Twenty-ninth Lecture

Rudolf Steiner: This is, of course, an extremely extensive chapter. You see, much more than one might think, so-called physical illnesses — in the sense in which I also spoke this morning — depend on spiritual-soul preconditions, and actually there are no real soul illnesses at all, but soul illnesses are basically always based, albeit sometimes on very distant, minute physical illnesses. I would like to emphasize that anthroposophy does not take the view that one speaks of mental illnesses and the like and also wants to heal the so-called mental illnesses spiritually. The point is that in this area in particular, today's external, materialistic medicine — which has almost entirely become a description of abnormal states of mind, in this respect there are indeed the most detailed medical histories — is very much mistaken. The cure for so-called mental illnesses is usually to be found in physical healing, because it is the case that the spiritual-soul is not ill, but can only fail to appear, cannot express itself, through the sick physical. One could even go as far as the paradox: physical illnesses go back to spiritual causes, mental illnesses go back to physical causes. Of course, one must not press such a paradox.