Transforming The Soul: Volume 2 E-Book

Rudolf Steiner

• Herausgeber: Rudolf Steiner Press
• Kategorie: Ratgeber
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2013

Beschreibung

Those who observe human nature with regard to the smallest things will find that everyday experiences can also lead to an understanding of the greatest actualities...' In a refreshingly practical series of lectures, Rudolf Steiner speaks about the nature of the human soul and how it can be metamorphosed and raised to a higher consciousness. He studies the spiritual significance of various expressions of human nature, including laughing and weeping, sickness and health, error and mental disorder, positivity and negativity, and conscience. Steiner also discusses the nature of prayer, mysticism, the mission of art, and the significance of language. Throughout the talks he refers to many key historical figures, including Zarathustra, Socrates, Plato, Homer, Wagner, Goethe, Hegel and Angelus Silesius. These inspiring lectures form the conclusion to Transforming the Soul, Volume 1, but can also be read independently.

Leseprobe

TRANSFORMING THE SOUL

VOLUME 2

Nine lectures given in Berlin, Germany, between 20 January and 12 May 1910

RUDOLF STEINER

RUDOLF STEINER PRESS

Translated by Charles Davy and Christian von Arnim, and revised for this edition by Pauline Wehrle

Rudolf Steiner Press Hillside House, The Square Forest Row, RH18 5ES

www.rudolfsteinerpress.com

Published by Rudolf Steiner Press 2013

Previously published in English as Metamorphosis of the Soul, Paths of Experience, Volume 2 by Rudolf Steiner Press in 1983

Originally published in German under the title Metamorphosen des Seelenlebens, Pfade der Seelenerlebnisse 2 (volume 59 in the Rudolf Steiner Gesamtausgabe or Collected Works) by Rudolf Steiner Verlag, Dornach. This authorized translation is published by permission of the Rudolf Steiner Nachlassverwaltung, Dornach

Translation © Rudolf Steiner Press 2006

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978 1 85584 431 5

Cover by Andrew Morgan Design Typeset by DP Photosetting, Aylesbury, Bucks.

Contents

Summary of Contents

LECTURE 1 Spiritual Science and Language20 January 1910

LECTURE 2 Laughing and Weeping3 February 1910

LECTURE 3 What is Mysticism?10 February 1910

LECTURE 4 The Nature of Prayer17 February 1910

LECTURE 5 Sickness and Healing3 March 1910

LECTURE 6 A Positive and Negative Frame of Mind10 March 1910

LECTURE 7 Error and Mental Disorder28 April 1910

LECTURE 8 Conscience5 May 1910

LECTURE 9 The Mission of Art12 May 1910

Notes

Notes regarding Rudolf Steiner's Lectures

Summary of Contents

Lecture 1

Language touches on the very essence of man, uniting us with our fellows, yet it can also tyrannize us. Influence on character, temperament and national character. Development of language: ‘bow-wow’ theory and ‘bim-bum’ theory. Aspects of man as a seven-membered being. Higher spiritual activities working on us before the advent of the ego gave us our power of speech as the final gift of their forming us through the medium of air. Our speech organs determine our humanity. Prior to the advent of the ego, the inner and outer aspects of forces affecting speech were: on the astral level, gratification and desire; on the etheric level, imagery, symbolism and outer stimulus; and on the physical level, imitation and outer happenings. The advent of the ego brought inner experience to language. Speech can be compared to artistic creation. Characteristic qualities of the Chinese, Hebrew and Indo-Germanic languages. An artistic sense is needed both for understanding and for the proper use of language. A creative feeling for language is necessary for communicating spiritual thoughts.

Persons referred to: Max Mueller, Fritz Mauthner. Quote from Friedrich von Schiller.

Lecture 2

Importance of finding the spirit in commonplace matters. It is healthy to proceed from what is familiar to what is less familiar. The ‘Zarathustra smile’ and Faust's tears that accompany his return to the world. Laughing and weeping as expressions of our inner spiritual life. As the ego strives to bond with its environment effects work right down into physical body. Fear makes us pale and shame makes us blush. When raising ourselves above something our astral body expands and goes slack, and we laugh or smile. Grief contracts both astral and physical body, and we produce tears to compensate. Babies cannot laugh or weep in the first 36-40 days of their lives. Animals cannot laugh or weep, only grin or howl. When we weep, in-breathing is shorter and out-breathing longer; when laughing, the opposite occurs. We received our selfhood when Jehovah breathed into us the living breath. Laughter when being tickled. Certain speakers’ calculated use of provoking the liberation of laughter or the comfort of tears. Educational effect of laughter and tears through artistic presentations in the form of comedy or tragedy. Our ego needs to move in a pendulum and find a balance between extremes. Laughing and weeping are two opposite poles through which world secrets are made manifest.

