VII. Spiritual-Scientific Foundations for a True Physiology

Well, gentlemen, in us older fellows things are such that only during sleep can we properly trace this network, but in a child it is still much in evidence. The child has a lively nerve bulb activity in the nerves as long as its intellect is unawakened; that is, throughout its first year, and just as the sun shines over the blossoms of the onions, so shines the light into the child that as yet does not translate with the intellect what it receives with its eyesight. This is indeed like the sun shedding its rays inside the head and opening up all the onion blossoms. In the nerves of the skin we carry a whole plant kingdom around within us. Later, however, when we enter grammar school this lively growing comes to an end, and then we use the forces from the nerves for thinking. We draw these forces out and use them for thinking. This is extremely interesting. Ordinarily, it is assumed that the nerves do the thinking, but the nerves do not think. We can employ the nerves for thinking only by stealing their light, so to speak. The human soul steals the light from the nerves, and it uses what it has taken away for thinking. It is really so. When we truly ponder the matter, we finally recognize at every point the independently active soul.