A Spiritual Scientific View of Nature and Man

GA 352 — 7 January 1924, Dornach

I. On Pachyderms – The Nature of Shell and Skeleton Formation

Good morning, gentlemen! It's been a while since we last met; perhaps someone has thought of something in particular that we should discuss today?

Questioner: The large ants that live in the forests have a kind of honey or resin at the bottom of their hive; this is used for cultic purposes, and Catholic priests like to use it for incense. I would like to ask where this comes from and what it is composed of.

Dr. Steiner: The resins that form here contain the same substance as incense, and so it has no other value than that it is a cheap way of getting incense. The anthill is formed by the fact that the ants, with the formic acid, also secrete all kinds of things that they bring with them from the resinous components of the trees, where they collect their juices. So it is not a kind of honey, but a resin mixed with formic acid.

Mr. Müller: I would like to come back to the bees, to the carpenter bees, which nest in the trees. When I was young, I experienced a case in a forest, a district where all the wood had rotted, had not been utilized. Then a master carpenter came along and bought up this wood, which had previously only been used as crate wood, in large quantities. He used this wood for carpentry work for new buildings, built it in. After a year, bees were found everywhere inside the apartments. These bees were so dangerous for the building that after two years the carpenter had to take it back, and all the beams up to the roof had to be taken down. He had to take it back completely, had to buy it.

Dr. Steiner: Of course that can happen, naturally. Was the wood infested by the carpenter bees in the forest or only in the storage area?

Mr. Müller: It was auctioned in the fall, then used in the spring, and in the summer the bees came out.

Dr. Steiner: Anything that can be very useful on the one hand can also be terribly harmful on the other. But that does not contradict what I said, that these bees on the wood are absolutely necessary. As I said, anything that can be extremely useful on the one hand can also be extremely harmful on the other. I will give you an example: Imagine that a young boy is short-sighted and you give him a pair of glasses. This is necessary and can be very useful. But if the other boys see it as something particularly elegant and also want to put on glasses, it would not be useful, but harmful. And so it is: what is extremely useful in one case can be extremely harmful in another. That is already the case.

Mr. Müller would like to return to the topic of bees and what our life and work as beekeepers involves: Recently, my colleagues have repeatedly told me that it would have been better if I hadn't read out loud but spoken off the cuff. But I have to reply to my colleagues: I only attended elementary school and do not have a particular talent for speaking. So I am not able to speak off the cuff. So today I will read and not speak off the cuff: About the bees, the queen. (He moves from the beehive to complaints about the workers and the employer; goes back to 1914, expresses some dissatisfaction. Compares: we are also a beehive, and so on.)

Dr. Steiner: Well, gentlemen, it is difficult to deal with such matters off the cuff, and I'm sure we've all had the experience that when such things are put on the agenda and dealt with immediately, the discussion takes on a different tone than when the matter is thoroughly considered. Therefore, if the matter is to be discussed further at all, we want to consider it thoroughly. We do have another hour available on Wednesday, and I will then ask the gentlemen who have something to say about this matter to choose the Wednesday hour.

The issue of temperament has rightly been raised. Temperaments work differently if you have had a good night's sleep! Of course, I don't want to take the matter off the agenda at all, because I'm not saying that I won't say something about it myself on Wednesday. But I think we will do it so that we do not deal with the matter right now, when it could boil up hotly in many people, but that we will take our time until Wednesday. Then I will ask the gentlemen, if they wish, to take the floor on Wednesday.

So today, let us stay with what we usually deal with, with the questions of knowledge. And as I said, Mr. Müller's suggestion should definitely be taken into account, that we then express our views on the matter on Wednesday. And I will also say what I myself have to say.

You see, for someone who is completely immersed in it, it is relatively easy to say something about science, even without preparation; but I would like to think again about the whole matter that has been presented here. You agree, don't you? (Agreement) Does anyone have any questions?

Mr. Dollinger: The question has been raised a lot lately, it has been discussed in all the newspapers, that you never know where the dead elephants are buried because you never find the remains of them. I would like to ask Dr. Steiner if it might be interesting to talk about this?

Dr. Steiner: That is an interesting point about elephants! It is a fact that the remains of prehistoric elephants, of ancient times, are sometimes found in an excellent state of preservation. And the way in which these prehistoric elephants are found shows that these animals, which in natural history are called pachyderms, must always have perished in the same way wherever they are found as prehistoric animals – that is, they must have been preserved in such a way that they were suddenly enveloped by the surrounding soil. So I mean by this: these pachyderms could only remain so well preserved if they were not gradually permeated by water, soil and mud, but rather had to be lying in a cave and were suddenly enveloped by earth in a landslide. As a result, when the foreign soil around the skeletons had dissolved the flesh, the solid shell preserved the skeletons extremely well. You can find beautifully preserved specimens of these mighty prehistoric animals in museums everywhere.