Persons referred to: Zarathustra, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.

Lecture 3

Mysticism was known of in earliest times, but is not understandable to our present-day mentality until the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. From Meister Eckhart, Johannes Tauler and Suso through to Angelus Silesius mystics sought to penetrate inwards beyond sense impressions and soul experience to the divine ground of the world and the experience of the Christ's life, death and resurrection. Due to the unifying effect of the ego, piercing though the veils to the inner world leads to spiritual monism. Piercing through the veil of the outer world leads to monadology, to plurality. Yet concepts of unity and plurality cannot fathom the divine foundation of the world. Because of the individual nature of mysticism the interest for us lies in what has to be overcome. Investigating the outer world, which is common to all, is not spoilt by the shortcomings of investigators. In comparison to these ways, on the spiritual-scientific path we do not use only forces we already have but develop slumbering ones, and find other paths which unite both outer and inner ones. The awakening faculties lead to knowledge by way of Imagination, Inspiration and Intuition. The mystical experience of the rose cross arises through an inner devotion to both what is outside and what is within us, leading to a new force in us, one that shows us that what is outside and what is inside is the same. Putting the picture aside, we arrive at the inspirational stage by concentrating on the inner activity which creates the pictures, thereby finding an inner strength which unites us with the outer world. In intuitive knowledge we go out of ourselves again, yet arrive at something closely akin to our inner being. Mysticism, if pursued too early, leads to subjective immersion in one's own self. The path through Imagination prepares us to become one with the outer world. A symbol can lead to a truth which removes egotism.

Persons referred to: Meister Eckhart, Angelus Silesius, Johannes Tauler, Suso, Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibnitz, Johann Friedrich Herbart.

Lecture 4

Medieval mysticism is a first step to real spiritual research and the true form of prayer is a preparatory step to mystical devotion. Egoism causes prayer to be misunderstood. Prayer helps us discover the inner spark and gives us an inkling of the infinite expanses of the soul. A stream from the past and a stream from the future meet in the soul in the present. Our ability to judge our past, even be ashamed of it, leads to the first awakening of God within us, of a divine ego. May this live in the present! Fear and anxiety towards the future, if overcome, brings humble submission for whatever will come, bringing new strengths. In prayer we rise from the immediate present, from the temporal to the eternal. Prayer is a lighting up in us of the force that seeks to transcend what our ego is at present. Prayer directed to the past engenders warmth; prayer directed to the future engenders light. The outer world is connected with our future. Jacob's fight with his angel. The desire to find God entirely in ourselves and to become perfect is egoistic. Overcoming our intellect leads to finding the wonders of nature outside and new forces within. Prayers such as the Lord's Prayer. Prayer is the instrument for finding God everywhere outside. Prayer works with the spiritual forces in the world. In art we find it in odes, hymns, particular paintings, cathedrals. Mood of eternity in prayer.

Persons referred to: Angelus Silesius, Meister Eckhart, Johannes Tauler, Valentin Weigel, Jacob Boehme, Heraclitus, Goethe, Miguel de Molinos.

Lecture 5

We view our physical body externally and our astral body inwardly. Etheric body and ego are not outwardly perceptible, but they mediate between inside and outside. In sleep, physical and etheric on the one hand and ego and astral on the other separate, and these two pairs can be called the ‘outer man’ and the ‘inner man’. Soul experiences are seated in the inner man, but we need the outer man in order to be conscious of them. In sleep our learning experiences are taken up with us and become our abilities and wisdom. Homer's dramatic picture of Penelope and her suitors. There is a limit to our ability to change outer man. Need for harmony between outer and inner man. Amount of change possible in outer man connected with the law of soul and spirit arising from soul and spirit, which leads to the principle of repeated earth lives. A new incarnation provides the possibility of incorporating into outer man our previously acquired abilities. Harmony between the two streams of the inner and the outer man is achieved only when disharmony has been worked through. Difference between inner and outer point of view; these have to work together to reach truth. For development to occur, the limits applying to outer man have to be crossed. The breaching of these limits is what causes illness. Eruption of Mount Pelée an example of lack of harmony between outer and inner man. Cut finger a simple example of sickness as a disharmony between inner and outer man. Healing compares with waking from sleep, helping inner man to progress. Death brings benefits for life between death and a new birth and our next life on earth. So healing is a good thing and so is death! Healing contributes to raising inner man to a higher level, and death does the same for the outer man. Real health is acquired by working our way through mistakes and illness. Erring leads to renewed striving, and illness points beyond itself to our individually won health.

