(a) INTRODUCTORY NOTE

A fundamental achievement along our path of study was the recognition that a force of levity exists, polar to that of gravity, and that these two together represent a primary polarity in nature which in turn is the source of nature's manifold secondary polarities.

In the last part of these studies a vista opened up of an inner differentiation of levity itself into warmth, light, chemical action and the formative activity of life. Our next task will be to develop a clearer conception of these four modes of action of levity.

In undertaking this task, however, we shall have to extend our observations of nature beyond the frontier that can be reached by using only what we can learn from Goethe. It is here that Rudolf Steiner comes to our aid by what he was able to impart through his researches in the realm of the supersensible itself.

This turning to information given by another mind, whose sources of knowledge are beyond our own immediate reach, seems at first sight to be incompatible with the principles guiding all our studies hitherto; for in gaining insight into the How and Whence of a phenomenon of the sense-world we have up to now admitted only what is yielded by an observation of the phenomenon per se (though with the aid of the 'eye of the spirit') and of other phenomena related to it. This is what we have called 'reading in the book of nature', and we have found it to be the method on which a science aspiring to overcome the onlooker-picture of the universe must be based. So we must first make sure that the step we now propose to take does not violate

this principle.

*

The assurance we want will be found in two characteristics of the communications made by Rudolf Steiner from his researches. The content of these communications was acquired by way of a 'reading' which is nothing but a higher metamorphosis of the reading first employed by Goethe; and the acceptance of this content by another mind is itself nothing but another act of reading, save that the direction of the reading gaze differs from the usual one.

In order to understand this we must go back to what we learnt in the course of our optical studies as to the two forms of vision arising from the activity of the eye's inner light - the dream-vision and the seeing of after-images. Of these two, seeing in dream is in a certain sense the purer form of inner seeing in that it arises without any outer stimulus exercised upon the physical organ of sight. On the other hand, it lacks that objective conformity to law characteristic of the after-images which mirror the order of the external world. There is an arbitrary, enigmatic element in dream-pictures, and their logic often seems to run counter to that of waking consciousness. A further characteristic of dream-perception is that we are tied to the level of consciousness prevailing in the dream. While we are dreaming we cannot awaken to the extent of being able to make the pictures the object of conscious observation.

With the after-images it is different. Although to begin with they are present in our consciousness with a clarity no greater than that of the dream-pictures, nevertheless we are able so to enhance our consciousness of them as to bring them under observation like any external phenomenon. As previously shown, it is possible, even while the eye is riveted on an impression from outside, to develop such awareness in the activity of the inner light called forth by this impression, that together with the results of the deeds and sufferings of the light we can perceive something of these deeds and sufferings themselves. Perception of the after-images thus turns into what we may call perception of simultaneous images. (This activity of the eye corresponds with what Goethe, in a different connexion, called an 'alliance of the eyes of spirit with the eyes of the body'.)

These two forms of visual perception - which we may briefly call: (1) perception of post-images, and (2) perception of co-images - represent successive rungs on a 'spiritual ladder' pointing beyond themselves to a further rung. By the logic of succession this may be expected to consist in some sort of seeing of pre-images, with the characteristic of being a still less physical mode of seeing than the two others. This seeing must be based on an activity of the inner light which will be similar to that in dream by its arising without any stimulus from external light-impressions, yet at the same time there must be no arbitrariness in the contents of this perception. Further, our consciousness in this perceptive activity must be such as to allow us to be in full control of it, as we are of ordinary day-waking seeing.

This kind of pure sense-free perception does indeed exist, and it can be aroused by means of a well-ordered training from the dormant state in which it is present in every human being. Anyone who learns to see in this way gains perception of the activity of cosmic light, contacting it directly with his own inner light - that is to say, without mediation of his corporeal eye which is subject to gravity. So this eye-of-the-spirit becomes capable of perceiving the levity-woven archetypes (ur-images), which underlie all that the physical eye discerns in the world of ordinary space.

In respect of the intrinsic character of the world-content thus perceived, Rudolf Steiner called this mode of perception, Imaginative perception, or, simply, Imagination. By so doing he invested this word with its due and rightful meaning.

From what we found in our optical studies concerning the nature of after-images (Chapter XV), it is clear that the acquisition of Imaginative perception rests on a re-awakening in the eye (and thus in the total organism behind the eye) of certain 'infant' forces which have grown dormant in the course of the growing up of the human being. It thus represents a fulfilment of Thomas Reid's philosophic demand. Consequently we find among the descriptions which Traherne gives of the mode of perception peculiar to man when the inner light, brought into this world at birth, is not yet absorbed by the physical eye, many helpful characterizations of the nature of Imaginative perception, some of which may be quoted here.

Consider, in this respect, the following passage from Traherne's poem The Praeparative, quoted earlier. In describing the state of soul at a time when the physical senses are not yet in operation, Traherne says:

'Then was my Soul my only All to me,

A living, endless Ey, Whose Power, and Act, and Essence was to see:

I was an inward Sphere of Light Or an interminable Orb of Sight, Exceeding that which makes the Days, A vital sun that shed abroad its Rays: All Life, all Sense, A naked, simple, pure Intelligence.''

This is the condition of soul of which Traherne says in the same poem that through it a man is still a recipient of the 'true Ideas of all things'. In this condition the object of sight is not the corporeal world which reflects the light, but light itself, engaged in the weaving of the archetypal images. In a later passage of the same poem Traherne expresses this by saying:

'Tis not the Object, but the Light That maketh Hev'n. ...'

And more clearly still in the following part of his poem An Infant Eye: 'A simple Light from all Contagion free, A Beam that's purely Spiritual, an Ey That's altogether Virgin, Things doth see Ev'n like unto the Deity; That is, it shineth in an hevenly Sense, And round about (Unmov'd) its Light dispense.

'The visiv Rays are Beams of Light indeed, Refined, subtil, piercing, quick and pure; And as they do the sprightly winds exceed, Are worthy longer to endure; They far out-shoot the Reach of Grosser Air, With which such Excellence may not compare. But being once debas'd, they soon becom Less activ than they were before.'

How at this stage the soul experiences the act of perception in itself is shown in the following passage from the poem Wonder:

'A Nativ Health and Innocence Within my Bones did grow And while my God did all his Glories show I felt a vigour in my Sense That was all SPIRIT: I within did flow With seas of Life like Wine.'

Utterances of this kind illustrate the fact that perception of the ur-images of the world consists in a reading with the eye-of-the-spirit, which has been rendered so strong that for its action no support from the physical eye is any longer required. This faculty of spiritual Imagination (which Rudolf Steiner was able to exercise in advance of other human beings) is acquired on a path of training which is the direct continuation of the Goethean path.1

It remains to show that acceptance of information obtained through spiritual Imagination, without ourselves being as yet in actual command of it, is not in contradiction with the principles of 'reading'. Let us, to this end, think of reading in the ordinary sense of this word, calling to mind that for the acquisition of this faculty we depend on someone who can teach it because he already has it. Exactly the same holds good for the reading with which we are here concerned. Here, too, a teacher already possessing this faculty is required. Thus Goethe became for us a teacher of reading, and it would be a mistake to imagine that he, for his part, needed no teacher. In his case this function was fulfilled partly by what he learned through his studies of the earlier fruits of man's spiritual activity, that is, from an epoch when vestiges at least of the original, instinctive faculty of spiritual Imagination were still extant. A similar function on our own path of study was performed by our occupation with the old doctrine of the four elements and the basic concepts of alchemy.

Indispensable as is such a training in reading by turning to past conceptions of man, it does not suffice to meet the present-day demands of a scientific understanding of the universe. For this, we need a 'technique' of reading that cannot be attained along these lines alone. Awareness of this fact led Rudolf Steiner to pursue his spiritual-scientific investigations and to communicate the results in such a way that they can be a 'school of reading' for those who study them.2 In point of fact we have already made use in this sense of one of the results of Rudolf Steiner's researches, for at the very beginning of this book his picture of the threefold psycho-physical organism of man was taken as the basis of our own investigations. The reason why the present remarks were not then included is that the relevant results of higher research were in that case of such a nature that, once known, they could be confirmed by the simplest kind of self-observation. The fact, however, remains that from the very beginning we have called upon one fully trained in reading, to help in deciphering certain facts of nature - in this case of human nature.

A similar need, though now in an amplified form, arises at the present stage of our studies. And here, out of the wealth of knowledge conveyed by Rudolf Steiner from the realm of supersensible Imagination, it is his characterization of the four modifications of levity which will now give the guidance necessary for our own observation. Adopting the terminology chosen by him for the description of this sphere, we shall in future speak of it as of the 'Ether' pervading the universe (thus using this word also in its true and original meaning). Accordingly, we shall refer to its fourfold differentiation as to the four kinds of ether: Warmth-Ether, Light-Ether, Chemical Ether and Life-Ether.

