The Nature of Man in the Light of Spiritual Science

GA 68d — 15 December 1908, Nuremberg

26. The Secret of the Human Temperaments

Dear attendees! It is often said that there is a deep truth to the statement that the greatest mystery of all is man himself. Although this saying is often uttered, in its depth, in its full meaning, it is not understood. Rather, the full mysteriousness of man is felt and sensed deeply enough only in the rarest of cases. In truth, not only does man face himself as a significant, difficult-to-solve riddle when he looks beyond the most superficial things in life, but also every fellow human being faces us, in a certain, and very deep way, as a riddle in turn. And what should interest us today in particular is that when we talk about the human puzzle, we cannot hope to have solved this human puzzle with a single answer; but if we proceed not theoretically but in accordance with life, we must say: in this human puzzle there are basically as many individual puzzles as there are people in the world.

Within certain limits, each person can be seen as a separate puzzle within the greater puzzle of the human race. And what we are to deal with today is intimately connected with this view of the human being: that peculiar coloring of the human being, that fundamental tone of human individuality, which we encounter in one person in this way, in another differently, and which we describe with the word: the human temperament.

Everything that can enlighten us about the diversity of human nature is encompassed by this word, and we may hope that if we are able to shed some light on the mystery of human temperaments, we may also gain a handle to solve the human puzzle a little in its most diverse forms. Of course, when we approach this human puzzle not in a general, theoretical way, but in a lively, individual way, we must not succumb to the great illusion that an external knowledge of the human being, a mere sensual-physical knowledge of the human being, will somehow lead us to solve the human riddle in its most diverse forms. temperament; if we approach this human puzzle individually and full of life, then we must not succumb to the great illusion that an external knowledge of the human being, a mere sensual-physical knowledge of the human being, could somehow lead us further.

For spiritual scientific or, let us say, theosophical consideration, as we have often been able to mention here, the human being is a very diversely composed being, and we only understand him if we not only look at the outside of himself, at what eyes see and hands touch, what the outer senses can perceive, what the human, brain-bound mind can dissect, but we can only hope to fully understand man little by little if we also consider the supersensible aspects of human nature. And since it has often been said which are the members of human nature, they need only be mentioned briefly today, insofar as we need to do so in order to then enter into the consideration of human temperaments.

That which eyes see, hands grasp, and the physical organs can perceive in a person is, after all, only the outermost link of the human being for spiritual scientific observation, the link of the human being that it shares with the entire seemingly lifeless mineral nature around it. Beyond that, we have the next link of the human being, a link that cannot be perceived by the outer senses, which already belongs to the supersensible, invisible links of human nature. And while we call that which man has in common with inanimate nature the physical body, we call this supersensible first the etheric or life body. We find it in every living being, in plants, which it permeates and organizes just as much as it does in human beings, and in animals. In spiritual science, we do not speak of this etheric or life body in the same way that materialists speak of life, as if life were just something that emerges as an effect from the physical body and the interaction of the forces and substances of the physical body. No, for spiritual science this etheric body is not only something independent, something that the consciousness of the human being, which can see behind the world of the senses with clairvoyance, really sees as reality, just as the physical eyes see the physical body, but this etheric body is actually that which underlies the physical body as the first, as the actual creator. The physical body is not the cause but the consequence of the finer, the etheric or life body. Just as – this image has also been used here often – just as for someone who looks into a container in which there is water, ice can condense out of this water into lumps, so the spiritual is around us, and the physical is the condensation of the spiritual. Thus, within the human etheric body, the physical body, with all its substances and powers, is a condensation of the etheric body. And so it is with all living beings.

A third link in the human being, which he has in common only with animals, is the so-called astral body, the carrier of lust and suffering, joy and pain, desires, urges and passions, ideas and thoughts. The astral body is the carrier of all that surges up and down within the human soul. Just as the physical body is a densification of the etheric body, so the astral body is a densification of the astral body. The objection raised by the materialist is a very cheap one: Can you imagine that somewhere in the world there are passions, thoughts, feelings, desires and suffering flying around freely? Must they not be bound to a physical body? Of course, if someone has a vessel of water in front of them and only begins to see when the water has condensed into ice, then they may deny the water. So the materialist is quite right when he says that only the physical exists for him; but the one who recognizes the higher organs of the human being, which Goethe describes as spiritual eyes, must also recognize that our world is truly only filled with tangible and visible content, but with entities, with processes that only exist in passions and drives and desires that weave through each other and that can condense into the etheric and the physical. In short, we distinguish the third limb in the human being, the so-called astral body, the bearer of lust and suffering, joy and pain, desires and thoughts.

