THE WISDOM OF MAN (Anthroposophy)

Berlin, October 23–27, 1909

LECTURE I

The Position of Anthroposophy in Relation to Theosophy and Anthropology.

The Human Senses.

HERE in Berlin, as well as in other localities where our Society has spread, much
has been discussed that concerns the comprehensive realm of theosophy, that
emanates, so to speak, from the high regions of clairvoyant consciousness, and it
is natural that a desire should have arisen to do something toward a serious and
adequate substantiation of our spiritual current.
The present General Assembly, which brings our members together here at the
seventh anniversary of our German Section, may be taken as the proper occasion
for contributing something toward strengthening the foundations of our cause.
This I shall attempt to do at this time in the four lectures on Anthroposophy.
The lectures in Kassel on The Gospel of St. John, those in Düsseldorf on the
hierarchies, those in Basel on The Gospel of St. Luke, and those in Munich on the
teachings of oriental theosophy, were all occasions for rising to high altitudes of
spiritual research and for bringing back spiritual truths difficult of access. What
occupied us there was theosophy and, at least in part, its ascent to exalted
spiritual peaks of human cognition.
It does not seem unjustifiable, given a gradually acquired feeling in the matter, to
see something deeper in what is called the cyclical course of world events. At the
time of our first General Assembly, when the German Section was founded, I
delivered lectures to an audience composed only in part of theosophists; those
lectures may be characterized as the historical chapter of anthroposophy. Now,
after a lapse of seven years that constitute a cycle, the time seems ripe for
speaking in a more comprehensive sense on the nature of anthroposophy.
First, I should like to make clear through a comparison what should be
understood by the term anthroposophy. If we wish to observe a section of
country, together with all that is spread out there in the way of fields, meadows,
woods, villages, roads, we can do so by going about from village to village,
through streets and meadows and woods, and we will always have a small section
of the whole region in view. Again, we can climb to a mountain top and from

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there overlook the whole landscape. The details will be indistinct for the ordinary
eye, but we have a comprehensive view of the whole.
That approximately describes the relation between what in ordinary life is called
human cognition or human science, and what theosophy stands for.
While the ordinary search for human knowledge goes about from detail to detail
in the world of facts, theosophy ascends to a high vantage point. This extends the
visible horizon, but without the employment of quite special means the
possibility of seeing anything at all would vanish. In my book, Knowledge of the
Higher Worlds and Its Attainment, is set forth how one can reach this ideal peak
without losing the power of clear vision.
But there is a third possibility, lying between the two described. It is to ascend
part way, remaining half-way up. At the bottom you cannot survey the whole; you
observe only details and see the top from below. At the top, everything is beneath
you, and above you have only the divine heavens. In the middle you have
something above and something below you, and you can compare the two views.
Any comparison lags and limps, but all that was intended at the moment was to
place before you the manner in which in the first instance theosophy differs from
anthroposophy. The latter stands in the middle, the former on the summit: it is
the point of departure that is different. Thus far the comparison is helpful, but it
is inadequate in characterizing what follows.
Devotion to theosophy necessitates rising above human points of view, above the
middle, from self to higher self, and it implies the ability to see with the organs of
this higher self. The peak attained by theosophy lies above man, ordinary human
knowledge, below, and what lies half-way between, that is the human being
himself: between nature and the spiritual world. What is above reaches down to
him; he is permeated by the spirit. In contemplating the world from a purely
human angle, he does not take his point of departure from the summit, but he
can see it — see the spirit above. At the same time he sees what is merely nature
beneath him; it reaches into him from below. There is a risk connected with
theosophy; unless the above-mentioned means are employed to see with the
higher self — not with the ordinary self — there is danger of losing contact with
the human element, and this results in forfeiting the ability to see anything at all
adequate, of recognizing reality below. This danger disappears, however, as soon
as those means are employed. Then we can say that theosophy is what comes to
light when the God within man says, “Let the God within you speak; what He
reveals of the world is theosophy.”

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 Take your stand between God and Nature and let the human being in you
speak. Speak of what is beneath as well as what is above you, and you have
anthroposophy. It is the wisdom spoken by man.
This wisdom will prove an important fulcrum, a key to the whole realm of
theosophy. After a period of immersion in theosophy, nothing could be more
profitable than seriously to seek the firm center of gravity provided by
anthroposophy.
All that has been said so far can be historically substantiated in many directions.
We have, for example, the science calling itself anthropology. As it is practised,
anthropology comprises not only the human being, but everything pertaining to
him; all that can be gleaned from nature, everything necessary for understanding
man. This science is based on moving about among objects, passing from detail to
detail, observing the human being under a microscope. In short, this science,
which in the widest circles is regarded as the only one dealing authoritatively with
man, takes its view from a point beneath human capacities. It is chained to the
ground; it fails to employ all the faculties at the disposal of man, and for this
reason it cannot solve the riddles of existence.
Now contrast all this with what you encounter as theosophy. There one searches
the most rarefied regions for answers to the burning questions of life. But all
those who are unable to keep pace, whose standpoint is anthropology, consider
theosophy an air-castle, lacking foundation. They are not able to understand how
the soul can ascend step by step to that summit from which all is spread out
beneath it. They cannot rise to the planes of imagination, inspiration, and
intuition. They cannot ascend to the peak that is the final goal of human
evolution.
Thus we find anthropology on the lowest step, theosophy on the summit. What
becomes of theosophy when it wants to reach the top but is not in a position to do
so with the right means? We can find the answer in the historic example of the
German theosophist, Solger, who lived from 1770–1819. Conceptually, his views
are theosophical, but what means does he employ to attain the summit?
Philosophical concepts, concepts of human cerebration long since sucked dry and
emaciated! That is like climbing a mountain for the purpose of observation, and
forgetting to take your field-glasses; you can distinguish nothing whatever down
below.
In our case the field-glasses are spiritual, and they are called imagination,
inspiration, and intuition. Man's ability to reach that peak diminished more and

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more through the centuries — a fact that was clearly felt and acknowledged as
early as the Middle Ages. Today it is felt too, but not acknowledged. In olden
times that capacity to ascend existed, as you know, though only to a minor
degree. It was based on a clairvoyant twilight condition in man. There really was
an ancient theosophy of that sort, but it was written that such revelations from
the summit should come to a close, that they should no longer be open to the
ordinary means of cognition.
This old theosophy, which considers revelation a thing of the past, became
theology, and thus we find theology running parallel with anthropology.
Theology's ambition is to climb the heights, but for its means it depends upon
something that was once revealed, was then handed down, and is now rigid;
something incapable of continually revealing itself anew to the striving soul.
Throughout the Middle Ages, anthropology and theology frequently opposed
without rejecting each other, but in recent times the contrast is sharp. Nowadays
theology is admitted along with anthropology as something scientific, but no
bridge is found between the two. If we do not stop with the details but ascend
half-way, we can establish anthroposophy by the side of theosophy.
Within modern spiritual life attempts have been made to practise anthroposophy,
among other things, but again, as in the case of theosophy, with the wrong,
inadequate means of a defunct philosophy. The meaning of philosophy can really
no longer be understood by philosophers — only by theosophists. Historical
contemplation alone yields this understanding. Philosophy can be comprehended
only by contemplating its origin, as can be seen by an illustration. In former
times there were the so-called Mysteries, abodes where the higher spiritual life
was cultivated, where the neophytes were guided by special methods to spiritual
vision. One such Mystery, for example, was in Ephesus, where the neophytes
could learn through their training the secrets of Diana of Ephesus; they learned
to look into the spiritual worlds. As much of such matters as could be made
public was communicated to the profane and received by them, but not all of
these realized that higher secrets had been revealed to them. One of those to
whom such communications from the Mysteries of Ephesus had penetrated was
Heraclitus. He then proclaimed these, by means of his partial initiation, in a way
that could be generally understood. In reading the doctrines of Heraclitus, “The
Obscure,” we still find immediate experience, the experience of the higher worlds,
shining through between the lines. Then came his successors who no longer
realized that those doctrines originated in direct experience. They no longer

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understood them, so they began to improve them, to spin them out in concepts.
They began to speculate intellectually, and this method persisted through the
generations. Everything we have in the way of philosophy today is but a heritage
of ancient doctrines squeezed out and sucked dry of all life, leaving only the
skeleton of the concepts. Yet the philosophers take that skeleton for a living
reality, for something created by human thinking. There is, as a matter of fact, no
such thing as a philosopher who can think creatively without having recourse to
the higher worlds.
Just such a skeleton of concepts was all that the philosophers of the nineteenth
century had to work with when they took up what may be called anthroposophy.
The term actually occurred. Robert Zimmermann wrote a so-called
Anthroposophy, but he constructed it of arid, empty concepts. Indeed, everything
that has attempted to transcend anthropology without employing the right means
has remained a shriveled web of concepts no longer connected with the subject.
Like philosophy, anthroposophy too must be deepened through theosophy; the
latter must provide the means for recognizing reality within the spiritual life.
Anthroposophy takes the human, the middle standpoint, not the subhuman, as
does anthropology. A theosophy, on the other hand, as practised by Solger,
though spiritual in its point of view, employs only inflated concepts, and when
Solger arrives at the summit he sees nothing. That is spinning at the loom of
concepts, not living, spiritual observation. It is something we do not intend to do.
We aim in these lectures to confront the reality of human life in its entirety. We
shall encounter the old subjects of observation, now illuminated, however, from a
different point whence the view is both upward and downward.
The human being is the most important subject of our observation. We need but
to contemplate his physical body to realize what a complicated being he is. In
order to gain a sentient understanding of anthroposophy's aims, let us first
ponder the following. The complicated physical body as we encounter it today is
the product of a long evolution. Its first germinal potentiality came into being on
old Saturn, and it evolved further on the old Sun, the old Moon, and the Earth.
The etheric body was added to it on the Sun, the astral body on the Moon. Now,
these members of the human being have changed in the course of evolution, and
what we encounter today as the complicated physical human body, with heart,
kidneys, eyes, ears and so forth, is the product of a long development. It has all
grown out of a simple germinal form that originated on Saturn. Through millions
and millions of years it has continually changed and been transformed in order

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that it might achieve its present perfection. If today we wish to understand a
member or an organ of this physical body — say, the heart or the lungs — we can
do so only on the basis of this evolution. Nothing of what we encounter today as
the heart existed on the old Saturn. Only gradually did these organs assume their
present form, one being developed and incorporated earlier, another later. Some
organs we can actually designate Sun-organs, as having first appeared during the
Sun evolution, others Moon-organs, and so on. If we would understand the
present physical body of man we must assemble our concepts from the whole
Universe — that is the theosophical method of observation.
How does anthropology set to work? Theosophy ascends to the ultimate heights
and from this spiritual summit examines individual phenomena. Anthropology
remains on the ground, takes its point of departure from the details, and now
even investigates individual cells in their juxtaposition. Everything is
mechanically lined up and the cells are studied individually, but this does not
reveal their relative age. Yet, far from being immaterial, it is important to know
whether a given group of cells developed on the Sun or on the Moon. Much more
could be said concerning these complicated conditions. Consider, for example,
the human heart. True, as constituted today it evolved late, but as regards its first
germinal potentiality it is one of the oldest human organs. During the period of
the old Sun, the heart was dependent upon the forces governing there. During the
Moon period its development continued; then the Sun withdrew from the Moon,
with which it had been united, and henceforth its forces acted upon the heart
from without. Here the heart underwent a different development, so that from
then on a Sun element and a Moon element can be observed in its tendencies.
Then Earth, Sun, and Moon were united again and worked upon the heart. After
a pralaya the Earth evolution followed, during which the Sun first withdrew
again. This separation resulted in an intensification of the Sun's influence from
without. Then the Moon withdrew as well and also acted upon the heart from
without. So, being among the oldest human organs, the heart comprises a Sun
element, a Moon element, a second Sun element during the Earth evolution, a
second Moon element during the Earth evolution, and finally, after the
withdrawal of the Earth, an Earth element — all corresponding to cosmic
evolution.
If these elements of the heart accord, as in the cosmic harmony, the heart is
healthy; if any one element preponderates, it is sick. All human sickness derives
from disharmony among the elements within the organ in question while their