* * * (b) WARMTH

We begin with the warmth-ether as the only modification of ether which combines certain etheric with certain physical properties. Constituting as it does a border-condition between the two worlds, the warmth-ether has, on the one hand, the function of receiving the picture-weaving transmitted to it by the higher ethers, and, on the other, of bringing physical matter into the state where it becomes receptive to the working of the etheric forces. The warmth-ether achieves this by freeing matter from being controlled one-sidedly by the centre-bound forces of the earth. It thus calls forth, when acting physically, the processes of melting of solids and of evaporation of liquids: phenomena which yielded the initial observations for our introduction of the concept of levity. In processes of this kind we now recognize the physical manifestation of a universal function of the warmth-ether, namely, to divest matter of all form and to lead it over from the realm dominated by gravity into that of levity. Provided we attach the right meaning to the word, we may say that the function of the warmth-ether is to bring about chaos at the upper border of physical nature. It is thus that we have already found it working in the plant, when through the union of the pollen with the seed a state of chaos is produced within the seed, which enables the type to impress anew its form-principle into it.

Another instance of the warmth-ether's anti-gravitational effect, also discussed earlier, is the earth's seismic activity. True, it appears at first sight as if little were gained by speaking of warmth-ether, instead, as we did previously, of levity in general. But it must not be forgotten that in the ether-realm as a whole, warmth - that is, the overcoming of earthly gravity - is only one of the four modes of etheric action, albeit the one which enables the other three to work into the physical world. We shall see, later on, that only by taking into account the action of the higher modifications of the ether is it possible to gain insight into the true causes of the apparently so arbitrary occurrences of volcanic and kindred phenomena. Here, too, it is the function of the warmth-ether to produce in the physical sphere the chaos which is necessary to make the physical sphere receptive to the activities going on in higher spheres.

In view of this universal function of the warmth-ether, which distinguishes it from the other modifications of ether, we may give it as a second name that of 'chaoticizing ether'.

* * * (c) LIGHT

The function of the light-ether, the second of the four modes of ether, can best be envisaged by thinking of the difference between a plant growing in darkness (perhaps a potato sprouting in a cellar) and another of the same species exposed to the influence of the light. On Plates VII and VIII two kinds of unicellular organisms are shown, of one which - the green algae - is accustomed to live in light, the other - the bacilli - in darkness. These things are, of course, well-known facts. Our purpose here, however, is not merely to record them as 'fact', but, by re-creating them within ourselves, to use them to gain an experience of the function of the light-ether.

The following passages from Goethe's Metamorphosis of Plants are a classical example of observation of the activity of the light-ether in the plant. They are taken from the second part of the essay, where Goethe is describing leaf-development:

'While the leaves owe their first nourishment principally to the more or less modified watery parts, which they draw from the stem, they are indebted for their increased perfection and refinement to the light and air. The cotyledons which are formed beneath the closed seed-sheath are charged, so to speak, with only a crude sap; they are scarcely and but rudely organized and quite undeveloped. In the same way the leaves are more rudely organized in plants which grow under water than in others which are exposed to the open air. Indeed, even the same species of plant develops smoother and less intricately formed leaves when growing in low damp places, whereas, if transplanted to a higher region, it will produce leaves which are rough, hairy and more delicately finished.'

'So it is also with the anastomosis of the vessels which spring forth from the larger veins, seeking each other with their ends and coalescing, and thus providing the necessary basis for the leaf-skin or cuticle. All this, if not entirely caused by subtle forms of air, is at least very much furthered by them. If the leaves of many water-plants are thread-like or assume the form of antlers, we are inclined to attribute it to lack of complete anastomosis. The growth of the water buttercup, Ranunculus aquatilis, shows this quite obviously, with its aquatic leaves consisting of mere thread-like veins, while in the leaves developed above water the anastomosis is complete and a connected plane is formed. Occasionally, indeed, in this plant, the transition may be still more definitely observed, in leaves which are half anastomosed and half thread-like.'

The second of these paragraphs describes the phenomenon of vascular anastomosis which, having already been more than once an object of our study, here reveals a new meaning. If, following Goethe's method, we re-create in our mind the repeated separations and reunions of the sap-vessels, while keeping in view the fact that the leaf's outer form is the result of a purposive, many times repeated anastomosis, then the picture of the activity of weaving arises before our mind's eye. (Hence the word 'tissue' for the flesh of a living being.) In truth all nature's forms are woven of light, including the crystals.3

How clear a picture Goethe had of the conformity of man's act of thinking with nature's way of producing her forms - both being an act of supersensible weaving - is shown by the following two verses. That on the left is a passage from Faust, from the scene in which Mephisto (disguised as Faust) instructs the young Scholar. The other is an altered version of it, written by Goethe at a later time to conclude an essay (Bedenken und Ergebung) in which he deals with the problem of the relation between Experience and Idea:

Truly, when men their thoughts conceive 'Tis as if some masterpiece they weave. One thread, and a thousand strands take flight, Swift to and fro the shuttles going, All unseen the threads a-flowing, One stroke, and a thousand close unite.1

So with a modest eye perceive Her masterpiece Dame Nature weave. One thread, and a thousand strands take flight, Swift to and fro the shuttles going, Each to the other the threads a-flowing, One stroke, and a thousand close unite.4 -

What Goethe wants to show here by applying to the activity of nature the same image which he used originally to depict the act of thinking, we can express to-day by saying that it is the identity of the activity of the light-ether in human thinking and in external nature which is responsible for the fact that the objective ideas operating in nature can become the content of man's consciousness in the form of thoughts.5

Following our previous procedure when we gave the warmth-ether a second name by calling it chaoticizing ether, we can denote the light-ether also as 'weaving ether'.

*

If at this point in our discussion we revert once more to the realm of physical manifestations of light, dealt with in the preceding chapters, we do so because by studying them in the present context we shall gain further insight into the fact that one plane of nature provides illustrations of processes which on another plane remain more or less veiled. At the same time this will help us to learn more about the properties of levity-space. The optical phenomenon which we shall discuss in this sense is that of the so-called pin-hole camera. (The pin-hole camera effect is easily produced by a keyhole in a closed door which on one side faces a window and on the other leads to a comparatively dark room.)

The usual explanation of the appearance of the optical image on the back inside wall of such a camera is that light-rays, emanating from every point outside, cross each other in the aperture of the camera and so - again point by point - create the inverted image. No such explanation, clearly, is open to us. For the world of external objects is a whole, and so is its image appearing in the camera. Equally, the light entering the camera is not a sum of single rays. Pure observation leads to the following description of the optical process.

By surveying the path which the light takes from the illuminated surface of the outer objects via the pin-hole to the optical image inside the camera, we realize that the light-realm engaged in this process has the shape of a double cone, with its apex in the opening of the camera. Within this cone the light carries the image across the space stretching in front of the light-reflecting objects up to the point where the image becomes visible by being caught on the back wall of the camera.

Thus in every section of the cone the image is present in its totality - even in the very apex of the cone. There, too, the image in all its details is present as a whole, though without (ideally) any spatial extension. Seen thus, on this level of its action the light-ether reveals as one of its characteristics the faculty of making present in a spaceless point an image originally expanded in space, and of letting it emerge from this point in spatial expansion.

Further, there is the fact that, wherever we set up a pin-hole camera, the aperture in its front will cause the formation of an optical image inside it. This shows that each point in space filled with light is the bearer of an optical image, contracted to a point, of the entire world of light-reflecting objects surrounding it. All we do with such a camera is to select a particular image and bring it to separate visibility.

Through these observations we grow aware of light's faculty of communicating simultaneously to space as a whole, and to each point in it, a potential image of the light-reflecting object.

What we observe here in the sphere of physical light-activity is exactly what the light-ether performs on a higher level of nature when with its help the spiritual archetype of a plant takes on spatial appearance. For to this end the archetype, itself without spatial limitations, imprints its image into the tiny seed, whence the growing plant organism carries it again into space. And there is in principle no limitation to the number of such seeds, each of which will bear the complete image of the archetype.

* * * (d) SOUND

The characteristics of the third modification of ether are such that they prompted Rudolf Steiner to give it as a second name, besides chemical ether, that of sound-ether. In view of the fact, stressed at the beginning of this chapter, that perception of the ether is achieved by a heightening of the power of the spirit-eye, it must cause surprise to learn that a certain mode of activity of the ether has a quality which makes appeal to aural experiences. The full answer to this riddle must await the discussion that follows this chapter. Two points, however, may be brought forward at once. Firstly, where gravity, with its tendency to individualize, is absent, no such sharp distinctions exist between one form of perception and another as are found in the sphere of the physical senses.6 Secondly, even in ordinary sense-perception a certain overlapping of visual and aural experiences is known to us. We need only think how common it is to give musical attributes, such as 'consonant' and 'dissonant' to colours, and to describe tones as 'light' and 'dark'. The reason is that subconsciously we accompany visual experiences with tone-sensations, and vice versa. Cases are even known of human beings in whom the secondary sensation occurs with such intensity as to equal the primary one. Such people say that they 'see' sounds and 'hear' colours.

*

Everything that is true of the supersensible sphere we may expect to come to expression in some form in the world of sense-perception. The sphere of the ether is the sphere of the creative archetypes of the world, and when we learn that to one part of this world the character of sound is attributed, we must search for a phenomenon, perceptible to our senses, which reveals to us the secret of the sound's form-creating power. This we have in the so-called sound-figures, discovered by the German physicist Chladni (1756-1827) and called after him 'Chladni's sound-figures'. A short description of how they are produced will not be out of place.

