How Spirit Works in Nature

GA 351 — 10 October 1923, Dornach

2. Hydrogen Cyanide And Nitrogen, Carbonic Acid And Oxygen

Good morning, gentlemen! Have you thought of anything?

Questioner: The doctor once said that the stars, for example the moon, are much larger than we can see them. Could we perhaps hear something more about this?

Dr. Steiner: Today I want to tell you something that makes it possible for us to go into these heavenly bodies in more detail in the next lesson. Of course, firstly, we have to understand what these heavenly bodies are and how they relate to the earth; and on the other hand, we have to understand that there is something spiritual everywhere in these heavenly bodies. Of course, their size, position and so on do not make much of a difference. Therefore, today I will tell you a certain basis from the earth that will show you how to understand the sun and the moon from the earth. It is of course the case that the sun is much larger than the earth and the moon is smaller than the earth. The moon is of course larger than it appears to us, but it is smaller than the earth. And the sun, as it is spread out there, is larger than the earth.

But now, above all, we have to be able to see what these heavenly bodies are made of, what they actually are. We have to ask ourselves what would be encountered if one were to travel there in an airship. In all of this, we must start with the human being. We have discussed time and again how humans depend on their entire environment: you breathe in the air, you breathe out the air. When you breathe in the air, you take into your body what is outside in your environment. The air that is outside consists of oxygen and nitrogen. That itself is an airy, gaseous body. And this oxygen is absolutely necessary for our life. We need oxygen. We need it in such a way that we inhale it in the dark at night, and inhale it during the day in such a way that the sun's rays can pass through. We need all of this. So that we can say: we would not live if we did not have the oxygen in the air. But this oxygen in the air is mixed with another gas: with nitrogen. So in the air we have oxygen and nitrogen. Now you might say: Do we also need the nitrogen?

If there were only nitrogen, we would suffocate. Imagine if, instead of bringing you all into this room where oxygen is mixed with nitrogen, we brought you into a room where there was only nitrogen: You would all suffocate together! So we could say: maybe we could be completely indifferent to whether the nitrogen is there or not, maybe we could have just the oxygen. But then it would be like this: if there were only oxygen, then at most the youngest person sitting there would still be alive – all the rest of us would have died long ago. The youngest would still be alive, but he would have a long beard and white hair and wrinkles, he would be an old man! So we would all live too fast if there was only oxygen. It is only because oxygen is mixed with much more nitrogen – only 21 percent is oxygen, the rest being almost all nitrogen – that we live as long as we can as humans. So if we didn't have nitrogen, we would live too fast. We would only live long enough to be about sixteen, seventeen, eighteen years old, and then we would already be old.

However, the nitrogen in the air has another very special property. You might say: What if there was a little more or a little less nitrogen in the air? Assume there is less nitrogen in the air than the percentage that is already in it. Gentlemen, that would be a very curious story: You would all start breathing out more nitrogen in the air you breathe out than you would otherwise breathe out, where there is just as much in the air as there is now. So if there were too little nitrogen in it, you would pump the nitrogen out of your body in order to pump as much out of your own body into the air as is in it now. If there were more in the air than is now in the air, you would start to retain the nitrogen you breathe in and exhale less than you do now, so that there is less nitrogen in the air again. This is very strange: man not only needs nitrogen mixed with oxygen to breathe properly, but he also needs a certain amount of nitrogen in his environment. It must be there. So it is not important that we have enough nitrogen and oxygen inside us, but that the right amount is in our environment. And if it is not enough, we add it ourselves.

This is something that today's science does not know at all. Today's science completely excludes the human being from the world, not knowing that the human being can in fact be the master of the world if he is only aware of it. If, for example, it were necessary to found a colony somewhere where there is too little nitrogen, then it would be possible to produce enough nitrogen by simply recommending food to people that would enable them to exhale a lot of nitrogen themselves. So you see how a real science can be put into practice immediately.

But now something else comes into play. Let us first consider the nitrogen that we do not just let out, but that we also continually inhale and exhale. If we had only that nitrogen, we would suffocate. In our lungs, we suffocate from the nitrogen. But our kidneys, our digestive organs, our hands and feet need the nitrogen; it is transported there by the blood and is necessary there. So that we can say: When a person is standing (see diagram), nitrogen, which I have marked in red here, is constantly going into his arms and hands, into his abdomen, into his legs and feet. That is where the nitrogen has to be. Nitrogen must not remain in the lungs, it must only pass through and have oxygen for the lungs. The lungs can only live when they have oxygen; but the nitrogen goes further, into arms and hands. So everywhere I have marked in red, the nitrogen must go in. And in the heart, too, it must still be deposited, the nitrogen. There must be nitrogen everywhere inside.

