Scientific Disciplines and Anthroposophy

GA 73a — 29 March 1920, Dornach

5. Questions Following a Lecture by Walter Johannes Stein on “Anthroposophy and Physiology”

Preliminary note: Walter Johannes Stein's lecture was not written down. The questions from the participants were submitted in writing.

Question: How is it that the color perception on the right and left is of different intensities?

Rudolf Steiner: This is connected with the fact that the entire vitality in the human being is different on the left and right. We are not at all organized in such a way that the human being functions the same on both sides - the left-handed person and the right-handed person, if I may say so. That which lives in our consciousness is actually always an intermediate state between that which lives through the left-handed person and that which lives through the right-handed person, and the extreme states, the lopsidedness and so on, are just radical formations of that which is actually already present in every person by nature. The difference in intensity stems from the fact that we, as symmetrical human beings, live and function with the two [dis]symmetrical parts in varying degrees of intensity.

The next question was: What is the significance of the warmth points? To what extent can the warmth points be regarded as organs of warmth perception, of general inner and outer perception?

In general, however, something comes into consideration that would be extremely difficult to explain in brief. I would have to give you a whole lecture about it. What is referred to here as heat points, they do not actually serve like the sense organs, but they serve to spread the sensations of warmth as such throughout our organization, so that we identify ourselves with the warmth within us.

This spreading is actually essentially there to perceive us in the sensation of warmth as a unified being, as we must generally hold that we as human beings are organized in such a way that we also stand out from our animal nature through our sensory organization. Our animal nature is actually organized in the way our sensory physiologists usually describe it. In contrast, our human senses are formed in such a way that the orientation towards the I is already inherent in the individual sensory activities. The I is basically a resultant of the twelve partial effects that come together from our various senses. We should not actually say, if we formulate the facts precisely, that we perceive through the eye. Perception as such is much more rooted in a process that lies further back. What actually takes place through the eye is the activation of the process of perception in our entire ego process – it is the same with the other senses – so that we are distinguished from animals by the fact that our senses are already oriented towards the ego. This can also be demonstrated externally by the fact that the further down the animal scale we go, the more dissimilar, and to some extent more complicated, the senses become in comparison to our human senses.

The next question: How are the biogenetic and phylogenetic processes to be understood?

This will become very clear once we start to properly study embryology and a reasonably conducted embryology will then also lead to a reasonable interpretation of phylogeny. Present-day embryology is actually a very one-sided science; it actually only considers the development of the ovum in its complexity. However, it attaches very little importance to the decadent organs, to that which disappears in the developed embryo, i.e. to what disappears, such as the amniotic sac, the allantois, the chorion and so on. These things regress, while that which then becomes the visible human organs develops forward. The mistake that is made today is that one actually only looks at the evolutionary processes, not the involutionary processes, not that which develops in the opposite sense as a result of the other evolving. If embryology is ever studied in such a way that the organs that develop in the opposite direction, that then fall away, are also considered, then it will be possible to properly observe the transformations of form in phylogeny as well, and then it will become clear that what has been presented to you schematically today can be characterized as the real summary of everything that can be well traced phylogenetically.

Today, the empirical sciences have a wealth of material available, but this rich material is by no means exploited in a rational sense. There is, so to speak, a great deal of chaos in this rich material, and as a result, the facts on which this more schematic presentation is based are still hidden from the observations of comparative anatomy, comparative physiology, and comparative biology in general. The relationships that have been indicated here, for example, the transformation, the metamorphosis of the sense of taste into the sense of sight, is something that can already be read today between the lines of the usual physiological descriptions. This can already be proven. Likewise, the process can be observed phylogenetically in the animal series: If we go back to lower-formed eyes, which, however, already have the organization of the eyes of higher animals and humans, we will find that this metamorphosis of the taste organ into the organ of vision can actually be demonstrated if we just want to see impartially.

Another question: What does the kidney actually perceive and what role does the adrenal gland play in this?

Well, the perception we are dealing with here is, of course, very much in the subconscious. When we speak of “renal perception”, we are actually dealing with an analogous use of the word. After all, the point is that we can go into this process of perception without thinking of it in the same crude way as the external senses. The perception in question can be characterized as follows:

Let us say that a person perceives with their sense of hearing. They perceive in the way that has been described to you here today: they perceive outwardly, and this perception takes place in the conscious mind. A perception that we can describe as the opposite pole of auditory perception, we would have to characterize as being conveyed to the region of rhythmic activity. Certain processes that take place in human metabolism have to be conveyed to the region of rhythmic activity, these processes, the metabolic processes, are in a certain way conveyed to the rhythmic processes by something analogous to perception, just as, for example, the external vibrational processes are conveyed to the brain by the perception of sound.

It is only possible to connect a clear concept with these things if one can imagine that inner vitality as it is in the three-part human being. What is in the metabolic human being, for example, must be conveyed for the rhythmic human being. The rhythmic person can only be in harmony with the metabolic person through mediation, and this mediation is provided by kidney activity. The strength of the secretion, the quality of the secretion, forms the mediation, so to speak. In this way, the kidney creates a reagent for the rhythmic person in relation to the metabolic person.