And as a fourth link, we have always recognized in the human being that which encompasses the name of the human being, which can only sound from within if it is to denote what it is applied to; as a fourth link, we denote the bearer of the human ego, of human self-awareness. The I can only name itself; only from within can it give itself the name “I”; the name “I” cannot possibly reach your ears from the outside if it is to mean you.

This is only a rough sketch of how we think of the human being as a four-fold creature. All these aspects interact in the most diverse ways. The I has an effect on the physical, etheric and astral bodies, the astral body on the I, the physical and etheric bodies, and so on, and so on. These four members of human nature are in a perpetual interaction. It is important that, in addition to this interaction, which can always be observed by clairvoyant consciousness during waking, we also consider the changes that can occur in the context of these four members, first of all those changes that take place every day in the alternation of the waking day consciousness and the sleeping consciousness.

When a person falls asleep, his physical and etheric bodies remain in bed. The astral body and the ego leave. In the morning, the ego and the astral body plunge back into the etheric and physical bodies and make use of the organs through which the environment can be seen as physical. The human being also exists at night, even if unconsciousness spreads around him. He just cannot see anything because, in his current state of development, he does not have spiritual ears and eyes in his astral body. He has to use the physical organs, and he can only do that if he submerges into the physical body. That is the change that a person goes through day after day. Human nature undergoes yet another change, the change that is characterized by the meaningful words that basically already encompass a large part of the human mystery: birth and death – or life and death.

Today, once again, we must briefly call ourselves to mind what happens to a person when they pass through the mysterious portal of death. It is not like when a person falls asleep. In death, the physical body remains as a corpse, and the I, the astral body and the etheric body separate from this corpse. What does not occur between birth and death, that the etheric body leaves the physical body, happens in death. We can see from this that throughout life, and indeed both during waking and sleeping states, the etheric body is a fighter against the disintegration of the physical body. Where the etheric body does not fight against disintegration, the physical body follows its own substances and forces and disintegrates, decays. This is the nature of the physical body, which it unfolds as a corpse. That it does not reveal them during life, that it does not follow the chemical-physical forces as it does in death, is due to the etheric body, which is a loyal defender against the disintegration of the physical body between birth and death. And when a person has passed through death, then, having discarded his physical body, he can live on in the spiritual world with the fruits that he has harvested in the life between birth and death, which he has harvested through his experiences. The etheric body, which withdraws from the physical body, contains a true image of all experiences between birth and death, and it is something like an essence, like an extract of the etheric body, which we take with us into the following life after death, into the life in the spirit. We take something like an extract of our etheric body with us, which usually also detaches from us as a second corpse after a few days, and this extract remains with us for all eternity. It contains something like a brief excerpt from the last life; we take this with us into the future life.

Now, however, we still have a task after death. We have to undergo a kind of probationary period, a period of getting out of the habit. You can best imagine this time if you start from a simple consideration, if you say to yourself: the astral body of man is the carrier of pleasure and suffering, of instincts, desires, all pleasures. The physical body is not the carrier of these; it only provides the instruments for enjoyment. The enjoyment itself lies in the astral body. But you take the astral body with you after death. Immediately after death, it is exactly as it was in life. Let us assume that a person was a gourmet. After death, he still has his astral body; it always longs for tasty morsels. But there is no possibility of satisfying this craving. It can only be satisfied if you have a palate. The physical body is discarded, so the astral body craves the pleasures of life after death. It is the same with everything that can only be satisfied by physical tools. All of this must be weaned off within a certain period of time.

