The Human Being as Body, Soul and Spirit

GA 347 — 2 August 1922, Dornach

I. On the Origin of Language and Languages

Good morning, gentlemen! Today we want to use the time to add something to what we have heard. Then we will be able to understand a great deal about the dignity of man.

You see, I have roughly described how nutrition and breathing take place in the human being. We have also shown that nutrition is more closely related to human life, that nutrition consists of our absorbing nutrients that are actually in a lifeless state in our intestines, that these nutrients are then brought to life by the lymph vessels, and that they are then transferred to the blood in a living state. Then, as we know, this living food comes into contact with the oxygen in the air inside the blood. The air is absorbed by the human being. The blood is changed. This is the process that takes place in the chest. And at the same time, we have what our feeling gives us.

So, life is actually brought about between the intestinal processes and between the blood processes. Within the blood processes, in turn, between the blood processes and the air, that which is our mind is brought about. Now we also have to take care of the mind and try to understand how the mind came about in humans.

You see, it has only been possible to recognize this externally for about sixty years, one might say. We could have celebrated the sixtieth anniversary last year, in 1921. It was not celebrated because people today have little interest in organizing purely scientific anniversary celebrations. The discovery made in 1861, which could have been celebrated as a 60th anniversary – so only for the last fifty or sixty years has it been possible to talk about the matter I want to talk about today – is an important scientific discovery. I remember this discovery for the simple reason that it is exactly the same age as I am. This discovery consists of the following.

I recently told you how one can observe in a human being: one does not need to experiment, but one only needs to pay attention to what nature itself experiments on the human being when the human being falls ill in some way. If we know how to observe what has happened in the physical human being when the human being has fallen ill in any way, then such an experiment, such an attempt has been made by nature itself for us, and we can gain knowledge from this experiment.

Now, in 1861, it was found, namely, by Broca, it has been found that in people who have speech disorders, when they are dissected after death, something is violated in the third left frontal convolution.

It is not true, when we look at the brain, when we, so to speak, lift off the bony skullcap, the bony covering, we get to see the brain. This brain has convolutions: There is one convolution, there is a second, and there is a third convolution (it is drawn). This convolution is called the temporal convolution because it is located here at the temple. Now, every time a person has either individual speech disorders or is no longer able to speak at all, something is broken in this left frontal convolution.

This can happen when a person suffers a so-called stroke. A stroke consists of blood that should only be flowing in the veins pressing through the veins and flowing into the rest of the mass around the veins, where the blood should not be. This kind of hematoma then causes the stroke, the paralysis. So when the blood pours into the human being unlawfully, into this temporal winding, this ultimately causes, when this temporal winding is completely undermined, that the person can no longer speak.

You see, this is a very interesting connection. We can say: A person speaks because he has a healthy left temporal winding in his physical body. And now we have to understand what that actually means: a person has a healthy left temporal lobe. But to understand that, we have to look at something else.

When small children die, and we examine this same area of the brain, this left temporal lobe, then this strip of brain is a fairly uniform mass; especially before the child has learned to speak, it is a fairly uniform mass. To the same extent that the child begins to learn to speak, this left frontal convolution gets more and more small convolutions. It is formed more and more artificially. So that one can say: If, for example, this left frontal convolution would look like this in a very young child (it is drawn), it will look like this in a child who has learned to speak and in an adult: very artificially formed.

Something has happened to the brain; something happened just as the child was learning to speak. And no one should think differently about such a thing than one otherwise thinks in ordinary life. You see, if I move the table from here, no one will say: the table has moved here. Nor should I say: “The brain has formed convolutions.” Instead, I have to think about what actually happened and what the cause is. So I have to think about where this formation of the left temporal convolution comes from.

Now, you see, when the child learns to speak, it moves its body. It moves its body in the speech organs. Before that, when the child cannot yet speak, when it is still just a fidgety being, it screams at most and so on. As long as it just screams, this left frontal convolution is still a pulp like the one I drew at the beginning. The more it learns to do more than just scream, but to let screaming turn into sounds, the more this frontal convolution is developed. So that one can say: When the child just cries, then there is a brain mush at that point. Now it begins not just to cry, but to say sounds. Then gradually this general mush is transformed into a beautifully formed left brain part.

