Kleptomania, Hydrocephalus, and Curative Speech: Individual Cases

You will remember the boy of twelve years old who was brought before us yesterday and whom I had to describe as a kleptomaniac. I explained to you how spiritual vision can discern, in the case of such a kleptomaniac, that on account of hindrances in the astral body, he has no means of access to the capacity for judgement that ordinarily belongs to human beings in the world. In this connection, you must realise that everything which has to do with morality, everything of which it can be said that our conception of it must needs include moral impulses, comes to expression within Earth existence alone. We really could say—it would of course be misunderstood by the superficial thinking of the present day—that where the Earth comes to an end, where one goes out beyond into the super-sensible realm, moral judgements such as we are familiar with on Earth cease to exist; for the reason that out there, in the realm of the super-sensible, morality is, so to say, a complete matter of course. Moral judgements begin only where there is a possibility of choice between good and evil. For the spiritual world, good and evil are simply characteristic qualities. There are good beings and there are bad beings. As little as you can say of a lion that he ought, or ought not, to be lion-like, just so little can you say, when you have come away from the Earth, that good and evil ought or ought not to be as they are. To speak in this way pre-supposes the possibility of choice, of saying Yes or No, a possibility which comes in question solely within the organisation of man and where human beings are living socially together. Now, in the case of an illness such as kleptomania, owing to the hindrances of which we spoke, the person in question has not evolved his astral body far enough to enable him to develop a sensitivity to moral judgements. Consequently, the moment a boy of this kind feels a particular interest in some object, he sees no reason at all why he should not take it. He does not understand that it may “belong” to someone, the idea of “mine and thine” has no meaning for him. His astral body does not get far enough into the physical world for him to be able to appreciate the concept of possession.