Lecture II

We can then compare this with childhood illnesses, for obviously childhood illnesses cannot have the same origin, because they appear in an early stage of life when absolutely nothing has yet been transformed. If one has learned the origin of illnesses in later life, however, one has also acquired a capacity to observe what underlies the origin of illnesses in childhood. One finds the same thing, in a certain way, only from another side. One finds that there is too much of the soul-spiritual force of organization in the human organism when childhood illnesses arise. To an individual who has acquired the capacity to perceive along these lines, such things appear especially significant when considering the phenomena of scarlet fever or measles in childhood. With these he can see in the child's organism how the soul-spiritual, which otherwise functions in a normal way, begins to stir; he sees how it is more active than it should be. The whole course of these illnesses becomes comprehensible the moment one really sees this restless stirring of the soul-spiritual in the organism as the basis of illness.