4. Man's Inner Cosmic System

Before getting into this lecture proper, it would be helpful to more fully elaborate a concept expressed in direct reference to human blood in The Riddle of Humanity (RH, Lect. 4, pp. 48-52). In regard to form, we must stress the difference between force and matter. That force exists is not seriously questionable, but while matter can be seen, force cannot. The physical body is a body of forces that create the "form" (or "phantom"), which cannot be seen until it is filled with matter. We shall look at the creation of matter in the condensation of The World of the Senses and the World of the Spirit (WSWS, Lect. 3) later in this essay.

In The Riddle of Humanity (pp. 48-52), Steiner discusses what he calls "physical forces." The parts of the physical body that are actually physical cannot even be directly observed. Here "physical" refers to those parts governed by and subject to physical forces. It is terribly easy to deceive oneself in this regard. Anyone who accepts materialistic criteria will say that breathing is a physical process in the human being. A person takes in air and then, as a consequence of the breath, certain processes occur in the blood, and so on, all of these being physical processes. Of course these all are physical processes, but the forces on which the chemical processes of the blood are based come from the I (the Ego or "I AM"). It is precisely in the human body that what is really physical is less involved. For example, physical forces are expressed in the human body when a child begins to crawl and then to assume an upright position. This is a kind of victory over gravity. These extraordinary relationships with balance and with the effects of weight are always present, but they are not physically visible. They are what spiritual science refers to as the physical body. They are physical forces to be sure, but they are, essentially, forces that cannot be observed. It is like having a balance on a stand. In the middle is the support (fulcrum). Forces are acting on one side because of the weight that is there. Other forces are working on the other side where another weight is hanging. The strings by which the weights are attached are not identical with the forces at work there. Even though the forces are physical, they are invisible. This is the sense in which parts of the human body can be called physical—for the most part, they are to be thought of as forces.

By way of further distinction, Steiner adds that aside from physical forces there are forces called "etheric" in the etheric sphere which cause mineral matter to be yoked into a living creature (plant, animal or human), "astral" forces in the astral sphere which involve processes in the nerves of a sensate creature, and finally "Ego" forces which are involved in the circulation of the blood. He then illustrates convincingly how morality for example affects (enters) the human being only through the blood by way of the head. The human kingdom, by virtue of its different head or brain, has morality, whereas the animal kingdom does not. One would never think of judging an animal for an immoral act. The blood's action in rushing to the surface to escape from its embodied Ego when one blushes in shame, or fleeing inward to protect such Ego when one pales from outer danger, are observable manifestations of the spiritual reality of the perceiving Ego's presence in the blood. Shame is the result of a moral judgement by the Ego.

We can now return to An Occult Physiology, Lect. 4. Steiner notes that an objection can be made about an apparent contradiction between the importance assigned (in Lect. 3) to the spleen and the reality that, contrary to the situation with certain other "vital" organs, a human being can survive when the spleen is removed. No contradiction exists, for this "reality" is compatible with everything previously discussed. In the spleen as an organism a whole array of supersensible forces and organisms are involved. In addition to a physical force, there are the forces of the etheric and astral bodies and the Ego. But we might say of the physical force alone of the spleen that the more any one of the organs is the direct expression of the spiritual, the less is the organ's physical form, i.e., what we have before us as physical substance (matter), the determining factor. Just as we find in looking at a pendulum that its movement is merely the physical expression of gravity, even so is the physical organ merely the physical expression of the supersensible influences working in force and form—except that in the case of forces like that of gravitation, when we remove the pendulum, which is the physical expression, no inner rhythm due to gravitation can continue. This is the case, of course, in inanimate, inorganic nature; but not in the same way in animate, organic nature. When there are no other causes present in the organism as a whole, it is not necessary that the spiritual influences cease with the removal of the physical organ, for this physical organ, in its physical nature, is only a feeble expression of the nature of the corresponding spiritual activities. On this point we shall have more to say later.