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cosmic counterparts are in harmony. All healing depends upon strengthening the
element that lacks its share, or subduing superfluous activity, as the case may be,
thereby bringing the elements into harmony again. But talking about this
harmony is not enough. In order to effect it one must really penetrate into the
wisdom of the universe; one must be able to recognize the different elements in
each organ. That will suffice to give an idea of genuine occult physiology and
anatomy, which comprehend the whole human being out of the whole cosmos
and explain the details out of the spirit.
Occult physiology speaks of Sun and Moon elements of the heart, larynx, brain,
and so forth, but since all these elements are at work upon man himself,
something in him confronts us today in which all these elements are
consolidated. If we look into the human being himself and understand these
elements, we also understand the etheric body, the astral body, etc., the sentient
soul, the intellectual soul and the consciousness soul, as man is constituted today.
That is anthroposophy, and in anthroposophy, too, we must start at the lowest
step, gradually ascending to the highest.
Man's lowest member is the physical body that he has in common with the
sensory world that is perceived through the senses and the sensory-physical
mind. The theosophical point of view, starting from the universe, contemplates
man in his cosmic contexts. In the matter of the sensory-physical world,
anthroposophy must start from man, in so far as he is a sensory being. Only then
can we deal appropriately with the etheric body, then the astral body, the ego,
and so forth, and what is to be learned from them.
Observing the human being in this anthroposophical sense, we ask what it is that
must first engage our interest. It is his senses, and it is through these that he
acquires knowledge of the physical-sensory world. Starting from the physical
plane, it is therefore these that anthroposophy must consider first. Let the study
of the human senses then constitute our first chapter. Thereafter we will ascend
to the study of the individual spiritual regions in man's nature.
Beginning with the study of the human senses, we at once find anthroposophy
invading the territory of anthropology, for anthroposophy must invariably start
from all that the senses tell us is real. But it must keep in mind that what is
spiritual, influences man from above. In this sense it is genuine anthropology.
Ordinary anthropology has thrown everything pertaining to the human senses
into complete confusion, groping its way from detail to detail and examining only
what is on the ground, so to speak. Important matters are disregarded because

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men have no Ariadne-thread to lead them out of the labyrinth of facts into the
light. Anthropology cannot find its way out of this maze and must fall a victim to
the Minotaur of illusion, for the saving thread can be spun only by spiritual
research.
Even in the matter of the human senses, anthroposophy has a different story to
tell than has external observation. At the same time it is interesting to note how
external science has lately been forced by material facts to go to work more
thoroughly, seriously and carefully. There is nothing more trivial than the
enumeration of the five senses: feeling (touch), smell, taste, hearing, and sight.
We shall see what confusion reigns in this enumeration. Science, it is true, has
now added three more senses to the list, but as yet doesn't seem to know what to
do about them. We will now list the human senses according to their real
significance, and we will endeavor in the following to start laying the foundations
of an anthroposophical doctrine of the senses.
The first sense in question is the one that in spiritual science can be called the
sense of life. That is a real sense and must be as fully acknowledged as the sense
of sight. What is it? It is something in the human being of which, when it
functions normally he is not aware. He feels it only when it is out of order. We
feel lassitude, or hunger and thirst, or a sense of strength in the organism; we
perceive these as we do a color or a tone. We are aware of them as an inner
experience. But as a rule we are conscious of this feeling only when something is
out of order, otherwise it remains unobserved. The sense of life furnishes the first
human self-perception; it is the sense through which the whole inner man
becomes conscious of his corporeality. That is the first sense, and it must figure in
the list just as does hearing or smell. Nobody can understand the human being
and the senses who knows nothing of this sense that enables him to feel himself
an inner entity.
We discover the second sense when we move a limb — say, raise an arm. We
would not be human beings if we could not perceive our own movements. A
machine is not aware of its own motion; that is possible only for a living being
through the medium of a real sense. The sense of perceiving our own movements
— anything from blinking to walking or running — we call the sense of our own
movements.
We become aware of a third sense by realizing that the human being
distinguishes within himself between above and below. It is dangerous for him to
lose this perception, for in that case he totters and falls over. The human body

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contains a delicate organ connected with this sense: the three semicircular canals
in the ear. When these are injured we lose our sense of balance. This third sense
is the static sense, or sense of balance. (In the animal kingdom there is
something analogous: the otoliths, tiny stones that must lie in a certain position if
the animal is to maintain its equilibrium.)
These are the three senses through which man perceives something within
himself, as it were; by their means he feels something within himself.
Now we emerge from the inner man to the point at which an interaction with the
outer world begins. The first of such reciprocal relations arises when man
assimilates physical matter and, by doing so, perceives it. Matter can be perceived
only when it really unites with the body. This cannot be done by solid or fluid
matter, but only by gaseous substances that then penetrate the bodily matter. You
can perceive smell only when some body sends out gaseous matter that
penetrates the organs of the mucous membrane of the nose. The fourth sense,
then, is the sense of smell, and it is the first one through which the human being
enters into reciprocal relationship with the outer world.
When we no longer merely perceive matter but take the first step into matter
itself, we have the fifth sense. We enter into a deeper relationship with such
matter. Here matter must be active, which implies that it must have some effect
upon us. This takes place when a liquid or a dissolved solid comes in contact with
the tongue and unites with what the tongue itself secretes. The reciprocal
relationship between man and nature has become a more intimate one. We
become aware not only of what things are, as matter, but of what they can induce.
That is the sense of taste, the fifth sense.
Now we come to the sixth sense. Again there is an increase in the intimacy of the
interaction. We penetrate still deeper into matter, things reveal more of their
essence. This can only occur, however, through special provisions. The sense of
smell is the more primitive of these two kinds of senses. In the case of smell, the
human body takes matter as it is and makes no effort to penetrate it. Taste, where
man and matter unite more intimately, is more complicated; then, matter yields
more. The next step offers the possibility of penetrating still more deeply into the
outer world. This takes place by reason of an external material substance being
either transparent or opaque, or by the manner in which it permits light to pass
through it, that is, how it is colored. An object that rays out green light is
internally so constituted that it can reflect green light and no other. The
outermost surface of things is revealed to us in the sense of smell, something of

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their inner nature in taste, something of their inner essence in sight. Hence the
complicated structure of the eye, which leads us much deeper into the essence of
things than does the nose or the tongue. The sixth sense, then, is the sense of
sight.
We proceed, penetrating still deeper into matter. For example, when the eye sees
a rose as red, the inner nature of the rose is proclaimed by its surface. We see
only the surface, but since this is conditioned by the inner nature of the rose we
become acquainted, to a certain extent, with this inner nature. If we touch a piece
of ice or some hot metal, not only the surface and thereby the inner nature are
revealed, but the real consistency as well because what is externally cold or hot is
cold or hot through and through. The sense of temperature, the seventh, carries
us still more intimately into the fundamental conditions of objects.
Now we ask ourselves if it is possible to penetrate into the nature of objects still
more deeply than through this seventh sense. Yes, that can be done when objects
show us not only their nature through and through, as in the case of temperature,
but their most inner essence; that is what they do when they begin to sound. The
temperature is even throughout objects. Tone causes their inner nature to
vibrate, and it is through tone that we perceive the inner mobility of objects.
When we strike an object its inner nature is revealed to us in tone, and we can
distinguish among objects according to their inner nature, according to their
inner vibration, when we open our inner ear to their tone. It is the soul of objects
that speaks to our own soul in tones. That is the eighth sense, the sense of
hearing.
If we would find an answer to the question as to whether there exist still higher
senses, we must proceed cautiously. We must beware of confusing what is really a
sense with other terms and expressions. For example, in ordinary life — down
below, where much confusion exists — we hear of a sense of imitation, a sense of
secrecy, and others. That is wrong. A sense becomes effective at the moment
when we achieve perception and before mental activity sets in. We speak of a
sense as of something that functions before our capacity for reasoning has come
into action. To perceive color you need a sense, but for judging between two
colors you do not.
This brings us to the ninth sense. We arrive at it by realizing that in truth there is
in man a certain power of perception — one that is especially important in
substantiating anthroposophy — a power of perception not based on reasoning,
yet present in him. It is what men perceive when they understand each other

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through speech. A real sense underlies the perception of what is transmitted to us
through speech. That is the ninth sense, the sense of speech.
The child learns to speak before he learns to reason. A whole people has a
language in common, but reasoning is a matter for the individual. What speaks to
the senses is not subject to the mental activity of the individual. The perception of
the meaning of a sound is not mere hearing because the latter tells us only of the
inner oscillations of the object. There must be a special sense for the meaning of
what is expressed in speech. That is why the child learns to speak, or at least to
understand what is spoken, before he learns to reason. It is, in fact, only through
speech that he learns to reason. The sense of speech is an educator during the
child's first years, exactly like hearing and sight. We cannot alter what a sense
perceives, cannot impair anything connected with it. We perceive a color, but our
judgment can neither change nor vitiate it; the same thing is true of the sense of
speech when we perceive the inner significance of the speech sound. It is
indispensable to designate the sense of speech as such. It is the ninth.
Finally we come to the tenth sense, the highest in the realm of ordinary life. It is
the concept sense, which enables us perceptively to comprehend concepts not
expressed through speech sounds. In order to reason we must have concepts. If
the mind is to become active, it must first be able to perceive the concept in
question, and this calls for the concept sense, which is exactly as much a sense by
itself as is taste or smell.
Now I have enumerated ten senses and have not mentioned the sense of touch.
What about it? Well, a method of observation lacking the spiritual thread
confuses everything. Touch is usually tossed in with our seventh sense,
temperature. Only in this meaning, however, as the sense of temperature, has it
in the first instance any significance. True, the skin can be called the organ of the
temperature sense — the same skin that serves also as the organ of the touch
sense. But we touch not only when we touch [TRANSLATOR'S NOTE: The verb
tasten can mean “to touch.” Indeed, the sense of touch is der Tastsinn, but more
often it signifies something like our “groping,” as one gropes in the dark by means
of the sense of touch: “feeling around for something.” In this sentence the first
“touch” is to be understood in this sense, the second (berühren) as meaning “to
come in contact with.”] the surface of an object. We touch when the eye seeks
something, when the tongue tastes something, when the nose smells something.
Touching is a quality common to the fourth to seventh senses. All of these are
senses of touch.