A round or square plate of glass or brass, fixed at its centre so that it can vibrate freely at its edges, is required. It is evenly and not too thickly covered with fine sand or lycopodium powder and then caused to vibrate acoustically by the repeated drawing of a violin-bow with some pressure across the edge of the plate until a steady note becomes audible. Through the vibrations thus caused within the plate, the particles of sand or powder are set in movement and caused to collect in certain stationary parts of the plate, thereby creating figures of very regular and often surprising form. By stroking the plate at different points on the edge, and at the same time damping the vibrations by touching the edge at other points with the finger, notes of different pitch can be produced, and for each of these notes a characteristic figure will appear (Fig. 14).7

The significance for us of Chladni's experiment will emerge still more clearly if we modify it in the following way. Instead of directly setting the plate with the powder into vibration by stroking it with the bow, we produce a corresponding movement on a second plate and let it be transmitted to the other by resonance. For this purpose the two plates must be acoustically tuned to each other and placed not too far apart. Let us imagine, further, that the whole experiment was arranged - as it well might be - in such a way that the second plate was hidden from a spectator, who also lacked the faculty of hearing. This gives us a picture of the situation in which we find ourselves whenever the higher kinds of ether by way of a tone-activity inaudible to our physical ear, cause shapeless matter to assume regularly ordered form.

*

This comparison of the activity of the sound-ether, as the form-creating element in nature, with Chladni's phenomenon is drawn correctly only if we recognize that the conception of form, as an expression of that which is called forth through the etheric forces in nature, comprises more than the external spatially bounded shape of an organic or inorganic entity. Apart from the fact already indicated, that for the formation of such entities the co-operation also of life-ether is necessary, we can judge the activity of sound-ether correctly only if we conceive it as a much more inward activity, compared with the formation in external space of Chladni's figures. In the latter case, the reason why the influence of sound causes nothing beyond the ordering of form in outer space is because on this plane of nature the only changes that can occur are changes in the positions of separate physical bodies. Where the forces of sound in ether-form are able to take hold of matter from within, they can produce changes of form of a quite different kind. This effect of the activity of sound-ether has given it its other name: chemical ether.

We have mentioned once before that our conception of 'form' in organically active nature must not be limited merely to that of a body's spatial outline. This was in connexion with Ruskin's definition of the spiritual principle active in plant-formation as 'the power that catches out of chaos charcoal, water, lime and what not, and fastens them down into a given form'. Besides the external order of matter revealed in space-form, there exists also an inner qualitative order expressed in a body's chemical composition. Upon this inner chemical order is based all that we encounter as colour, smell, taste, etc., of a substance, as well as its nourishing, healing or harmful properties. Accordingly, all these parts of an organism, both in the plant-kingdom and within the higher organisms, have a certain inner material order, apart from their characteristic space-structure. The one is never present without the other, and in some way they are causally connected.

In this inner order of substance we must see in the very first place the work of the sound or chemical ether. And we should be aware that by the word 'chemistry' in this connexion we mean something much more far-reaching than those chemical reactions which we can bring about by the reciprocal affinity of physical substances, however complicated these reactions may be. A few examples will illustrate the difference between chemical processes caused by direct influence of the chemical ether, and others in which only the physical consequences of the ether are effective.

In his book, Man the Unknown, Professor Carrel shows very impressively, by an example from the human organism, the difference of quantitative ratio in externally similar processes, one of which occurs within the domain of life, the other, outside it. He compares the quantity of liquid necessary to keep artificially alive a piece of living tissue which has been reduced to pulp, with the quantity of blood doing the same within the living organism. If all the tissues of a human body were treated in this way, it would take 45,000 gallons of circulating fluid to keep them from being poisoned in a few days by their own waste products. Within the living organism the blood achieves the same task with 1J gallons.

Very many chemical changes within living organisms are effected by the two polar processes of oxidation and reduction. We have discussed them repeatedly as hieroglyphs of much that occurs in nature by way of polarity. In accordance with the principle ruling the physical plane of nature, that differences of level tend to disappear, oxidation can occur by itself, whereas reduction requires the expenditure of energy. Let us from this point of view compare the transformation of oxidized into reduced iron, as it takes place inside and outside the realm of life.

An example of this process in its purely physical form is the reduction of iron-ore to metallic iron in blast-furnaces, where, with the help of high temperature and high pressure, carbon is made to combine with the oxygen ingredient of the ore and to impart to it its own imponderable energy. Precisely the same process is going on continuously and unobtrusively within the human body under normal bodily conditions of temperature and pressure, when the oxy-haemoglobin of the arterial blood changes over into the haemoglobin of the venous blood. A macrotelluric counterpart of this is the transformation of the red river-mud into the blue-black continental mud at the bottom of the sea, around the continental shores. Here, again, reduction takes place without those preliminaries that are necessary for carrying through the process by technical means.

Through examples of this kind we gain insight into the nature of the chemical ether as a 'magic' force (in the sense in which we have introduced this term at the beginning of the book). What the chemical ether is capable of effecting in a gentle manner, so to speak, in cooperation with the inertness-overcoming power of the warmth-ether, can be imitated physically only by an extraordinary concentration of external energy and the use of masses of material substance. At the same time the imitation is never complete. For to all that happens through the action of the chemical ether there belongs the quality of cosmic youth, while everything brought about in a purely physical manner is of necessity cosmically old.8

Of all the provinces of nature towards which man's exploring eye has turned since the dawn of the onlooker-consciousness, none has furthered his purely quantitative thinking more than chemistry, ever since the discovery that the chemical reactions of the various substances are conditioned by a quite definite and constant numerical relationship. It was these relationships which impelled the rise of the atomic conception of matter and all its consequences. For since the onlooker-consciousness is quite unable to conceive the existence of numerical relationships in the physical world except as sums of computable units in space, it was natural for this type of consciousness to reduce all empirically established numerical relationships to correspending relationships among quantities of the smallest possible material or matter-like units.

Scientific thinking, if guided by knowledge of the existence of etheric forces and their action, has no need of such an interpretation of the numerical relationships revealed in the physical world; for it knows them to be nothing but the last expression of the action of the chemical ether (hence occasionally also called 'number-ether' by Rudolf Steiner). To do justice to the appearance of measurable numerical relationships in nature, in whatever sphere, it is necessary to free ourselves from the abstract conception of number which governs modern scientific thought and to replace it by a more concrete one. We shall rind that for the existence of a certain number there may be two quite different reasons, although the method of establishing the number itself is the same in each case. A simple example will illustrate this.

Let us look at a number of similar objects, say a group of five apples. We observe that the relation of the number five to the group of objects in front of us is purely external and accidental. In applying to it the conception 'five' we combine the single objects into a group and give it a name, or numerical label, which has nothing to do with the nature of the items making up the group. This way of thinking, we may observe, is of exactly the kind which the nominalists of the Middle Ages attributed to every conception formed by the human mind. In fact, the process of counting is a process of pure abstraction. The more differentiated are the things which we want to combine into a group through the process of counting, the further this abstraction has to go. We can count apples and pears together under the collective conception of 'fruit'; if turnips are added, we must help ourselves out with the conception 'vegetable products'; until finally we deal only with 'things', without considering any qualitative differentiation. Thus the conception of number is created solely within the human mind, which applies it to things from outside.

From the moment when human consciousness was unable to attribute to itself any other than a purely nominalistic mode of comprehension it was inevitable that all explanations of natural phenomena would have two results: (1) the exclusion from observation of everything that could not be conceived in terms of numbers, and (2) an endeavour to find for every numerical relationship capable of empirical proof an explanation which could be interpreted as the result of taking qualitatively identical units and counting them. For this method of forming conceptions is the only one which nominalism can accept with a good conscience. The fact that in so doing it is led ad absurdum has only quite lately occurred to it. For if by the logical following of this path - as in modern theoretical physics - the whole universe is dissolved into units which can no longer be distinguished from each other, then it will become impossible to count these parts, for it cannot be established whether any given one of these hypothetical elemental particles has been counted or not. None the less, Eddington claimed to have found the exact number of particles composing the universe - a number with 80 figures - by using a special calculus, but this number is valid only on the supposition that the particles cannot be counted because they are indistinguishable!9

However correct the nominalistic conception of number may be in such a case as that of numbering the five apples, it is wholly incorrect to restrict the concept of number itself to one valid for this kind of occurrence. We shall see this immediately if we take one of the apples and cut it across. There we find the number five confronting us in the well-known star-like figure, represented by the fivefold pericarp in the centre of the apple. What man, restricted as he was to the mode of understanding, has completely overlooked is this: although the act of counting, by which we establish the number five, is the same in both cases, the quality of the number five is totally different. For in the case of the five pericarps this number is a quality immanent in the apple, which it shares with the whole species of Rosaceae. The apple itself is just as much 'five' as it is 'round', 'sweet', etc. In the supersensible type which creates in the plant its own organ of manifestation, the creation of a number - in the apple the number five - is part of the form-creating activities characteristic of the type. The numerical relationships which appear between natural phenomena depend upon the way in which the chemical ether participates. This is true equally of those discovered by chemistry in the sphere of inorganic matter and used to-day with such great success.

