Lecture XIV

One philosopher spoke about this division of man as if it were an arbitrary one that had been made with the intellect and which amounted to a formal schematism. Of course one can also divide a table into legs, top, etc., even though the whole thing is made of wood. One could also divide it from left to right, but the division of the human being has nothing to do with such an arbitrary classification. One could put it like this: if one has real hydrogen and real oxygen and one combines them one gets water. They are realities and not just artificial schemata. Likewise, man's members are not separated in an arbitrary way; they are integrated into the reality of human nature, so that one can say that the spirit comes from spirit land, the soul from the soul world and the physical body from the physical world. These members of the human being come from three different worlds and they are integrated in man. And when man leaves the physical world with his consciousness, his inner elements split up, and the one becomes three. However, what happens in individual men in this way takes place in the whole of humanity throughout its various racial and national evolutions, although not everyone has to participate in it. One can say that the evolving humanity which is present in the sub-consciousness of every single human being and which doesn't become noticeable to ordinary consciousness, goes through stages of development that are similar to the ones individual men go through.