is a process. One cannot say, once and for all, that certain 'substance processes' are worked up in the human being, and certain others, like the lead process, for which we must always have the power of elimination, are thrown off. It is not correct to say this because there are other processes, like the magnesium process, in connection with which there is rhythmic alternation; in periods which alternate rhythmically we have to consume the magnesium process, and then again throw it out.

This will show you that it means nothing to say, as the result of mere analysis: the human organism contains magnesium. It means nothing, for in the twelfth year of life these substances have quite a different significance than they have in the fourth or fifth year of life. We unfold a real knowledge of the human being when we know the period during which certain substance processes are important in the human organism. If we want to know how substances outside in nature can work further within the human organism, it is of very little importance to study the chemical composition of these substances. We must study something that is hardly studied at all today. If we trace back the study of substances to the thirteen or fourteenth century, we find the beginnings of modern chemistry. These beginnings are to be found in the alchemical processes which are so often scoffed at nowadays. But alchemy contained something else too, of which there has been no continuation. It is what might be called today the doctrine of signatures. This Doctrine of Signatures was applied especially in the study of plants but also of minerals, and it has not been developed or continued.

The characteristic quality of antimony is its well-known spiky, crystalline formation. If you apply a certain metallurgical treatment to antimony, you get the familiar “antimony mirror” when the volatilizing antimony is precipitated on a cold surface. Antimony has the tendency to develop forms which reveal themselves very clearly as forms of the etheric body. The shapes taken by antimony are very similar to the forms of certain simple plants which have an affinity to the etheric body. When one studies antimony one has the feeling at once that this antimony is very sensitive to etheric forces. It has an affinity with etheric forces. Everyone can confirm this by bringing antimony to the cathode. There will be a series of slight explosions which show the relation of antimony to the etheric forces. This is a striking case, but at one time people had a great faculty for understanding these things. This faculty is now quite lost and no attention or respect is paid to such indications as I have given. And for this reason, certain significant observations leave people in complete perplexity.

Think of diamond, graphite, anthracite, common coal. They are all carbon, but yet so different from each other. Why are they different? If people were capable of not limiting their investigations to the chemical composition but of finding out about the ‘Signature’, as it was called in olden times, they would begin to understand what the difference is between common coal and graphite. Common coal came into being during the Earth evolution, graphite during the preceding Moon evolution. Diamond came into being during the Sun evolution. When you study these things in the cosmic aspect, you realize once again that what is of essential importance is not the substance itself but the conditions and times under which and during which a substance assumed a definite form. Physical reality is subject to the element of time, and time has a definite significance. If you think of what I have said, you will realize: common coal is a child, it has as yet no great age; graphite is a youth, but older than common coal; diamond, though not exactly ancient, is very mature. If you have to set a task which demands the power of maturity, you will not give it to a child. Everything depends on the age. So you will realize that simply because of its cosmic age, coal, in whatever form it appears, has a different task from graphite which is more mature.

Insight into cosmic processes is necessary if we want to understand the relationship of the human being to what is out there in the cosmos. Antimony has a particular connection with the human etheric body, and if you introduce it into the human organism as a medicament, you must understand what antimony is outside the human being before you can know what is stimulated in the etheric body by the use of antimony. You must study the delicate processes in nature if you want to understand how a medicament is to act within the human organism.

It is, of course, only possible to give aphoristic indications here of what will have to be communicated in detail as time goes on, if your connection with the movement at the Goetheanum is to be continued in any real way.

It must be emphasized, above all, that in the very nature of things, one cannot heal in opposition to karma. The fundamental attitude of the physician must be that no healing is possible if it runs counter to karma. In his will-to-heal, the physician's attitude must, from the very outset, tend in two directions. First of all, there must be the unconquerable will that karma be fulfilled. The physician needs this above all for himself, for as you have heard, in a sense, he loses, so far as he himself is concerned, the effect of what he uses for his patients. It can, of course, be transformed so that it will also be effective for him, but all you need to know, in the first place, is what I have already said on this subject. The physician, too, is naturally subject to karma so far as his own health and illness are concerned. But when the proper attitude is present, when therapeutic knowledge penetrates deeply into the human soul, it can be said that the consciousness of karma becomes more and more an actual revelation of karma.