This nitrogen, which is inside, goes, I would say, all the time in brotherhood with the carbon. Carbon is in coal, in diamond, is in graphite. But carbon is also in us. Only in us it is liquid, floating around. So in there (see drawing) is the nitrogen, which I have drawn in red; now I want to draw in the carbon in blue. It is also everywhere inside, so that the red is everywhere with the blue, the carbon. This is something very strange: you carry carbon and nitrogen together in your insides, in your legs, your feet, your arms and hands, in your stomach, in your liver, in your kidneys, in your spleen, in your heart – nitrogen as it is in the air and completely liquid carbon, as if you were dissolving coal and this black stuff were floating in the water. You have that inside you.

But that is actually a dangerous story when carbon and nitrogen are next to each other. If carbon and nitrogen are present next to each other, there is always the danger, if the right conditions are present, that they form prussic acid, cyanic acid; because prussic acid consists of what I have marked red and blue in the diagram. So you walk around and while you walk around, there is always the danger that prussic acid is formed in you. So everywhere where I have marked in blue, there is always the danger that prussic acid is formed throughout the whole human being. And because the bones have lime, the prussic acid can also combine with the lime; then a cyanide-calcium compound is formed. And then potassium cyanide is formed. You know that potassium cyanide is the most technically perfect way to poison yourself. Of course, there is no better means than potassium cyanide for this purpose; it is immediately right. But now there is a constant danger in man that he will form prussic acid and potassium cyanide. This must be so. Because if you did not have this ability to form potassium cyanide within you, then you could not walk and you could not move your arms. The power to move, to move your arms and legs, comes from the fact that you are constantly exposed to the danger of forming prussic acid.

Now there is something very subtle: this prussic acid wants to form in us all the time and we constantly prevent it! That is what our life as a moving human being consists of. Even the movement of blood depends on our preventing the formation of prussic acid. Our movements arise from this resistance to the formation of prussic acid. And our will actually arises from the fact that it is constantly compelled to prevent the formation of prussic acid and prussic acid in us.

Now, gentlemen, prussic acid does not form; because if it did form, we would be poisoned. But at every moment we have the possibility of prussic acid forming in us and we have to prevent it. Of course, it is not much prussic acid that wants to form, but it would add up to something over a lifetime if it were to form. And the power that lives in the prussic acid that wants to form, this power that lives there, connects the human being on earth with the sun. So that what lives in the prussic acid flows continuously from man into the sun. So you can say when you look up at the sun: I have a connection with the sun; and the power that lives in me to break down the prussic acid that constantly wants to form in my body, this power goes from the earth up to the sun. If you have the earth here and the sun here – I have to draw it large now – then such currents of Zyankali are constantly flowing from the person to the sun, and currents flow back from the sun. This dissolved Zyankali flows from the person to the sun, and from the sun flows back what the sun makes out of this dissolved Zyankali. And this distance is twenty million miles – one mile is calculated as seven and a half kilometers. If a light is now lit on the sun, we see it first because the light takes so long to get here, much later. So we are connected to a world body that is so far away from us simply by the fact that we radiate this power, which is constantly striving to form potassium cyanide. In particular, there is always something like a cyanide center in our bones, like a source of cyanide.

If that were not the case, then we would be very peculiar people on earth. If we did not have this connection with the sun, then we would also stare up at the sun and say: Yes, that is a world body that has nothing to do with us. - We would see that plants grow; but these plants could not grow either if this potassium cyanide did not go back and forth. So we would stare at the sun and we would not know what relation it has to man. Of course, people today also do not know this connection that I have told you about, but they feel that they belong to the sun. And they feel this very strongly. Because when the sun goes down – especially in ancient times, when people still lived healthier lives, slept at night and watched during the day, it was still like that – then people feel that they do not absorb the sun in the same way. Then potassium cyanide is only in him, albeit only in small quantities; then he falls asleep. It is indeed the sun that always wakes people up and puts them to sleep. Only because man withholds something can he commit the folly of continuing to work at night or not working but continuing to enjoy himself. But the forces that we summon up during the night also come through the connection of these forces with the sun. And I would like to say: when hydrocyanic acid is formed somewhere on the earth itself - for example, hydrocyanic acid is formed in certain plants - when hydrocyanic acid is formed on the earth itself, then this solar force is applied to the plant, so to speak, in such a way that it brings about what actually wants to be done in the human being.