Of course, these things can only be characterized superficially. They lead into such profound things of the human organization that they are hardly suitable for a brief answer to a question.

The question was also asked about the nature of the secretion. What is meant by secretion here?

Surely, one can only use the word “seclusion” in this case if one means the following: when we speak of the sense of warmth, we are dealing with the perception of something in the external world that is present in the same way in ourselves, so that, as it were - as was also mentioned in today's lecture - only the difference in level is actually perceived between the external warmth and the internal warmth. And it is indeed the case that, basically, the same process is taking place as with the thermometer, only externalized.

With sound perceptions, it is the case that we not only penetrate into something that we also carry within us, it is the case that we not only penetrate into something that is, so to speak, a common medium in which we are inside and the object is inside, but in the case of sound perception, we penetrate into something that is inherent in the object. We can certainly say, for example, that every metal has its own sound. So in a sense we penetrate into the interior of an object in a weaker way than we penetrate into the interior of another person when we listen to how he speaks and how he reveals his inner self to us. We do not penetrate into something that is common to both us and him – only the mediations are common, but not the content. Thus we penetrate out of ourselves by penetrating into the object through the perception of sound.

This can be characterized by the fact that, while ascending from the sense of sight to the sense of warmth, we still live in something that is a common medium for what is perceived and for ourselves, but that something separates when we go from the sense of sight to the sense of hearing. There is also an intensification in this, because we not only perceive a sound, but we perceive an inner mental process.

Thus, in the sense of sound, a further differentiation can be perceived. And one cannot arrive at a schematization, if I may say so, or a classification of the senses, other than by considering this activity of the human being from the inside out, this absorption, this ever-increasing absorption in the sense of sound. Only in this way can one arrive at an objective classification of the senses. Precisely because this has not been done, it has been overlooked that one really must proceed from the sense of hearing to the sense of sound, and from the sense of sound in turn to the sense of concept. For it is an absolute nonsense to speak of perceiving, let us say, what the other person puts into language as his soul content, with the sense of hearing. To separate these two senses, the sense of sound and the sense of tone, leads only to a failure to understand anything about these things in the world.

It is therefore a matter of actually setting a boundary where such a boundary is given by the objects, and of seeing this separation, which is not yet present in the sense of warmth. What is actually perceived by the subject himself first occurs in the sense of sound, and then increasingly in the other senses, in the sense of sound and so on, or even in the sense of self. Everything is thrown into confusion. In this theory, which we can hear today, it is actually the case that the perception of the other self should come about through me approaching the other person and seeing a nose, two eyes, hair and so on, and then say to myself through a half-unconscious conclusion: I also have a nose, two eyes, hair; what he has, I also have, therefore what I see will have an I like I have.

This unconscious conclusion is what we see at work today. It is often called “empathy” or something similar, as chattering psychologists, for example Lipps, have said. We find this unconscious conclusion at work everywhere, and we do not notice how direct the process is that lies in the fact that I actually perceive the ego of the other person.

Some people who study such things, such as Scheler, have indeed become aware of how immediate this perception of the self of the other is and how fundamentally, radically different this perception of the self of the other is from all the processes that lead me to the inner experiences, which I then summarize into the overall state of the inner life.

I believe that what has been mentioned is a radical process that proceeds in many ways and intervenes in the inner life, while the human being's perception of the self is on the same level as other sensory perceptions, except that here we are entering the realm for which humanity is not yet predisposed today. I would like to say, to speak of organs in the way we speak here of the organ of the sense of self, that would hardly be easy to understand today in the context of our psychology or physiology - which, as I mentioned earlier, has even led to the development of an analytical psychology, a so-called “psychoanalysis” - that would hardly be easy to understand today in the context of these complexities.

But at least the pure fact must be presented to the world today: that I-perception is something other than the summarizing, the synthetic summarizing of those processes that then lead to the confirmation of the fact of the inner I of the subject.

The next question: what processes are involved in dowsing?

With regard to the divining rod, it must be carefully noted that, when the corresponding phenomena occur, there is an intensified sensory process for which, however, the whole human being is the mediator. We are not dealing with inner mechanical or magnetic processes or the like, but with the intensity of the person, which is then expressed in what is transmitted through the person to the divining rod.

The facts of the matter are such that one can indeed point out how people who really have no inclination to engage in spiritual science are quite seriously forced to deal with such a problem, such as that of the divining rod, both physically and physiologically.

I still remember – although I do not want to speak here in favor or against something in this direction – how a Viennese researcher blew the whistle on Hansen – after all, most of the nonsense that Hansen did with hypnotism at the time – and how this same researcher is now forced to seriously deal with the phenomena of dowsing. I need only recall that in fact experiments in locating springs and the like with the help of the divining rod have even played a certain role during this war, so that in fact here in this field exact research is beginning. But this research does not want to consider the fact that we are not dealing here with processes that have been separated from the human being, but with processes that are based on the fact that the human being is involved in the entire process, so to speak. This is confirmed, for example, by the fact that the movements of the rod vary greatly depending on whether one or the other person is using it. We are dealing with something in whose reactions the intervention of the human being plays a role.

These questions are such that if we wanted to answer them exhaustively, we would need the whole night to do so, and that cannot be expected of us.