Twelfth Lecture

In the context of the world as a whole, one must have this view of one thing and that of another; but the less good also has its rightful place. Some people cannot understand this. We also try to prove the harmfulness of materialism; but on the other hand, we must recognize that materialism had to come into the 19th century. But now it must be overcome. Some people would like to take the easy way out on such questions. They say: the human body is just the tool in which the soul dwells; the soul is heavenly, the body is earthly, let us stick to the soul. That is a comfortable view of life. But it is to materialism's credit that it has taught people that the physical also has a share in the spiritual, that the body was organized under certain elements of the human race precisely to receive the spiritual. And the most outstanding people were those whom Christianity encountered. In the early days, when Christianity spread in Europe, the bodies of these European people were good instruments for receiving Christianity, because the physical brain, having developed in a certain way from the spiritual world, was a good receiving organ for Christianity. And while in Asia Christianity emerged after centuries or millennia of development in a culture that was only for souls, in Asia this Christianity encountered a decadent culture that was dying out, a soul culture that was good for ancient times but no longer good for the time in which Christianity took hold. In Europe, this Christianity encountered receptive people who were organized through their bodies to grow into this Christianity and to make their bodies into instruments for receiving Christianity; for there was still much spirit in these bodies, cosmic spirit, nature spirit. That is precisely the significance of the native population of Europe in the post-Atlantic period, that there was spirit in the bodies and that Christianity was received with this spirit in the bodies. But this spirit gradually disappeared, this spirit ceased. This spirit did not remain with the European bodies. And that is precisely the most essential thing about the transition that took place in the middle of the 15th century of the Christian era, that essentially the natural spirit that was in the human European bodies began to fade, that the bodies gradually became incapable of understanding from within what they had first received with fresh strength, because with physical strength, as Christianity. As a result, understanding of Christianity gradually declined from the 15th century onwards. Only tradition remained. The underlying conditions are actually misunderstood in ordinary external science. One believes that a human being is a human being, and one believes that one can study this human being by carrying corpses to clinics and anatomizing them. But that is the very least one can learn about a person, for the delicate constitution of these people changes almost from century to century. The human race of one century is fundamentally quite different in terms of its delicate constitution from the human race of the previous century. Because this does not occur in broad terms and cannot be established by rough scientific means, people do not want to know about it. But this human being is a very fine organization, and that which develops in succession over the course of time remains side by side. For gross anatomy, there is a belief, but it is only a belief: if you draw blood from a Westerner and draw blood from an Easterner, you are just drawing blood; blood is blood. But this view that blood is blood is complete nonsense before a truly deeper knowledge of humanity. I can only speak schematically about this matter and today I can only, I would like to say, state the results of extensive research. But these results are extremely important. If I were to draw something schematically – which, of course, would be different if it were drawn schematically rather than in real life – I would have to draw it in the following way. If I were to draw the blood clot in the living human body of a Westerner, I would draw it like this (see drawing a). If I were to draw the blood clot in the vein of a Russian person, I would have to draw it like this (see drawing b).