Lecture Thirteen

I have now brought together many and various matters which may help us to a perception of the structure of the Universe in its relation to Man. We have seen—and this must be emphasised again and again—that the Universe cannot be grasped without Man. That means that it is not possible to understand the Universe in itself, without keeping in mind Man and the relation of the Universe to him. If one wishes to form in a very simple way an idea of Man's connection with the Universe, one need only think of a theme in elementary astronomy—the so-called ‘obliquity of the ecliptic’—that is, the oblique position of the Earth's axis in relation to the line, the curve, which passes through the Zodiac. This obliquity of the ecliptic may be understood and even interpreted as you will; with such interpretations we are not for the moment concerned as to whether they accord with reality or not; we are concerned rather to bring a certain fact to your notice. If the Earth's axis—the axis on which the Earth turns daily—were perpendicular to the plane through the Zodiacal ecliptic, then day and night would be equal throughout the year over the whole Earth. If the Earth's axis lay in the ecliptic, then over the whole Earth one half of the year would be day and one half night. Both extremes do in a certain respect actually occur at the equator and at the poles. But in between lie regions where the length of day varies in the course of the year. We need only reflect a little on this matter to arrive at the tremendous significance for the whole evolution of earthly civilisation, of the position of the Earth's axis in cosmic space. Just reflect, we could all of us throughout the Earth be only Eskimos if the axis lay in the ecliptic; were it vertical to the ecliptic, the whole Earth would be filled with the kind of civilisation that prevails at the equator.