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Up to and including the sense of temperature we can speak of touching. Hearing
we can no longer describe as touching; at least, the quality is present only to a
small degree. In the senses of speech and concepts it is wholly absent. These
three senses we therefore designate as the senses of comprehension and
understanding. The first three senses inform us concerning the inner man.
Reaching the boundary between the inner and the outer world, the fourth sense
leads us into this outer world, and by means of the other three we penetrate it
ever more deeply. Through the senses of touch we perceive the outer world on the
surface, and through those of comprehension we learn to understand things, we
reach their soul. Later we will deal with other senses transcending these.
Below the sense of smell, then, there are three senses that bring us messages out
of our own human inner being. The sense of smell is the first to lead us into the
outer world, into which we then penetrate deeper and deeper by means of the
others. But what I have described to you today does not exhaust the list of senses.
It was only an excerpt from the whole, and there is something below and
something above the ten mentioned. From the concept sense we can continue
upward to a first astral sense, arriving at the senses that penetrate the spiritual
world. There we find an eleventh, a twelfth and a thirteenth sense. These three
astral senses will lead us deeper into the fundamentals of external objects, deep
down where concepts cannot penetrate. The concept halts before the external,
just as the sense of smell halts before the inner man.
What I have given you is an urgently needed foundation upon which to build
cognition of the human being. Through its neglect in the nineteenth century,
everything pertaining even to philosophy and the theory of knowledge has been
most horribly jumbled. Merely generalizing, people ask what the human being
can learn by means of the individual sense, and they cannot even explain the
difference between hearing and sight. Scientists talk about light waves in the
same way they do about sound waves, without taking into account that sight does
not penetrate as deeply as hearing. Through hearing we enter the soul-nature of
things, and we shall see that by means of the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth
senses we penetrate their spirit as well: we enter the spirit of nature. Each sense
has a different nature and a different character.
For this reason a great number of expositions given today, especially in physics,
concerning the nature of sight and its relation to its surroundings may be
regarded unhesitatingly as theories that have never reckoned with the true nature
of the senses. Countless errors have arisen from this misconception of the nature

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of the senses. That must be emphasized, because it is quite impossible for popular
representations to do justice to what has here been set forth. You read things
written by people who can have no possible inkling of the inner nature of the
senses. We must understand that science, from its standpoint, cannot do other
than take a different attitude. It is inevitable that science should spread errors,
because in the course of evolution the real nature of the senses was forgotten.
This true nature of the senses is the first chapter of anthroposophy.

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 THE WISDOM OF MAN(Anthroposophy)

LECTURE II

Supersensible Processes in the Activities of the Human Senses.

IN DEALING with the human senses in our first lecture we merely enumerated
them, though in a manner gleaned from the human being himself. We did not
confuse and jumble them, as inevitably occurs in the external physiology of the
senses where their relationships are not known, but rather, we enumerated them
all in the order that accords with the nature of man. Today it shall be our task to
examine the realm of the human senses more closely, as this is most important
for a deeper fathoming of the human being.
We began with the sense we called the sense of life — the feeling of life, the vital
sense. What is this sense based upon, in the true spirit of the word? In order to
visualize its source we must delve rather deep down into the subconscious mind,
into the substrata of the human organism. This method of spiritual-scientific
research discloses first a peculiar co-operation of the physical and etheric bodies.
The lowest member of the human being, the physical body, and the second, the
etheric body, enter a certain mutual relationship whereby something new occurs
in the etheric body. Something that is different permeates and flows through the
etheric body, and actually, men of our time don't in the least know in a conscious
way what this “something” is. It saturates the etheric body as water does a
sponge. Spiritual science can tell us what it is that acts thus in the etheric body. It
is what corresponds today to what men will develop in a far distant future as
spirit man, or atma. At present, man does not possess this atma as his own. It is
bestowed upon him, so to speak, by the surrounding outer spiritual world,
without his being able to participate in it. Later on, in the distant future, he will
himself have developed it within him. That which saturates the etheric body,

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then, is spirit man, or atma, and at the present stage of human evolution it is in a
sense a superhuman being.
This superhuman atma, or spirit man, expresses itself by contracting the etheric
body — cramping it, as it were. Using an analogy from the sense world, we can
compare the effect to that of frost, which cramps and contracts the physical body.
Man is as yet not ripe for what one day will be his most precious possession, and
therefore, in a sense, it destroys him. The result of the contraction described is
that the astral element is pressed out, squeezed out. In proportion as the etheric
body is pressed together the physical body as well undergoes tension, whereby
the astral body makes room for itself. You can visualize it approximately by
imagining a sponge being squeezed out. Now, the activities in the astral body are
all emotional experiences — pleasure, distaste, joy, sorrow — and this process of
being squeezed out communicates itself to sentience as the sense of life. This is
the process that takes place in the astral body, and it expresses itself as a feeling
of freedom, of strength, of lassitude, etc.
Now let us ascend a bit. As the second sense, we listed the sense of our own
movements. In this case, again, an extraneous principle is at work in the etheric
body, and again it is one not yet indigenous in man. He has not achieved it
through his own efforts; it flows into him out of the spiritual world, and, as with
atma, the etheric body is saturated with it as a sponge with water. It is the life
spirit, or buddhi, which in time will permeate him, but which for the present he
holds as a gift, as it were, from the life spirit of the world. Its action is different
from that of atma. As water seeks its level, so buddhi effects proportion,
equilibrium, in the etheric and physical bodies, and hence in the astral body as
well. This condition operates in such a way that when the balance is disturbed it
can re-establish itself automatically. If we stretch out an arm, for example,
destroying the balance through this change of position, the balance is
immediately restored because the astral body is in a state of equilibrium. In
proportion as we stretch out an arm the astral current streams in the opposite

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direction, thereby re-adjusting the balance. With every physical change of
position, even merely blinking, the astral current in the organism moves in the
opposite direction. In this inner experience of a process of equalization the sense
of movement manifests itself.
We come now to a third element that can permeate man's etheric body, and this,
too, is something that has entered human consciousness only to a negligible
extent: manas, or spirit self. But inasmuch as precisely at this period it is
incumbent upon man to develop manas, this being his earth task, manas acts
differently upon the etheric body than do atma and buddhi, which are to be
developed in the distant future. Its action is to expand the etheric body, effecting
the opposite of what was designated “frost” in connection with the sense of life.
This activity could be compared with a pouring, a streaming, of warmth into
space, and this expands the elastic etheric body. We have something like
streaming warmth when this semi-conscious expansion of the etheric body
occurs. The consequence of this elastic expansion of the etheric body is a
corresponding rarefaction of the astral body, which can thus expand as well. It
need not be pressed out; by having more room it can remain in the expanding
etheric body. While the sense of life becomes conscious through the contraction
of the astral body, the static sensation results from the expansion of the etheric
body, which thus makes more room for the astral body. In the way of a
comparison it can be said that the texture of the astral body becomes rarefied,
less dense. This thinning of the etheric and the astral bodies offers the possibility
for the physical body to expand as well — in a sense, to extend itself.
Through the action of atma the physical body is contracted, through the action of
buddhi it is stabilized, through the action of manas it is unburdened. The result is
that at certain points it pushes out tiny particles, and this occurs in those three
marvelous organs, the semi-circular canals of the ear. Such spreading out of
physical matter does not arise from a forcing from within, but from a cessation or
diminution of pressure from without, through the unburdening of the physical

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matter in question. This in turn enables the astral body to expand more and
more. It makes contact with the outer world and must achieve equilibrium with
it, for when this is not the case we cannot stand upright; we even fall over. If we
would move in space we must take our bearings, and for this reason those three
little canals are arranged in the three dimensions of space at right angles to each
other. If these canals are injured we lose our sense of balance, we feel dizzy, we
faint.
In the animal kingdom we find that everything of the kind in question results
from the animal's premature descent into physical matter. A certain hardening is
the consequence. We even find little stone formations in them, the so-called
otoliths, that lie in such a way as to indicate the measure of balance.
A study of these three senses shows us clearly the difference between the factual
results of spiritual-scientific research and the opinions held by the present-day
inadequate thinking of the savant group soul, which clings to externals. Thus far
we have considered three senses, passing outward from within, and the last of
them lies close to the boundary line between what we experience within us and
what must be experienced without if we are to identify ourselves with the outer
world. We must distinguish clearly between facts and the inadequate thinking of
the savant group soul. Just here, for example, the latter has shown us how we
must not think. Quite recently, special events have brought external science face-
to-face with the necessity for at last recognizing these three sense regions, but its
failure to do so has proved how badly it must stray without the right guiding
thread. These formations that signify a human sense organ were promptly
compared with certain organs in the plant kingdom; in certain plants there
appear formations that up to a point can be compared with the semi-circular
canals in the human ear. Modern thinking, which as a rule is abandoned by logic
precisely at the moment when adequate judgment is called for, infers from the
appearance of these similar formations in plants that the latter, too, have a sense
of equilibrium. It is not difficult to carry such logic ad absurdum. If you maintain

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that a plant has a sense on the grounds that it purposefully rolls up its leaves, a
sense that goes so far as to entice and snap up its nourishment by means of
certain contrivances, I can suggest a being that can do all that just as efficiently,
that is, a mousetrap. What science has put forth concerning the human sense
organs can be applied quite as logically to the mousetrap as to the plant. With
equal propriety it could be maintained that scales have a sense of equilibrium.
Mental derailments of this type derive from an inflexible sort of thinking that
cannot really penetrate into the nature of things.
Until modern science learns to illuminate the edifice of the human organism with
the light of theosophy, it will not be able to master the nature of these three
senses. Theosophy enables us to understand the entire structure of the human
organism anthroposophically. By means of spiritual-scientific observation, man
in his entirety must be comprehended through his own inner nature.
We pass to the sense of smell. The reason for not occupying ourselves particularly
with what science calls the sense of touch has already been indicated. As
generally described, it is a mere figment of the imagination, an invention of
physiology, hence we will disregard it. Because I can give but four lectures at this
time I must pass rapidly over certain matters and utter many a paradox. In
dealing with a number of senses we can speak of touch sensations, but not of a
special touch sense in the way modern physiology does. All that takes place when
we touch something is wholly comprised in the concept “sense of equilibrium.” If
we press down on a table, stroke a velvet surface, pull a cord, everything that
there manifests itself in pressure, stroking and pulling as a process of touch is
nothing but a change of equilibrium within ourselves. While all this can be found
in the sense of touch, the sense of touch proper must be sought higher up in the
sense of equilibrium — there where this sense comes to fullest expression. An
unimpaired sense of equilibrium provides the sense of touch. In science the most
distressing theories prevail concerning this sense of touch.

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Pressure is something that does not interest the ordinary human being. He
speaks of “pressing,” but does not enquire further into the nature of the
phenomenon. But from the spiritual-scientific point of view the question must
arise. What takes place in pressing? What occurs in the sense of equilibrium?
What compensation is effected by the astral body? The extent of misconception
connected with the sensation of being pressed is revealed in physics. Physics talks
of atmospheric pressure, and when some alert boy asks his teacher how we can
stand the high atmospheric pressure without being squeezed to death, he receives
the answer that pressure and counter-pressure are always equal; we are filled
with air, so the outer pressure is canceled. But if the boy is bright enough he will
object that he has often sat in the bathtub, completely surrounded by water, and
although he was not filled with water he wasn't squeezed to death.
If the state of affairs were as represented by the physicists, an enormous
atmospheric pressure would be exerted on the body's surface, and they explain
our unawareness of it by the counter-pressure, by our being filled with air. This is
one of the absurdities resulting from purely materialistic explanations. No, what
we have to deal with here is an eminently spiritual process. The human being is
so strong that he can push the astral body into the constricted portions and
thereby re-establish equilibrium. When pressure is exerted, a little lump, as we
may call it, always results, and this effect is so strong in the astral body that the
latter, from within, overcomes the whole pressure of the outer air. In this realm
the spirit is literally tangible.
After this short digression we will now return to the sense of smell. Here the
human organism is taken in hand and affected by something other than was the
case in the senses just dealt with, something less remote from human
consciousness, that is, by the consciousness soul itself, which comes into action in
the process of smelling. We shall see why all such things are accomplished by
means of special organs. The consciousness soul not only effects an expansion
and rarefaction at a certain place in the organism, but causes the astral body to