Now, gentlemen, the thing is this: You know that when the child cries, the cries it makes are mostly what are called vowels: A, E. So when the child just cries out, it does not need a structured left frontal convolution; rather, it always produces what it cries out from within itself, without having anything artificial in the brain. If you pay a little attention, you will see that what the child cries out first is very similar to the A sounds. Later, the child begins to add U and I sounds to his crying. And gradually, as you know, the child also learns consonants. The child first cries out A; then he learns the M to go with it: MA or WA. So the child gradually forms words out of his crying by adding the consonants to the vowels.

And how do you form these consonants? You only have to pay attention to how you produce an M. You have to move your lips. As a child, you have to learn this through imitation. When you produce an L, you have to move your tongue. And so you have to move something. You have to move from the fidgeting that the child does to regular movements, to movements that the speech organs perform by imitation. And the more the child adds such consonants, L, M, N, R, and so on, to the vowels, which are only present when screaming, the more this left frontal convolution is structured, the more this left forehead is artificially developed; so that the left frontal convolution develops with the same strength with which the child learns the consonants.

Now, we can say: How does the child initially learn to speak? The child really only learns to speak by imitation. It learns to move its lips by intuitively imitating how other people move their lips. Everything is imitation. This means that the child notices, sees and perceives what is going on around it. And through this perception, through this mental work of perceiving, the brain is formed. Just as the sculptor forms his wood or marble or bronze, so this brain is formed by the child moving. The organs that it moves plant their movement all the way into the brain. So when I say L with my tongue, the tongue is connected to the brain by a nerve, connected to other organs. This L goes into my left frontal convolution and produces such figures in there. The L produces such a figure where one thing follows another, where this left frontal convolution almost forms like a bowel. The M produces such spherical convolutions. So you see, it is work on this left temporal convolution. It is the one that moves the child by noticing, by experiencing. It is very interesting that since we know that a stroke ruins the left frontal lobe and thus undermines speech, we can know that the child's left frontal lobe is actually being worked on all the time as it learns consonants and vowels. And that comes from the fact that the eye and all kinds of other organs notice that something is happening in the outside world. What is happening there in the outside world?

Well, you see, when we speak, we always breathe while speaking. We breathe all the time. And when we breathe, what is formed from breathing, this breath, as I have called it, first goes into the human body, then goes up through this spinal cord canal (it is drawn) and goes into the brain. So while the child cries, cannot yet say the consonants, but cries and breathes, during that time this breathing always goes up, this breathing impulse; it goes up and goes everywhere into the brain.

Let us ask ourselves: what actually goes into the brain? Well, blood goes into the brain. It goes everywhere, as I have explained to you in the last few days. So through breathing, the blood is actually pushed into the brain all the time. But that through breathing the blood is pushed in everywhere, yes, you see, that already takes place after the child is just born – even earlier, but there it is just working in a different way. So when the child is born, it begins to breathe. This rush of air, which pushes the blood into the brain, is actually always present.

And in this way we can say: as long as only the blood is pushed into the brain through breathing, the child can only scream. It begins to talk when not only the blood is pushed into it, but when, let us say, the child notices something from the eye or from some other organ, from the ear in particular, when it perceives something. When the child notices a movement in another person, it imitates the movement internally; then not only does the blood flow up there, but then, let's say, for example, another flow goes from the ear continuously into there (it is drawn). You see, that is the other current. And this other current is the nerve current.

So in the left temporal convolution, in the so-called speech convolution, as everywhere else in the human body, blood vessels and nerve cords meet. What one notices, what one perceives, acts on the nerve cords. The movements that the child makes during the consonants are thus transmitted through the nerves into his left speech coil. And there this is very well developed, in that the respiratory impulse always interacts with the blood with what comes from the ear or also from the eye, and what there gradually, beautifully structures the entire pulpy brain mass between blood and nerves. So you can see that our brain is actually only formed – at least in this part, and then in other parts it is exactly the same – formed by the fact that one activity, namely perception, interacts with another activity, namely this push that drives the blood into the brain.