You see, gentlemen, in order for this to be formed – and it has to be formed because the nitrogen is in the prussic acid – you need the nitrogen in the environment. And the sun needs the nitrogen to be able to work on us in the right way. We could not stand on earth as human beings if the sun did not have the nitrogen through which it can act on our limbs, on our digestive organs and so on. But with the head it is quite different, with the human head, quite different. You see, in the lungs, the nitrogen is no good there; it has to go through the lungs. In the lungs, only the oxygen is of any use. And when the oxygen passes through the lungs, the part that then goes to the head must not go so fraternally to the nitrogen. The oxygen that goes to the head must go to the carbon instead. And instead of hydrocyanic acid being formed towards the feet, carbonic acid is now continuously formed towards the head — I want to emphasize this. So, towards the feet, humans produce prussic acid, towards the head, they produce carbonic acid. If we had to breathe carbonic acid, we would suffocate; but we need it in our heads. You see, gentlemen, that is a very interesting thing: our head needs the carbonic acid.

Now, you all know carbonic acid, of course. You have probably all had a fizzy soft drink or sparkling water: it contains bubbles, these gas bubbles. This is often carbonic acid, because in carbonated water, the carbonic acid is inside and rises in small bubbles. Gentlemen, you would not think that you have your head to anything at all if it were not for the fact that you are constantly producing little bubbles in your own body through the blood. Just as the bubbles shoot up in the bottle in the fizzy lemonade, tiny little bubbles are constantly going up in you towards your head. You could use your head for nothing if you were not a bottle like that yourself. One thirteenth to one fourteenth of the weight of your own body is taken up by blood. So you can imagine: you are actually such a bottle, filled with blood instead of fizzy water, and these bubbles swim upwards, striving upwards, just like in the fizzy water bottle, only much smaller, like in the lemonade bottle. Your head would not be able to think if these bubbles did not constantly rise up in you.

But now this carbonic acid must not be inactive in your head. You can well imagine that, with regard to your blood, you are like a bottle of fizzy pop, with bubbles rising up to your head. Now you have the same carbonic acid in your head, these bubbles, as in the bottle of fizzy lemonade. If you have too little in your head, you fall asleep; so you need it in your head. But this carbonic acid comes into contact with something in your head – nowhere else – but in your head it comes into contact with the iron in your blood. The iron is everywhere in the blood. But the iron that is in the blood in the hands cannot do anything with the carbonic acid; only in the head does the carbonic acid come together with the iron. And I would like to say: they kiss in the head, become very intimate with each other, the iron and the carbonic acid; and from there, through the veins, the iron passes into the whole blood. The carbonic acid then carries the iron into the whole blood when it has come into contact with it in the head. Iron and carbonic acid can only have a rendezvous in the head; but afterwards, when they have had their rendezvous, they can stroll around in the whole blood. Therefore, if a young girl becomes anemic, if she has too little iron in her blood, it means that there are too few rendezvous in her head, too few trysts between iron and carbonic acid. The girl does not have the strength to let enough iron and carbonic acid come together in her head.

But now you have probably already heard of such carbonic acid waters and even drunk some yourself. These carbonic acid waters, which are called ferruginous waters, are particularly healthy. You see, wherever there are ferruginous springs – and there are a great many carbonated waters in the earth – that is where nature exercises in the earth that which the human being exercises in his head. Large ferruginous springs are to be found here and there in the earth. And people are sent there when their own minds have become too weak. For every human mind is such an iron-containing source; even a ferruginous acid is still constantly forming in there, carbonic acid iron. There are as many sources in you as there are people sitting here. It is only when someone has been muddling through the winter that his mind becomes weak, and then the carbonic acid iron content in his mind becomes weak. He feels something that many people feel in spring: he feels as if something is wrong with his blood – of course, if he has been drinking! – he feels weak in the head, and must be sent to a carbonic acid bath, so that he gets through the stomach and from there through the head what he should actually produce himself through a more solid life. The ferruginous springs are not so rare: there are as many as there are people on earth! So we have what we need in iron in our blood through this carbonic acid iron.

