Third Lecture

Now let us look at the human being in relation to the one and the other system. In relation to the metabolic system: external substances are absorbed. The essential thing for the digestive system is the activity that is now triggered when external substances are introduced into the body. What the human organism is compelled to do because a foreign body enters it, which it has to transform, which it has to metamorphose, what the human being must therefore do: that is what is important, that is what this process comes down to in digestion, and this process stops at a certain stage. At the moment when this process, which initially progresses, comes to a standstill in the process of overcoming the forces of the external food, the impulse of excretion occurs. And the excretion occurs here in relation to the metabolic system in such a way that this excretion takes place directly outwards. We must therefore understand the metabolic-movement system in such a way that, firstly, the impulses of the human organism that are related to the will, the will directly intervenes in the metabolism, that these impulses, which are related to the will, the overcoming, the constitution of matter as it is outside, push it to such an extent that it reaches a certain point. Then it is excreted, excreted in all the ways that are known. But the excretion takes place outwards.