II. The Physical World and the Moral-Spiritual Impulses

But we also gain an insight into those processes which work as combustion in our organism when we can discern what lies behind them, when in the destructive processes, in the generating of combustion in our organism we can behold the cosmic Will at work; as the power of the Logos stands behind the breathing engendered by the externally audible spoken word, so the creative power of the cosmic Will holds sway behind the forces of combustion ever active in our organism. As we apprehend what spiritually underlies the modified breathing as it develops from the larynx into the spoken word, as we apprehend that voice of the spirit which rises out of the deep silence from the opposite direction to that of spoken words, but has to be arrested before it reaches the larynx—as we have this spiritual experience which brings us into the presence of the silent but all the more distinctive voice of the World-Logos—so in all the combustion-like processes which we can observe within our organism, we discern the cosmic Will as it flows and weaves within them, and in which we ourselves participate—not unthinking will as imagined by Schopenhauer, but a will quickened and permeated by the spirit.