But now you also have to be clear about the following. The child learns to speak in this way, that is, it trains its left frontal convolution. But, gentlemen, if you now sit with a corpse and dissect it, and observe the right frontal convolution, which lies symmetrically there, it is relatively untrained. So there we have the left frontal convolution; it has become as beautiful as I told you. The right one usually remains throughout life as it was in the child – so it remains undivided. I would like to say: if we only had the right frontal convolution, we could only scream, and only by artificially preparing the left frontal convolution can we talk.

But, you see, once a person is a lefty , that is, if he is in the habit of doing things not with his right hand but with his left, then it turns out that, when he is struck on the left side, he does not lose his speech, for example. And when he is dissected, it is found that in the left-handed person, the right frontal convolution has been structured in the same way as in the usual, normal citizens and people, the left frontal convolution is structured.

So the arm and hand movements play an extremely important role in the formation of the brain. Where does that come from? Yes, you see, it comes from this: when someone gets used to doing a lot with their right hand, they not only do what they do with their right hand, but they also get used to breathing a little harder on the right, and thus using more breathing power. They get used to hearing more clearly on the right, and so on. This only shows us that when a person gets used to using his right hand, he generally tends to be more active on the right side than on the left. But the left frontal convolution is developed when he is a right-handed person, and the right frontal convolution when he is a left-handed person. Why is that so?

Yes, gentlemen, you see: here (he draws) you have the right arm, the right hand, here you have the head and here you have the left temporal convolution. Now let's examine how the nerves run. The nerves run like this; you have nerves everywhere in here. If you didn't have these nerves, you wouldn't be able to feel warm or cold here, for example. It's all connected with the nerves. You have nerves everywhere here, which go up through the spinal cord and into the brain. But the strange thing is that the nerves in the right hand go here into the left brain, and the nerves in the other hand go into the right brain. Because the nerves cross inside there. In the brain, the nerves cross so that when I do, say, some gymnastic or eurythmy exercise with my right hand or my right arm, I feel it through the nerve that conveys this sensation; but I feel it with the left side of the brain because the nerves cross.

Now imagine that a child prefers to do everything with his or her right hand. Then he also breathes a little more on the right side, listens a little more, and even sees a little more sharply on the right side. The person then makes more effort on the right side and develops what he does in terms of movements into the left brain.

Now you just have to imagine that we also always have a little peculiarity that we make gestures when speaking: Ah! (corresponding gesture); and when we reject something: E! We make gestures when we speak. These gestures are felt by our nerves; and the gestures of the right hand that we make when speaking are felt by the left side of the brain. And in the same way, if we are right-handed, we tend to use the right side of the larynx more to pronounce the vowels and consonants, to pronounce the sounds more strongly; then what we do there is also felt more strongly with the left side of the brain. And that is where the fact that the brain, which is originally a pulp, is more developed comes from. We leave the left half more unused; therefore, the right hemisphere is less developed and remains pulpy. But if someone is left-handed, it happens the other way around.

This leads to a number of important pedagogical issues. Consider left-handed children – and there are a few of them even at school – you have to realize that while the left temporal lobe in the brain is very artificially developed in all others, it is fully developed in these left-handed children, and the right temporal lobe is developing. And when I teach the children how to write, I use the right hand. Those children who are right-handed will only strengthen what they have already begun to develop in their left frontal gyrus when learning to speak. But those children who are left-handed will ruin what they have formed in their right temporal gyrus through language if I force them to write with their right hand. They ruin it again, and so I have the task, since it should not be that way with writing, of letting left-handed people write with their left hand. I have the initial task of slowly and gradually gradually transfer what they do with their left hand to their right hand, so that they first learn to work with the other hand and only then, much more slowly than the other children, begin to write. It doesn't matter if they learn to write a little later.

If I just let left-handed children learn to write as quickly as right-handed children, I make these children dumber because I ruin what they have developed in the right hemisphere of their brains. So I have to make sure that I teach left-handed children to write differently from right-handed children. They will not become duller for later life, but cleverer, if I lead left-handedness slowly into right-handedness, and do not simply confuse the whole brain by writing with the right hand.