This period of disaccustoming, during which man learns to have no more desire for anything that can only be satisfied by the physical organs, is usually called the time of desires, Kamaloka. For when man has gone through this period of disaccustoming, when he no longer desires anything that can only be satisfied by the physical senses, then he discards the third corpse. First he has discarded the physical body, then the etheric body, which dissolves a few days after physical death, and then he discards the unusable part of the astral body. And then man is that purely spiritual being who undergoes a time of purely spiritual life.

The transition from the period of weaning from physical passions makes itself felt in that man first has, as the innermost part of his experience, something that can be described as a feeling of bliss. Now begins the time when he works towards a new existence, when he begins to apply what he has learned in previous lives, what he has received as fruit, and to gradually develop it into a spiritual archetype, of which the next life can become an image. Creation is always connected with a feeling of bliss. And that creation in which we gradually form the archetype for a next existence, that is supreme bliss. I will not even talk about the bliss associated with every spiritual production, but there is bliss when only - forgive the comparison - the hen participates in the production of the new chicken. There is a bliss that permeates a being in all creation. It is therefore also a bliss that a person experiences when he is free from all the limitations of the physical world, when he brings everything together spiritually, which, when it is spiritually developed, leads to a new existence on this earth.

When the human being has fully developed his spiritual core, which takes a long time, then the descent into the physical world begins again, and then it is the case that the human being surrounds himself with three new bodies. Depending on the person's qualities, the substances from the astral world attach themselves, forming his new astral body. We can compare this formation with, say, when we have spread metal filings on a thin plate and pass a magnet underneath; these metal filings then arrange themselves into all kinds of shapes, in which they then shine. In the same way, the astral substance arranges itself around a spiritual core during the descent.

Then the person is led to a pair of parents and, through the connection of this spiritual core of the being, which has incorporated its astral cover, with what takes place between the parents, the further human covers around this core of the person's being are formed. In the interaction of what descends with the parents, a new etheric body and a new physical body are formed around the descending, so that every time we see a person enter into an existence, we have to say to ourselves: This human being receives from two sides what he actually is for this earthly existence. The inner being descends from spiritual heights. Because the human being is spiritual and astral, he descends from higher worlds. Through that which is inherited from generation to generation, from ancestors to descendants, what we see as the outer shell is formed around the human being, but also much of what belongs to the etheric body, to the fighter against the disintegration of the physical body.

And now, having realized that the human being is formed from two sides, let us ask ourselves what would happen if one or the other extreme were to prevail. Let us assume that a person brings with him only a few qualities from the spiritual heights, then his astral body would also have a little richer content, and what is structured around the person as an etheric and physical shell would have an overwhelming effect. That is to say, a person who brings only poor content with him would be in all his ancestors, a repetition, so to speak, within the line of inheritance. The richer the content that a person brings down, the more that which goes from the ancestors to the grandson, that which lies in the line of inheritance in general similarities, the more it is driven into the individual being changed. People who descend into poverty from a spiritual point of view are, so to speak, overwhelmed by the external, which closes around them through race, tribe, family and class. They have the character traits of their people, their family. People who descend with a rich content, with a significant inner development of strength, emerge as sharply defined individuals. They also absorb what passes from ancestors to descendants, but the similarity recedes in the face of the individual traits that are a consequence of the spiritual development of the individuality. We can see this when we look at “primitive” people, or especially when we turn our spiritual gaze back to the primeval times of the earth. The people of a nation resemble one another. Why do they resemble one another? Because the people who incarnated in such primeval times have experienced few past stages of existence, have learned little in earlier stages, and therefore bring little with them from the spiritual. With more developed peoples we have more developed stages; there we find people who have many, many lives behind them, who have absorbed rich, rich fruits from earlier lives and therefore bring down into the spiritual what they have carried up as fruits through many lives, and shape an individual existence for themselves. But every human being in our present period of humanity must, so to speak, make this compromise; he must descend and encase himself in a physical shell, which he must take from the line of inheritance. This duality is present in every human being and forms a whole. On the one hand, the human being is similar to what flows down through the ancestors; on the other hand, he is a being of his own.