But this proves to you that these animals have the peculiarity of retreating into caves when they are about to die. Not quite so strict as you said before, of course, but one can only say that in very frequent cases – of course, dead elephants are also found – the elephant, which could previously still be seen quite well, is missing without a trace. These animals have the peculiarity of retreating into caves when they see death approaching, and ending up in caves. You see, gentlemen, this is connected with the fact that these animals – and what you said essentially only applies to pachyderms – have this extraordinarily thick skin. And what does this thick skin mean? You see, the hardest parts of an animal are the ones that are most closely related to the earth. Even the nails on your own hands are most closely related to the earth. And the skin of an elephant is so extraordinarily related to the earth. As a result, the elephant feels surrounded by the earth all its life, namely by the earth in its skin, and only feels comfortable when it is surrounded by its skin. Well, the elephant is actually constantly dying in its skin. When death approaches – and this is the peculiar thing about these pachyderms – these animals feel it very strongly precisely because of their thick skin. They then want to have more of the earth inside their skin; it is their instinct that they then stay in burrows. You just don't look for them in these burrows. If you were to look for them in burrows, you would find dead elephants where there are elephants. You don't find them in open fields.

But this fact proves that animals have a much stronger sense of their own death than humans do. This is especially true for those animals that are covered by thick skins. But it is also especially true for those animals that are lower animals, are small, for example insects, which are also covered by horny skins. And you see, with these small animals, one must say: it is the case that they not only feel their death, but that they also, when they come to their death, take all possible precautions to ensure that death occurs where it can best occur. Certain insects withdraw into the earth to meet their death there.

It is the same with humans: they buy their freedom by having as little sense of foreboding as possible. Animals have no freedom; they are all unfree. But they have a strong sense of foreboding, and you know that when, for example, there is danger, earthquake-like danger, animals migrate, while humans are truly surprised by such things.

We can say that it is extremely difficult for humans to empathize with the souls of animals. But anyone who is really able to observe animals, who has a sense for observing animals, will definitely find that animals act extremely prophetically throughout their lives. And the peculiarity discussed is precisely related to the prophetic life in these animals. But then again, when animals do something like this, they cannot be compared to humans!

There is something else we want to discuss that relates to elephants, and it is precisely from this that what you have asked will be even more understandable to us. You see, it has been repeatedly observed that, let us say, some small herd of elephants is led to the watering hole to drink. Now, there might be some no-good fellow standing there when the elephants go, and he throws something at an elephant. The elephant seems to be a patient animal at first and does nothing of the sort, behaving quite indifferently. The good-for-nothing boy waits and wants to throw the elephant again when it comes back. But lo and behold, as the elephant goes back, it has retained a good load of water in its trunk. And as it comes back and sees the boy again, before the boy can throw it, it splashes the boy all over with this load of water. These things have been observed repeatedly. Now, you could say: By golly, the elephant is much smarter than a human, because the elephant must have tremendous wisdom if it remembers something like the insult the boy did to it and now retains this load of water in its trunk and takes revenge later!

Yes, gentlemen, the thought that you have for the elephant is not quite right. You don't have to compare it to human cleverness, but you do have to compare it to something else in humans. If a fly lands on your eye, you do this: you wipe the fly off without giving it much thought. In science, where we have many expressions for things that we sometimes understand much less, we call this a reflex movement. So you just wipe away, out of some kind of instinct, out of some kind of defensive movement, what could possibly be harmful to you. Such things happen to people all the time. When a person simply wipes away a fly, his brain is not active at all; only the nerves that go to the spine are active. Not so when a person is thinking about something: Up here he has his brain, then, for example, when he has seen this or that, his optic nerve goes to the brain, and from the brain the will goes through the rest of the organism, which does something. But if a person simply swats at a fly sitting there, then the nerve does not go to the brain at all – even if it is at the head – but goes directly to the spinal cord, and without the brain even thinking about it, the fly is swatted away. So it is the spinal cord that actually causes us to instinctively defend ourselves as humans when something approaches us in this way.

