II. The Elemental Kingdoms of Nature

If you construct a machine, or build a house, you do this in accordance with the laws of the mineral world. A machine is build according to these laws of the mineral world; but you cannot construct a plant in this way. If you wish to have a plant, you must leave this work to those Beings which form the foundations of Nature. In the future, it will be possible to produce plants in the laboratory, but only when human beings will regard this as a sacrament, as a holy rite. Only when man has become so earnest and purified, that he looks upon the laboratory-table as an altar, will he be permitted to produce living substance. Until this time has arrived, however, not even the slightest detail concerning the way in which living beings are constituted, will be revealed to him. In other words: The Ego lives, as a cognitive being, in the mineral kingdom, but it will ascend, in the future, to the plant kingdom, and it will learn to know this kingdom, just as today, it knows the mineral kingdom. Still later, it will learn to grasp also the laws of the animal kingdom; and finally, those of the human kingdom. All human beings will learn to know and to grasp the inner nature of plants, animals, and of man—these are prospects for the future. Whatever we really understand, we can also produce—for instance, a clock. But the human being of our day will never be able to produce anything belonging to the sphere of living Nature, without the help of the Beings that lie behind nature, as long as such a work has not become for him a sacramental rite. Only then will he be able to ascend from the mineral kingdom to the plant kingdom. The human being is already a human being, at the present time; but his knowledge is restricted to the mineral kingdom. The Ego of man lives within a human form, but when this human Ego looks out into the environment, its cognition is limited to the mineral kingdom. The Ego thus possesses only the capacity to vitalize the blood in a mineral fashion—it is unable to do more. Although the Ego lives within the blood, during the day—dwelling within it and vitalizing it—nevertheless it does this merely in a mineral way.