II. Impulses of Transformation for Man's Artistic Evolution I

When we begin to look at the human being, the part that first strikes us, because it is the most outward, is the physical body. But this physical body is permeated and penetrated and filled by the etheric body. The physical body might be simply called a space body or described as an organisation in space. But the etheric body, which dwells in the physical body and, as you know, also extends beyond the limits of the physical body and is intimately connected with the whole cosmos, cannot be contemplated without the aid of time. Basically everything in the etheric body is rhythm, a cyclical rhythm of movement or activity, and it has a spatial character only in as far as it inhabits the physical body. For human imaginative perception, it is true, the etheric body also has to be conceived in spatial pictures; but these do not show its essential nature, which is cyclic, rhythmic, moving in time.