We humans, at least physically, do not have thick skin, but very thin skin. Our skin is so thin that it is even transparent, because the human skin consists of three layers: the inner one is the so-called dermis, then there is a layer, which is the so-called Malpighian layer, and then there is the outer skin, which is already completely transparent. We also have skin like an elephant, only it is very thin. The outer skin is completely transparent. The fact that we have a skin that is transparent means that we are in contact with our surroundings through all our senses, and the fact that we are in contact with our surroundings means that we are inwardly thinking people and reflect on things. The elephant is simply a thick-skinned animal in the physical sense, while people are often thick-skinned in the moral sense. But what does that achieve? You can easily imagine, after what I have told you, that the elephant is extremely insensitive to its surroundings. Such an elephant, basically, feels nothing at all, and everything it perceives of its surroundings, it must see; it is like a world closed in on itself. To study the mind of an elephant in depth is, of course, something extraordinarily interesting for some people. Sometimes a person would have to have an extraordinary desire to advance in knowledge, to be an elephant. Because, you see, if a person had the mind to do so – to have an elephant's mind – then he would indeed become so clever that it would be impossible to express how clever! But the elephant doesn't have the brain to become so clever. Because he is completely closed in on himself, his reflex movements, his defensive movements, are prolonged. This takes a long time. If you had a fly sitting on you and you didn't have the instinct to swat it away right away, the fly would fly away by itself first. Now, with the elephant, it is like this: He would let a fly sit because the story that he would brush it away would only come to him after an hour, that's how slowly the reflex movement, the defensive movement, works. And what the elephant does with his trunk is nothing more than such a reflex movement that just takes a longer time. And it is not that he thinks: The boy insulted me, I have to splash a load of water over his head – the elephant does not think about that. But he wants to actually hit the boy with his trunk while he is standing there; but that takes a long time for an elephant. If you throw dirt at a boy, you hit him without thinking twice. But the elephant is a slow animal, precisely because it is a pachyderm, and so it takes a long time, going back and forth, until it has extended its trunk and wants to hit the boy. But while he is drinking in the meantime, he realizes: When the water is in his trunk, his trunk is stronger, it strengthens his trunk; he wants to make his trunk stronger by keeping water in it. And he feels that his trunk is getting longer. It is simply the extended trunk with which he wants to hit him when he squirts out the water load. That is what you have to think about. You can't just ascribe human wisdom to the elephant, but you have to go into the elephant's whole mind, and then you find something like that. And so it is with the elephant that he is inwardly a closed entity and notices everything, and especially notices what happens inside him. That is how he also notices the approach of death and can withdraw.

It is a fact that there is very little animal psychology at all today. It is true that people do observe animals and find all kinds of interesting facts, as I have already told you. But actually looking into the animal soul is something that is extremely rare today. But if you want to find out about these things, you have to sharpen your senses by observing life in general.

Go to the very small animals, as there are such. There are very small animals that consist only of a soft, slimy mass (see drawing). This soft, slimy mass can, when there is a grain of some kind nearby, stretch out something like a thread from the mass. First an arm is formed out of the mass. This can be retracted again. But you see, such animals excrete lime or silica shells, so that they are surrounded by lime or silica shells. Now, you cannot notice much about such a small animal that excretes a lime or silica shell. But then there are more perfect animals, and you can already notice more. There are animals that also consist of a slimy mass, but inside there is something that, when you look closely, looks like small rays; and then they have a shell around it, and there are spines on the shell. Everything that then grows into a coral looks like this.

Take an animal like this, which has a shell with spines and, inside its soft mass, such radiant structures. What is that? If you really investigate, you will find that these rays inside are not caused by the earth, but are caused by the earth's surroundings, by the stars. This soft mass is caused by the sky, and the hard mass, or the mass with the spines, is caused by the earth's interior. How does something like this come about? Well, gentlemen, if you want to know how something like this comes about, imagine: here is a piece – I am drawing it quite enlarged – of one of these slimy little creatures. Now, due to the influence of a star from far away, a piece of such a ray is formed here inside. As a result of this forming, the star's influence presses the rest of the mass here quite strongly. But the surrounding mass presses even harder against the wall. Because of this, a stronger bulge forms on the shell inside because it presses harder, a spine of the surrounding lime or siliceous mass. So this spine is caused from the outside, from the earth, but this ray from the inside through the influence of the star. Can you understand that?

What is forming in there is the beginning of a nerve mass; what is forming out there is the beginning of a bone mass. So we see that in these lower animals, nerves form under the influence of the external world, the extraterrestrial. Everything that is bony, shell-like – after all, the lower animals only have an outer bone – forms under the influence of the earth.

The more you look at more perfect animals, the more you see that the formation of shells stops and the formation of skeletons sets in, which is then most perfectly present in humans. But look at the human skeleton. When you look at the human skeleton, you come to the point where you can actually compare the head with a lower animal, because it has a kind of shell. Inside it is soft. That is a great difference compared to the rest of the human bone structure. Your leg bones, you carry them internally, and the flesh covers them. The soft mass is on the outside. In this way, the human being has taken the bone skeleton into itself. Now, the fact that the external skeleton is not taken in as it is with the head, but as it is with the rest of the human being, is connected with the fact that the blood develops in a certain way in these higher animals and also in humans. If you look at such lower animals, everything is a white mass. Even what runs through them as blood is white. These lower animals actually have white blood that is not warm at all. The higher the animals become and the more we approach the animal organization up to the human being, the more the human being, who remains light, is permeated by the blood mass. And the more the nerve is permeated by the blood mass, the more the skeleton, which was previously only an outer shell, also retracts into the interior of the organism.