Now, you see, if you want to treat the whole person with writing at all, then pedagogically you achieve the opposite of what you want to achieve. There is now a great tendency to teach people everything with both hands, to let them do everything with both hands. That's how I mess up their brains. And it just shows how little people know when they have such a tendency to let people do the same thing left and right. You could strive for that; but you have to do something else first. And what should you do? Yes, gentlemen, you would have to change the whole person first! You would have to slowly let one activity pass from the left side to the right side and slowly weaken the activity on the right side. What would happen then? Yes, you see, what would happen then is that under this surface of the left temporal convolution (it is drawn) the left temporal convolution would be formed more artificially, and on the outside, on the outer side, it would remain mush. And that would then also occur on the right temporal convolution. Instead of dividing the two activities between the left and right sides, I make each temporal winding into two halves, an outer and an inner half. The inner half is then more suitable for speaking, the outer half is more suitable for shouting the vowels and consonants into it. But all speaking is a combination of shouting and articulating. This remains so throughout life.

So you see, you can't just mess around with people, but you have to know the whole person if you want to do pedagogy, even just elementary school pedagogy. Because with everything you do, you change the person. And that is the really sinful thing, that today people only tamper with appearances and do not look at how things are when you really get inside the person.

Now, in very few people are both frontal lobes usable, but the right frontal lobe is more permeated with blood flow, the left has less blood flow and is more permeated with nerves. And that is the case with our entire brain: the right brain is more for blood flow, i.e. for blood to run apart, while the left half is more for noticing, for perceiving.

As soon as we come to know that the brain develops under external influences, only then will we begin to understand how strong these external influences are. These external influences are, of course, extremely strong when we know that everything that goes on in the brain is caused by external influences. So, by having learned what actually happens in the brain when a person speaks, we can now form an idea of what the human brain is like in general. You see, if we examine this brain further, it turns out that there are always more blood vessels on the outer wall, where the brain has its outer wall, than on the inside. So we can say: the brain is richer in blood on the outside, and richer in nerves on the inside. So on the inside we have nerves; there are nerve cords inside.

So how is the brain actually formed in a child who learns to speak in the usual way, that is, who is right-handed? Well, you see, if you take a very young brain from a child, it is surrounded by a blood-rich, I would say, mantle (it is drawn). That is viewed from the front. That should be to the right of the person – seen from you, it is on the left – that should be to the left of the person. All these nerve cords are now forming there. Because of this, gentlemen, because there are nerve cords in there, you see, when you take them out, the inner brain mass looks whitish, while the more blood-rich brain mass around it looks reddish-gray when you take it out. It looks reddish-gray.

If the child continues to develop in such a way that it learns to speak, that its left temporal convolution is structured, what happens then? Yes, that is what happens: these nerve cords become more involved; as a result, the blood system develops less here and more there (it is drawn). So, in a sense, the inner part of the brain moves more to the left in a normally developing child; the other moves after it. The brain thus shifts over to the left side, and it becomes whiter and whiter towards the left side. It shifts over like that. The whole of human development is based on such artificial things.

Now, let's move on from language. You see, there are languages that have, let's say, a lot of consonants, and there are languages that have a lot of vowels: A, E, I and so on. There are other languages in which everything is squeezed out: S, W, so that one almost does not notice the vowels. Now, what is actually the case here?

If someone lives in a region – because it depends on the regions, the languages differ according to the regions of the earth – in which more of the consonants develop, what does that mean? It means that he lives more in the outer world, because the mitlaute have to be formed on the outside. So when someone lives more in the outer world, his white brain matter shifts more to the left. When someone lives more within himself, in such a region, where man lives more within his own inner being, this white brain matter shifts over less. Man is more inclined to produce harmonious sounds from his inner being. But this varies according to the regions of the earth.

So let us take the following, gentlemen. Imagine there is the earth (it is drawn) and at different points on the earth there are people. I will draw it very schematically, there is a person and there is a person. So there are different people standing on the earth. We always stand on the earth like that, even if it is drawn much too disproportionately, of course, but that is how we stand on the earth. And the person here, let's say, gets a language with consonant-final vowels, the other gets a language with consonant-medial vowels.

