# 131. On the Essence of Nature

The point is to correctly experience the essence of nature: then we will express knowledge of nature in archetypal phenomena instead of in abstract laws.

In cytology, we have an image of what is experienced in the realm of ideas. Those who are familiar with the real processes in the life of ideas sense that cytology is a related field. Concepts gained through the senses are not applicable here. One feels that they do not encompass the phenomena. Only inspired concepts can penetrate into this sphere. Ed. v. Hartmann remarks:

The preliminary stages of the development of a cell, up to the point where it becomes sexually mature, if such a thing exists, will always remain shrouded in mystery for us, partly because any representatives of

it have long since died out, and partly because they occur at submicroscopic dimensions.

But in the life of the imagination, its macroscopic archetype is given. Imagination is based on a trans-sensual process that is interrupted before the transition into the sensually perceptible, insofar as it remains a life process. If it is continued into the sensual, then it becomes a process of consciousness.

Description of mitotic cell division: It starts from the central corpuscle, seizes the nucleus

and the entire filamentous structure, splits all parts lengthwise, moves them and rearranges them so that instead of a centralized cell content, there are ultimately two, which separate from each other.

Through anesthesia, the life process is prevented from transitioning into cell life by means of paralysis. The supersensible part of a perception has a paralyzing effect; the sensory part occurs as a result of the paralysis.

Just as one is in the sphere of the life of the imagination when dealing with the disputes of the cell physiologist before he proceeds to the fertilization process, so too one is in the sphere of feeling when reading the explanations of this physiologist when he describes division, conjugation, etc. Imagined perceptions serve as orientation here.

As soon as the egg leaves the mother, we run into difficulties of comprehension. We can only get by assuming a process external to the mother for the formation of the egg and conceiving of the full development of this process as impossible under present-day conditions. Then the mother only provides the protective shell through which the process is removed from the conditions that are impossible for the egg under present-day conditions. But all this remains hypothetical if it is not corroborated by the fact that such a process is perceived. But it is perceived in the emotional life. In this, one recognizes an existence within the conditions that are not fulfilled in the physical environment. But this perception is never a presence. Ed. v. Hartmann puts in the place of perception: the principle of minimal effort and the principle of lawful development.