V. Illness and Death

To understand illness we must look at the way human beings are related to the surrounding world of nature. Let us look at what takes place between a person as a living being and the rest of the natural world. With every breath, sound, light, and morsel of food that a person absorbs, he enters into a reciprocal relationship with nature. If you look at the matter more closely, you will realize, even without spiritual sight, that what exists in the outer world actually builds up the physical organs and causes the senses to function. When certain animals wandered into caves and stayed there, their eyes in time atrophied. The eye, a sense predisposed to light, cannot exist without light; conversely, only where there is light can this sense develop. Hence Goethe could say that the eye is created by the light, for the light. Naturally, the physical body is built up according to what might be designated as the inner architect, but the external substances are the material this architect uses.