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extend its impulses beyond the organism. In proportion as the gaseous substance
penetrates the mucous membrane of the nose, the astral substance presses
outward, leaves the organism, penetrates the gaseous substance, and experiences
something in it, not only in itself but in the substance. What it thus experiences it
calls aroma, pleasant or unpleasant scent, etc., as the case may be. It is an
antenna of the consciousness soul, projected by the latter through the agency of
the astral body.
In the fifth sense, taste, the mental soul is active. It pours its astral currents
outward through the organ of taste, sending the astral substance to meet
whatever matter comes in contact with the tongue. The resulting process in the
astral body is of a special nature. Let us first recall and examine the sense of
smell. What is the nature of the stream emanating from the astral body in
smelling? It is none other than the nature of will. The impulse of will that you feel
within you streams forth to meet the inflowing matter. The process of smelling is
one of resistance, an impulse to force back the instreaming matter. Spiritual
science can tell you that this substance flowing in is but maya; it is external will.
Your inner and your outer will attack each other and fight. Smelling is a conflict
of will forces. Schopenhauer, who had an inkling that the interior and the exterior
wills hinder and obstruct each other in the activity of the senses, built a
philosophy of will upon it. But that is unsound metaphysics because this interplay
of the two wills actually occurs only in smelling. In the other cases it is merely
read into the processes.
Now, while in the sense of smell the outgoing stream is of the nature of will, it
pertains to feeling when the current results from tasty food. What enters as food
is also mere maya, an external image that is experienced as feeling. In the process
of tasting, the interplay is between feeling and feeling. That is the real process of
tasting; the rest is merely an outward image, and we shall see that the tongue is
formed accordingly. For this reason this sense of taste is a sense of touch
[TRANSLATOR'S NOTE: It is perhaps not without significance that Gefühl can

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mean “touch” as well as “feeling.” With this in mind let the student now read the
sentence as follows: “For this reason the sense of taste is a Gefühlssinn.” It is
most suggestive but unfortunately untranslatable, a sort of higher play on words.
Cf. also footnote on p. 16.], notably of feeling, agreeable or disagreeable,
repulsive, and the like. The point, however, does not center in feeling as such, but
in the clash of feelings and their interaction.
In the sixth sense, sight, it is the sentient soul that works on the etheric body and
flows into it, but strange to say, this effect partakes of the nature of thought. It
represents a mental principle, and the thoughts constitute the subconscious
element of the process. The sentient soul subconsciously bears within it what the
consciousness soul then raises to consciousness as thought. What flows out of the
eyes is a thinking in the sentient soul. Real thought substance streams out of the
eyes from the sentient soul. This thought substance has far greater elasticity than
the other substances that flow out when the sense of smell or of taste is active. It
can reach out much farther toward its objects — indeed, it is a fact that something
of an astral substance streams forth from men to far distant objects, unchecked
until some other astral element offers resistance.
The scientific explanation that in seeing, ether waves enter the eye and the latter
then projects the image outward, can mean nothing to sound thinking. Somebody
would have to be inside to work the projecting business, wouldn't he? What a
horribly superstitious notion, this “Something that busily projects!” When in
trouble, science, so proud of its “naturalism,” does not disdain the assistance of
that “imagination” it professes to scorn.
It is something astral, then, thought substance, that flows toward the object. An
astral element leaves the body, streams toward the object, and continues onward
until opposed by another astral element. The conflict between these two astral
elements engenders color, which we sense as pertaining to objects. Actually, the
genesis of color occurs at the boundary of objects, where the astral element

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emanating from the human being collides with that of the object. Color comes
into being where the inner and the outer astral elements meet.
Here spiritual science leads us to a strange phenomenon. We learned that really a
kind of thinking resides in the sentient soul, but that its first appearance is in the
intellectual soul and that it only becomes conscious in the consciousness soul. In
the sentient soul it is subconscious. Now, when we look at an object with both
eyes, we have two impressions that in the first instance do not reach our
consciousness, although they originate in an unconscious thought process. Two
mental efforts must be made, because we have two eyes. If we are to become
conscious of these mental efforts, however, we must travel from the sentient soul
by way of the mental soul to the consciousness soul. This path can be readily
visualized by means of a simple analogy from the sense world. We have two
hands and we feel each one individually, but if we wish this feeling to become
conscious, that each hand should feel the other, they must touch each other,
cross. If the impressions gained in the sentient soul through mental effort are to
enter our consciousness, they must cross. In that way you feel your own hand;
you render conscious what you ordinarily do not feel. Just as you must touch an
external object to become conscious of it, so contact is here necessary if objects
are to enter our consciousness. That is also the reason why the two optic nerves in
the physical brain are crossed. Through this crossing, an effort made
subconsciously in the sentient soul is raised into the consciousness soul; one
effort can be sensed by means of the other. That is an illustration of the way
anthroposophy teaches us to know the human being down to the most intricate
anatomical details.
Seventh among the senses is that of temperature, and again there is something in
man that transmits it. It is the sentient body itself, which is of an astral nature. It
transmits the sense of temperature by sending its astral substance outward. An
experience of warmth or cold occurs only when the human being is really able to
ray his astral substance outward, that is, when nothing prevents this. Such an

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experience of warmth does not occur when, for example, we sit in a bath of the
same temperature as our own body, when equilibrium exists between ourselves
and our surroundings. We experience temperature only when warmth or cold can
flow out of or into us. When our surroundings are at a low temperature we let
warmth flow into them; when our own temperature is low we let warmth flow
into us. Here again it is obvious that an inflowing and outflowing takes place, and
always the effects of the human sentient body are involved. If we are in contact
with an object whose temperature is steadily increasing, our sentient body will
stream out more and more strongly, until the limit is reached. When the object
has become so hot that nothing corresponding to it can flow forth from us, then
we can bear the heat no longer, and we are burned. When it is no longer possible
for the sentient body to stream out, the heat becomes unendurable and we are
burned. When we lack sufficient astral substance to equalize the outstreaming
warmth ether, when we can send out no more sentient substance because the
object cannot absorb it, it would seem as though in touching an extremely cold
object we should have a burning sensation; as a matter of fact, that is exactly
what occurs. In touching a very cold object we have a burning sensation that can
even raise blisters.
Now we enter the realm of hearing, the eighth sense. What active principle is it,
we ask, that participates in the process of hearing? The human etheric body. But
this human etheric body, as constituted today, is in reality unable to serve us, as
the sentient body still can, without incurring a permanent loss. Ever since the
Atlantean time the etheric body has been so constituted that it cannot possibly
give off anything, so that a more powerful action must be brought about by
means other than through the sense of temperature. The human being can
contribute nothing; he possesses nothing by means of which he might develop
out of himself a sense higher than that of temperature. No higher senses,
therefore, could come into being were it not that at this point something special
takes place in man that provides what he lacks. Higher beings permeate him —

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the Angeloi, the Angels — that send their own astral substance into him. They
place their own astral substance at his disposal, and what he cannot ray forth
they supply for him. Essentially, then, it is foreign astral substance that
permeates man and is active in him. He appropriates it and lets it stream out. The
beings active here, the Angels, absolved their human existence in the past. Their
astral substance enters us, and then streams forth from the sense of hearing to
meet what the tone brings. On the wings of these beings we are carried into the
innermost nature, the soul, of objects, so that we may know them. Beings of an
order higher than man are here active, but they are of the same nature as his own
astral substance.
As a still higher sense, the ninth, we mentioned the sense of speech, the word
sense, the sound [TRANSLATOR'S NOTE: Throughout this exposition the term
“sound” (Laut) refers to the kind of sounds of which spoken language consists,
notably, but not exclusively, the vowels. Articulation in the narrower sense.]
sense. To the functioning of this sense the human being can again contribute
nothing by himself, can produce nothing. He has nothing to give, hence he must
be entered and helped by beings of a substance similar in its nature to that of the
human etheric body. These beings possess the corresponding astral substance as
well, but this is forced out into the surrounding world during the process in
question. They are the Archangels, who permeate the human being with their
etheric bodies, which he can then pour out into his surroundings. The Archangels
play a far more important role than the Angels. They enable man to hear a sound.
They are in man. They enable him not only to hear a tone — say a G or a C-sharp
— but to perceive a sound, like “ah,” together with its meaning. Thus we can
experience the inner nature of a sound we hear. These beings are at the same
time the Spirits of the several folk individualities, the Folk Spirits.
In the sense of hearing the Angels give outer expression to their activity through
the medium of the air. They work with the air in the ears, and this results in
external activity of the air. The Archangels, on the other hand, produce activity in

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the lymphatic fluids, as in a watery substance. They guide the circulation of these
fluids in a certain direction, enabling us to perceive, for example, the sound “ah”
in its full significance. The outer expression of this work is the forming of folk
physiognomies, the creation of the particular expression of the human organism
as related to a certain people. From all this we can infer that the lymphatic fluids
in man flow in a different manner, that the whole organism makes a different
impression, according to the way in which the Archangels of the people in
question have imparted a certain sense of sound by means of the lymphatic
current.
When a people designates the ego with the word Adam (irrespective of the
theories it holds regarding the human ego), the Folk Spirit speaks through the
two a's that succeed each other in consecutive syllables. A certain basic
organization results. A member of that people must feel the nature of the ego to
be such as corresponds to the two a's, to “Adam.” The consequences are different
when a people expresses the ego with the word “ich.” [TRANSLATOR'S NOTE:
Ich means I (or also, ego). As the vowel sounds are so important it should be kept
in mind that the i in ich is pronounced as in the word “if.”] Such a people must
have a different conception of the ego. A different feeling results when, in place of
the two a's, the sounds “i” and “ch” are linked. A certain nuance, a certain color,
is inherent in the “i,” suggesting what the Folk Spirit infuses into the individual
organism in connection with the conception of the ego.
Through the sequence a-o something different is infused into a people than
through the sequence i-e. The words amor and Liebe are very different things.
When the Folk Spirit says amor we have one shade of feeling, and quite a
different one when he says Liebe. Here we see the Folk Spirit at work, and we also
see why the differentiation of sounds came into being. It is by no means
immaterial, for example, that the word “Adam” was used in old Hebrew to denote
the first human form, but by the ancient Persians to designate the ego. The fact

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shows that quite different feelings and quite definite trends of these feelings are
expressed in this way.
Here we have the first hint of the mystery of speech, or rather, of its first
elements. What is involved is the activity of spirits of the order of Archangels,
who penetrate man with the sense of sound and vibrate in his whole watery
substance. One of the greatest experiences vouchsafed him who ascends to higher
cognition occurs when he begins to feel the difference between the various
sounds in relation to their creative force.
Tone force manifests its pre-eminent activity in the air, sound force only in the
watery element.
Here is another example. When you designate some being with the word Eva, and
then wish to express something more, something that is related to this word as
the spiritual is to the material, you can apply the reflected image, Ave. This
sequence of syllables by which the Virgin is addressed actually affects in the
human organism the exact opposite of the word Eva. Here we also find the reason
for another variant of E-v-a; place a j before Ave, and you have Jave. When
progressing to higher cognition, penetrating the secret of sound, you can learn to
know all the connections between Jave and Eva. You will know what a higher
being of the order of Archangel has inspired in man. The truth concerning the
nature of speech is that it is based upon a real sense, the sense of sound.
Speech did not arise arbitrarily. It is a spiritual product, and in order to perceive
it in its spiritual aspect we have the sense of sound, which in a systematic
enumeration of the senses is exactly as justified as the others. There are still
deeper reasons why the senses must be listed in just this manner. In the next
lecture we will ascend to the sense of concept and the higher senses in order to
understand the microcosm anthroposophically.

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 THE WISDOM OF MAN (Anthroposophy)

LECTURE III

Higher Senses, Inner Force Currents and Creative Laws in the Human
Organism.