We must, however, constantly produce it ourselves in our heads. But just as we must prevent it at the moment when it wants to arise, just as we must prevent the prussic acid. It may only just begin to form. You know, today chemists only talk about: well, we can put iron and carbon and oxygen together, and get iron carbonate. That must then be there, this iron carbonate. But that is not how it happens in life! Just as there is a difference between a stone and a piece of your liver, there is a difference between what the chemist does in the laboratory with iron carbonate and what exists in your mind as iron, as iron carbonate. That is alive! The difference is that it is alive. And you see, from this carbonic iron, which is in your mind, currents are constantly going up to the moon. Just as the currents of potassium cyanide go to the sun, so these currents, which a person develops by having the strength within himself to control the ferrous carbon, go up to the moon and back again.

Think, gentlemen, that you are looking up at the moon. You can say to yourself: It has a lot to do with my head. And so it is when you come to any area – I will mention, for example, Sauerbrunn in Hungary or Götsch in Styria, Gießhübl and so on; I believe there are also some in Switzerland – when you come there, it is a place where the moon can best affect the earth through the soil, because only there can such waters arise. So we see how the earth and man on the earth are connected with the sun and moon in that one comes to it: the cyanide currents ruled by man go according to the sun, the iron-carbonic acid currents ruled by man go according to the moon.

If one were reasonable, one would examine all such things properly. That is not done today. You just have to consider that the plants that are on the earth constantly need carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide is there. We humans and the animals exhale carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide is there! The plants that are on the earth do not breathe oxygen, but carbon dioxide. They throw away the oxygen, they keep the carbon in themselves. Therefore, the plant is built on carbonic acid. But this whole process, which develops best in the plant, is such that the plant can develop out of carbonic acid when the full moon is shining, because it is connected with the power of the moon. On the other hand, when there is a new moon, it develops less. And so it is always a basic condition for the plant that it is illuminated by the full moon. Growth is dormant during the new moon and develops particularly strongly during the full moon.

That is how you also explained the influence of the moon in “old superstitions”! Of course, such things were observed in the past, when people had no science. That is why you will find references everywhere in old country sayings to the importance of the full moon for plant growth. And you see, gentlemen, one should not just talk about the relationships between the individual heavenly bodies, but one should start from how this actually manifests itself on earth among people. Man has, as you have now seen, an extraordinary amount from the moon and from the sun. Man owes it to the moon that he can use his head. Man owes it to the sun that he can use his heart and his legs and hands. Just as we need the ground under our feet so that we can walk on it and not keep falling over, we need the sun and the moon. When we walk at night, we walk by the stored-up solar energy that we received during the day. We need these heavenly bodies!

But now, when you know what I have just said, you will also be able to say to yourself: Yes, but what about the early days? I have already told you that in the early days the sun and the moon and the earth were one single body; only in the course of time did they separate. Today we have the sun, the earth and the moon, that is, three bodies, distributed in space. In the beginning we had the sun, huge; inside it was the earth and inside the earth was the moon itself. They were one inside the other (see diagram). If we go back in the process of development, we come to a point in time when things were as if you, gentlemen, were very powerful, we were all very powerful and would now start here in the assembly to pack up the whole earth, load it onto a world wagon, quickly drive to the moon and then we would take the Earth and the Moon, which we had packed up, and drive up into the Sun. We would have reestablished the conditions that once existed. Only all the substances of the earth and all the substances of the moon would immediately take on a different form than they have now. But that was once the case! And when that was the case, there was not the same air as there is now, but there was prussic acid on the earth. So there was prussic acid and carbonic acid everywhere in the sun. You will say: But there was no real oxygen; in hydrocyanic acid and carbonic acid, man cannot live! Yes, gentlemen, as man is today, he could not live in that either; but in those days man did not yet have a physical body. He lived as a soul in this structure, in this heavenly body, which was the sun and earth and moon at the same time. And if we look at it properly, we simply come back to the fact that the whole nature of the heavenly bodies was different in those days, that when we still lived in the sun we naturally did not live on oxygen, but on prussic acid and carbonic acid. The sun, in which we lived, gave us prussic acid; the moon, which was inside the earth, gave us carbonic acid.

Today, all that remains of this is nitrogen in the air, which we cannot live on either. That remained from the prussic acid. The enormous prussic acid air of the sun left us the nitrogen when the sun and the earth separated. So the nitrogen remained from the prussic acid. And the oxygen remained from the carbonic acid after the moon came out. So we can say: Our air, our ordinary air, which consists of nitrogen and oxygen, has not been around forever, it has only been around since the sun separated from the earth; that's when the nitrogen came. And since the moon has separated from the earth, that's when the oxygen came.