Persons referred to: Homer, Francesco Redi, Giordano Bruno.

Lecture 6

Genuine study of the human psyche defines positive as standing firmly by one's acquired convictions, and negative as being easily swayed by new impressions; yet positivity can make a person rigid and negativity can lead to wholesome change, whilst going to extremes achieves nothing. If we include the concept of ‘evolution’ it extends our picture. Our development through sentient soul, rational soul to consciousness soul can proceed further to becoming more truly human, acquiring moral ideals and ideas from the spiritual world and applying them in action and knowledge. In our evolution positivity and negativity work in each individual at different stages. Positivity has to be overcome on one level so that a stage of negativity can lead to positivity on a higher level. Negativity can be dangerous but is essential for our progress. Mention of vegetarianism. To counteract bad effects of negativity the acquiring of new soul qualities should be accompanied by study of spiritual-scientific material. Making a judgement is positive, the inability to judge is negative. Hence frequent predilection for an irrational rather than rational approach to spiritual matters. Healthy positivity in actively acquired ideas. Theorizing about nature cultivates a negative attitude, participating in nature cultivates a positive one. Watching slides is passive and negative. Anthroposophy cannot be demonstrated but has to be acquired actively and positively. Example of the art of tragedy. Art in all its forms leads us to a higher level.

Persons referred to: Meister Eckhart, Peter Rosegger, Plato, Heraclitus.

Lecture 7

Spiritual science in harmony with the results produced by genuine science but not with its interpretation of them. Any truth we discover is true only with respect to certain particulars, and if extended further can become a dogma. Not to be able to interpret an observation correctly is pathological. A German philosopher's two stories; in the first his mind wanders, and in the second full consciousness is in control. We distinguish an inner and an outer man. There is a reciprocal relationship between outer and inner man: sentient soul interrelated with sentient body; rational or perceptive soul with etheric body; and consciousness soul with physical body. Normal life is disturbed if these links do not function properly. When the philosopher's mind wandered it caused a split between the sentient soul and sentient body. When there is a split between the rational soul and etheric body, thoughts are not brought to completion. A grotesque example of the ego, and the true symbol of the snake biting its own tail. Contrast of a modern philosopher's reference to ‘infinite darkness of evolution’ and the spiritual-scientific conclusion that soul and spirit can originate only from soul and spirit. Error in the etheric body can therefore be sought in the rational soul and corrected. Illness occurs when the error is incorporated into the etheric body. Faults pass down from inner to outer man from one life to the next. But heredity is also at work. Splits between the consciousness soul and physical body are seen in worst aspects of bodily organs; symptoms are megalomania and persecution mania. Importance of our making the inner man as strong as possible. Impetus for physical education should also come from the soul. Spiritual activity that gets its impulse from within is not tiring. Significance of stages of imitation, authority, etc. occurring at the right time; failing to follow these leads to such things as schizophrenia and senile dementia. Developing our spiritual nature helps to counter the supremacy of the outer man. Hegel, another seeker of the spirit, using the word reason for all the forces of the soul, said: ‘Reason is the rose on today's cross!’

Persons referred to: Wilhelm Wundt, Francesco Redi, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel.

Lecture 8

History of human attitude to conscience. In Lessing's time they felt conscience to be an essential factor of our true humanity. Commonly felt to be the voice of God, it is felt by everyone to be holy. In medieval times Meister Eckhart connected it to the mystic spark. In modern times some philosophers said it was merely an acquired experience, while Fichte said it was the greatest experience of our higher ego. Effect of materialism on thinking seen in Bartholemew Carnieri's ‘outer influence’ and Paul Rée's ‘voice of vengeance’. Yet conscience is not eternal, but arose in time. Socrates still held that virtue could be taught. In earlier times, before the advent of the ego, a higher ego worked on our bodily sheaths. While human consciousness was outside in the spiritual environment human beings saw the result of their deeds as ghostlike visions shown them by the Furies, the Erinyes. When the ego entered, outer experiences became inner ones and people saw the beneficial effect of correcting the harm they had done to the cosmic order. Examples in Aeschylus. The understanding of the Christ impulse is aided by both East and West, by the East with its understanding of Christ's spiritual nature and by the West with its conscious experience of the inner divinity of conscience. The Incarnation gave human beings the chance to grasp God in their inner being.

