Lecture VI

We may say then that it is incorrect to believe that human life is maintained only by the consumption of food. This is simply not correct. It would be just as correct to say that life is maintained by the active interplay of forces in the tissue fluids. When you give food which stimulates this activity in the tissue fluids, you maintain life. This does not happen by merely introducing food substances into the body but by the encounter with the stable forces of its own proteinaceous constituents. This is a process that you stimulate by absorbing food, and this process is the most fundamental factor in the maintenance of life. Here, too, we find that we have to look at the process. It can be, for example, that substances we know to be effective in children do not necessarily act in the same way in an adult; for a child is developing his body and needs the introduction of substances and the unfolding of their forces in an inward direction. If you know that something is effective as substance in a child, it will not be similarly effective in the adult. In an adult, it may be much more necessary simply to maintain and stimulate the forces in his tissue fluids that are striving toward rest.