Let us be quite clear that the relationship of unity to plurality in the case of the five apples is totally different from what it is in the fivefold pericarp. In the first case unity is the smallest quantity represented by each of the five apples. There, the step from one to two is made by joining together two units from outside. The path from one to many is by way of continuous addition. In the second case the unity is represented by the pericarp - i.e. by the one comprising the many, the latter appearing as parts of the whole. In such a case two is part of one and so are three, four, five, etc. Plurality arises from a continuous process of division of unity.

The ancient world knew the idea of number only in the last-mentioned form. There unity appeared as an all-embracing magnitude, revealed through the Universe. The world's manifoldness was felt to be not a juxtaposition of single things, externally connected, but the content of this unity, and therefore derived from it. This was expressed by the pre-Socratic Greek philosophers in the formula (the One and the All).

With the appearance of the Arabs on the scene of history, human thought turned to the additive concept of number, and the original distributive concept receded gradually into oblivion. The acceptance of the new concept made it possible for the first time to conceive the zero. It is clear that by a continuous division of unity one is carried to a constantly growing number of constantly diminishing parts, but without ever reaching the nothing represented by the number zero. To-day we should say that in this way we can reach zero only by an infinite series of steps. Yet the idea of the infinite did not exist in this form for ancient man. On the other hand, in the arabic conception of number the steps necessary to reach zero are finite. For just as by the external addition of unities we can step forward from one number to the next, so we can also step back on the same path by repeated subtractions of unities. Having thus reached One, nothing can stop us from going beyond it by one more such step. The arabic numeral system, therefore, is the only one to possess its own symbol for zero.

It has been correctly noted that the penetration into European thought of this additive concept of number was responsible for developing the idea of the machine; for it accustomed human beings to think calmly of zero as a quantity existing side by side with the others. In ancient man the idea of nothingness, the absolute void, created fear; he judged nature's relation to the void accordingly, as the phrase 'natura abhorret vacuum' indicates. His capacity to think fearlessly of this vacuum and to handle it thus had to be developed in order to bring about the Machine Age, and particularly the development of efficient steam engines. Consider also the decisive part played by the vacuum in Crookes's researches, through which the path to the sub-physical realm of nature was laid open.

Yet nature makes use of number as a regulating factor in quite a different way from its appearance in the purely electrical and gravitational connexions of inorganic matter, namely where sound-ether from the upper boundary of nature so regulates nature's dynamic that the manifold sense-qualities appear in their time-and-space order. When we interpret the arrangement of numbers found there on a nominalistic basis, as is done when the axis- and angle-relationships of crystals are reduced to a mere propinquity of the atoms distributed like a grid in space, or when the difference in angle of the position of the various colours in the spectrum is reduced to mere differences in frequency of the electromagnetic oscillations in a hypothetical ether - then we bar the way to the comprehension not only of number itself, as a quality among qualities, but also of all other qualities in nature.

*

(e) LIFE

As already mentioned, the three kinds of ether, warmth, light and sound, are not sufficient in themselves to bring into existence what in its proper sense we call 'life' in nature, i.e. the formation of single living organisms. This requires the action of a fourth kind of ether, the life-ether, ranged above the other three. We can best comprehend the life-ether's contribution to the total activity of the ether in nature by considering the interaction of the four kinds of ether with the four physical elements.



We have seen that the warmth-ether has the double function of being at once the lowest ether and the highest physical element, thus acting as a sphere of reflexion for the other kinds of ether and the elements respectively. Each stage in the etheric has its reflexion in the physical, as the above table shows. Thus to the physical air the etheric light is related. (The affinity of light and air is best seen in the plant and its leaf-formation.) To bring about real changes in the material composition of the physical world requires the stronger powers of the chemical ether. Therefore it is also the first ether of which we had to speak as 'magical' ether. Its effects reach into the watery element which is already bound up with gravity, but by its own strength it cannot penetrate beyond that. The causation of material changes in the liquid sphere would in fact be all that these three kinds of ether could achieve together.

Only when the power of the life-ether is added to the three others can etheric action reach as far as the sphere of solid matter. Thus the life-ether is responsible for all solid formation in nature, both in her organic and inorganic fields (the latter-crystal-formation-being the effect of external ether-action).10 It is to the action of the life-ether that nature owes the existence in her different realms of multitudes of separate solid forms. To mention an instance from our previous studies: in the same way as volcanic phenomena manifest the warmth-ether's gravity-overcoming power on a macrotelluric scale, so snow-formation illustrates the life-ether's matter-shaping might.

Through its power to bind flowing action into solid form, the life-ether is related to the sound-ether in the same way as the articulated word formed by human speaking is related to the mere musical tone. The latter by itself is as it were fluid. In human speech this fluidity is represented by the vowels. With a language consisting only of vowels man would be able to express feelings, but not thoughts. To let the word as carrier of thought arise out of sound, human speech possesses the consonants, which represent the solid element in it.

The emergence of the sense-bearing word from the merely ringing sound is an exact counterpart to what takes place in nature when the play of organic liquids, regulated by the chemical ether, is caused by the life-ether to solidify into outwardly perceptible form. By reading in this way the special function of the life-ether among the other three, we are led to the term ' Word-ether' as an appropriate second name for it, corresponding to the term sound-ether for the chemical ether.

*

Thus Levity presents itself to us as being engaged in the fourfold activity of Chaoticizing, Weaving, Sounding and, lastly, Speaking the form-creative Cosmic Word into the realm of Gravity.

1 To avoid misunderstandings, it should be emphasized that spiritual Imagination is not attained by any exercise involving directly the sense of sight and its organ, the eye, but by purely mental exercises designed to increase the 'seeing' faculty of the mind.

2 Indeed, it is a misunderstanding of the whole meaning of Anthroposophy when its contents are quoted - as they sometimes are even by adherents - in such a way as to suggest that by their help a better 'explanation' may be gained of matters for which there is otherwise no, or at least no satisfactory, explanation. The question: 'How does Anthroposophy explain this or that?' is quite wrongly put. We ought rather to ask: 'How does Anthroposophy help us to read more clearly this or that otherwise enigmatical chapter of the script of existence?'

3 See Space and the Light of Creation, by G. Adams, where this 'weaving' is shown with the help of projective geometry.

4 Translation by J. Darrell.

5 We may recall here also the passage from Ruskin's The Queen of the Air, quoted earlier, p. 118).

6 That the ether, apart from being supersensibly seen, is also heard, was empirically known to Goethe. See the opening words of the 'Prologue in Heaven" (Faust, I) and the call of the Spirit of the Elements in the first scene of the Second Part of the drama, which follow upon the stage direction: 'The sun announces his approach with overwhelming noise.'

7 By attending Chladni's lectures on his discovery in Paris the French physicist Savart became acquainted with this phenomenon and devoted himself to its study. Chladni and Savart together published a great number of these figures.

8 Understanding the attributes of the chemical ether enables us to see in their right perspective Rudolf Steiner's suggestions to farmers for the preparation of the soil and for keeping healthy the crops growing on it. Attempts have been made to dismiss these suggestions by calling them 'mysticism' and 'mediaeval magic'. Both terms are titles of honour if we understand by the one the form of insight into the supersensible realm of nature acquired by the higher mode of reading, and by the other a faculty of nature herself, whose magic wand is the chemical or sound-ether.

9 See Eddington's humorous and at the same time serious treatment of this problem in his Philosophy of Physical Science.

10 Of the difference between external and internal ether-action more will be said in the concluding chapter.

CHAPTER XX

Pro Anima

Thy functions are ethereal, As if within thee dwelt a glancing mind, Organ of vision! And a Spirit aëreal Informs the cell of Hearing, dark and blind. W. WORDSWORTH

(a) THE WELL-SPRINGS OF NATURE'S DEEDS AND SUFFERINGS

As our observations have shown, gravity and levity not only exist side by side as a primary polarity; the manifold interaction of their fields gives rise to all sorts of secondary polarities. Obviously, this interaction must be brought about by a further kind of force to which gravity and levity are subordinate.

In what follows we shall try, so far as is possible within the scope of this book, to throw light on the nature of this force. Since the direct experience of the dynamic realm constituted by it is based on faculties of the mind other than those needed for the Imaginative perception of the etheric realm, we shall have to examine also the nature and origin of these faculties. This will lead us again to the study of one of man's higher senses, this time his sense of hearing, with the aim of finding the spiritual function that is hidden in it. But our order of procedure will have to differ from the one followed in the last chapter, because it will be necessary first to make ourselves acquainted with the nature of the new force and then to turn to an examination of the sense-activity concerned.

*

Let our first object of observation be man himself in so far as he illustrates a polarity of the second order.

When studying man's nature with the idea of understanding the genesis of his onlooker-consciousness, it will be remembered, we had to examine the ordering of his consciousness into waking, dreaming and sleeping in the different members of his organism. We recognized three different organic systems, the sensory-nerve system, the rhythmic system and the metabolic-limb system, as the bodily foundation of three different soul activities. These are the thought-forming activity which belongs to waking consciousness; the feeling activity which belongs to dream consciousness; and the willing activity which belongs to sleep consciousness. We then saw in these three systems representatives of the three alchemical functions - 'sulphurous' in the metabolic, 'saline' in the nervous, 'mercurial' in the mediating rhythmic system.