Of course, materialistic thinking objects to such things in particular. For example, it is said: Oh, what are you talking about the descending human being; it's all inherited! We can also find the qualities of the greatest genius in our ancestors. There are people who take Goethe or Leibniz or this or that person and research them up to the earliest ancestors, and then find the characteristics that emerge in genius scattered among the ancestors, one characteristic in this person and one in that. And so these people tell us: You can see that genius is based solely on inheritance. Genius is very rarely found at the beginning of a generation, but usually at the end of it, so it has inherited its characteristics from its ancestors. – What a strange logic this is! For anyone who considers this logic will find that it says the opposite of what it claims. This logic wants to prove that genius inherits its characteristics. It would prove it if it could be shown that Here is a genius, the son has inherited his qualities, the grandson again and so on. But that is not the case. That is precisely what is denied. The genius is infertile. It is rare that one can simply inherit genius. If the genius is at the end of a line of succession, this does not mean that this individuality flows down in its entirety in the line. Of course, the physical and etheric bodies, which are the instruments of the human essence, come from the line of inheritance, and it is not surprising that they show the characteristics that can be read together here or there. That is just as clever as telling someone who has fallen into water and been pulled out: This one is wet. That is self-evident. So it is with the characteristics that one inherits. The logic that is usually applied to somehow refute the well-established fact that a person flows together from the two lines, one of which goes from generation to generation and is called race, people, tribe, family, but the other lies within the spiritual world, where a person progresses from life to life and, in long periods between death and a new birth, prepares for that new birth in a purely spiritual world, is wrong. These two lines merge.

How is the agreement created between what comes from the spiritual world and what lies within the line of inheritance and is determined by words like people, family? How is a balance created? This balance can only be created by the fact that the qualities that distinguish people in that they belong to a race, a tribe, a family, that these are countered by others that are similar to them and combine with those that come from below. If we were only the automata that reproduce in the line of inheritance, we would say: This is how we are. We look up the line of ancestors and find the qualities that are in our physical and etheric bodies in our ancestors. We find not only the shape of the nose and forehead, hair color and physiognomy in our ancestors, but also inner qualities, which come close to what can be described by the word “moral”, are inherited. There are concepts, for example about sensations and feelings, that are native to this family or that race or that tribe. How do they reproduce? If reproduction only took place from physical body to physical body, then people would only be similar in relation to this. The fact that they also agree in such qualities, which are character traits of a tribe, stems from the fact that an etheric body belongs to that which also continues through the generations. And just as the physical body reacts from below up onto the etheric body, which properties of the physical body from below up imprint on the etheric body after it is formed, these become the racial peculiarities. Originally, the physical body came into being as if through a kind of condensation of the etheric body. But once it is there, it absorbs impressions from the outside world. These in turn have an effect on the etheric body, and to the extent that they have an effect, they are transmitted within the line of inheritance. Thus, the etheric body of each person is endowed with very specific, typical, stereotyped, even racial characteristics, due to the fact that the latter is, so to speak, a descendant of some ancestor.

The spiritual core of the human being, in which he descends into the physical world, must adapt to what is available to him in this physical world as a cover. This must offer something that is related to the properties of the etheric body. In other words, the descending ego must now be able to imprint such properties into the etheric body that the etheric body, through these properties imprinted on it from above, from the astral body, can form a compromise between what comes from below and what comes from above. When a person enters a new existence, certain qualities flow together in the etheric body, which is connected to the physical body below and other qualities flow through it from above, which are imprinted on it by the descending astral body.

The properties that are imprinted on the etheric body by the descending astral body establish the human temperament. This is where temperament is located. The human being brings this temperament with them. They do not yet have it when they only have the astral body; they have it because this astral body, as it descends, has to connect with the etheric body, which has certain characteristics of the race, of the people. Since it develops certain qualities, so to speak, that correspond to the lower nature, but are also appropriate to the original, core characteristics of the human being, temperament is something that is both individual and that, so to speak, casts its tone over the general characteristics that the human being shares with race, tribe, and family. If we only inherited the peculiarities of race, tribe, and family, we would be average figures; if we came from above with our core nature and now had to drive into it, so to speak, then little would fit. What we bring with us, what we may have developed thousands of years ago, would not match well with what we find. What can adapt as an individual to the stereotyped general from below is temperament.

