II. The Physical World and the Moral-Spiritual Impulses

Such processes as that in which the flame consumes the candle-substance occur wherever initiatives of will are astir within us. In his ordinary consciousness man ‘sleeps through’ these obscure processes of the will, as it were; they remain below the range of his cognition. He does not know what happens between the intention of lifting a hand and the actual movement of the hand. He does not know how the intention, which lives in his thoughts, shoots into his muscles and then effects the lifting of the hand. It is only the actual movement of the hand which the eye then sees. What lies between is a process similar to that of combustion. Within the human organism we are, however, incapable of such observations, whereas on a higher spiritual level we discern this process of combustion, which is the material process for the unfolding of the human will. When we follow this process of combustion we can find no indication that only matter is being changed, what happens is the elimination of the processes which go out from the ordinary nutritive functions in the human body. All those physical processes which are similar to combustion and form the basis for the unfolding of the will, take place between the continuing action of the nutritive functions and blood formation.