Regarded thus, man's nature reveals itself as being endowed with a physical organization, and an etheric organization, which are brought into different relationships by being acted upon by a third organization consisting of forces of the kind here to be studied. At his lower pole these forces co-ordinate the ether and physical organizations in a manner corresponding to the function of the 'sulphur'-pole of the alchemical triad. Here, therefore, the warmth-ether takes the lead and acts in such a way that the higher kinds of ether are able to come to expression in material processes of the body. At the upper pole corresponding forces co-ordinate the physical and ether organizations in a way characteristic of the 'salt'-pole. This gives the lead to the life-ether, so that the physical organism provides the foundation for the activity of the ether-forces without, however, being actually penetrated by them (at least after completion of the embryonic and first post-embryonic development). As a result, consciousness lights up in this part of the body. The rhythmic sphere, being the 'mercurial' middle, is distinguished by an alternation of the two conditions described. With each diastole it becomes more akin to the pole below, and with each systole more akin to the pole above. Here, therefore, the lighting up of consciousness is only partial.

By means of these observations we realize that the third type of force, in so far as it is active in man, has the capacity, by co-ordinating the physical and etheric parts of the organism in one way or another, to promote happenings either of a more corporeal or a more psychical nature - namely, motion at one pole, sensation at the other, and feeling in the middle between them.1 Remembering Goethe's formula, 'colours are deeds and sufferings of light', we realize how deeply true the concepts were to which he was led by his way of developing observation and thought.

What we have now brought to our awareness by studying man, holds good in some sense also for the animal. The animal, too, is polarized into motion and sensation. (What makes the animal differ from man need not concern us here, for it belongs to a dynamic realm other than the one we are now studying. This other realm will come under consideration in the next chapter.) Quite a different picture arises when we turn to the plant. The plant, too, is characterized by a threefold structure, root, stem with leaves, and florescence, which in their way represent the three alchemical functions. Consequently, there is also motion in the plant, although this is confined to internal movements leading to growth and formation. And at the opposite pole there is sensation, though again very different from the sensation experienced by higher living beings. What we mean here by 'sensation' can be best expressed by quoting the following passage from Ruskin's The Queen of the Air, in which the dual activity of the dynamic which we seek to understand is brought out particularly clearly.

In describing the forming of blossom in the plant as the climax of the 'spirit' active in it, Ruskin says: 'Its (the plant's) form becomes invested with aspects that are chiefly delightful to our own human passions; namely, first, with the loveliest outlines of shape and, secondly, with the most brilliant phases of the primary colours, blue, yellow, red or white, the unison of all; and to make it more strange, this time of peculiar and perfect glory is associated with relations of the plants or blossoms to each other, correspondent to the joy of love in human creatures and having the same object in the continuance of the race.'2

If we wish to understand why the same dynamic action working on the physical and etheric organisms of the plant, on the one hand, and of man and the animal, on the other, brings about effects so different, we must turn to the realm whence this action originates in both cases. For the animal and for man this realm is situated within their organisms because in addition to their individual physical and etheric organizations they are endowed also with an individual organization of the higher kind. Not so with the plant. For the rhythms of its growth, the successive formation of its various organs, the production of its colours, etc., the plant depends on outer conditions.

What strikes us first in this respect is the plant's dependence on the succession of the seasons. These in turn are an outcome of the changing mutual positions of earth and sun. That which forms part of the individual organism in higher living beings is located in the cosmic surroundings of the plant. In fact, it is our planetary system which provides the forces that stir the etheric and physical forces of the earth to their various interactions, thus bringing about all the manifold secondary polarities.

*

Before we embark on a description of further phenomena which testify to the cosmic nature of the forces with which we are here concerned, it will be well (following a principle applied before) to establish the historical antecedents of the conception of the universe we are about to develop.

We realize that the type of force with which we are here seeking to become familiar is the one responsible for the existence of what we commonly call 'soul'. The creation of a body-bound soul, however, is only one particular form of the activity of these forces. Another is the one which we have just seen manifest in the plant. In yet another way the same forces function as movers and stirrers of the macro-telluric processes of the earth, and beyond this of the happenings in the body of our planetary system, including the movements of the various planets.

This is an aspect which was by no means unfamiliar to ancient man. It was naturally lost when the onlooker-consciousness awoke. In this respect it is of historical significance that the same man, G. A. Borelli (1608-79), a member of the Florentine Academy, who was the first to inquire into the movements of the animal and human body from a purely mechanical point of view, made the first attempt to deduce the planetary movements from a purely physical cause.3 Through this fact an impulse comes to expression which we may term Contra Animam, and against which we have to put our Pro Anima, in much the same way that we put our Pro Levitate against the Contra Levitatem call of the Florentine Academicians.

*

It will help our further descriptions if we introduce at this point the name which Rudolf Steiner adopted for the type of forces we are concerned with here. In view of the fact that their origin lies in the extra-terrestrial realm of the universe, he called them 'astral' forces, thereby giving back to this term, also, its true and original meaning. It is under this name that we shall speak of them henceforth. To make ourselves more familiar with the character of the astral forces, it will be well to observe them first of all in their macrotelluric form of activity.

There is, as already mentioned, the rhythmic occurrence of the seasons in connexion with the varying relative positions of earth and sun. Alongside this we may put the rhythm of the tides, coincident with the phases of the moon. Just as the solar rhythm manifests in an alternating rise and fall of the saps in the plants, so also does the lunar rhythm.4 (Note how this fact actually vitiates the usual explanation that the tidal rhythm of the sea is caused by a gravitational pull exerted by the moon's body on the oceanic water.) In neither instance is the change of position of the relevant cosmic body - in our examples that of the sun or moon in relation to the earth - the 'cause' of the corresponding rhythmic events on the earth. Together with all other rhythmic events of equal periodicity, it is itself the effect of the activity of a force-sphere constituting the cosmic realm to which the relevant planetary body belongs.

From this statement three major questions arise, which need to be answered before we can carry on our description of the astral forces themselves:

Firstly, by the way we have spoken of the varying relations of the sun and moon to the earth, seeing in them the effects of certain astral activities, we have treated them as if they were of like nature, namely, resulting from a movement of the relevant heavenly body round the earth. According to the Copernican conception, however, only the moon rotates round the earth, whereas the apparent yearly progression of the sun is actually caused by the earth's motion round the sun. This raises the question of how far the Copernican, heliocentric aspect is valid in a science which strives to embrace the astral realm of the universe in its inquiries.

Secondly, what roles do the other members of our planetary system play as compared with those of the sun and the moon?

Thirdly, if it is true that the essential solar and lunar effects - and presumably the effects of the other planets - on the earth do not spring from physical influence exerted by the visible bodies of the planets concerned, but from certain astral force-fields of which these bodies themselves form part, what is the significance of such a body within the planet's dynamic whole?

Starting with the answer to the first question, we shall quote the following passage from a lecture on theoretical physics given by Professor Planck in 1909 at the Columbia University, New York:

'Only the hypothesis of the general value of the principle of Relativity in mechanics could admit the Copernican system into physics, since this principle guarantees the independence of all processes on the earth from the progressive motion of the earth. For, if we had to make allowance for this motion, then I should, for instance, have to reckon with the fact that the piece of chalk in my hand possesses the enormous kinetic energy corresponding to a velocity of about 30 km/sec.'

The implications for us of these remarks by an eminent physicist can be expressed as follows:

In a science which knows how to deal with movement as an event of absolute dynamic reality, the Copernican aspect loses its significance as the only valid aspect of our cosmic system. For its application as a means of describing the dynamic happenings within this system presupposes the acceptance of Einstein's relativistic conception of motion. Indeed, for the building up of a picture of the dynamic structure of our system, the Copernican view-point is inadequate.

This statement must not be taken to deny all justification to the heliocentric view-point. There is, after all, the fact that the orbits which the heavenly bodies appear to follow when viewed in this way, assume a particular geometrical character which cannot be accidental. And more than that, when the heliocentric aspect is seen in its true setting, it forms (as will be shown later) an extremely revealing part of the script which tells us of the nature of the astral forces. All that is required is that the heliocentric picture be taken for what it is, namely, a purely kinematic aspect of the true dynamic ordering of our cosmic system, which in itself calls for quite other means of conceptual representation.

From the point of view of the astral order of the universe, the earth appears in the centre of a number of force-fields which penetrate each other and in their peripheral region extend beyond one another in accordance with the respective orbits of the various planetary bodies. How many force-fields there are, and what is the respective character of each, will become clear from the following consideration, which will also provide the answer to the second of our three questions.

As the originator of the secondary polarities in earthly nature the astral realm must undoubtedly itself be structured polarically, one part of it forming the cause of all the happenings by which levity is brought into interaction with gravity, the other of all the happenings by which gravity is brought into interaction with levity. There must be a further part which is responsible for the establishment of the 'mercurial' mean between the two poles of the secondary polarity. This leads us to a threefold aspect of the astral realm.