Thus, through his temperament, the human being escapes from being a completely individual being. For through his temperament, the human being moderates his full obstinacy as an individual being, dulling it. But at the same time, he removes the stereotyped nature. Therefore, we also see that people's temperaments arise from the mixing of basically a few basic temperaments.

You all know these four basic colors of temperament, which are referred to as melancholic, phlegmatic, sanguine, choleric. Actually, there are not only these four, but seven shades of temperament. Only the choleric temperament is basically separate. The sanguine, phlegmatic and melancholic temperaments all have an active and a passive side, so they occur in two ways. This gives seven colors, just as seven colors can be distinguished in the rainbow, seven tones in the musical scale. The eighth is just a repetition of the prime. But that should concern us less. We should realize that we can never ascribe any one of these temperaments to any one person, but that each person is a mixture of all these temperaments; only the predominant one of the four makes him appear melancholic or phlegmatic or sanguine, and depending on that, we describe him as such or such. The melancholic contains the others, only they recede in comparison to the melancholic basic mood. You could easily prove this by looking at someone like Napoleon, for example; he certainly had a choleric temperament. Think about how phlegmatic he was in very specific things that didn't interest him. He could be very phlegmatic in certain fields. A person has one prominent characteristic, but is composed of the four, or rather seven, basic colors of temperament.

Now the question arises: when is a person primarily a melancholic, a phlegmatic, a sanguine, a choleric? It has already been said in the introduction that all aspects of human nature interact with each other. Thus, all higher aspects of human nature interact with the physical body. If the human being had no ego, no individually constituted ego, then his blood and the whole blood circulation would not be as they are. The blood circulation is the expression of the ego. The ego is purely spiritual, but the effect of this spiritual, this ego, is the blood in its whole circulation. How the blood circulates in us is the expression of our ego. The expression of the astral body is the nervous system – at least one expression. The expression of the etheric body is the glandular system. Only that entity can have a glandular system that is permeated by an etheric body; for the etheric body permeates the physical body with the glandular system, which is necessary for all life, for nourishment and reproduction. Only a being that has an astral body can think and feel, because an astral body permeates the physical body with a nervous system. And only a being that is an ego can have a blood circulation, because that is the physical expression of the ego. Thus, every limb that we count among the higher limbs has an effect on the physical body. But conversely, the physical body has an effect back again.

We have seen that the temperaments have their particular expression in the etheric body. Through this balance, which takes place between what is imprinted in the etheric body from above when a person descends and what comes into the etheric body from below in the form of certain qualities, the temperament arises. If, in a particular incarnation, a person has a physical body that makes a stronger impression on the etheric body than the astral body and the ego, then what is called the melancholic temperament develops in that person. Due to the nature of the descending astral body, because it does not, so to speak, fully master the laws of the physical body, this physical body, with all its heaviness, has an effect on the ether body, and this is how the melancholic temperament arises. In particular, in the case of a person, it must be that part of the physical body that is the physical instrument of thought, of the spiritual life in general, which, in the case of the melancholic temperament, has a retroactive effect on the etheric body, on the person's entire life circumstances. Therefore, the person who, through his astral body and ego, cannot, so to speak, master the physical brain, that which is otherwise the physical instrument for thoughts, will be under the control of his thoughts. The physical body forces the etheric body to do this, so that the person is not master of his thoughts, but is ruled by them.

This is the cause of the melancholic person's tendency to brood. They drag themselves along behind their masses of thoughts and feelings, which keep coming back, because the physical body has the predominant influence on the ether body. And wherever the physical body has a predominant, that is, too great an influence on the human being, wherever his life proves to be such that he cannot be fully controlled by the higher limbs, the consequences of this are evident, even when they become pathological. It is only the consequence of the fact that the higher members of human nature cannot exercise their full dominion over the physical body when, for example, epileptic seizures or nervous headaches occur. As soon as the melancholic character tends towards the pathological, such things can occur.