IN THE last lecture we dealt with the sense of speech, and today we will examine
the sense of concept. The term “concept” is, of course, not intended here as pure
concept, but in its everyday meaning. That is, I hear a word spoken and I
visualize its meaning. This sense could also be called the sense of visualization.
[TRANSLATOR'S NOTE: The verb vorstellen means imagine, in the loose sense
(“I can imagine”), but we have no noun in English that exactly reproduces
Vorstellung. “Visualization” must serve, but the reader should understand that its
application is not limited to the visible; it covers abstract ideas as well as concrete
objects — anything we “call to mind.” The terms “visualization,” “conception” and
“mental picture” are here used interchangeably.] In order to understand how this
sense comes about we must glance back once more to the sense of tone or hearing
and to the sense of speech or sound, asking ourselves what it means “to have a
sense of speech.” How does the perception of sound [Always the spoken sound is
meant.] come about? What particular process takes place when we perceive a
sound like “a” or “i”? To grasp this we must understand the apparatus of sound
perception, and we will give a few indications that you will be able to substantiate
later.
In music we distinguish between the single tone, the melody, and the harmony.
Harmony implies perception of tones occurring simultaneously, melody calls for
the mental co-ordination of a sequence of tones. The mechanism of sound
perception can be comprehended by studying the relation between the tonal
element in sound and sound itself.
Suppose we could raise into consciousness what we accomplish subconsciously in
perceiving sound. We would then no longer be dealing merely with a sense
perception but with a judgment, with the formation of a concept. If we were able,
in hearing a melody, so to crowd the single tones in time as to perceive them
simultaneously, to cause past and future to coincide; if in the middle of a melody
we already knew what was to follow, knew this so vividly as to draw the future
into the present, then we would have consciously converted the melody into a

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harmony. We are not able to do that, but what we cannot execute consciously
actually takes place unconsciously in the sense of sound. When we hear an “a” or
an “i” or other sounds, a subconscious activity momentarily transforms a melody
into a harmony. That is the secret of sound; it is melody transformed into
harmony. This marvelous subconscious activity proceeds in approximately the
same way as the various refractions in the eye are carried out according to
physical laws, which is another process we can call to consciousness after it has
taken place.
But this subconscious activity that instantly converts a melody into a harmony is
not enough; something more is needed if the sound is to come forth. A musical
tone is not a simple thing. A tone is a musical tone only by virtue of its harmonics
[TRANSLATOR'S NOTE: Dr. Steiner refers here to something much more
definite than what is suggested by our “overtones,” a term that has almost lost its
original significance. The harmonic series as it is known in the field of music is
the series of intervals into which a vibrating body (a string, a column of air, etc.)
divides itself unassisted by artificial means. Under favorable conditions some
three to five of these harmonics can be detected by a keen ear. They come out
most clearly in large church bells.] (overtones) that sound with it, however
faintly, in contrast to noises, which have no harmonics. In a harmony, therefore,
we hear not only the separate tones but the harmonics of each tone as well.
Accordingly, if we crowd a melody into a harmony, we have not only the separate
notes of the melody crowded into simultaneity, but the harmonics of each note as
well. Now, the final step. Through the agency of that subconscious activity, the
attention of the soul must be distracted from the fundamental tones of the
melody. These must in a sense be aurally disregarded, and only the harmony
created by the harmonics be comprehendingly heard. A sound comes into being
when a melody is transformed into harmony and then the fundamentals
disregarded, attention being directed exclusively to that harmony of the
harmonics. What these harmonics then yield is the sound “a,” “i,” etc. In this way
we have explained sound perception as taking place in the same way that sight
does in the eye.
The next question is difficult but important. How does the perception of
visualization come about? How does it happen that when we hear a word we
understand its meaning by means of the word itself? That this is a question by
itself can be seen from the fact that in different languages the same thing is
designated by different sounds. While the sound we hear is a different one in

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every language (amor and Liebe), it nevertheless points the path to an identical
underlying conception. Whether the word used is amor or Liebe, it appeals to the
sense of visualization underlying it. This underlying sense of visualization is
always uniform, regardless of all the differences in the sound formations. But
now, how is this perceived?
In studying this process, the perception of visualizations or conceptions, we
should keep in mind our premise that conceptions reach us by way of sounds. To
enable a conception to come about, attention must be still further diverted; the
whole harmonic series must be ignored. At the moment when the soul as well is
unconsciously distracted from the harmonics, we perceive what has incorporated
in the sounds, what pertains to them as conception or visualization. This implies
that the visualization reaching us through sounds — the visualization that, as
something universally human, pervades all sounds and languages — comes to us
slightly colored, toned down.
Incorporated in this harmonic series, which creates the timbre and intensity and
the various sounds in the different languages, which vibrates into the human
organism, are the Folk Spirits. These manifest themselves through the sounds of
the language. Language is the mysterious whispering of the Folk Spirits, the
mysterious work upon the fluids, that vibrates into our organism through the
harmonics. But what underlies the harmonic series is the universal human
element, the common spirit of man that suffuses the whole earth. The universal
spirit of man can be perceived only when each of us, from his own particular
locality, ignoring the harmonics, listens for what is inaudible, for what belongs in
the realm of conceptions.
In the course of historical evolution, men did not acquire the capacity to
comprehend what is universally human until they learned to recognize common
factors by disregarding, as it were, the shades of sounds. Only in our life of
conceptions can we begin to grasp the Christ Spirit in His true being. The
spiritual beings whose task it is to proclaim Him in manifold forms — His
messengers to whom He has assigned their missions and tasks — are the Folk
Spirits of the various folk individualities. This thought has found very beautiful
expression in Goethe's fragment, Die Geheimnisse.
That will give a picture of what the sense of visualization is, bringing us to an
important milestone. We have exhausted what we have in the way of ordinary
senses, finally arriving at the study of the subconscious human activity that is
able, through the force of the astral body, to push from consciousness even the

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harmonic series. It is the human astral body that pushes aside this harmonic
series as though with tentacles. If we achieve this power over the harmonics,
which means nothing else than the ability to ignore them, it signifies increased
strength in our astral body.
But even this does not exhaust the capacity of the astral body; it is capable of still
higher achievements. In the cases we have so far discussed, the appearance of a
visualization has presupposed the overcoming of an outer resistance; something
external had to be pushed back. Now we find the astral body to be endowed with
still more power when we learn that its astral substance enables it not only to
push back what is outside, but also, when there is no outer resistance, to stretch
forth, to eject, its astral substance through its own inner strength. If one is able
thus to stretch forth the astral tentacles, so to speak, with no resistance present,
then there appears what is called spiritual activity; the so-called spiritual organs
of perception come into being. When the astral substance is pushed out from a
certain part of the head and forms something like two tentacles, man develops
what is called the two-petaled lotus flower. That is the imaginative sense, the
eleventh.
In proportion to his capacity for stretching out his astral tentacles, man develops
other spiritual organs. As his ability to thrust out astral substance increases, he
forms a second organ in the vicinity of the larynx, the sixteen-petal lotus flower,
the inspirational sense, the twelfth. In the neighborhood of the heart the third
organ develops, the twelve-petal lotus flower, the thirteenth, the intuitive sense.
These three senses, the imaginative, the inspirational and the intuitive, are
additional, astral senses, over and above the physical senses. Beyond these there
are still higher, purely spiritual senses, but let them here be merely mentioned.
The question now arises as to whether these three astral senses are active only in
more highly developed, clairvoyant people, or has the ordinary human being
anything that can be called an activity of these senses? The answer is that
everybody has them, but there is a difference. In clairvoyants these senses
operate by stretching out like tentacles, while in ordinary people their effect is
inward. At the top of the head, for instance, just where the two-petal lotus flower
forms, there are tentacles of this kind that reach inward and cross in the brain. In
other words, ordinary consciousness directs them inward instead of outward. All
that is outside us we see, but not what is within us. Nobody has seen his own
heart or brain, and it is the same with spiritual matters. Not only are these organs
not seen, but they do not even enter consciousness. They can therefore not be

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consciously employed, but they function nevertheless; they are active. Here
consciousness makes no decisions whatever regarding reality.
These senses, then, are active. They direct their activity inward, and this impulse
directed inward is perceived. When the imaginative sense pours inward there
arises what in ordinary life is called outer sensation, [TRANSLATOR'S NOTE:
There is no wholly satisfactory English equivalent for the noun, Empfindung,
though the adjective empflindlich is exactly “sensitive.” The term “sensation” is
used in this translation (occasionally varied by “sentience”), but it should be
understood that only the meaning it has, for example, in “a sensation of warmth”
is here applicable, never that in “the news created a sensation.” In other words, it
is the noun corresponding to the adjective “sentient,” not “sensational,” and to
the verb “to sense.”] outer perception of something. We can have an outer
perception only because what appears in the imaginative sense works its way into
us. By means of this imaginative sense we are able to “sense” a color, and that is
not synonymous with seeing a color, or analogous to hearing a tone. When we see
a color, we say, for instance, it is red. But through the activity of the imaginative
sense we can also have a sensation connected with it — that color is beautiful or
ugly, pleasant or unpleasant.
The inspirational sense also directs its activity inward, and this produces a more
complicated sensation: feeling. The entire life of feeling is an activity of the
inspirational organ streaming inward.
When the intuitive sense pours inward, thinking proper arises, that is, thought
forming. So the order of the processes is: We sense something, we have a feeling
connected with it, and we form thoughts about it.
Thus we have ascended from the life of the senses to the soul life. Starting from
without, from the sense world, we have seized hold on the soul of man himself in
its activities of sentience, feeling and thought. Were we to continue along this
path, examining the still higher senses that correspond to the other lotus flowers
— they can hardly be called senses any more — the entire higher life of the soul
would be revealed to us in their interplay. When, for example, the eight- or ten-
petal lotus flower directs its psychic activity inward, a still more delicate soul
activity is engendered, and at the end of the scale we find the most subtle one of
all which we call pure, logical thought. All this is produced by the working of the
various lotus flowers into the inner man. Now, when this inward motion is
transformed into an outer motion, when the astral tentacles stretch outward and
criss-cross, directing, as so-called lotus flowers, their activity outward, then that

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higher activity comes into being through which we rise from the soul to the spirit,
where what normally appears as our inner life (thinking, feeling and willing) now
makes its appearance in the outer world, borne by spiritual beings.
We have arrived at an understanding of the human being by ascending from the
senses by way of the soul to what is no longer in him, to spirit acting from
without, which belongs equally to man and to surrounding nature, to the whole
world. We have ascended to the spirit. As far as we have gone, I have described
the human being as an instrument for perceiving the world, experiencing it with
his soul and grasping it spiritually. I have not described something finished, but
something that is active in man. The whole interplay of forces and activities of the
senses, the soul, and the spirit is what shapes the human being as he stands
before us on earth. How does this come about? We can give but brief intimations,
but such as we find substantiated on all sides.
What we see before us in observing a human being merely with our senses really
does not exist at all; it is only an optical illusion. Spiritual-scientific observation
actually perceives something quite different. Remember that sensibly we cannot
perceive ourselves completely. We see but a part of our surface, never our back or
the back of our head, for example. But we know, nevertheless, that we have a
back, and we know it by means of the various senses, such as the sense of
equilibrium or of motion. An inner consciousness tells us of the parts we cannot
perceive externally. Indeed, there is a great deal of us that we cannot perceive
unless the appropriate organs are developed.
Let us further consider the portion of the human being that he himself can
perceive sensibly — with the eye, for instance — and let us delimit it. Through
what agency is he to perceive it? Actually, all that we can see of ourselves with our
eyes we perceive through the sentient soul; the sentient body would not be able to
perceive it. It is the sentient soul that really comprehends. The portion of the
human being that he sees with his eyes, which the sentient soul confronts, is
nothing but the image of the sentient body, the outer illusion of the sentient body.
We must, of course, extend the concept a bit to cover those portions of the body
we can touch though not see, but there, too, we have the image of the sentient
body. Perception comes about through other activities of the sentient soul. The
latter extends to every point at which outer perception occurs, and what it
perceives there is not the sentient soul but the illusion of the sentient body. Could
we perceive this, we would see that astrally something endeavors to approach but
is pushed back.