Closer inspection reveals a repetition of this threefold order within each of the two polar regions. In Chapter XII we learnt to distinguish the material happenings at the two poles of the secondary polarity by observing their appearance in the plant as 'sublimation', on the one hand, and 'assimilation' on the other. Of the former process, by which matter is carried from its gravity-bound to its gravity-free condition, we know that it takes place in three stages, of which the first implies the lifting of matter from the solid to the liquid condition, the second from the liquid to the aeriform condition, and the third to the condition of pure heat. There are three corresponding stages by which ether becomes susceptible to gravity. It is in their nature that they are not in the same degree manifest as are their polar opposites. Still, properly guided observation is able to detect them and enables us to describe them as follows. At the first stage, ether, which in itself has a purely peripheral orientation, becomes linked to some all-relating point; at the second stage, the various ether-activities, already point-related, are brought into some characteristic interrelationship so as to become the cause of a particular formative action in the material realm; at the third stage, the etheric aggregate thus organized receives the impulse to link itself with some particular portion of ponderable matter.

In these six forms of astral activity, observation, if guided by modern spiritual science, recognizes the characteristics of the six planetary spheres, known as 'Moon', 'Mercury', 'Venus', on the one hand, 'Saturn', 'Jupiter', 'Mars', on the other. In the same way the dynamic sphere of the 'Sun' is found to provide the astral activity which mediates between the two groups of planetary spheres.5 The following observations may help us to become familiar with the different modes of activity of the force-spheres.

Let us start with the astral forces corresponding to the three cosmic bodies nearest to the earth - Moon, Mercury, Venus. Their activity can be discerned, for example, by watching the successive stages of plant development - the formation of the sap-bearing parts; the flower-substance already partly transformed into aeriform condition; finally the propagating processes which belong essentially to the sphere of activity of the warmth-ether.6 In the human organism we find the same sequence in the step-by-step transformation of nutriment right up to the moment when earthly form passes into chaos, as we learnt previously. The so-called enzyme action, ascribed by physiology to the various digestive juices, is in reality the product of an activity of the lower part of man's astral organization, for which the relevant juices exercise the function of physical 'carriers'. In the field of macrotelluric phenomena, the metamorphosis of the atmospheric moisture extending beyond the different cloud-stages up to the stage of pure warmth is an example of the activity of the same forces.

Within all three-stage transitions of this kind, the astral forces connected with the Moon preponderate during the first stage, those connected with Mercury during the second, those connected with Venus during the third. We have already come across some examples of the outstanding share taken by the Moon in the events of the earth's watery sphere. To these phenomena, which show by their rhythm their connexion with the Moon, we may add the fertility rhythm in the female human organism which coincides, not in phase but in duration, with the rhythm set by the Moon's course in the heavens. If we consider that the formation of a new human body in the womb needs the play of formative forces from out of the whole world environment, and that for this purpose matter must be brought into a receptive condition for these forces, then we can better understand the preparatory part played by the Moon-forces. In order, however, that the substance of the female germ should reach that condition of chaos suitable for embryonic development, there is still necessary the influence of the supra-lunar astral forces. Entry for these is provided by the union of the germ-cell with the male sperm-cell.7

As the three sub-solar planetary spheres are responsible for events of a 'sulphurous' (radial) character, so are the three supra-solar spheres responsible for those of a 'saline' (spherical) character. For example, we meet with Saturn-activity in everything which radiates from the human head and brings about the hardening both of the head itself and of the entire skeleton. Observation has shown that, even if the human being, as usually happens, stops growing in the early twenties, so that the skeleton undergoes no further lengthening, it nevertheless reaches its final shape and its final hardening only between the twenty-eighth and thirtieth years. This is the time in man's life when Saturn returns for the first time to the position in which it stood relatively to the earth at his birth, or, more correctly, at his conception.

If the activity of the Saturn-force is most clearly manifest in the formation of the hard skull, that of Jupiter, the planet of 'Wisdom', is shown in the formation of the complicated structure of the brain, which enables it to co-ordinate the bodily and psychic functions of the entire man. In the realm of physical nature, man's brain is indeed the most perfect example of cosmic Intelligence at work in a manner resembling that activity of human intelligence which one usually understands by 'organizing'.

In order that Form should come about, the forces of Saturn are required; for the formative process to take place in Wisdom-filled order, Jupiter's forces are necessary. If form and order are to become manifest in the realm of earthly substance, both require the assistance of Mars. We can best form an idea of the part which Mars contributes to the coming into being of the world of Form in nature if we observe what takes place when we make use of speech as a medium for expressing our thoughts. In order to be able to shape a thought we have to participate in the formative force of Saturn. We depend upon Jupiter to bring about logical connexion between the single thoughts. To announce them to the world, we need the motive force of Mars, which enables us so to set external matter in motion that it becomes a carrier and relayer of our thoughts. (We here touch upon the field of the acoustic movements of the air which will occupy us more closely later on.)

Many examples of the activity of the force-spheres represented by the three exterior planets are to be found also in nature external to man. From the realm of plant life we may take the woody and bark-like formation of the trees as representing the operation of Saturn-forces. Similarly, all that goes on in the organizing of the single leaf, and particularly in the organization of the countless separate leaves which make up the foliage of a tree into a unified whole, the characteristic crown of a tree, is an example of the work of Jupiter. Both activities are assisted by the force of Mars, which directs them from the cosmic periphery toward the single physical object.

Between the two groups of astral force operating in this manner, the Sun acts as a mediating element through its double function of supporting the activity of the three lower planets by means of its heat and of conveying to the earth, through its light, the forces of the three higher planets. In the human microcosm the Sun-forces accomplish a corresponding task by means of the influences which radiate from the heart through the body along the paths taken by the blood.

*

In what follows we shall point to a group of phenomena which show the astral interconnexion between earth and universe; we owe our knowledge of them to Rudolf Steiner. It is due to him, also, that experimental research into the relevant facts became possible. They concern the reflexion of the various planetary movements, observable in the sky, in the behaviour of certain mineral substances of the earth.

In connexion with our discussion of electricity (Chapter XIII) we spoke of the special function of the metals as bearers of the 'mercurial' quality (in the alchemical sense of the term). As one of the characteristics which reveal this function we mentioned the peculiar capacity of metals to behave as 'solid fluids'. This exceptional place among the mineral substances of the earth, the metals owe to their close association with the extra-terrestrial astral forces of the world. In this field, too, modern spiritual investigation has recovered something which was known to people of old - that among the metals there are seven which have a distinctive character, for each stands in a special relation to one of the seven planets (that is, the planetary force-spheres) of our cosmic system. This is shown in the following table:

Saturn Lead Jupiter Tin Mars Iron Sun Gold Venus Copper Mercury Quicksilver Moon Silver

As compared with these seven, the other metals are products of combinations of various planetary forces. A comparison of the role of Saturn as the outermost planet of our cosmic system with the role played by its metal, lead, as a final product of radioactive disintegration, leads one to conceive of the radioactive sphere of the earth as being related especially to the planets outside the orbit of Saturn, namely, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto.

Thanks to the work of L. Kolisko who, in following Rudolf Steiner's indications, observed for many years the behaviour of the seven metals singly and in combination by submitting their salts to certain capillary effects, we know to-day that the" earth bears in her womb substances whose dynamic condition follows exactly the events in the planetary realm of the universe.8

*

The picture of the universe which has thus arisen before our mind's eye is a startling one only so long as we keep comparing it with its heliocentric predecessor. How wrong it would be to regard it as something inconceivable for the modern mind, is shown by the fact that the modern physiologist has already been driven to form quite a similar picture of the human organism, as far as it concerns glandular action in this organism. His observations have taught him to distinguish between the gland as a spatially limited physical organ and the gland as a functional sphere, and to conceive of the latter as the essential gland. Seen thus, 'the spatial and temporal dimensions of each gland are equal to those of the entire organism' (A. Carrel). In this way we come to see the human organism as a realm of interpenetrating spheres of distinctive physiological activities. Each of these activities is anchored somewhere in the physical body by the anatomically discernible gland-body, and the latter's relationship to the functional sphere is such that a gland's 'physiological individuality is far more comprehensive than its anatomical individuality'.

We need only translate this statement into its macrocosmic counterpart to obtain another statement which expresses fittingly the relationship of the visible body of a planet to the functional (astral) sphere indicated by its orbit. Then we shall say that 'a planet's astral individuality is far more comprehensive than its astronomical individuality'.

It should be observed that the step we have here taken, by using a conception obtained through microcosmic observation to help us to find the answer to a question put to us by the macrocosm, complies with one of the fundamentals of our method of research, namely, to allow 'the heavens to explain the earth, and the earth the heavens' (R. St.).

* * * (b) HEARING AS DEED

In the introductory part of the last chapter we said that we have the right to employ results of investigation carried out by higher faculties of spiritual perception without contradicting our principle of seeking to understand the phenomenal world by reading it, provided our doing so helps to enhance our own reading activity, and provided it can be shown that the acquisition of the higher faculties of perception is a direct continuation of the training we have to apply to our mind and senses to make them capable of such reading. As regards the forces of astral character, the first of these two conditions has been fulfilled by the observations we have already worked through in this chapter. We have still to show that the second condition is equally fulfilled.