That is why in Greece, where they still had clairvoyant feelings, they called a person a melancholic when the densest part had the most predominant influence. The physical body is what humans have in common with mineral beings, which are grouped together under the concept of the earth. The ancient Greeks still knew what is no longer known today, namely that the human physical body is formed by its various fluids. These were not merely seen as something physical, nor were they merely examined in the chemical retort. Rather, it was known that they underlie everything spiritual. therefore designated this temperament, in which the physical body exercises the predominant influence, as black — melas —, as the melancholic temperament, because one saw the secretion of juices in man, which causes the tenacity of the physical body, whereby the latter withdraws from the normal influences of the higher limbs and thus makes man a dark, introspective being. For through his higher members, man belongs to a much greater totality. Through his etheric and astral bodies and his I, he would feel himself as belonging to the great whole, the great cosmic I, the Godhead. That which is the human being's spiritual being is precisely what makes him personal, in that he is enclosed in the skin of his physical body. This is why the melancholic person finds it so difficult to detach from their physical existence, because this physical aspect exerts the predominant influence.

If the etheric body is not strongly influenced by either the physical body or the astral body and I, if the impulses of the family, the peculiarities of the race, are not strongly pronounced, if there is no strong effect on the etheric body from above and below, if it remains neutral, so to speak, then the phlegmatic temperament arises. The phlegm is the balanced part of the etheric body. In this case, neither the physical nor the astral body and the I have a particularly strong effect. In this case, the person has the balanced phlegm of the forces of his ether body surging through him. You can see this in the physical form of the body, which you can see projected outwards. You can see how, in the phlegmatic person, the etheric body receives no strong influences from above or below, and so what is surplus in life settles in the fat. You can see in every detail the consequences of what we must see in the spiritual; the physical is in every detail an expression of the spiritual. We can only understand the physical if we grasp the spiritual.

When the distribution of the faculties is such that the astral body has a predominant effect on the etheric body, making its impressions particularly strong, and suppressing what comes up from the physical body, then what we call the sanguine temperament arises. Here the astral body is active; the surging feelings and sensations are lively and animated. The person is open to all impressions from the outside world. We will soon hear that it is the ego that contains the images that arise in the astral body and have their physical instrument in the nervous system, and that the blood, the expression of the ego that contains them, is physical. In fact, the blood and nervous systems work together in a very strange way. Imagine that the blood weakens. What happens? Fantastic images, hallucinations, fantasies that do not correspond to reality appear. The right inhibitions for these hallucinative and imaginative powers are formed physically by the blood and spiritually by the ego. There is nothing pathological about the sanguine person, but he is therefore open to all impressions from the outside world because the actual ego does not yet appear strong enough. What appears strong is the astral body and the nervous system. That is why the sanguine person is open to all impressions; that is why the sanguine person is mobile because his astral body is mobile. Look at the sanguine gait of the sanguine child, how it bounces, how it is interested in this and that. If it were not the case that the child is alternately interested in this and that, then the impressions would have to be regulated by the ego and the blood.

This is the case with the choleric person. When the I and its blood are active, predominantly active, and have an effect on the etheric body, then this establishes the choleric temperament, which goes too far in the other direction, which does not rush from image to image, but instead develops forces that contain the change. These forces are there with him.

Thus we see how we learn to understand the different shades of temperament, which are caused by the impact of what comes from above and below. If the influence of the physical body on the etheric body predominates, the result is the melancholic temperament; if the etheric body is neutral, the phlegmatic temperament. If the astral body is particularly active internally, we have the sanguine temperament, and if it is the ego that is primarily given the right of mastery in the human individuality, then the choleric temperament is the result.

Once you have grasped these things in the spiritual, you will also find them distinctly manifested in the physical. Imagine choleric people, people in whom the I is strongly developed. They contain the astral body. And now this is the original creator of the physical body. The astral body has the need, the longing, to make the physical body as slender as possible, to develop it as diversely as possible. In the case of choleric people, the ego works against this, thus curbing growth. Now look around you at choleric people, and you will see the repressed growth of the physical body. I would like to draw your attention to the picture of a spruce that was a choleric person; it had precisely this expression in the physical body; and I only need to mention Napoleon and the expression of the small, stocky figure. Here, too, the restrained growth has been expressed.

