Lecture IV

You will easily be able to imagine that the plant, as it develops from those early stages where the leaf emerges, to fertilization, unfolds forces within itself that reach their culmination at the very moment of fertilization. But then the downward path begins, and the plant decays again. And by observing this cycle of the plant world, you will see the essential nature of the plant. As I said, we will not deal with perennial plants and those plants that leave behind a trunk like a tree. What I said about the annual plant, which comes to an end with a single fertilization, would only be more complicated; but we grasp the essential nature of the plant by looking at the nature of the plant that comes to an end with fertilization. When properly observed, the plant-like quality lies precisely in the life that culminates in fertilization and, by culminating in fertilization, descends in the other direction. Therein lies the plant-like. If we seek the essence of the plant, we must search in a similar way to how we must search for the human being's sense of self in the continuous dying. We say of the human being that the death with which he first ends his physical being is actually always within him as a force. When he is born, he begins to die, begins to develop, I would say, differentials of dying; he dies continually. The dying process is within him. In the plant, that which culminates last is continually present. Just as we culminate in death, so they culminate in fertilization. Just as we grasp our inner being, our ego, in death, so we grasp the essence of the plant in fertilization. The plant comes to life in fertilization; what develops in the leaf is only a metamorphosis, only a preliminary stage of fertilization.