13. The Relationships Between Spiritual Science and Individual Academic Subjects III

In the human head organization, we are dealing with a continuous process of degeneration, which is, however, nourished by the appendages of the head. While the head itself is organized for degeneration through its organization, we are dealing with a continuous dying in the human head. The processes that are ascending and vitalizing are one thing; the other processes are those that are held back, spread out in the line of time, which, when compressed into an instant, appear as the death of the whole organism. One could also say: what comes over the whole organism in an instant with death could be regarded, mathematically expressed, as an integral for which one seeks the relevant differential. And then one would come to find, distributed over the time line, in the differential series into which one has resolved the integral, that which takes place as a retrogressive development, a devolution in the human main organism. This devolution, however, is found to be the actual basis for the process of imagining and of sensing. We can therefore say that it is impossible to regard what underlies human growth, what underlies ascending development, as the organizing forces, and also as the basis for the processes of soul and spirit. On the contrary! Where the organism is being broken down, the soul and spirit arise precisely above the breakdown, precisely above the destruction of the organic. One cannot gain insight into the connection between the physical body and the soul in man if one does not know that what one regards as the basis of the organization must not be regarded as the basis of the spiritual-soul process. The physical body must first break down, make way, give way, so that the spiritual-soul in man can take hold.