So that one can say: Why do human beings have internally structured bones, like on their arms and legs? Because they have permeated their nervous mass with blood mass. So that one can say: The higher animals and human beings need blood internally so that they can take the shell inwardly. Can you understand that?

But from this we can also say that a lower animal knows nothing of itself. But humans and higher animals know of themselves. How do we know of ourselves? By having a skeleton within us, we know of ourselves. So if you ask how humans actually have their self-awareness, how they know of themselves, then one must not point to the muscles, then one must not point to soft tissue, but one must point straight to one's solid skeleton. Through the solid skeleton, man knows of himself. And the thing is that it is extraordinarily interesting to look at the human skeleton.

Imagine you have a human being here and I draw in his skeletal system very roughly (see drawing). Now it is extremely interesting: when you look at a skeleton, you have to imagine that this skeleton was inside the human being; but this skeleton of the human being is completely covered by skin. If I am to draw this skin here, I would have to draw it like this. When a person is alive, his entire skeletal system is enclosed in a skin, the so-called periosteum, which is very closely adapted to it, just like in a sack. So imagine a joint here, where a bone has a head that engages, let's say, in a joint socket. This is how it is with the periosteum: there is the periosteum; the entire outer bone is surrounded by the periosteum, and there the periosteum continues, it arrives again, goes over the skeleton. So if you simply imagine the skeleton inside the human being, the skeleton is quite separate inside the human being. Between all the other parts of the human being and the skeleton is a sack-like skin. It is really as if you take the skeleton of a living person and imagine spreading a sack over the whole skeleton and touching it everywhere so that the sack would cover the skeleton on the outside. But you don't need to do that at all, because nature has already done it; the whole thing is inside a sack, in the leg skin. And the interesting thing is: the blood vessels only go as far as the periosteum – the periosteum is permeated by them – this blood nourishes, as far as it is to be nourished, the bone, but within the sac the bone is completely earth: calcium carbonate, calcium phosphate, ash, salts and so on. So you have the strange fact: So you have muscles, liver and so on, and you have your blood vessels in you, and the blood now first forms a sac. The sac seals you off from the inside. Within this sac is a cavity, but this cavity first contains the skeleton. So it is really as if your bones were inside you, and you had sealed your bones off with a sac, the peritoneum. And these bones are completely earthy, they are earth inside. You cannot feel them inside. You feel your bones through what the bones are, just as you would if you took a piece of chalk. If you take a piece of chalk, you don't feel it either, it is outside of you. So the bone is outside of you, and you are separated from it by a sack. All of you have something in your skeleton that is not really you, that is earth formed into bone, phosphoric acid lime, salts, carbonic acid lime; you carry that within you, only you have surrounded it with a sack, the periosteum.

You see, gentlemen, there is no room for anything unspiritual; because if you bring any splinter of earth into yourself, it must fester. The bone does not fester. Why? Because in the place where you are dead within, where the bone appears dead within the skin of the leg, there is spirit through and through. You see, that is the wonderful instinct why simple people, who often knew more than the learned, imagined death as a skeleton, because they knew that the spirit resides in the skeleton. And so they imagined that when a spirit walks around, it must also appear in skeletal form. This is a correct pictorial representation. Because as long as a person is alive, he makes room for the spirit through his bones.

This is something we will discuss in more detail in the near future. But you can also see from this that people put a lot of effort into bringing the spirit into their bones. The elephant still leaves room for the spirit in its thick skin. And because the elephant leaves room for the spirit in its thick skin, the spirit that the elephant then feels can perceive when the outside world destroys it. Man knows nothing of his own death because his skin is too thin. If he were also physically a pachyderm, he would also withdraw into a cave and die in a cave. And one would also say: Where do people go? They go to heaven when they die! Yes, gentlemen, the same thing was said about those people who were greatly revered in certain circles as was said about the elephant. For example, about Moses, of whom it was said that his body had not been found. He disappeared because people imagined that this had really happened to him. He became so wise, people imagined, as I told you earlier. If man were physically a pachyderm and had his brain, then he would be so clever that one cannot even express how clever he is! And people knew such connections. Think, it is amazing what people knew! They say of Moses that he was already as clever as he would have become if he had had a thick skin; that is why he also withdrew and his body was not found. It is a very interesting context. Does it not appear so to you? Ancient legends are often related to pure, beautiful animal worship.

Well, we'll talk about that some more next time, if the proceedings we've been saddled with today leave us time.

So next Wednesday, gentlemen.