What must have happened in the area in question? Well, a great deal could have happened, many different things, but I will highlight one possibility. Imagine there are high mountains here (it is drawn) and a plain there. So here are high mountains, there is the plain. Now, in fact, when there are flat plains, you notice that the language there has more vowels. If there are towering mountains somewhere, then the language tends to become richer in consonants.

But you see, it's not that simple. We have to ask ourselves: what causes the mountains and the plains? This is how it is (it is drawn): here is the soil everywhere; here the sun shines. Our whole Earth was once a pulp. The mountains must have been pulled out of the pulpy mass. So the Earth is basically a pulp, and the mountains are pulled out of it here.

Gentlemen, what is pulling the mountains out? The mountains are pulled out by the forces from the universe that are working from outside! So that we can say: certain forces are at work from the universe, drawing out the mountains. These forces are strong, and that is why a mountain range is created. Here, weaker forces from the universe are entering, and that is why no mountain range is created. There the earth's surface was pulled out less in ancient times. And those people who are now born on such earth, where these forces are less effective, speak in self-sounds, and those people who are born on such earth, where these forces are more effective, speak in middle-sounds. So that depends on the whole forces of the universe.

And how can we state something like that? Well, gentlemen, what we indicate must be set up in such a way that we can look at the clock. We have to go to work or have to leave. But we will not say for a moment: Now it's too much! This damn big hand, he's a horrible guy, he's whipping me to work now! - That doesn't occur to us at all. The hand indicates when we should go to work, but we do not ascribe the slightest blame or cause to it. Don't we, we don't do that. So it is most innocent in the matter.

Likewise, gentlemen, we can look towards the sun here and can say: When we stand here, at a certain moment the sun is, let us say, for example, in front of the constellation of Aries. There we have the direction where the strong forces are at work. It is not the ram, but it indicates the direction where the strong forces are at work. At the same time, a person is standing here. For him, the following only comes into consideration: When the sun has moved over here (it is drawn), it stands here, for me in Virgo, in the constellation of Virgo. The forces are weak in that direction. Instead of telling the whole process now, I can say: If someone is born in an area where, at a certain time, let's say at the time of his birth, the sun is in the constellation of Aries, then he learns to speak more consonantly; if he is born at a time when the sun is in the constellation of Virgo, then he learns to speak more vowels.

So you see, I can use the whole zodiac like a clock to tell me what is happening on Earth. I must always be clear about the fact that it is not the constellations that do this, but that the constellations are there to read. From this you can see that the zodiac can tell us a great deal. It can tell us something to the extent that we can understand from it how languages on earth differ.

So we can definitely say: let's look at the earth. Let us imagine that there is the Earth and that we have placed a chair there – it may not be so, but hypothetically we can assume it – a chair in outer space, looking at a kind of language map, the different languages on Earth. Then we get a picture. And now we turn the chair around, now we look out into space. We get a picture of the stars, and they correspond to each other. If someone were to look at the southern half of the earth and observe the languages there, and then turn the chair around and look at the southern starry sky, it would be quite different from if someone were to do the same for the northern half. So that one could draw the starry sky, and anyone who has studied this connection can indicate from a particular constellation what language is common under that constellation.

So you see that just when we start observing the spiritual life of man, that is, where his mind is formed through language, we have to look up at the starry sky if we want to understand something. On earth, we don't get any context. No matter how much you think about why languages are different, you won't get an explanation.

You see, if you want to know what is going on in your stomach, you have to ask the ground – what is down there. If cabbage is mainly grown in a particular area, you can tell yourself: in this area, the killed cabbage fruits must be continually revived. So if you want to know how a particular area is nourished, you have to ask the soil. If you want to know how a particular area is breathing, you have to ask about what is happening in the air around it. And if you want to know what is going on inside this box, in the brain box, you have to ask how the stars are arranged out there. And so you have to be able to integrate the human being into the whole universe. And then you will see that it is indeed a superstition when, from remnants of what people once knew, it is merely said: When the sun is in Aries, this and that is effected. That is nothing at all. But when one knows the whole context, then it ceases to be an ordinary superstition, then it becomes science.

And that is what gradually brings us from an understanding of the mere reworking of materials to what happens and what is connected with the whole universe outside.