Karma has its two sides. You must regard karma in such a way that you relate your destiny to the earthly life immediately preceding the present one. Karma, in this aspect, is the expression of what the previously earthly lives have brought. But you have also to think of karma in the fifth or sixth subsequent earthly life, in the fifth or sixth life following the present one. Then you will have the results of what is happening now. If you carry this thought to its conclusion, you will realize that karma, too, is in the becoming, that what is happening now adds one thing or another to karma. It can also be said that here and there our deeds may give a turn to karma. Nobody who understands karma can ever be a fatalist.

The one direction of the physician's attitude is, therefore, towards karma. This leads to a sense of security and sureness in life, gives a firm standpoint. The other direction, however, is this; that the will-to-heal must always be present. This will must never, under any circumstances, weaken. It must be at work in therapy all the time, so that it can be truly said that everything possible is being done, even when one is of the opinion that the patient is incurable. You must suppress this opinion and do everything possible about healing. I merely indicate this, aphoristically.

What we have to do today is to deepen, in the esoteric sense, those things that may result in the awakening of soul forces in medical study. The content of the esoteric teaching must assume a particular form, must become a special activity, for the physician. The physician will not be able to content himself with looking at things as they are looked at in ordinary life. This is just what ordinary science does. Science does not call upon forces of soul which are not applied in ordinary life; on the contrary, science throws all its weight upon the side of not calling upon such forces. But the ordinary, current view of life does not enable us to know that some substance or process in the world contains healing forces. The healing forces are only revealed by things when we approach them with certain awakened powers of soul. It will be for you, step by step, to awaken these powers of soul in order that things may speak to you in such a way that in your work as physicians you are able to help human beings by their means. What is of importance is that what I have said to you about the attitude of the physician shall be infinitely deepened in your souls.

I will take a simple subject, to begin with, and treat it in the way in which it ought to be treated in medical study. It will seem aphoristic here, but when there is time, it will be developed.

Think of the form that is revealed to you in the bony skull. We can take this bony skull and draw it. Look at its form and contrast this form with what is revealed to you by a long bone — let us say the thigh bone. These bones are not quite on their own, for manifold physical forces play around the bony skull; equally manifold forces play around the long bones. But the reality of a long bone will only be revealed to you if you study it in connection with the whole universe.

Just think of a long bone. Its forces are such that they pass through its length, and when the human being assumes his true earthly posture, they actually go down to the central point of the earth. But that is not the essential. The essential thing about a long bone is that it introduces these forces into the connection that exists between the central point of the earth and the moon. Therefore whatever is placed in the body like the long bone of the thigh or the bone of the upper arm, or a muscle lying in a similar position, is really inserted into the forces which connect the earth with the moon. You can picture it like this. Here you have the earth. (See diagram below.)

Forces stream up to the moon from the earth and these forces include everything that is involved, let us say, in the position in which the thigh is when the human being is standing or walking.

On the other hand, everything that has a position like that of the skull-covering is membered into the Saturn movement. In the skull there are the rotatory forces which belong to Saturn. So that we can say: The human being is formed from below upwards through the connection between earth and moon. He is rounded off, finished off, by the rotatory forces of Saturn. But these two kinds of forces are counter to each other. In the forces which are contained in the connection between earth and moon there lies everything that gives the human being his plastic form, everything that builds him, plastically. One might say: There is a secret sculptor in these forces; whereas the other forces give rise to a perpetual process of demolition, in which the substances which build up the human being plastically are again disintegrated or dispersed. When you cut a nail, you with your scissors are in the Saturn forces; when you eat, this takes you into the realm of the forces working between earth and moon. All these latter forces are up-building forces. All the other forces pulverize the human being. In this interaction between pulverization and plastic up-building live the soul of man and the spirit of man. Therein they manifest themselves.

All that is connected with the etheric body of man both in the outer world and within man himself is connected with these peripheric forces. Silver is connected, in a certain respect, with the forces of up-building. So that when you notice in a human being that the up-building forces are being overpowered by the forces of demolition, you can as a rule correct this by means of some medicament derived from silver. But if you notice that the up-building forces are rampant, that they are maintaining the human being too strongly within his form, hindering as it were the process of pulverization, you will have recourse to the remedies that come from Saturn, from lead. When we know how the human being is built up, we begin to see how we must act.