Persons referred to: Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Meister Eckhart, Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Bartholemew Carnieri, Paul Rée, Socrates, Plato, Aeschylus, Euripides.

Lecture 9

Finding the same deep foundation to both knowledge and art, truth and beauty. History of the artistic impulse linked to our changing consciousness. The reality in myths and fairy tales and in Homer's muse. Poetic imagination a substitute for clairvoyance. Development of an ego-feeling came sooner in the West than in the East. While pictorial vision still flourished in the East the West developed the hymn. In Greece both influences meet. Advance from Homer's epics figuring the gods to Aeschylus’ dramas figuring active human characters. Dante's inspiration comes no longer from without but from within. In his Divine Comedy he shows us pictures of soul forces that have to be overcome to reach spiritual heights. Klopstock's modern version of the ‘muse’. Shakespeare comes forth from his own personality into the everyday world and describes many personalities each with their own centre. Goethe, in his Faust, objectifies his own nature so that Faust is everyman. In Goethe, art reaches again into the spiritual world. Past and future connection with spirituality linked by artistic imagination. Artists can give us evidence of the spiritual world. Its mission is to fructify the ‘parable of transience’ with the message of eternity.

Persons referred to: Goethe, Baruch (Benedict) Spinoza, Johann Heinrich Merck, Richard Wagner, Homer, Aeschylus, Dante Alighieri, Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock, William Shakespeare.

Lecture 1

Spiritual Science and Language

20 January 1910

It is fascinating to look at the various expressions of man's being from the point of view of the kind of spiritual science we represent here.1 For as we so to speak work our way around human life, as we have done in these lectures, and look at it from its different sides, we can get an impression of human life as a whole. Today we shall speak about that universal expression of the human spirit which is manifest in language, and next time our title will be ‘Laughing and Weeping’, when we shall look at a kind of related means of expression which, although it is connected with language, is entirely different.

Whenever we discuss language we never fail to feel that the whole subject of language touches on the essence of man's being, his very dignity and significance. The innermost part of our being, all our thoughts, feelings and impulses of will find their way to our fellow human beings and unite us with them by means of language. It is language that gives us the feeling of being able to extend our being infinitely, of having the ability to ray out into the environment. Yet on the other hand anyone who can enter into the inner life of a significant personality will be able to feel how language can also become a tyrant, a force that can exert power over our inner life. We ourselves can notice, if we care to, how inadequately and weakly we are able to express our own understanding of the special and tender feelings and thoughts we cherish within our souls. And we feel, too, how even the language we have grown up with forces us into specific modes of thought. Everyone must be aware how dependent we are on language where our thinking is concerned. Our concepts frequently cling to words, and when not yet fully mature a person will easily confuse a word, or what the word has instilled into him, with the concept. Hence the inability of some people to construct for themselves a conceptual framework that reaches beyond what is contained in the words commonly used in their environment. And we know, too, that the character of a whole people who speak a common language is in a certain way dependent on this language. At least, the person who observes national character and the character of languages in their context, must realize that the way in which individuals are able to express through sounds what is in their souls works back in its turn on the strength and weakness of their character, on the way their temperament expresses itself, even on their whole attitude to life. The configuration of a language can tell quite a lot about the character of a people. And since a people share a common language, the individual is dependent on a common element, an average quantity as it were, of which is prevalent among the people, he is thus subject to a certain tyranny, the rule of communality. If you get the feeling, however, that our individual spiritual life on the one hand and the spiritual life of the communalities on the other is laid down so to speak in the language, then what one could call the mystery of language could seem to have a special significance. Something could certainly be learnt about human soul life if one were to observe how this expresses itself in the particular vehicle of language.

The mystery of a language, its origin and its development through the various ages, has always been a puzzling question for certain special branches of science. But it cannot be said that these disciplines have been particularly successful in our age in uncovering the secret of language. This is why we shall be having a little look today, in outline—aphoristically so to speak—at language, its development and its connection with the human being from a spiritual-scientific point of view, in the way we have been doing with regard to human beings and their evolution.

What seems so mysterious to start with is that we make use of a word to describe an object, an idea or a procedure. In what way is that particular combination of sounds which form a word or sentence connected with that which comes from us and signifies the object? External science has tried to put together all kinds of experiences with a great number of combinations. But this method has proved unsatisfactory. The question, which is so simple and yet so difficult to answer, is this: On encountering some object or activity in the outer world, what made human beings produce one particular sound from out of themselves as an echo to it?

