III. The Metamorphosis of Intelligence

What, for instance, does present-day science know on one immensely important question, namely this: Purely materialistically speaking—what does thought or ideation depend on? What does the will depend on? In a certain direction? I can speak of these things today because, as I said before on another point, I have investigated them for thirty to thirty-five years. Ideation depends upon the fact that man has within him, in the course of the circulation of his blood, carbonic acid which is not yet breathed out. When carbonic acid not yet breathed out is circulating inside him, there you have the material counterpart, the material correlate of Thought. And when there is oxygen in man—oxygen not yet converted into carbonic acid, oxygen that is still on the way to transformation into carbonic acid; there, in a certain direction, you have the material correlate of the Will. Where oxygen pulsates in man—oxygen not yet entirely transformed, but fulfilling certain functions—there is the Will materially at work. And where inside the human body there is carbonic acid, not quite elaborated to the point of expulsion or out-breathing, there you have the material foundation for a Thought-form. But as to how these two poles, the Thought-pole, which we may also call the carbonic acid pole, and the Will-pole which we may also call the oxygen pole—as to how they are regulated, only a science of realities can tell. Nowhere in the books of today will you find such a truth as I have just expressed.