In particular, the characteristics of temperament are revealed precisely in what the person can give through his or her individuality, can give in contrast to what generally characterizes him or her. You can see how the human being flows together from these two currents. The human being has firmly established forms in himself; that which is permanent, rigid in facial expression, is inherited. What is mobile becomes an expression of the individual, which comes down from the spiritual. It is into this mobile element that temperament is laid. The facial features can be an expression of rigidity, of what has been inherited; the gaze comes from the person's individuality. The gaze is the expression of temperament: the piercing gaze of the choleric, the restless gaze of the sanguine, the restrained gaze of the melancholic, and the dull gaze of the phlegmatic. As for me, take a look at the shape of the feet. Those who are connoisseurs would be able to say that this breed has this foot shape, another that. But it is different when it comes to walking. In that, we have an individual expression. At most, the basic forms of the gait show the racial character, but otherwise the individual comes into it. Therefore, the gait is something like the mediation between the individual and the general. You can see the sanguine person's bouncing gait, the choleric person's firm gait, the melancholy person's heavy step, which is caused by the heavy physical body with its predominant influence on the etheric body, and you can see the phlegmatic person's casual gait. In all the characteristics where the individual plays a role, what is semi-individual is revealed because it has to balance with what is generally racial in man; temperament plays a role here.

If we now understand this secret of temperament and how it works, then on the one hand we will say to ourselves: Oh, it is precisely in such subtle peculiarities of the human being that we see how we can only understand the human being if we understand not only the physical body but the whole being. And on the other hand, it also shows us how necessary it is to know all this when we work on a person by promoting their development. We know from other lectures that the physical body develops until the age of seven, the etheric body from then until the age of fourteen, and then the astral body and the I. The individual parts are interlinked. We see, therefore, that we can only grasp the right thing if we listen to the peculiar nature of the chemical composition — so to speak — of the temperaments, to hear something of the unique imprint of the developing human being. Only in this way can we, as educators or counselors, cultivate human nature if we understand this unique, almost chemical composition that presents itself to us through the four temperaments. Truly, just as every human being is composed of four elements - the physical, etheric, astral body and the I - so the influences of these four mix and show themselves to us in all possible nuances, which can be traced back to these four or seven temperaments. And now we see - because such a multiple mixture can be - how each individual person can be an enigma, and how only if we grasp the person in a lively way can we understand him. If we perceive each person as an enigma, then we are truly facing him for the first time.

Temperament is not something theoretical, but something that works from person to person. We will not only want to unravel the human being with our minds, but we will accept the whole person and let him perceive us as a riddle. Then we will approach the human being with full respect and love when we perceive his or her individual nature in such a way that he or she ultimately appears to us as a riddle that we marvel at and admire, but that we grasp in our perception, in the way we approach each individual through our respect and love, through our appreciation. Oh, there are also other riddles than just those that are solved with the mind. People are all riddles, and they are not solved merely with the mind, but the way we appreciate, honor and respect them, how we approach them with our feelings and how we act for them, that is also a way of solving riddles, and we will develop this way when we learn to feel how the individual mixes with the general through its intermediate thing, the temperament. Indeed, we see two currents flowing together in the human being when he enters this earthly existence. And we see at the same time that these currents must work together in order to bring forth fruit through this life, to take it with him for a subsequent life, to live out in a new embodiment. There is change and there is eternity in man. The eternal core ascends from spirit world to spirit world; but that which is changing is not unnecessarily experienced. In the balance between temperament and racial character, we create the fruits out of our etheric body, which we take with us through our entire subsequent life.

And so it is absolutely true for this area, too, that freedom exists alongside necessity, that we enter into life through the confluence of the two currents and are shaped by necessary laws, but that nothing is destroyed that we ourselves shape within our individuality and the general.

Freedom and necessity are equally beautiful, one as much as the other, expressed in Goethe's word - if only we fully understand it - which is meant to tell us how the law passes through human nature; when we see how the temperaments interact in their chemical mixture, then we find, especially in this mystery of the human temperament, the truth of what the Symbolum Goethe so beautifully says and with which we want to conclude:

Just as on the day you were born,
The sun greeted the planets,
You immediately thrived and thrived
According to the law by which you came into being.
That is how you must be, you cannot escape it!
So said the Sibyls, so said the prophets,
And no time and no power dismembered