But now it goes further! I told you that there is actually only a little oxygen in the air, about 21 percent, and quite a lot of nitrogen, around 78 percent. Now, I also told you: the sun is big, the moon is small; we get our oxygen from the moon, so there is less of it in the air; we get our nitrogen from the sun, so there is a lot of it in the air because the sun is much bigger than the moon. So you can see from the nitrogen in the air that the sun is bigger than the moon, because we get our nitrogen from the sun and our oxygen from the moon.

But I also told you that carbonic acid consists of oxygen and carbon. The carbon that is in black coal is there; the oxygen is in the air. Now I have told you that when the moon came out of the earth, the oxygen was created. But then the carbon that remains in the earth, that is the black coal in the earth, was formed from the carbonic acid. So think, we dig the black coal out of the earth today. What do we have to say to ourselves when we don't just drill into the earth like earthworms, but educate ourselves about how this coal was formed? —Once the moon came out of the earth, gave the air oxygen and the ground coal. We really must say: You, Moon, you gave us plenty when you left the Earth; you didn't just slip away when you left the Earth; you left us oxygen in the air and coal in the Earth! - So the moon, it's actually a very fine fellow out in space; because when he was still with us, he entertained our souls by always developing carbonic acid himself; he left that behind for us. And outside he left us the carbon and in the earth the coal. He did not act like a thief, leaving nothing behind or even taking it with him, but he made the physical human possible in the first place. Before that there was no physical human, but only a spiritual human in the sun with the moon and the earth.

And even earlier, the Earth and the Sun separated. The Sun provided the Earth with prussic acid, actually with potassium cyanide. This is needed to live spiritually, that is, when one does not have a physical body. You have to have prussic acid in the environment where you cannot use it when you are supposed to live as a physical person. Prussic acid immediately dissolves the physical person. But the sun is also such a fine person: it left us the nitrogen in the air when it went away, when it separated; and in the earth it left us the potassium cyanide and other cyanide compounds. These consist of carbon, nitrogen and potassium – potassium is a substance that shines as finely as silver – or also calcium. So the sun left behind nitrogen in the air for us, and also some carbon, but this did not become coal, but lives in plants, this carbon; but it secreted calcium and that is where the limestone mountains, the Jura and so on come from. The fact that we have a solid earth at all comes from the fact that the sun was once with us and went out into space and left us the lime. The moon left us the coal, the sun left us the lime in the earth. The moon left us oxygen in the air, the sun left us nitrogen in the air.

And so the earth was formed out of the sun and the moon. And after it was formed, we look up and see the sun and the moon. But when everything was still together, when the sun, moon and earth were together, man could only live as a spiritual being, could not live otherwise! Yes, gentlemen, in those days man was able to live as a soul-spiritual being despite the fact that he never received a physical body because oxygen and nitrogen and all that was not there. But now, when we bring potassium cyanide into our bodies as we are on earth, it destroys all our movements and vital forces in our bodies. And the terrible thing is that there is always a danger when someone poisons themselves with potassium cyanide that it takes its toll on the soul and instead of being able to live on in the soul, the person is scattered all over the world and especially in the sunlight.

If anthroposophical knowledge were to spread, no one would poison themselves with potassium cyanide anymore. It would not even occur to him! The fact that poisoning with potassium cyanide occurs is only the consequence of the materialistic world view, because people believe that dead is dead, no matter whether one dies from potassium cyanide or from inner dissolution. But it is important! When someone dies through inner dissolution, then the soul and spirit have to take the usual path into the spiritual world; they simply continue to live. But when you poison yourself with potassium cyanide, then the soul intends to go with every body part, and especially to spread out in the nitrogen and dissolve into the universe. That is the real death of soul and spirit. If people only knew that the soul and spirit are the actual human being, then they would say: We cannot possibly cause this terrible explosion, which is then caused throughout the whole universe in a subtle way, when a person poisons himself with potassium cyanide. – Because every person who poisons himself with potassium cyanide connects himself in an improper way to the current that goes from the earth to the sun. And if one had the right instruments, one would see a small explosion in the sun every time a person poisons himself with potassium cyanide. And the sun is deteriorating as a result. Man corrupts the universe and also the power that flows from the sun to the earth when he poisons himself with potassium cyanide. Man really has influence on the universe. When a person poisons himself with potassium cyanide, he is actually ruining the sun! And so it is with every case of cyanide poisoning.