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This image of the sentient body comes about as follows. From back to front there
is co-operation of the sentient soul and the sentient body. When two currents
meet, a damming up occurs, and thereby something is revealed. Imagine you see
neither current, but only what results from the whirling together of the two. What
shows as a result of this impact of the sentient soul thrusting outward and the
sentient body pressing inward from without, is the portion of our external
corporeality that the eye or other outer sense can perceive. We can actually
determine the point on the skin where the meeting of the sentient soul and
sentient body occurs. We see how the soul works at forming the body. We can put
it this way. There is in the human being a cooperation of the current passing from
back to front and the opposite one, resulting in an impact of sentient soul and
sentient body.
In addition to these two currents there are those that come from the right and
from the left. From the left comes the one pertaining to the physical body; from
the right, the one pertaining to the etheric body. These flow into each other and
intermingle to a certain extent, and what comes into being at this point is the
sensibly perceptible human being, his sensibly perceptible exterior. A perfect
illusion is brought about. From the left comes the current of the physical body,
from the right that of the etheric body, and these form what appears to us as the
sensibly perceptible human being.
In like manner we have in us currents running upward and downward. From
below upward streams the main current of the astral body, and downward from
above the main current of the ego. The characterization given of the sentient body
as being bounded in front should be understood as meaning that it operates in a
current upward from below, but that it is then seized by the current running
forward from the rear, so that in a certain sense it is thereby bounded.
But the astral body contains not only the one current that runs upward from
below as well as forward from the rear, but also the other one running backward
from the front; so that the astral body courses in two currents, one upward from
below and the other backward from the front. This gives us four intermingling
currents in the human being.
What is brought about by the two vertical currents? We have one current running
upward from below, and if it could discharge unobstructed we would draw it thus
as in the diagram, but this it cannot do. The same is true of the other currents.
Each is held up, and in the center, where they act upon each other, they form the
image of the physical body.

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Actually, it is due to the intersection and criss-crossing of the currents that the
threefold organization of man comes into being. Thus the lower portion that we
ourselves can see should be designated as the sentient body in the narrower
sense. Higher up lies what in the narrower meaning we can call our senses. This
portion we can no longer perceive ourselves, because it is the region where the
senses themselves are located. You cannot look into your eyes but only out of
them, into the world. Here the sentient soul, or its image, is active. The face is
formed by the sentient soul. But the two currents must be properly differentiated.
The lower currents, streaming from all sides, are held down from above, and this
lower part we can designate the sentient body. Below, the impulses proceed
largely from without; while above, it is principally the sentient soul that makes
itself felt. From above there streams the ego, and at the point where this current
is strongest, where it is least pushed back by the other currents, the intellectual
soul forms its organ.
Now, in addition to this ego current we have one from left to right and one from
right to left. Again the whole activity is intersected. There is further a current
running through the longitudinal axis of the body, effecting a sort of split up
above. At the upper boundary a portion of the intellectual soul is split off, and
this is the form of the consciousness soul. There the consciousness soul is active,
extending its formative work into the innermost man. Among other things, it
forms the convolutions in the grey matter of the brain.
The nature of this spiritual being helps us to understand what exists in man as
form. That is the way in which the spirit works on the form of the human body. It
evokes all the organs plastically, as the artist chisels a figure out of stone. The
structure of the brain can be comprehended only with the knowledge of how
these separate currents interact in man; what we then see is the joint activity of
the various principles of the human being.
Now we must go into a few details in order to show how these facts can be fruitful
when they will have become the common property of a true science. We have
learned that up above there came into being the organs of the consciousness soul,
the intellectual soul, and the sentient soul. The ego acts downward from above;
the main portion of the astral body, upward from below. In their mutual
damming up, a reciprocal action takes place that extends along the whole line, so
to speak; it forms the longitudinal axis of the body, and the effect of this will be a
different one at every point of the line. When the ego, for instance, is called upon
to perform a conscious act, this can only be done at the point where the sentient

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soul, the intellectual soul, and the consciousness soul have developed their
organs. Through the intellectual soul, for example, reasoning comes about, and a
judgment must be localized in the head because it is there that the appropriate
human forces find expression.
Now let us assume that such an organ is to come into being, but one in which no
reasoning takes place, in which the intellectual soul has no part, an organ
independent of the work of sentient, intellectual and consciousness souls, in
which only the physical, etheric and astral bodies and the ego have a part — an
organ in which an impression received from the astral body is immediately
followed by the reaction of the ego, without reasoning. Suppose that these four
members of the human being — astral body and ego, etheric body and physical
body — are to cooperate without any delicate activity such as reasoning or the
like. What would be the nature of an organ in which these four currents work
together? It would have to be an organ that would not reason. The reaction of the
ego would follow directly, without reasoning, upon the impression received by
the organ in question from the astral body. That would mean that the ego and the
astral body act together. From the astral body a stimulus proceeds to the ego, the
ego reacts upon the astral body.
If this is to be a physical organ it must be built up by the etheric body. From the
left would come the current of the physical body, from the right, that of the
etheric body. They would be dammed up in the middle and a condensation would
result.
In addition, the currents of the ego and the astral body, from above and below
respectively, would undergo the same process.
If we draw a diagram of such a structure, where in one organ the currents of the
physical and etheric bodies are dammed up against those of the ego and astral
body, the result is nothing less than the diagram of the human heart with its four
chambers:

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 !
Diagram 1
from Wisdom of Man ...

 
That is the way the human heart came into being. When we consider all that the
human heart achieves — the co-operation of the physical, etheric and astral
bodies and the ego — it will be borne in upon us that the spirit had to build the
human heart in this way.
Here is another example. We have learned that in visual activity there is really a
subconscious thought activity present. Conscious thought activity comes about
only in the brain. Well, how must the brain be built in order to make conscious
thought activity possible? In the brain we have the outer membrane, then a sort
of blood vessel membrane, then the spinal cord fluid, and finally the brain
proper. The latter is filled with nerve substance, and when sense impressions are
communicated to this nerve substance through the senses, conscious thought
activity arises. The nerve substance is the outer expression of conscious thought
activity.
When an organ is to be created in which not a conscious but a subconscious
reaction to an external impression is to take place, it would have to be built in a
similar way. Again there must be a sheath and something like a blood vessel
membrane against the back. The spinal cord fluid must dry up and the whole
brain mass be pushed back to make room for a subconscious thought activity
undisturbed by a nervous system. Were the nerve substance not pushed back,
thinking would take place there; when it is pushed back, no thinking can take
place. Thus an external impression is first digested by subconscious thinking on

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the part of those portions not interlaced by the nervous system, and only later
does it penetrate to the instrumentality of sentience, feeling and conscious
thought.
The result of this pushing back of the brain, so to speak, to the rear wall is that
the brain has become an eye. The eye is a small brain so worked over by our spirit
that the nerve substance proper is pushed back to the rear wall of the eye and
becomes the retina. That is the way nature's architects work. A single plan
governs in building really all of the sense organs; it is merely modified in the case
of each organ as occasion demands. At bottom, all sense organs are small brains
formed in different ways, and the brain is a sense organ of a higher order.
There is one more detail to be studied, but first we will interpolate a few
elucidating remarks in the nature of theoretical cognition, which in turn will
clarify the standpoint of anthroposophy.
We have said that the standpoint of anthropology lies below, among the details of
the sense life, that theosophy stands upon the summit, and anthroposophy half-
way between the two. In a general way, anyone can become convinced of the
existence of the sense world by means of his senses, and with his mind
understand the laws governing there. For this reason most people believe
unhesitatingly anything resembling their sense experiences, which can be
checked. It could easily be demonstrated that formally there is no difference
whatever between the spiritual scientist's statements concerning the existence of
spiritual worlds and the belief that there was such a person as Frederick the
Great. Formally there is no difference between the belief that there are Spirits of
Will and the belief that there was a Frederick the Great. When someone
constructs for you the life of Frederick the Great from external data, you believe
that there was a person with the attributes set forth. The human being gives
credence to what is told him, provided it resembles what he finds in his own
environment. The spiritual investigator is not in a position to deal with such
things, but it is none the less true that there is no difference in the attitude
assumed toward such communications. We have described the standpoints of
anthropology and of theosophy. Ours is between the two. A feeling of confidence
and faith in theosophy's message is fully justified by our sense of truth; there is
such a thing as well-founded acceptance of theosophic truths.
Coming to the third possibility, the standpoint lying between the other two, we
find that from this vantage point we can distinguish intelligently that there is a
sense perception; I believe because I can see it. There is a spiritual perception; I

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believe because the spiritual scientist tells me it is there. But there is a third
possibility. Here is a hammer; my hand grasps it, picks it up, and raises it from
the horizontal to the vertical position. We then say that it was moved and raised
by my will. That will not strike anybody as remarkable, for we see the underlying
will embodied in the man that raises the hammer. But supposing the hammer
were to raise itself up, without being touched by a visibly incorporated will. In
that case it would be foolish to imagine such a hammer to be the same as other
hammers. We would have to conclude that something invisible was at work in the
hammer. What conclusion would we draw from this embodiment of a will or
other spiritual force? When I see something in this world acting as it could not
act according to our knowledge of the laws of outer form, I am forced to conclude
that in this case I do not see the spirit in the hammer, but it is reasonable to
believe in it; in fact, I should be a perfect fool not to believe in spiritual activity.
Suppose you are walking with a clairvoyant and encounter a human form lying
motionless by the way. With the ordinary senses it might be impossible to
determine whether it was a living being or a cardboard dummy, but the
clairvoyant would know. He would see the etheric and astral bodies and could say
that that is a living being. You would be justified in believing him, even though
you could not perceive the etheric and astral bodies yourself. But now the figure
stands up, and you see that the spiritual scientist was right. That is the third
possibility.
Now I will tell you a case that you can observe and verify in ordinary life — close
at hand in one sense, though not in another. We have considered the various
currents in the human being and found them to run as follows:

From left to right, the currents of the physical body.

From right to left, those of the etheric body.
From the front backward, those of the sentient body.
From the rear forward, those of the sentient soul.
From above downward, those of the ego.
From below upward, those of the astral body.

The ego, then, acts downward from above; so how would its physical organ have
to lie? The physical organ of the ego is the circulating blood; and the ego could
not function downward from above without an organ running in the same
direction in the human body. Where the main direction of the blood-stream is

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horizontal, not vertical, there can be no ego, as in men. The main direction of the
blood-stream had to raise itself in man to the vertical in order to enable the ego to
lay hold on the blood. No ego can intervene where the main blood-stream runs
horizontally instead of vertically. The group ego of animals can find no organ in
them, because the main blood-line runs horizontally. Through the erection of this
line to the vertical in man, the group ego became an individual ego.
This difference between men and the animals shows how erroneous it is to set up
a relationship inferred from purely external phenomena. That act of rising from
the horizontal to the vertical is an historic incident, but it could no more have
taken place without an underlying will, without the co-operation of spirit, than
the raising of the hammer could have done. Only when a will, a spiritual force,
courses through the blood can the horizontal line pass over into the vertical, can
the upright position come about and the group soul rise to become the individual
soul. It would be illogical to recognize the spiritual force in one case, that of the
hammer, and not in the other, in man.
That is the third possibility, a middle way of conviction, as it were, through which
we can verify all theosophic truths. The deeper we penetrate into these matters,
the clearer it becomes that this middle path to conviction is universally applicable
— this middle way that fructifies ordinary experience through spiritual science.
External research will be stimulated by spiritual science. Comparing the results of
genuine spiritual-scientific research with outer phenomena, we are forced to the
conclusion that all external processes are really comprehensible only if we take
into account, without prejudice, the experiences of spiritual science. Thus to
observe the world without prejudice, that is the standpoint of anthroposophy. It
receives fruitful impulses from above, from theosophy, and from below, from
anthropology; it observes the facts of the spiritual world and the things of this
world, and explains the latter by means of the former. The building of each of our
organs can be explained through spiritual activity, just as we described the
transformation of the brain into an eye, and the build of the heart.
By showing how spiritual facts and earthly things are interwoven, how spiritual
truths are verified in outer phenomena, anthroposophy leads to the conviction
that it is senseless not to acknowledge the higher truths that spiritual science is in
a position to bring us.

