V. The Human Being and its Expression in Greek Art

Take the opposite case: there is no reason at all for the ego and the astral body to leave the physical and etheric bodies, and yet they are driven out because the physical and etheric bodies are destroyed from the outside, because they are taken from the ego and the astral body. So the ego and the astral body have to leave. But in that the physical body and ether body are destroyed from the outside, they take on a form which, on the one hand, follows the destructive force and, on the other hand, makes it literally visible how the ego and the astral body are pushed out. With Niobe, this does not have to be the case; there it is suddenly there. But suppose that Niobe, instead of gazing at the field of corpses of her offspring, did not rush out of her physical and etheric bodies, but that something happened to her physical and etheric bodies that forced the soul out. Then one would not see in the physical and etheric bodies how they become statues, how they freeze, as it were, in matter, in formed matter, but one would see how the I still works in there, how the astral body still endeavors to form the etheric body. You also formed that in Greece: this is Laocoon. You can understand Laocoon when you are imbued with the realization that it is the opposite of Niobe, that the physical body and the etheric body are being destroyed from the outside and how the whole thing fights with the I and with the astral body, which are being pushed out. So that in every form, in the shaping of the mouth, in the shaping of the face, in the holding of the arms, in the forms that the fingers take, you can see from Laocoon that the situation I am talking about is being depicted.