What we have to do is find our way into this kind of perception. You see, my dear friends, the true world, the world of the spirit, has always been said, and rightly said, to lie on yonder side of a threshold. The human being lives on this side of a threshold. He has to pass over this threshold in order to attain true knowledge, true insight into the constitution of the world. Speaking generally, it is dangerous for the human being to cross this threshold without preparation. For if he carries with him into the spiritual world on yonder side of the threshold his ordinary sense-perception, permeated with thoughts as in ordinary life, he calls forth illusion, downright illusion before his spiritual eyes, because he then judges things on yonder side of the threshold just as he does here, in the physical world. Therefore there stands at the threshold that spiritual being from whom we learn that quite different concepts are necessary when we cross the threshold, that illusions paralyze our life if we pass over into the spiritual world with the ordinary concepts derived from the world of the senses. This Guardian of the Threshold warns us that we must first acquire the ideas that are needed in the spiritual world. People as a rule do not believe that the concepts which correspond to facts in the spiritual world are so very different from those which are suitable in the physical world. In the physical world, for example, the part is always smaller than the whole. This is an axiom. But it is not so in the spiritual world. There, the part is always greater than the whole.

We understand this from an example drawn from the being of man. If we think of a force which the human being has within him when, for instance, he is building up his body out of mineral matter and then think of the nexus of forces which one part of him contains, then, in the face of the cosmos, that which forms the organ — which is the part — is essentially greater than the whole human being. It is not easy at once to visualize the maxim that the part is greater than the whole because you are accustomed to the sense-world; but in face of the super-sensible world it is absolutely true. We must attain to the insight that in the spiritual world the part can be greater than the whole. Our laws of mechanics and physics do not hold for the super-sensible world, rather precisely the opposite. Here, in the material world, a straight line is the shortest distance between two points. In the spiritual world, it is the longest, because there, if we go in the straight direction, we have the most obstacles to overcome. Every other direction is shorter, there, than the straight one.

We must be absolutely clear that if we want to enter the spiritual world, ideas and concepts are needed that are quite contrary to what is a matter of course in the physical world. Courage is required so that we shall not enter into the spiritual world in confusion. We must have courage enough to pass over the spiritual threshold, over the abyss. If we cross over to the spiritual world, if we pass the Guardian of the Threshold and reach the spiritual world yonder in the soul and spirit, in astral body and ego, consciously, then all is well. But if we do not pass through this experience in the ego and astral body, illusion arises and when this illusion shoots back upon the human being, illness is the result. Whenever a man is ill, he really has the Guardian of the Threshold within him, but in a kind of demonic counterpart.

There again I come to the demonic element of which I already had to speak. When we look at a human being with ordinary perception, all his members are intermixed. On the one side there is the ego and the astral body of the man; on the other side there is the etheric body and the physical body. All seems to be intermixed when we look at him with ordinary sight. And what is essential above all is to learn to distinguish what is of the soul in a human being from what is of the body. When the soul is in the body, and you are looking at a human being, the soul does not appear as it really is. Indeed and in truth the soul is light. You must learn more and more to realize that the human soul, when we behold it in its absence from the body, is light. It belongs to what surrounds us as the etheric elements — it belongs to the light. The human soul belongs entirely to the realm of light. We see it rightly when we see it within light.

On the other hand, the body belongs to heaviness. I have shown how heaviness is overcome, how the brain becomes much lighter than its external weight. But the physical body, in the form in which we perceive it, belongs to heaviness. Just as through chemical analysis you get hydrogen and oxygen out of water, so, if you want to behold man in his true being, you must member him into the soul with its power of radiance and the body with its might of heaviness. These two realities — the soul with its power of radiance, and the body with its might of heaviness — are interwoven in confusion when they are looked at with physical eyes. And because they are thus interwoven in confusion, we cannot see in the body, or in the human being as a whole, the essential nature of the illness. By so adjusting your soul that you can observe the human being in such a way that you see how the nature of the illness is revealed, then, gradually, when you look at lead, or silver, you will realize what healing forces are contained in these substances.

But you must take your medical life in tremendous earnestness. You must take the meditative life with such strength into your soul that through this meditative life you grasp the world differently. And that is why I want to give you now words which, if they are added to the others (see Lecture Four) and truly meditated upon, will bring you into the same relation with particular substances which these substances themselves have to the healthy and the sick human being. You must let the words, which I am now going to write on the board, awaken your souls to the realization that what you see of the human being in ordinary life is not the reality. When you vitalize your souls with what lies in these words, then you will perceive the truth, the true reality of the human being.