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 THE WISDOM OF MAN (Anthroposophy)

LECTURE IV

Supersensible Currents in the Human and Animal Organizations.

The Group Soul and the Rôle of the Ego.

WE HAVE been dealing with the various force currents that shape the human
organism and give it form in a manner enabling us to comprehend it. If we really
learn to know these formative forces, we must perceive that they could not
function otherwise, that our heart, our eyes, inevitably had to become exactly
what they are. We have traced the sense image of ourselves back to those super-
sensible currents that flow back and forth in different directions, from above
downward, from right to left, from the back forward, and so forth. At this point
someone may try to catch me out by objecting that while dealing with the
currents I had failed to explain a certain significant phenomenon in the human
organism, that in addition to the asymmetrical organs (heart, liver, stomach, etc.)
there are those that are arranged symmetrically. You might say that my
description could at a pinch be accepted if the whole organism were laid out
asymmetrically, but not in connection with the symmetrical organs. This
objection, however, can be cleared away, too, as follows.
We have learned that the physical and etheric bodies stream from left to right and
from right to left respectively, that is, in the plane in which the human being is
formed symmetrically. Spiritual science teaches us that the physical body is an
ancient entity, stemming from the old Saturn, while the germs of the etheric
body, the astral body, and the ego were prepared on the old Sun, the old Moon,
and the Earth respectively. In its first appearance on Saturn the physical body
was asymmetrical, conditioned by a current corresponding to the one active today
from left to right, and the first germ of the etheric body was also asymmetrical,
with a current from right to left. Thence development proceeds; the physical body
is further formed on the old Sun, the old Moon, and so on. Had this not occurred,
the physical body would have remained lopsided, asymmetrical. As it actually
happened, however, the further development of the physical body and of the
other members continued on the old Moon and on the Earth, during which
something occurred that altered the whole previous development and brought
about a turnabout, so to speak, a reversal of the direction. If the physical body

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were to be formed, not into a lopsided but into a symmetrical structure, the
Saturn current running from left to right had to be opposed by one running from
right to left. How was this brought about? By the separation of the old Sun from
the old Moon. The Sun forces, which hitherto had worked on the physical body
from within, acted henceforth from without, that is, from the opposite direction.
The physical body, as it was constituted up to the time of the old Moon, was then
influenced by the Sun from without.
The etheric body experienced a similar transformation. You might ask why it is
that this other side of the physical body, the result of Sun forces acting from
without, is not much smaller, in a sense stunted, in comparison with the first, the
older portion? It is because those beings that left the Moon and passed over with
the Sun could develop stronger influences from their new sphere of action, owing
precisely to this separation that meant a higher development for them. They had
a more difficult task than the Saturn beings, for they had to counteract what was
already developed in one direction. This condition obstructed the whole process
of formation, so they had to become more powerful if they were to fulfill their
task. This, in turn, necessitated their acting from the Sun during the Moon
period, whereby their influence was intensified. In this way these younger but
more powerful currents — from right to left — balanced the weaker ones — from
left to right — and the physical body became a symmetrical structure.
We will now examine more closely some important details of the effects of those
force currents, remembering that the sentient body sends its forces into the
human organism from the front backward, but that the emanations of the
sentient soul run forward from the back. Given the existence of the physical and
etheric bodies and the general background, we ask in what manner these forces
proceed to build the human organism?

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!
Diagram 2
from Wisdom of Man ...

By being dammed up, stopped by the physical body, the backward-flowing

currents of the sentient body could now bore into the human organism and build
divers organs into what was already there. At the same time the sentient soul
works in the organism from the back toward the front. The currents of the
sentient body are dammed by the physical organism and bore their way in. In this
way they are obstructed by the physical body, so they really had to bore holes, as
it were.
In front (cf. sketch) we have the currents of the sentient body boring their way in.
They form the sense organs. In the rear the formative forces are active that build
the brain over them; this gives us the diagram of the human head seen in profile.
The openings represent the eyes, ears, organs of smell, etc., and the brain is
superimposed behind and above them. If spiritual science tells the truth, it is
clear that the human head could not possibly appear different from the way it
actually does. If a human head were ever to come into being at all it would have to
look as it does. It does look that way, and that is evidence proffered by the world
of outer phenomena itself.
In that connection there is another point to mention. The work of the sentient
body proceeds inward, that of the sentient soul outward, or at least, it has that
tendency. As a matter of fact, it is obstructed before emerging; it remains in the
physical body of the brain and emerges only at those points where previously the

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sentient body had, so to speak, bored the holes for the sense organs in the front of
the physical body. What we find, then, is that a part of our inner life flows
outward as sentient soul.
The intellectual soul would not be capable of this. It is completely dammed up
within, and no currents come to meet it from the opposite side. That is why
human thinking takes place wholly within. Objects don't think for us; they don't
show us the thoughts from without, nor bring them to us. That is the great secret
of the relation of human thought to the outer world. With our sense organs we
can perceive outer objects, and if these organs are healthy they do not err. The
mind, on the other hand, which cannot directly contact objects, is the first inner
member of the human being that can err, because its activity is completely
dammed up within the brain and does not emerge. From this it follows that our
thoughts about the outer world cannot be correct without an inner tendency to
permit right thoughts to arise within us. What the outer world can give us is
correct sense perception but not right thoughts. Thought is subject to error, and
the power of right thinking is something we must have within ourselves.
For the thinker this fact alone points to an earlier, prehistoric existence of man. It
is incumbent upon him to form right thoughts concerning the wisdom of the
outside world, but his thoughts cannot emerge or come in contact with what he
perceives. Nevertheless, that wisdom must be within him as well as without; it
must permeate him just as it does what surrounds him. The two currents,
therefore, belong together, though they are now separated.
At some time, however, they must have been united. That was before the human
ego had begun to dam up the currents within us, at a time when it still received
the wisdom of the world directly. There was a time when the currents of the
mental soul were not held up but flowed out, and that was the time when man
directly envisioned the wisdom of the world. What is now relegated to the brain
as thinking was once in contact with the outer world, like our sense perception, so
that man could look at his thoughts. That was a form of clairvoyance, though not
a conscious one irradiated by the ego. Man must have passed through earlier
stages in which he possessed a dim clairvoyance, and again it is the human
physical organization itself that shows us that in bygone times he was differently
constituted.
Something important for practical life follows from the foregoing. In all cases
involving the sense world, sense perception (apart from illusions) can be taken as
truth, for there the human being is in direct contact with the outer world. But

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concerning all that is within him, his knowledge is limited to what he acquires by
thinking. Now, the separation that exists between our intellectual soul and the
objects in space, and that makes it possible for our thinking about those objects
to err, does not apply to the ego. When the ego streams into us it is within us, and
it is natural that we should have a voice in its activity. The meeting of the
intellectual soul and the ego is what produces the purest thinking, the thinking
that is directed inward. This form of thinking, having itself as the object, cannot
be exposed to error in the same way as can the other kind, which is occupied with
outer objects and roves about in an endeavor to form judgments by observing
them. The only thing they can yield is sense perception. What we must do is meet
them with concepts, as though holding up their mirrored reflection to them.
Thinking is herein free from error only in so far as it is attracted to the tendency
to truth. Out of a right tendency to truth we must let concepts of things, thoughts
about things, rise up in us.
In the first instance we can form a judgment only of such things in the outer
world as are encountered by the senses. The senses themselves cannot judge what
is beyond their reach; no such judgment can be arrived at from the physical
plane. If the intellectual soul nevertheless does just that, unless it be guided by
the inner tendency to truth, it must inevitably fall into all sorts of errors.
To clarify these conditions by an illustration, let us turn to the various doctrines
of the descent of man. Here we distinguish between two kinds of ancestors. You
are familiar with one of them from theosophical research, which tells us of the
different forms we passed through in former periods, such as the Lemurian. That
is disclosed by spiritual science. We have seen how wonderfully comprehensible
everything perceived by the senses becomes when we have made this teaching
our very own, and it will reveal more and more.
In contrast, we will now consider material research, the materialistic doctrine of
descent, the crux of which is the so-called biogenetic law. According to this, man
in his germinal states passes through all forms recalling animal stages, thereby
repeating, in a sense, the various forms of the whole animal kingdom. At the time
when this doctrine was rampant the conclusion was drawn that man really passed
through these forms that thus appear in the germ state. In itself that is not
erroneous because in prehistoric times man actually did develop through such
forms. Fortunately, as we can say in view of the materialistic doctrine of the
descent, the foresight of the gods kept this fact secret until such time as the
opinions regarding it could be corrected by spiritual science. The development of

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man before he became outwardly perceptible on the physical plane could not
have been observed. It was shrouded by the gods and withdrawn from
observation, otherwise people would have evolved even wilder theories regarding
it than they do now. The facts are there, but they are frequently misinterpreted
because the senses that speak the truth cannot perceive them. In reasoning,
however, the power of the intellectual soul becomes active, and this cannot reach
what is imperceptible to the senses. In reality, the facts referred to prove the
exact opposite of what people try to infer from them. Here we have a striking
example of the way the power of judgment can plunge into a sea of errors when
its approach to external matters is purely by way of the mind.
What is shown by the fact that on a certain plane man resembled a fish? Precisely
that he never was a fish; indeed, that he had no use for the fish nature, that he
had to expel it before entering upon his human existence, because it in no way
pertained to him. This he did in turn with all the animal forms, because they were
not of his nature. He could not have become a human being if he had ever
appeared on earth in one of those animal forms. He had to discard these in order
to become what he did. The fact that in the germ the human being resembles a
fish is the very proof that never in his whole line of descent was he like a fish or
any other animal form. He had to expel all these forms because they were
inadequate and he therefore must never resemble them. He had to slough off
these forms, eject them. They are images he never resembled. All these forms of
germinal life show shapes he never bore. Thus we can find out precisely through
embryology how prehistoric man never looked. He cannot be descended from
something he had expelled. To infer that he passed through these forms would be
the same as to imagine that the father is descended from the son. The father is
not descended from the son, nor the son from himself, but the son is descended
from the father.
That is one of the cases in which the mind has proved wholly incapable of
thinking the facts of reality through to the end. It has exactly reversed the order
of development. Certainly these pictures of the remote past are extraordinarily
important, because they show us how we never looked. But that is something that
can be learned even more readily in another way, namely, through realms that lie
open in the sense world, that are not hidden from us. There we have all those
forms — fishes and so forth — and they can be properly studied with the ordinary
means of human observation. As long as men restricted themselves to observing
outer objects with the senses, and did not occupy their minds with matters

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concealed from sense perception, they avoided arriving at false conclusions; they
were rightly guided by their natural sense of truth. They would look, for instance,
at a monkey and doubtless experience the queer sensation that every normal
human being would have, a certain sense of embarrassment. This judgment
expressed through feeling means that the monkey is really a retarded being,
having remained behind in the evolution of man. This feeling is nearer the truth
than is the later judgment of the erring mind because it embodies the realization
that the monkey is a being that dropped out of the human current, that had to be
divided off from man if the latter was to achieve his goal. The moment our fallible
mind approached this fact it inverted it; instead of realizing that the monkey was
eliminated from the evolutionary human current it concluded that the monkey
was the starting point of human descent.
Here the error comes to light. In judging external things accessible to the senses
we should never forget that they are built up from within, through the agency of
spiritual currents. Suppose we are observing those parts of the human being that
are accessible to perception proper, or we observe part of another person that the
eye can see — his face, for example. In studying this face we must not imagine it
as having been built up from without. On the contrary, we must realize the need
to distinguish between two currents flowing into each other, the current of the
sentient body running backward from the front, and that of the sentient soul
running forward from the rear. In so far as we perceive the human countenance
by means of the senses, the sense image is true. That is given us by sense
perception and we will not go astray there. But now the human mind joins in, at
first subconsciously, and is at once misled. It regards the human countenance as
something merely fashioned from without, whereas in reality, this fashioning
occurred from within, through the agency of the sentient soul. What you see is
not really outer body; it is the outer image of the sentient soul.
Disabuse your mind of the notion that the human face might be outer body, and
you will see that in truth, it is the image of the soul. A fundamentally false
interpretation results from reasoning in a way that ignores the true nature of the
countenance as being the outer image of the sentient soul acting outward. Every
explanation of the human countenance based solely on physical forces is wrong.
It must be explained through the soul itself, the visible through the invisible. The
deeper we penetrate into theosophy the more we will see in it a great school for
learning to think. The chaotic thinking that today dominates all circles,