And that is something that does not evoke such an artificially created religious mood, but what really evokes a religious mood, is that man knows: I belong to the universe, and what I do continually evokes influences in the universe. That is precisely what has been completely forgotten by people, that this is the case and that people do not even know: the nitrogen that is around me was created by the sun; the oxygen that is around me was created by the moon. And that is why a real science is basically no longer there today. There is no real science at all anymore! Real science takes the other heavenly bodies into account. And so people look up at the stars through their telescopes, do mere calculating, but do not know that, for example, there is an intimate connection between every iron particle, of which millions swim around in our blood, between every iron particle in our blood and everything that happens in the moon. And so it is that, for example, a young girl suffering from anemia cannot develop a proper relationship with the moon and thus becomes completely disconnected from the cosmic context. So that such a pale anemia young girl, for example, loses her memory, everything that relates to the head, and that as a result the living relationship does not arise, everything that, as I have told you, should arise between iron and carbonic acid - all that is not present in the pale anemia young girl: the head becomes empty of thoughts.

But again, if a person is unable to properly combat what wants to arise in his body in terms of prussic acid, then too much lime is deposited in the bones; the bones become brittle and gradually even the lime pushes into the blood vessels: everything in the person becomes brittle. The human being can no longer develop the right relationship with the sun. But this must be. The human being must develop his right relationship with the sun through that which lives in his movements, in which the bones, of course, play an important part. And the human being must develop the right relationship with the moon through that which lives in his head. Yes, gentlemen, it is indeed the case that if a person does not think, is too lazy to think, then little by little the moon will not take care of that person! Then the person becomes dull, stupid. And if the person does not walk at all, but lies in bed all the time, then the sun will not take care of that person. Then the person becomes dull and lethargic and sluggish in relation to his limbs. Whether someone is very lazy in their movements or in their thoughts depends on their

relationship with the sun and moon. If you are on good terms with the sun and moon, you like to think and like to walk around and like to work. If you are on bad terms with the sun and moon, you stop thinking and you no longer enjoy walking around and working. But man is very closely connected to the sun and moon. If you ask one or the other today what he has learned from all that can be learned today - one tells you how to work with the microscope, the other tells you how to look at the sun and moon with the telescope, how to calculate the angles, how much distance are the distances, that the sun has sunspots, that it has a corona around it, how the nebulae rise – he tells you all that.

If you ask me what the connection between the heavenly bodies is, then I can tell you the same thing, because I have also learned what the others have learned. But if it is to become a living science, I have to tell it to you in such a way that it ultimately comes out that human walking and standing is connected with the sun; that is living science and the other is dead science, living science and dead science! This living science and this dead science, that is precisely the difference between the Goetheanum and, let us say, a modern university. If you go to a modern university, they tell the young doctor that when any body combines with oxygen, it burns. So you have a candle; there is all kinds of fuel, fats, there is the flame and there these substances combine with the oxygen in the air. And that is combustion, the combining of substances with the oxygen in the air, therefore combustion. And then the professor goes on to say: There is also combustion in the human being, because there is carbon in it, oxygen is inhaled, combines with the carbon; there is also combustion in the human being. – And so the professor tells you about the combustion in the human being. But that is just as much nonsense as saying: “Guy, your liver has gone terribly bad, I'll cut one out of wood and put it in for you.” Yes, that's a dead liver! But man needs a living liver. If you light a candle, you have a dead combustion; but the combustion that is inside man is a living combustion! The same difference that exists between a candle and the living combustion inside a person also exists between a living liver and a liver made of wood. So when the professor talks about a combustion taking place inside a person, he is not talking about a real person at all, but about someone he has carved out of wood. That is all nonsense! The combustion itself is alive in the human being. And that is the big difference between the combustion that is outside, the dead combustion, and the living one that is inside the human being. But they look at the combustion in the same way, saying: outside, fat, tallow or something similar burns in the candle, and inside, carbon burns to form carbonic acid. It is the same nonsense as saying that you could just as easily make a liver out of wood or stone. That would be a dead liver! In the body, there cannot be just any old kind of combustion like there is in a candle. There is a living combustion in the human being, and it is different from what is otherwise called combustion, just as the liver is different from a piece of wood. That is why I distinguish these expressions that are used by ordinary natural science from combustion and so on; I only say it by also explaining that it is a living combustion. Even in the word, when one says that a combustion takes place in the body, there is nonsense in the word, because everyone thinks: the same thing that happens in a candle happens in a human being. Even when you speak the words, you are talking nonsense.

Next Saturday, if I'm there, I'll give a lecture; otherwise on Monday.