What I have said up to now will help you, in a general way, to understand the human being in his relation to the cosmos. Today I should like to give you something that will help you to meditative knowledge of, say, a tiny piece of gold. I hammer it into a thin leaf and when I look through it I see green. In its green appearance it awakens, not from mere vague analogy, the same inner experience as green meadows, the green plant covering of the earth; it does indeed awaken this experience if I look at the gold leaf with deeper forces of soul. If then I really steep myself, with all my forces of soul, in the tiny, shimmering piece of gold, the opposite power of soul is awakened. Then, as well as the green shimmering gold — as I look now towards it and now away from it — a whole world comes to me, a whole world shimmers towards me in a kind of pale bluish-red light. And in that moment I know that the whole world is present in that tiny piece of gold. This little piece of gold which, to begin with, has a green shimmer, is, in reality, a whole sphere. Every tiny piece of gold is a center of a whole sphere and I learn to live and weave in the bluish-red, the bluish-violet colors of a sphere. And then, if you learn to know other qualities of gold you will realize their living connection. For instance, you will experience, but fundamentally and basically, the known quality of gold, namely, that it will not combine with oxygen. Then, you will say to yourselves: The human being lives through having oxygen; he lives through perpetually working in oxygen. In the etheric body, as you know, everything is different. The etheric body is related to what is not anchored in the physical body. Gold is related to the etheric body because it refuses to be combined with oxygen. So that by virtue of this very quality, gold works as a healing power in the etheric body for what oxygen, for example, may give rise to in the physical body. For this reason, gold is, as it were, a remedy that works from the center of the human being.

Through this impression of radiance in the pale bluish-red light, you get at the inner truth of the saying: “Gold is sun; gold is wholly sun.” This one piece of gold reveals to you that in cosmic space, gold is the sun, and that this gold-sun is related to your etheric body.

But this means that you are led to those qualities of a substance that are needed in therapy. But you will only really come to this realization by taking the following meditation, not as mere words, but in all earnestness, and as an unceasing challenge to the soul:

See in thy Soul
Power of Radiance;
Feel in thy Body
Might of Heaviness!

Schau in deiner Seele
Leuchtekraft,
Fühl in deinem Körper
Schweremacht.

But this must be a real exercise. You must practice with the aim of making your soul into something that really streams out into space and is like light, the power of radiance; and you must practice with the aim of making your body into something that through its own inner heaviness is connected with the inner being of the earth. You must have a real inner experience of this tremendous contrast, and then you separate your soul and body, as they should be separated. The verse continues:

In Power of Radiance
Rays the Spirit-I.

In der Leuchtekraft
Strahlet Geistes-Ich.

The human “P” rises up as an inner experience in the soul. It is a picture that you must understand. In the soul that is streaming out, radiating out into the universe, the “I” unfolds. To these words you must add:

In Might of Heaviness
God-Spirit wells.

In der Schweremacht
Kraftet Gottes-Geist.

The men of earlier times spoke, not merely in trivial analogy, but as something in profound correspondence with truth, of the human being, the human body, as being a temple of the Godhead. Just as it is true that the “I” is the ruler within the soul when the soul is conscious, so it is also true that the Divine, the Godhead, is the ruler in the body. You may not really speak of your body as your own, for the body is not of man, but of God. It is so indeed. The body of man grows out of the Divine forces. To man belongs only the soul that is within that body. In the instrument that is your body you must see the temple of God. It is of tremendous importance to know this:

In Power of Radiance [of the soul]
Rays the Spirit-I;
In Might of Heaviness
God-Spirit wells.

In der Leuchtekraft [der Seele]
Strahlet Geistes-Ich
In der Schweremacht
Kraftet Gottes-Geist.

The Divine Spirit is mighty in the human body, just as the “I” is mighty in the human soul. And now comes the important thing:

Yet shall not
Power of Radiance
Lay hold of
Might of Heaviness.

Doch darf nicht
Leuchtekraft
Ergreifen
Schweremacht.