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particularly science, finds no shelter in theosophy, which is therefore able to
interpret life correctly.
This ability to interpret phenomena correctly will further stand us in good stead
when, in the course of our investigations, we come to phenomena that lead us out
of the region of individual anthroposophy into the realm of the anthroposophy
that concerns the whole of mankind.
Returning once more to the sense of sound and the sense of visualization, let us
ask ourselves which of these came into being first in the course of human
development? Did man learn first to understand words or to perceive and
understand the conceptions that came to him? This question can be answered by
observing the child, who first learns to talk and only later to perceive thoughts.
Speech is the premise of thought perception because the sense of sound is the
premise of the sense of visualization. The child learns to talk because he can hear,
can listen to something that the sense of sound perceives. Speech itself is at first
mere imitation, and the child imitates long before he has any idea of visualization
whatever. First the sense of sound develops, and then, by means of this, the sense
of visualization. The sense of sound is the instrumentality for perceiving not only
tones but also what we call sounds.
The next question is how it came about that at one time in the course of his
development man achieved the ability to perceive sounds and, as a result, to
acquire speech? How was he endowed with speech? If he was to learn to speak,
not just to hear, it was necessary not only that an outer perception should
penetrate, but that a certain current within him should flow in the same direction
as that taken by the currents of the sentient soul when they press forward from
the rear. It had to be something acting in the same direction. That was the way in
which speech had to originate, and this faculty had to appear before the sense of
visualization, before man was able to sense the conception contained in the words
themselves. Men had first to learn to utter sounds and to live in the
consciousness of them before they could combine conceptions with them. What
at first permeated the sounds they uttered was sentience.
This development had to take place at a time when the transposition of the
circulatory system had already occurred, for animals cannot speak. The ego had
to be acting downward from above with the blood system in a vertical position. As
yet, however, man had no sense of visualization, consequently no visualizations.
It follows that he could not have acquired speech through the agency of his own
ego, but rather, he received it from another ego that we can compare with the

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group ego of animals. In this sense speech is a gift of the gods. It was infused into
the ego before the latter itself was capable of developing it. The human ego did
not yet possess the organs needed to give the impulse for bringing about speech,
but the group ego worked from above into the physical, etheric and astral bodies,
and as it encountered an opposing current, a sort of whorl came into being at the
point of contact. A straight line drawn through the center of the larynx would
indicate the direction of the current employed by the speech-giving spirits, and
the larynx itself represents the physical substance, the dam, that resulted from
the encounter of the two currents. That accounts for the peculiar shape of the
human larynx.
It was under the influence, then, of a group soul that man had to develop speech.
In what manner do group souls operate on earth? In animals the current of the
group soul passes through the spinal cord horizontally, and these force currents
are in continual motion. The force currents running downward from above move
constantly around the earth, as they did around the old Moon. They don't remain
in one spot but move around the earth retaining their vertical direction of
influence. If men were to learn to speak under the influence of a group soul, they
could not remain in one place, they had to migrate. They had to move toward the
group soul. Never could they have learned to speak if they had remained in one
spot.
What direction, then, would men have to take if they were to learn to speak? We
know that the etheric currents flow from right to left and the physical ones from
left to right, and this is the case not only in man but on the earth as well. Now,
where are the group souls that endow man with speech? Let us look at the earth
in its peculiar development. Man learned to speak at a time when his outer
structure was already complete. Strong currents were therefore needed because
the larynx had first to be transformed from a soft substance that in no way
resembled a larynx. This called for special conditions on earth. Suppose we stand
facing east. There flow in us from left to right the currents connected with the
formation of the physical body. This current exists outside us as well; it was
present during the formation of the earth. Running from north to south are those
strong currents that produce solid physical matter. From the other direction,
from the south, flow the etheric currents that lack the tendency to solidify the
earth. This explains the lopsidedness, the lack of symmetry on the earth. In the
northern hemisphere we find the great continents, in the southern, the vast
oceans; the tendency of the earth was asymmetrical.

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From the south the current acts that is of the same nature as the one that runs
from right to left in man, but while the current from back to front streams
outward, the one from front to back originates in the sentient body and enters the
sentient soul. With all this in mind we understand why the attainment of speech
called for a current passing outward from within; this current had to encounter a
group soul current in order that the two could be dammed up in man's own
organism. Man had to move toward a current that could act upon his astral
element. He could therefore go neither toward the north nor toward the south,
but had to take a direction at right angles to these. It was latitudinally that man
had to proceed when he was acquiring speech, that is, from east to west. At that
time he inhabited ancient Lemuria, where today we have the ocean lying between
Asia and Africa. Thence, in order to learn to speak, he migrated westward into old
Atlantis, to meet the group soul that was to engender speech in him. There he had
to develop the organism suitable for speech, and thus it was in old Atlantis that
he learned to speak.
The next step was to develop the sense of visualization by means of the speech
man had acquired, but in order to do this he could not continue in the same
direction. He had to proceed in a way that would cause the same current to act
from the opposite direction. Recall here what was said in the last lecture
concerning the origin of sound and of visualization. Sound comes into being
when we subconsciously convert a melody into a harmony, ignore the
fundamentals themselves, and mentally hear only the harmony produced by the
harmonics (overtones); visualization arises when we push back and disregard this
harmony of the harmonics as well. So, if we are to develop the sense of
visualization, we must destroy on the one hand what we had built up on the
other. We must face about and proceed in the opposite direction. One element of
speech has to be suppressed, the harmonics must be pushed back, if we are to
develop visualization. The old Atlanteans had to face about and migrate
eastward; by doing this they were able effectively to develop the sense of
visualization. This could not have been accomplished if they had continued
westward. It was the tragic fate of the American aborigines to migrate in the
wrong direction. They could not hold their ground, but had to yield to those who
had migrated properly and returned to them only later.
In this way a great deal becomes clear. When we know the secret of those
currents that fashion man and the earth we can understand the organization of
the earth, the distribution of oceans and continents, the migrations of men.

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Anthroposophy leads us into that life through which the outer world becomes
transparent and comprehensible.
Evolution proceeds. Humanity was not destined to stop at visualizations but to
achieve concepts as well, and in order to accomplish this it had to ascend from
mere visualizations to the soul life proper. After the sense of visualization, the
sense of concepts had to be developed, and again a new direction had to be taken.
In order to gain the life of visualizations, humanity — or as much of it as comes
into consideration — moved eastward, but pure concepts could be acquired only
by returning in a westward direction. We could similarly present the migrations
of peoples in the four post-Atlantean periods from an anthroposophical
viewpoint, and you would see a wondrous interplay of spiritual forces at work
upon the whole shaping of man, and of what comes to expression in forming the
earth.
But this is not the end. We have dealt with the currents running downward from
above, forward from the rear, etc., but in a sense we now appear to have reached
a dead end. Spiritual science, however, discloses higher forces holding sway
above the capacity for visualization and forming concepts, that is, the
imaginative, the inspirative, and the intuitive senses. We have learned that as a
rule these stream inward, but in clairvoyants, outward. All these currents must
operate too, and for that purpose must develop the necessary organs. So we ask
how they do this? How do they live and operate in the physical human being?
In order to answer this question we will first consider a force possessed only by
the human being, not by animals: the inner soul force of memory. Animal
memory is a pure figment of the scientists' imagination. Animals have no
memory; they merely manifest symptoms to be explained by the same principle
as those of human memory. In order to produce human memory, the main
position of animals would have to be raised to the vertical, so that the ego could
stream in. Since their principal position is horizontal, they can have no ego. But
in certain animals the forward part of the body is in the same position as that of
the human being, hence it can act intelligently, although this intelligence is not
permeated by an ego.
This is the beginning of a vast region of misconceptions. When an animal
manifests a capacity similar to that of memory and acts intelligently, nothing
more is proved by these facts than that a being can be guided by an intelligence
without being intelligent itself. Phenomena resembling memory can appear in the
animal world, but not memory itself.

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In memory we see something special, something quite different from what we
find in mere intelligent thinking, for example, or in visualization. The essence of
memory lies in the retention of a visualization we have had; it is still present after
the act of perception has passed. The repetition of an action previously performed
is not memory. A clock would in that case be endowed with memory, for it does
today exactly what it did yesterday. If memory is to come about, the ego must
seize a conception and retain it.
If the ego is to seize a conception in this way, an organ must be formed for the
purpose, and this is accomplished as follows. Out of its own essence the ego must
engender special currents and must pour and bore these into the various
horizontal currents already active minus the ego. The ego must overcome
currents. When a current appears running inward from without, the ego must be
able to produce within itself a counter-current.
That the ego was originally not capable of this we learned when studying the
origin of speech; then the group ego had to co-operate. But when the soul life
proper commences, beyond visualization, when a higher faculty such as memory
is to be developed, the ego must activate new currents independently, currents
that bore into others already there. Of this process the ego is clearly aware. In
developing the senses up to and including visualization, this activity of the ego is
not required, but when a higher activity is to be brought about, the ego must
oppose the currents already functioning. This becomes manifest through the
addition of a fourth phenomenon to the three currents at right angles to each
other in space. This boring in of the ego becomes perceptible in the consciousness
of time, and that is why memory is linked with temporal conceptions. We do not
follow time in any spatial direction, but into the past. The direction of the past is
bored into the directions of space. That is what occurs in all that the ego develops
out of itself. Through spiritual science we can even indicate the current that
comes into play when the ego evolves memory. It runs from left to right, and
when habits are developed by the ego, the currents run from left to right as well.
The ego bores its way into the opposing currents, those that were formed without
the ego. Here the law is exemplified that tells us that the higher activities of the
soul always have currents running in the opposite direction from that of the next
lower activity.
To gain inner contact with the ego, the intellectual soul had to develop up to the
ego plane. Now we ascend to the consciousness soul. When this functions
consciously its active current runs in the opposite direction from that of the

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intellectual soul, which is still able to function subconsciously. Under certain
earthly conditions the following law in human evolution can be proved. Learning
to read is an intelligent activity, but one that does not necessarily proceed from
the consciousness soul. The idea of learning to read and write occurred to men
before the consciousness soul was developed. Reading by means of the
intellectual soul had its inception in the Greco-Latin epoch. Then followed the
ascendancy of the consciousness soul, and the direction of the current had to be
reversed. Arithmetic could only develop with the consciousness soul. The
European peoples read and write from left to right, but they figure from right to
left, as in adding. It will be seen from this how the currents of the intellectual soul
and of the consciousness soul overlap, and we can actually understand the nature
of the European peoples by pondering the matter.
But there have been other peoples with other missions. They were advance
guards, so to speak, and their task was to develop, or at least prepare, the feature
of the intellectual soul that the European peoples, who had postponed their
cultural development, did not evolve until after the consciousness soul had
become active. Those were the Semitic peoples, who write from right to left.
They were the peoples who were to prepare in advance the later period of the
consciousness soul.
In such considerations we find the means for comprehending all cultural
phenomena on earth. We shall learn to know everything of that sort, down to the
letter formations of the various languages. The reason why peoples write from top
to bottom, from right to left or from left to right follows from an understanding of
the underlying spiritual facts. It is the mission of spiritual science to see that light
dawns in the minds of men, and that the obscure becomes clear.

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