The faculty of the mind which permits direct investigation of the astral realm was called (spiritual) Inspiration by Rudolf Steiner, who thereby restored to this term, also, its proper meaning. We have already indicated that this faculty resides in the sense of hearing in the same way that the faculty of Imagination - as we have found - resides in the sense of seeing. In order to understand why it is this particular sense which comes into consideration here, we have to consider that the phenomena through which the astral world manifests most directly are all of a rhythmic nature. Now, the sense through which our soul penetrates with direct experience into some outer rhythmic activity is the sense of hearing, our aural perceptions being conveyed by certain rhythmic movements of the air. In what follows we shall see how the study of both the outer acoustic phenomena and our own psycho-physical make-up in the region of the acoustic sense, leads to an understanding of the nature of Inspiration and of how it can be trained.

*

Among all our sense-perceptions, sound is unique in making itself perceptible in two quite different ways - via the ear as a direct sense experience and via the eye (potentially also via the senses of touch and movement) in the form of certain mechanical movements, such as those of a string or a tuning fork. Hence the world-spectator, as soon as he began to investigate acoustic phenomena scientifically, found himself in a unique position. In all other fields of perception, with the exception of the purely mechanical processes, the transition to non-stereoscopic colourless observation had the effect that the world-content of the naive consciousness simply ceased to exist, leaving the ensuing hiatus to be filled in by a pattern of imagined kinematic happenings - for example, colour by 'ether'-vibrations, heat by molecular movements. Not so in the sphere of acoustics. For here a part of the entire event, on account of its genuine kinetic character, remains a content of actual observation.

In consequence, the science of acoustics became for the scientific mind of man a model of the required division between the 'subjective' (that is, for scientific considerations non-existent) and the 'objective' (that is, the purely kinematic) part of observation. The field of aural perception seemed to justify the procedure of collecting a mass of phenomena, stripped of all that is experienced by man's soul in meeting them, and of assembling them under a purely abstract concept, 'sound'.

Professor Heisenberg, in his lecture (quoted at the beginning of Chapter II) on the way in which the scientific interrogation of nature has deliberately limited itself, draws attention to the fact that a full knowledge of the science of optics in its present form might be acquired merely through theoretical study by one born blind, yet without his ever getting to know what light is. Heisenberg could, of course, have said the same of the science of acoustics in regard to one born deaf. But we can go a step further by asking how far a deaf and a blind person could get towards establishing the respective science. The answer must be that, whereas the person lacking sight would not of himself be in a position to establish a science of optics, it would be well within the scope of the deaf man to establish a science of acoustics. For all the processes essential to a physical acoustics are accessible to the eye and other senses.

In order to make our experience of hearing a finger-post pointing the way to an understanding of the faculty of Inspiration innate in man, we must first of all seek to transform acoustics from a 'deaf into a 'hearing' science, just as Goethe turned the theory of colour from a colour-blind into a colour-seeing science.

*

Following our procedure in the case of optics, we select from the total field of acoustic phenomena a defined realm specially suited to our purpose. As it was then the spectrum, so it will be now the so-called quality of sound, or tone-colour.

By this term in acoustics is understood a property possessed by sound apart from pitch and volume, and dependent on the nature of the source from which a tone is derived. It is the tone-colour by which the tone of a violin, for instance, is distinguished from a tone of equal intensity and pitch produced by a flute. Similarly, two musical instruments of the same kind are distinguished from each other by tone-colour.

Tone-colour plays a specially significant part in human and animal voices. Not only has each individual voice its unique colour, but the colour varies in one and the same person or animal, according to the prevailing mood. Moreover, by uttering the various vowels of his language, man is able to impart varying colour to the sounds of his speech. For the difference we experience when a tone is sung on the vowel 'a' or the vowel 'e', etc., derives from the particular colour given by the vowel to that tone.

Among the discoveries of the last century in the realm of acoustics, there is one which especially helped to establish a purely kinematic conception of sound. Helmholtz showed that tones which to our ears seem to have a clear and definite pitch may be split up by a series of resonators into a number of different tones, each of them sounding at a different pitch. The lowest of these has the pitch which our ears attach to the entire tone. Thus in any ordinary tone there may be distinguished a 'fundamental' tone and a series of 'overtones'. Helmholtz further showed that the particular series of overtones into which a tone can be resolved is responsible for the colour of that tone as a whole. Naturally, this meant for the prevailing mode of thinking that the experience of the colour of a tone had to be interpreted as the effect of a kind of acoustical adding together of a number of single tone perceptions (very much as Newton had interpreted 'white' light as the outcome of an optical adding together of a certain number of single colour perceptions).

The picture becomes different if we apply to the aural experience Goethe's theorem that, in so far as we are deluded, it is not by our senses but by our own reasoning. For we then realize that sounds never occur of themselves without some tone-colour, whilst physically 'pure' tones - those that represent simple harmonic motions - exist only as an artificial laboratory product. The colour of a tone, therefore, is an integral part of it, and must not be conceived of as an additional attribute resulting from a summing up of a number of colourless tone experiences.

Further, if we compare our experiences of the two kinds of tone, they tell us that through the quality or colour of the natural tone something of a soul-nature, pleasant or unpleasant, speaks to us, whereas 'pure' tones have a soulless character.

Resolving normal tones by Helmholtz's method (useful as it is for certain purposes) amounts to something like dissecting a living, ensouled organism into its members; only the parts of the corpse

remain in our hands.

*

Having thus established that the psychic content of aural experience forms an integral part of the tone-phenomenon as such, we must seek to understand how the kinetic process which is indispensable for its appearance comes to be the vehicle for the manifestation of 'soul' in the manner described.

To this end we must first of all heed the fact that the movement which mediates aural sensation is one of alternating expansion and contraction. Expressed in the language of the four Elements, this means that the air thus set in vibration approaches alternately the condition of the watery element beneath it and of the element of fire (heat) above it. Thus, in a regular rhythm, the air comes near the border of its ponderable existence. Purely physical considerations make us realize that this entails another rhythmic occurrence in the realm of heat. For with each expansion of the air heat is absorbed by it and thereby rendered space-bound, while with every contraction of the air heat is set free and returns to its indigenous condition - that is, it becomes free from spatial limitations.

This picture of the complete happenings during an acoustic event enables us to understand how such a process can be the vehicle for conveying certain astral impulses in such a way that, when met by them, we grow aware of them in the form of a direct sensation. Taking as a model the expression 'transparent' for the perviousness of a substance to light, we may say that the air, when in a state of acoustic vibration, becomes 'trans-audient' for astral impulses, and that the nature of these vibrations determines which particular impulses are let through.

What we have here found to be the true role of the kinetic part of the acoustic process applies equally to sounds which are emitted by living beings, and to those that arise when lifeless material is set mechanically in motion, as in the case of ordinary noises or the musical production of tone. There is only this difference: in the first instance the vibrations of the sound-producing organs have their origin in the activity of the astral part of the living being, and it is this activity which comes to the recipient's direct experience in the form of aural impressions; in the second instance the air, by being brought externally into a state of vibration, exerts a kind of suction on the astral realm which pervades the air, with the result that parts of this realm become physically audible. For we are constantly surrounded by supersensible sounds, and the state of motion of the air determines which of them become perceptible to us in our present state of consciousness.

At this point our mind turns to a happening in the macrotelluric sphere of the earth, already considered in another connexion, which now assumes the significance of an ur-phenomenon revealing the astral generation of sound. This is the thunder-storm, constituted for our external perception by the two events: lightning and thunder.

Remembering what we have found earlier (Chapter X) to be the nature of lightning, we are now in a position to say: a supraterrestrial astral impulse obtains control of the earth's etheric and physical spheres of force in such a way that etheric substance is thrown into the condition of space-bound physical matter. This substance is converted by stages from the state of light and heat via that of air into the liquid and, in certain cases, into the solid state (hail). To this we now add that, while in lightning the first effect of the etheric-physical interference of the astral impulse appears before our eyes, our ears give us direct awareness of this impulse in the form of thunder. It is this fact which accounts for the awe-inspiring character of thunderstorms.

*

The picture we have thus received of the outer part of the acoustic process has a counterpart in the processes inside the organ of hearing. Hearing, like seeing, depends upon the co-operation of both poles of the human organism-nerve and blood. In the case of hearing, however, they play a reversed role. In the eye, the primary effect of light-impressions is on the nervous part; a secondary response to them comes from the blood organization. In the ear, the receptive organ for the astral impulses pressing in upon it is a part which belongs to the body's limb system, while it is the nervous organization which functions as the organ of response. For in the ear the sound-waves are first of all taken over by the so-called ossicles, three small bones in the middle ear which, when examined with the Goethean eye, appear to be a complete metamorphosis of ah arm or a leg. They are instrumental in transferring the outer acoustic movements to the fluid contained in the inner ear, whence these are communicated to the entire fluid system of the body and lastly to the muscular system.9 We shall speak of this in detail later on. Let it be stated here that the peculiar role played by the larynx in hearing, already referred to by us in Chapter XVI, is one of the symptoms which tells of the participation of the muscular system in the internal acoustic process.

Psychologically, the difference between ear and eye is that aural perceptions work much more directly on the human will - that is, on the part of our astral organization connected with the limb system. Whereas eye-impressions stimulate us in the first place to think, ear-impressions stimulate us to ... dance. The whole art of dancing, from its original sacred character up to its degenerate modern forms, is based upon the limb system being the recipient of acoustic impressions.