Accordingly when we observe the spleen of the human being we have to do in the first place with that organ only, but beyond that with a system of forces working in it that have only their outward expression in the physical spleen. If one removes the spleen, these forces that are integral to the organism still continue to work. Their activities do not cease in the way in which, let us say, certain spiritual activities in the human being cease when one removes the brain or a portion of it. It may even be, under certain circumstances, that a diseased organ may cause a much greater hindrance to the continuation of the spiritual activities than is brought about by the removal of the organ. This is true, for example, in the case of a serious disease of the spleen.

One who follows these things with patience will see that there is no contradiction between what comes forth from spiritual science and what may be presented by external science. The difficulty is that the field of anthroposophical or spiritual science as a whole is so extensive that it is never possible to present more than a part of it.

The spleen's function in transforming rhythm was used for illustration in Lect. 3 because it is the most easily understood of all the spleen's functions. It is not the most important. Its function as a sort of "sieve" has already been mentioned. Also far more important is the fact of its involvement in the nourishment process whereby the body assimilates external substances having a different composition, form and manner of environmental existence than the human body. The biblical student can find this fundamentally expressed in Genesis in the various passages where each supersensible kingdom, with its descending branches, is said to have been created "after its kind" (Gen 1,11,12,21,24,25; also Gen 6,20; 7,14), including those given the human being for "food" (Gen 1,29; 6,21). Articles of food are after all not just bricks serving as building material for the body. Bricks are used as they are, according to their kind, in constructing a building, but the building belongs to the same essential kind as the bricks, namely, it is governed solely by the spiritual laws that regulate the Physical Condition of Form of the Mineral Kingdom (see I-1). This is not true of nutritive matter in relation to the human being. For all particles of substance in the human being's environment have certain inner forces, their own conformity to law (as clearly implied in Genesis). They do not simply consent to being inserted into the human being's inner activity, so to speak, but attempt first to develop their own laws, rhythms and inner forms of movement. To utilize them, the human being's organism must first destroy their rhythmic life, as it were, that vital activity peculiarly their own.

An illustration Steiner often uses in other lectures to combat the popular assumption that "we are what we eat" seems apt here. If these "laws" applicable to other "kinds" were not first destroyed, then one would, like a structure made solely of bricks, become what one is composed of. He says that if these laws are applicable, then a wolf confined from birth and given only lamb to eat would after a time, through its processes of metabolism, become a lamb in its nature.

We must recognize, therefore, that in those inner human organs that first encounter our food we have the instruments with which to oppose, in the first place, what constitutes the peculiar life of the nutritive substances—"life" here conceived in its wider meaning, so that even the apparently lifeless world of nature, with its laws of movement, is included. The life in our food that contradicts the human rhythm must be modified. And in this work of change the organism of the spleen is the outpost. Other organs also participate, so that in spleen, gallbladder and liver we have a cooperating system of organs whose main function is to repel what constitutes the particular inner nature of food received into the organism.

Thus our food is adapted to the inner rhythm of the human organism. Only when so adapted by the activity of these organs do we have in us something capable of being received into the organic system that is the bearer, the instrument, of our Ego. Before any external nutrition can be assimilated into human blood so that the blood becomes capable of serving as the instrument of our Ego, all those forms of law peculiar to the external world must be set aside, and the blood must receive the nutriment in the form that corresponds to the particular nature of the human organism. We may say, therefore, that in the spleen, liver and gallbladder we have organs that, as they react upon the stomach, adapt the laws of the outside world to the inner rhythm of the human being.

But if only these organs served it, the human being would be shut off completely from the outside world—isolated in itself. The human being must also confront the outside world directly with the help of the instrument of its Ego, i.e., its blood.

Whereas from the nutritional direction the blood connects with the external world only by assimilating that part of the outside world from which all forms of law peculiar to it have been cast aside, from the other side it relates with this external world by coming into direct contact with it. This happens when the blood flows through the lungs and comes into contact with the outer air. Thereby, without weakening the form of the air, the oxygen in it actually meets the instrument of the human being's Ego in a condition that conforms with the air's own essential nature and quality of being.

The human being's noblest instrument, its blood, the instrument of its Ego, thus stands between these two systems of organs that take substance in from the outside world. The human being's outer and inner worlds come into direct contact with each other through the blood that takes air from one side and nutrition from the other. One side provides the carbon and the other the oxygen necessary to combust into body heat (fire), and the meeting of the two sides occurs in the heart.