From a certain point of view the matter was thought to be quite simple. They imagined, for example, that speech would have been formed by imitating, with an ability in our speech organs, sounds heard outside such as the sounds made by animals, or something knocking against something else, rather like when children hear a dog barking and making the sounds ‘bow-wow’, and they imitate it and call the dog a ‘bow-wow’. This kind of word formation could be called onomatopoeic, an imitation of the sound. This was held by certain directions of thought to be the original foundation of sound and word formation. Of course the question of how human beings came to name creatures which did not emit a sound remains unanswered. The great linguistic researcher Max Mueller,2 realizing the unsatisfactory nature of such a theory, ridiculed it by calling it the ‘bow-wow’ theory. He set up another theory in its place, which his opponents in turn called ‘mystical’ (giving the word a sense in which it should not be used). For what Max Mueller meant by it was that each object possesses something like a tone; everything in a certain sense has a tone, not only glass when it is dropped, or the bell when it is struck, but everything. And the ability of human beings to establish a relationship between their soul and this tone, which is as it were the inner being of the object, calls forth the possibility in the soul of expressing this inner sound-nature of the object. Thus the essence of a bell can be experienced in imitating the sound as ‘bim-bum’. And Max Mueller's opponents returned his ridicule by calling his theory the ‘bim-bum’ theory. A more detailed examination would show that something unsatisfactory always remains when trying to characterize outwardly in this way the things human beings experience as an echo in themselves responding to the nature of things outside. We shall have to penetrate more deeply into the inner nature of the human being.

In the light of spiritual science the human being is after all a very complicated being. To start with we can see that human beings have a physical body within which are the same laws and substances that we can also find in the mineral world. Then spiritual science tells us of a second, higher member of the human being, the etheric or life body, and further of the member that we call the bearer of pleasure and pain, instinct, desire and passion—the astral body—which for spiritual science is just as real if not more real a member of human nature than what we see with our eyes and touch with our hands. And the fourth member of the human being we called the bearer of the ego. We realized that at the present stage human development consists of the ego working on the transformation of the other three members of the human being, and we pointed to the fact that in the far future the ego will have transformed these three members to such an extent that there will be nothing left of what nature, or the spiritual forces in nature, have made of these three members.

Initially then, we see the human being as a four-membered being consisting of physical body, etheric body, astral body and ego. And just as we have three members of our being deriving from the past, we are also able to speak of three members of the human being developing in the future, created by the work of the ego. We can therefore speak of a seven-membered human being by adding to the physical body the etheric body, the astral body and the ego, the Spirit Self, Life Spirit and Spirit Man. But when we regard these last three members as something distant, belonging to the future evolution of humankind, we have to add that the human being is to a certain extent already at present preparing for such a development. Consciously the human being will work with his ego on the physical, etheric and astral body only in the far distant future. But in the subconscious, that is, out of a dimly conscious activity, the ego has already transformed these three members of its being. The results are already in existence. The inner members of the human being that we described in previous lectures were only able to come about because of the work the ego did on them. From the astral body it fashioned the sentient soul as a kind of inner mirror image of the sentient body. While the sentient body transmits what we call gratification (as far as man is concerned sentient body and astral body are synonymous, and without the sentient body we would have no gratification), this is mirrored internally in the soul as desire, so we ascribe desire to the soul. So the two things, that is, the astral body and the transformed astral body or sentient body, belong together, just as gratification and desire belong together. In the past the ego worked similarly on the etheric body. This led to human beings acquiring within them, in their souls, the rational and perceptive soul, so that the rational soul, which is at the same time the bearer of memory, is connected with a subconscious transformation performed by the ego in the etheric body. And finally, the ego also already worked in the past on the transformation of the physical body, so as to enable human beings to have their present form. And what resulted from this transformation is what we call the consciousness soul, by means of which human beings can acquire knowledge of the outer world. In this way too we can speak of a seven-membered being, for through the preparatory, subconscious work of the ego there arose the three soul members: the sentient soul, rational soul and consciousness soul. But all this was done by an unconscious or subconscious activity of the ego on its sheaths.

