Lecture X

It might at first seem a folly in world-organization that something should begin in man which, if not checked halfway, would make him ill; but in the next lectures we shall learn to recognize this as something of the utmost wisdom. For the time being, however, let us study the actual facts, and discover what the answer of the separate digestive processes would be if we were to question their inner nature. We are always on the way to making our whole organism ill. Every digestive process, if unchecked, causes illness in the organism. If, therefore, digestion is to exist at all in man, other processes must exist whose germinal beginnings date from earlier times. These are the processes which are present in circulation, the circulatory processes. The circulation continually produces the processes of healing. So that we may really describe the human being by saying: During the old Moon evolution man was born as patient, and the doctor within him was already sent in advance during the epoch of old Sun. In regard to his own organism man was already born as doctor during the evolution of old Sun. It shows great foresight on the part of world-evolution that the doctor came into existence before the patient, for the patient in man himself was only added on old Moon. And if we are to describe man rightly, we must work backwards from the digestive to the circulatory processes, including, of course, all those impulses which underlie the circulatory system. Speaking broadly one substance induces quicker, another substance slower circulation. We have also quite small circulatory processes within us. Take any mineral substance, gold, let us say, or copper. Every such substance when induced into man—by the mouth, by injection, or in any other way—is endowed with the power of causing something to be formed or altered in the circulation, so as to work in a curative way, and so on. And what one must know, in order to gain insight into the essential healing processes in man, is what each single substance in his world-environment releases in man through alterations in his circulation. Thus one may say that circulation is a continual process of healing.