7. The Conscious Life of Man

And how can we fail to recognise this, since our thought is the most inward thing we have, that in which we most completely interiorise ourselves to our normal consciousness? Whereas in our feelings we are, to our normal consciousness, at the border-line between the inner and the outer, and in our will-impulses we come into such strong contact with the outer world that under ordinary circumstances the human being no longer recognises himself in his will-impulses! Man recognises himself always in his thoughts, but not in his impulses of will. This may be seen from the fact that there has been so much controversy in the world over the question of the freedom or absence of freedom of the human will, as well as over its other qualities. In our thought-system, which has its physical correlative in a process of salification, we have the innermost aspect of what the blood has to accomplish as an instrument of the ego. And since the process of salification must be completely interiorised and protected against the other organs, this capacity of the blood may be most of all hindered by abnormalities within it. When we note that the blood is so hindered that it no longer manifests its capacity in this direction, we must understand that it needs to be stimulated to that sort of activity which has fallen below a certain border-line in its own particular life.