12. The Relationships Between Spiritual Science and Individual Academic Subjects II

You will be able to completely resolve any contradictions that may arise from these statements if you approach them in the right empirical way, because these three systems are not separate, but interpenetrate each other. The nerve is built up organically through metabolism, but is something different in terms of its nervous process than the metabolism. However, the metabolic process also works in the nerve, because the nerve must be built up and broken down organically. When metabolism takes place in the nerve, our life of imagination is permeated with the impulse of the will. And one must be as materialistically sick as John Stuart Mill or those who profess him when one speaks of mere associations of ideas - which do not exist in this abstractness - when one completely separates the element of will from the life of ideas.