In order to understand how the muscles respond to the outer astral impulses which reach us through our ear, we must first understand what happens in the muscles when our will makes use of them for bodily motion. In this case, too, the muscular system is the organ through which certain astral impulses, this time arising out of the body's own astral member, come to expression. Moreover, the movement of the muscles, though not outwardly perceptible, is quite similar to acoustic movements outside the body. For whenever a muscle is caused to alter its length, it will perform some kind of vibration - a vibration characterized even by a definite pitch, which differs in different people. Since throughout life our body is never entirely without movement, we are thus in a constant state of inward sounding. The muscular system is capable of this vibration because during the body's initial period of growth the bones increase in length to a much greater extent than do the sinews and muscles. Hence the latter arrive at a condition of elastic tension not unlike that of the strings of a musical instrument.10

In the case of bodily movement, therefore, the muscles are tone-producers, whereas in acoustic perceptions they are tone-receivers. What, then, is it that prevents an acoustic perception from actually setting the limbs in motion, and, instead, enables our sentient being to take hold of the astral impulse invading our muscles?

This impediment comes from the contribution made by the nervous system to the auditory process. In order to understand the nature of this contribution we must remember the role played by the blood in seeing. It was found by us to consist in the bringing about of that state of equilibrium without which we should experience light merely as a pain-producing agent. Similarly, the perception of sound requires the presence of a certain state of equilibrium between the nerve-system and the limb-system. In this case, however, a lack of equilibrium would result not in pain, but in ecstasy. For if acoustic impressions played directly into our limb-system, with nothing to hold them in check, every tone we encounter would compel us to an outward manifestation of astral activity. We should become part of the tone-process itself, forced to transform it by the volitional part of our astral organization into spatial movement. That this does not happen is because the participation of the nervous system serves to damp down the potential ecstasy. Hence it is more or less left to the sentient part of the astral organization - that is, the part free from the physical body - to partake in the astral processes underlying the tone occurrences.

*

Our discussion has reached a point where we are able to answer a question which first arose in the course of our study of the four ethers, and which arises here anew.

In studying the chemical or sound ether we were faced with the fact that part of the etheric realm, although in itself accessible to the spiritual part of the sense of sight, offers supersensible experience comparable to the perception of sound. Conversely, we are now met by the fact that it is spiritual hearing which gives access to the immediate perception of a realm of forces which is not only the source of acoustic phenomena, but the origin of all that manifests in nature in the form of sulphurous, saline and mercurial events, such as the world of colours, electricity, magnetism, the manifold rhythmic occurrences on the earth (both taken as a whole .and in single organisms), etc. - all of which are taken hold of by quite other senses than that of hearing.

At our first encounter with this problem we remarked that in the supersensible no such sharp distinctions exist between different sense-spheres as are found in body-bound sense-perception. At the same time we remembered that even in physical perception we are inclined to attach acoustic attributes to colours and optical attributes to tones. In fact, it was precisely an instance of this kind of experience, namely, our conception of tone-colour, which gave us our lead in discussing the acoustic sphere in general. Our picture of the particular interaction of the two polar bodily systems in the acts of seeing and hearing now enables us to understand more clearly how these two spheres of perception overlap in man. For we have seen how the system which in seeing is the receiving organ, works in hearing as the responding one, and vice versa. As a result, optical impressions are accompanied by dim sensations of sound, and aural impressions by dim sensations of colour.

What we are thus dimly aware of in physical sense activity, becomes definite experience when the supersensible part of the senses concerned can work unfettered by the bodily organ. Clear testimony of this is again given to us by Traherne in a poem entitled Dumnesse. This poem contains an account of Traherne's recollection of the significant fact that the transition from the cosmic to the earthly condition of his consciousness was caused by his learning to speak. The following is a passage from the description of the impressions which were his before his soul was overcome by this change:

'Then did I dwell within a World of Light Distinct and Seperat from all Mens Sight, Where I did feel strange Thoughts, and such Things see That were, or seemd, only reveald to Me ...

'... A Pulpit in my Mind A Temple, and a Teacher I did find, With a large Text to comment on. No Ear, But Eys them selvs were all the Hearers there. And evry Stone, and Evry Star a Tongue, And evry Gale of Wind a Curious Song.'11

*

We have obtained a sufficiently clear picture of the organization of our sense of hearing to see where the way lies that leads from hearing with the ears of the body to hearing with the ears of the spirit, that is, to the inspirative perception of the astral world.

In the psycho-physical condition which is characteristic of our present day-consciousness, the participation of our astral organization in any happenings of the outer astral world depends on our corporeal motor system being stimulated by the acoustic motions of the air, or of some other suitable medium contacting our body. For it is only in this way that our astral organization is brought into the sympathetic vibrations necessary for perceiving outer astral happenings. In order that astral events other than those manifesting acoustically may become accessible to our consciousness, our own astral being must become capable of vibrating in tune with them, just as if we were hearing them - that is, we must be able to rouse our astral forces to an activity similar to that of hearing, yet without any physical stimulus. The way to this consists in training ourselves to experience the deeds and sufferings of nature as if they were the deeds and sufferings of a beloved friend.

It is thus that we shall learn to hear the soul of the universe directly speaking to us, as Lorenzo divined it, when his love for Jessica made him feel in love with all the world, and he exclaimed:

'There's not the smallest orb which thou behold'st But in his motion like an angel sings, Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubim, - Such harmony is in immortal souls. But whilst this muddy vesture of decay Doth grossly close it in, we cannot hear it.'

* * * (c) KEPLER AND THE 'MUSIC OF THE SPHERES'

'One must choose one's saints .. . and so I have chosen mine, and before all others, Kepler. In my ante-room he has ever a niche of his own, with his bust in it.'

This opinion of Goethe's must surprise us in view of the fact that Kepler was the discoverer of the three laws called after him, one of which is supposed to have laid the foundation for Newton's mechanical conception of the universe. In what follows it will be shown how wrong it is to see in Kepler a forerunner of the mechanistic conception of the world; how near, in reality, his world-picture is to the one to which we are led by working along Goetheanistic lines; and how right therefore Goethe was in his judgment on Kepler.

Goethe possessed a sensitive organ for the historical appropriateness of human ideas. As an illustration of this it may be mentioned how he reacted when someone suggested to him that Joachim Jungius - an outstanding German thinker, contemporary of Bacon, Van Helmont, etc. - had anticipated his idea of the metamorphosis of the plant. This remark worried Goethe, not because he could not endure the thought of being anticipated (see his treatment of K. F. Wolff), but because this would have run counter to the meaning of man's historical development as he saw it. 'Why do I regard as essential the question whether Jungius conceived the idea of metamorphosis as we know it? My answer is, that it is most significant in the history of the sciences, when a penetrating and vitalizing maxim comes to be uttered. Therefore it is not only of importance that Jungius has not expressed this maxim; but it is of highest significance that he was positively unable to express it - as we boldly assert.'12

For the same reason Goethe knew it would be historically unjustified to expect that Kepler could have conceived an aspect of the universe implicit in his own conception of nature. Hence it did not disturb him in his admiration for Kepler, that through him the Copernican aspect of the universe had become finally established in the modern mind - that is, an aspect which, as we have seen, is invalid as a means of forming a truly dynamic conception of the world.

In forming his picture of the universe, it is true, Copernicus was concerned with nothing but the spatial movements of the luminous entities discernible in the sky, without any regard to their actual nature and dynamic interrelationships. Hence his world-picture - as befits the spectator-form of human consciousness which was coming to birth in his own time - is a purely kinematic one. As such it has validity for a certain sphere of human observation.

When Kepler, against the hopes of his forerunner and friend, Tycho Brahe, accepted the heliocentric standpoint and made it the basis of his observations, he did so out of his understanding of what was the truth for his own time. Kepler's ideal was to seek after knowledge through pure observation. In this respect Goethe took him as his model. Kepler's discoveries were a proof that man's searching mind is given insight into great truths at any stage of its development, provided it keeps to the virtue of practising pure observation.

It has been the error of Newton and his successors up to our own day, to try to conceive the world dynamically within the limits of their spectator-consciousness and thus to form a dynamic interpretation of the universe based on its heliocentric aspect. This was just as repellent to Goethe as Kepler's attitude was attractive.

But by so sharply distinguishing between Newton and Kepler, do we not do injustice to the fact that, as the world believes, Kepler's third law is the parent of Newton's law of gravitation? The following will show that this belief is founded on an illusory conception of the kind we met before. As we shall see, Kepler's discovery, when treated in a Keplerian way, instead of leading to Newton, is found to be in full agreement with the very world-picture to which our own observations have led us.

*

It is an established conviction of the mathematical scientist that, once an observed regularity in nature has been expressed as a mathematical equation, this equation may be transformed in any mathematically valid way, and the resulting formula will still apply to some existing fact in the world. On innumerable occasions this principle has been used in the expectation of providing further insight into the secrets of nature. We came across a typical instance of this in discussing the basic theorem of kinematics and dynamics (Chapter VIII). Another example is Newton's treatment of Kepler's third law, or - more precisely - the way in which Newton's law of gravitation has been held to confirm Kepler's observations, and vice versa,