These three sheaths, the physical body, the etheric body and the astral body—what complicated entities they are! What a miracle of construction is the human physical body! And if we examine it in greater detail we would find that it is much more complex than just the part which the ego has transformed into the consciousness soul, and which can be called the physical bearer of the consciousness soul. Similarly the etheric body is much more complicated than what we call the bearer of the rational or perceptive soul. And the astral body too is more complicated than what we call the bearer of the sentient soul. These parts are certainly in a poor state compared with what existed before the human being had an ego. This is why, in spiritual science, we speak of the human being as having come into existence way back in the past, the first beginnings of the physical body being a gift from spiritual beings. This was followed by the etheric body, later on by the astral body and finally by the ego. Therefore the human physical body has passed through four stages of evolution. First, the physical body interrelated directly with the spiritual world, then it was worked on and interwoven with the etheric body, becoming thereby more complicated. Then it became interwoven with the astral body, which made it more complicated again. Then the ego was added. And only the work of the latter on the physical body transformed part of the physical body and made it into the bearer of human consciousness, the capacity with which we can acquire knowledge of the outer world. But this physical body has much more to do than bring us knowledge of the outer world by means of our senses and our brain. It has to carry out a number of activities which form the basis of our consciousness but which take place completely outside the sphere of the brain. The same applies to the etheric body and to the astral body.

Now if we realize that everything we have around us in the outer world is spirit, that there is a spiritual foundation to everything material, etheric and astral, as we have emphasized so often, then we have to acknowledge that just as the ego itself works as a spiritual force from the inside outwards in the course of the development of the three sheaths, so must spiritual beings—or we could equally well call them spiritual activities—have worked on our physical body, etheric body and astral body before the ego became operative and took the work further. We are looking back at a time in which so to speak active work was being done on our astral body, etheric body and physical body of a similar kind to the work the ego does on these three sheaths. That is to say, spiritual creativity, spiritual activity worked on our sheaths, giving them form, movement and configuration, until the ego was ready to become established within them. We have to speak of there being spiritual participation in human development until the ego became active, and that there are within us spiritual activities which presuppose ego activity and which were there before the ego could take over. If we exclude for a moment all the work the ego has done to create out of the three sheaths the sentient soul, rational or perceptive soul and consciousness soul, and look at the structure, inner movement and activity of these three sheaths, we have to admit that before the ego began to be active a spiritual activity was working in us.

This is why in spiritual science we speak of human beings as they are today as having an individual soul, a soul interwoven with an ego, which makes every human being into a self-contained individuality. But before this happened human beings issued from a group soul, a soul entity such as we still refer to today in the animal world as group soul.3 What we address in each person as the individual soul we find in animals as the foundation of a whole species or kind. A whole animal species has one animal group soul in common. Whereas each human being has an individual soul, animals share one group soul. So before human beings became individual souls, another soul was working in the three sheaths of their being of which we have knowledge today only through spiritual science, a soul that was the precursor of our individual ego. And this precursor of our ego, this soul of a species, this group soul of human beings, which then passed on to the ego the three sheaths they had been working on, the physical body, etheric body and astral body, so that the ego might continue to transform them, this group soul being also transformed from within itself the physical body, etheric body and astral body and ordered them according to itself. And the final activity, fundamental to us human beings before we were endowed with an ego, forms the basis of what we call human speech. When we therefore consider what preceded the life of our consciousness soul, our rational or perceptive soul and our sentient soul, we arrive at work performed on our soul before it was interwoven with the ego, the result of which is laid down in what is expressed today in speech.

What is the outer expression of what we call the four members of the human being based on? Purely externally how is this expressed in the physical body? The physical body of a plant looks different from the physical body of a human being. Why? Because in a plant only the physical body and the etheric body are present, whereas in the human physical body the astral body and the ego are also active. What is active inwardly also refashions the physical body accordingly. What effect did it have on the physical body that an etheric body permeated it?

The glandular system is the outer physical expression in man and animal of the etheric body, meaning that the etheric body is the architect or sculptor of what we call the glandular system. The astral body is the creator of what we call the nervous system. That is why we only have the right to speak of a nervous system in those beings in which an astral body is present. What is the expression in a human being of his ego? It is the blood system, and specifically when the blood is under the influence of the warmth of inner life. All the activity the ego expends on human beings when the result is to be incorporated into the physical body is channelled via the blood. This is why blood is such a ‘special fluid’ (to quote from Goethe's Faust). When the ego elaborates the sentient soul, the rational soul and the consciousness soul, its achievements only penetrate into the physical body because the ego has the ability to affect the physical body via the blood. Our blood is the mediator for the astral body and ego and all their activities.