7. The Conscious Life of Man

We may, therefore, draw the conclusion that the significance of the depositing of the bony system in man, as related to his whole organisation, consists in the fact that he can maintain a human form at all; and that everything expressed in the processes which take place in this solid bony system is kept in the subconscious. We have always to do with something of this kind in the human organisation, and we must be especially clear that something within it is shielded from the influences that play a part in our environment in the great world. We have stated, for example, that the seven members of the inner cosmic system, especially that most spiritual one among them, the spleen, restrain the working of the external laws natural to what we take in as nourishment; that they convey the nutritive substances into the organism in such a manner that they are finally filtered into a form which enables them to exert their powers in conformity with laws and a vital activity of their own. This shielding of the inner processes, this transforming and implanting of outside matter, is most visible and obvious in the warmth of the blood. This blood-warmth, which operates within strict limits of temperature, is regulated by conformity to its own inner laws; and, in this conformity it is, in normal life, independent of what takes place in the warmth-processes of the macrocosm, of the great world about us. Here in the stability of the temperature of the blood we have a perfectly obvious fundamental phenomenon. We must point out, therefore, that one of the most essential elements in the inner organisation of man is that something possessed of Being is cut off within set limits from the macrocosm and develops a vital activity of its own.