When the human being is asleep it is clear to you that his soul is separated from his body. He has separated soul and body. During sleep the soul has not got hold of the body. But in waking life, too, the condition must be such that although the ego and astral body come down in the physical and etheric bodies, there must be an inner separation, and inner apartness between the power of radiance and the might of heaviness. Chemical combination between the power of radiance and the might of heaviness must not arise; these two powers must be inwardly separate. They must not mingle with each other mechanically nor be inwardly united in any way. The might of heaviness of the body, the power of radiance of the soul must work side by side, the former downwards, the latter upwards, within the same space. For that reason, the following words are important.

Yet shall not
Power of Radiance
Lay hold of
Might of Heaviness,
Nor may
Might of Heaviness
Permeate
Power of Radiance.

Doch darf nicht
Leuchtekraft
Ergreifen
Schweremacht
Und auch nicht
Schweremacht
Durchdringen
Leuchtekraft.

The last two lines merely express the opposite of the first two. That which our external, sense-knowledge continually mixes together, must, in reality, be separate within the human being. When you look at the human being with knowledge that comes from the senses, everything is intermixed; and if the human being were indeed what he appears to be to ordinary perception, he would be ill all the time. The human being can be healthy, but our material perception of him is a condition of illness. As we see him, the human being is perpetually ill, but such perception is, of course, Maya, illusion. In his true being, a man must never be as we see him. In his true being of man, power of radiance and might of heaviness must not be intermingled. They must be inwardly separate from each other. There must be nothing of what happens in water, where hydrogen and oxygen enter into a chemical combination with each other and, in themselves, really disappear. This is what ordinary sense-perception does; it has had the bad taste to adopt chemical ideas and to look at the human being as if he were a combination of the power of radiance and the might of heaviness. These two are separate and must so remain — just as if in water, hydrogen and oxygen were separate, although united.

For when Power of Radiance seizes
Might of heaviness,
And when Might of Heaviness enters
Power of radiance,
Then in World-confusion Soul and Body
Bind each other
Unto Perdition.

Denn fasset Leuchtekraft
Die Schweremacht
Und dringet Schweremacht
In Leuchtekraft,
So binden in Welten-Irre
Seele and Körper
In Verderbnis sich.

In perdition is illness. You must take this in full seriousness, so seriously that it forms your body that you can really look at the human being according to the power of radiance and might of heaviness and that you have the feeling when they take hold of one another, they are enemies. In illness they do lay hold of one another. When the power of radiance lays hold of the might of heaviness (weight), bodily illnesses arise; when the might of heaviness presses into the power of radiance, the so-called mental illnesses arise. Just think of it — in the body lives the Divine Spirit. If the power of radiance seizes upon the might of heaviness, the human being is wrongly appropriating the Divine within him.

If you learn to think about these things with the moral impulses that are necessary, to feel them deeply and then to will with what you have felt, you gradually begin to perceive the things and processes of the world in such a way that when the power of radiance has laid hold of the might of heaviness you realize how you can separate the power of radiance from the might of heaviness through something that gives support to the etheric body from out of the astral body, through some substances or else through some process in the human being. If you really feel these things, you will also understand the healing forces of curative eurythmy. The healing power in curative eurythmy is something that reckons very specially with the cosmic forces in the process of healing. When you do exercises with the consonants in curative eurythmy, you are within the moon forces. When you unfold the powers of the vowels in curative eurythmy you are within the Saturn forces. Through these two kinds of forces in curative eurythmy the human being feels his way directly into the cosmos.

Therapy, of course, is the essential thing in medicine, but there can be no therapy without absolutely useful diagnosis. Suppose we are able to confirm that the formative principle is too strong in a human being, that this formative power is coming from salts or carbohydrates which he cannot keep within bounds; there is too much form in him. If you really observe the more delicate workings of the organism—and the symptoms may be only very subtle — you will find that vowels in curative eurythmy which work against form will have an extraordinarily favorable effect.

Or suppose a child shows a slight tendency to stuttering. I am not, of course, going to make any dilettante statements about stuttering being due to this or that cause; naturally, all kinds of things may be wrong and so be the cause of it. But whatever the trouble may be, in cases of stuttering a predominating formative force is present, and therefore vowel exercises in curative eurythmy will be good, carried out in the sequence that is natural in the being of man, the true manifestation of the being of man. So that much can be achieved with children who have a tendency to stuttering by taking the vowel sequence: A(ah), E(ay), I(ee), 0, U, in curative eurythmy provided one has the necessary patience and love.

If you think about all these things, my dear friends, you will realize the importance of regarding the esoteric principles which I gave you a few days ago and have given today, as a kind of morality in medical study. By morality I mean the feeling of being bound to a duty, the feeling of being obliged, through meditation, to bring the soul into the necessary and lasting attunement for facing the world in the true and right way. If lectures could be given you for a whole year, a great deal could be said in detail and this would be of concrete use to you in practice. But as in these lectures we could only make a beginning, it has been of very particular importance to speak of the development of the medical and therapeutic powers which lie within the human being — to place these powers within your reach. For if, with these esoteric hints, you go to your medical studies, you will see that things become different. Maybe they will become more difficult. If someone of a rather dull intellect (and education makes the intellect dull today) takes up medical studies, a certain inner persistence will carry him through the first and second years and help to master things if, as the result of social circumstances, he feels a moral whip behind him. But he does not become a physician in the real sense. He becomes a person whom society appoints to play the part, but he does not become a physician.

If you let these things work upon you, a more delicate force of soul will develop in you. And in many respects the physiology, psychology and pathology on which medical science is based today will cause you pain. It will really be as though you were being offered stones instead of bread. But you yourselves will, nevertheless, be able to get something out of these stones. What is offered to you will, after all, not be without purpose. It will not be easy for you to learn. There must inevitably be difficulties, for the world with its materialism is still mighty and we must, in some way, find our place in it. Having found this place, it is for us to work our way beyond it. Thus we must certainly become physicians in the way the world demands and then medical studies must be permeated with what can be given from here.

Therefore let me say once again that opportunity will be given for you to link yourselves with us here in the way I have indicated. You must have complete confidence in the way in which the medical section of the Goetheanum will be led by me in association with Dr. Wegman. It is precisely medicine, as it can be pursued here, that can show you how human life can really be experienced — strange as this expression is. Therefore when you are once again out in the world and one thing or another occurs to you, write your wishes and your hearts' desires and an answer will be given to everybody in the monthly circular letter. And in this way — which is, to begin with, the only practicable one — external medical studies will be able to be permeated with what can be given here.

You see, there are extraordinarily few people yet — and they can only be the young ones really — who are able to build the bridge between the spiritual aims of Dornach and the materialistic science that holds sway in the outside world. At the present time it can only be a few, and really only those who are still at the stage of their studies. Why?

I once had to give a lecture about a particular chapter of therapy which was attended by medical students and also a professor, a professor of medicine. I was able to watch this man. He came to the lecture thinking that he would find confirmation of his belief that it would be the usual kind of superficial twaddle talked of by quacks. I was able to make a real study of metamorphosis in watching this professor, for on the one side he was inwardly resisting, but on the other side he was astonished. He was obliged to come to the conclusion that it was not rubbish, but naturally he could not say “Yes” to it, because it completely contradicted what he had regarded for decades as being true and correct. I spoke to him after the lecture and it emerged that he was saying to himself: “I would prefer to keep out of all that.” He could not have gone as far as this if he had really thought it nonsense.

If he had thought it nonsense he would easily have kicked it away in the usual manner. He thought he could kick it away, too, but in reality he could not, and the very most that one could have hoped for from a professor was that he should have said to himself: “I would prefer to keep out of all that.” One could not expect more than this. But a young person must have quite a different attitude. A young person has no antecedents and he, therefore, is still able to absorb things which can lead to the healing of humanity. And if this happens, my dear friends, it will really come to pass that gradually perhaps more quickly than we thinkGoetheanum spirituality will enter into medicine.

But what must happen first is that these things shall be continued with real earnestness, and that you go on doing as Dr. Wegman has told me you have done — that you go on coming to her to make the link in full confidence with the true kind of medical studies and with those things that must flow as time goes on, into the materialistic medicine of today. You can do much for yourselves and also much for the world and for sick humanity if you do not regard what you have now heard as something merely transitory, but as a starting-point for that with which such a good beginning has been made. In this sense we will remain united, my dear friends, remain so united that the center to which you adhere here in Dornach, at the Goetheanum, can work in the world, through you. That is what I wanted to say to you as a kind of warning. Then things will go well and much will be added to what we have spoken of here. It may be an ideal in your life of feeling, but it can become, in very truth, life. And as such we will maintain it, my dear friends.