From Paracelsus to Goethe

A lecture given in Berlin on the 16th of November 1911. In it are some of Dr. Rudolf Steiner's (Anthroposophy) impressions of the home town of Paracelsus- such an important figure who lived about five hundred years ago:

IT was on a beautiful September day of this year (1911) that my vocation led me through Zurich. And as this was a free day between days of work, I went with some friends to the village of Einsiedeln, close to Zurich. Here is a Benedictine monastery, founded in the early Middle Ages, which has attained a certain celebrity through various circumstances.

Precisely on that September day, what is called in Catholic countries a Pilgrimage-festival was in progress. Einsiedeln was made ready to receive a great number of pilgrims, and expected a lively day, just such a day as periodically occurs in Catholic places of pilgrimage. I myself wished to make a kind of pilgrimage on that occasion, not indeed exactly to Einsiedeln, but from there to a neighboring place.

A carriage was hired, and we drove to what they call there the "Devil's Bridge". By a pretty rough road, up and down hill, we arrived there at last, after a good long stretch, and found a fairly modern guesthouse, not modern in luxury, but built only a comparatively short time ago. On this guesthouse there was a tablet:

Birthplace of the physician and naturalist Philippus Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim, called Paracelsus, 1493-1541.

That was, in short, the goal of my pilgrimage: this birthplace of the famous - in some connections one might say, notorious - Theophrastus Bombastus Paracelsus von Hohenheim. To begin with, we saw a remarkable place, where many roads crossed, everywhere a really luxuriant cultivation, rich growth of flowers, and, at the moment we were there, the immense herds of cattle, so frequently to be seen in Switzerland particularly. The natural character of the Alpine regions gives rise to a very special feeling, hardly to be found anywhere else in Europe: there is something about Nature, as if the plants there spoke a language of their own, as if they wished to say something to us, as if they could become quite talkative.

There is also in that place a spot well adapted to combine with what the Spirit of Nature may say. And there rose before my mind the picture of a boy who, in the first nine years of his life, grew up with that Nature, whose birthplace was actually a house which had once stood on that site, but had been replaced by the abovementioned new one. For, in the fifteenth century, there lived in that place the old physician, Bombast von Hohenheim, whose little son was the future Paracelsus. And anyone who knew the boy, could realize how closely, from his earliest childhood, he had grown up with Nature. One could realize the boy in these natural surroundings, could picture him carrying on intimate, childlike conversations with the plants.

If the exterior of the houses had altered, in a certain respect the external configuration of the landscape was, quite certainly, still that with which the boy Paracelsus had talked innumerable times, from early morning till late evening - except those times when he accompanied his father on his rounds among the adjacent villages. And it may be accepted as certain that even with this little boy, in the midst of that natural scenery, the father could exchange many interesting thoughts concerning the doubtless intelligent questions which that child was already able to ask about what Nature showed in his immediate experience. And much which we can discern in the life of Paracelsus, was ripening then in that child. It confronts us in childlike form when we have before us the picture of the good old man - but very learned licentiate - the old Bombast von Hohenheim, who leads by the hand the Nature-intoxicated boy, so eager for knowledge.

While this picture rose in my mind, I had to remember another which I saw - many years ago, it is true - when I stood before a house in Salzburg, which bore a tablet announcing that in this humble house died Theophrastus Bombastus Paracelsus von Hohenheim, at the age of forty eight years. These two pictures enclosed for me this eventful, quite unique life. If we look a little more closely into the life of Paracelsus, we find rising in his soul - certainly still with the character of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries - a deep knowledge of Nature, which then became Medical Science Philosophy and then became Theosophy. A deep understanding of Nature, not comparable with what is given us today of external Nature-knowledge through experiment and intellect, but derived from deeper soul-forces, clairvoyant soul-forces, of whose true form we have already been able to give indications in former lectures of this cycle. But what had awakened in Paracelsus these deeper forces, and made it possible for him to see in Nature that which is behind what external sense and external intellect discerns, was actually brought about through his intimate converse with Nature, the kinship which grew up between all his soul-forces and that which buds and blooms and grows in Nature.

Even when the nine-year-old boy moved with his father to Carinthia, he was transplanted into an equally prolific landscape, and could feel akin to all that dwells as Spirit in Nature. And as Paracelsus grew up, his conception of Nature became even more and more individual and quite uniquely personal.

How could it be otherwise! All that was fixed in his mind was closely dependent on his own particular forces and abilities, on his attitude towards things, on the way in which they spoke to him. Hence, throughout his life he attached a special value to having grown up so intimately with Nature. And when he wished to impress those who became his enemies, with the kinship between his innermost being and Nature, he would point to his early upbringing; for instance, in his words:

"Pay heed to my defence: By nature I am not subtly woven, nor is it the way of my country to achieve anything by silk-spinning, we were not reared on figs or mead or wheaten bread, but on cheese, milk and oatmeal; that does not make finical fellows. Therefore he may well be considered rough and rude, who believes himself to be quite courteous and kindly. Thus it happens to me too; what I take for silk, others call ticking and drill."

Paracelsus by Peter Paul Rubens

He is constructed, he considers, like those who have not severed their whole being from the matrix of natural existence, but remain closely connected with it; and from this connection he draws his strength and his wisdom.


Hence his motto throughout his life could be: "None shall be another's slave, who can for himself remain alone". This permeated his whole manner of life, and shows us the stamp of this man's soul. Hence we can understand that, when later, he came to the University, he could not at all adapt himself to the scholarly way in which he must pursue what he knew by nature, stimulated merely by converse with Nature and talks with his father about medical science. At first he simply could not digest the University methods.

To gain insight into what he had to endure there, we must glance at the way in which Medicine was studied at that time. The old traditions and documents of antiquated medical men, such as Galen and Avicenna, were authoritative above anything else; and the lecturers mainly busied themselves with explaining and commenting upon what was written in those books. This was deeply repugnant to the soul of young Philippus Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim; and he found, above all, that there is a very wide distance between the spiritual efforts and endeavors intuitively recognizable as proceeding directly from Nature, and what has deviated from it so far, as the scholarly approach, as merely intellectual conceptions and ideas. Hence he wished to go through a different school. And through this different school he had already radically gone!

We see Paracelsus having soon forsaken all collegiate teaching; we see him wandering through all the countries of Europe; not only through all the German and Austrian lands, Transylvania, Poland, Hungary, Italy, Spain and Portugal, but also through France, England, Holland, Prussia and Lithuania, as far as Denmark, Norway and Sweden, with the intention - to quote Goethe - of learning everywhere to know "how Nature lives in creating". For what actually hovered before him was the thought: The whole of Nature is indeed a unity, but she speaks many different languages; and precisely as a man learns to recognize how one and the same thing changes its form and is differently shaped in different regions and altered environments, so does he penetrate to the essence of the inner unity to that which, in contrast to all mere sense-perceptions, is the spiritual foundation.

But he wished to learn, not only how every ore, every metal, springs from its environment directly in accordance with the configuration of the mountain-ranges, always according to its habitat, thus forming for himself a picture of how Nature lives in creating; he wished to learn, not only how the plants assumed different forms according to climate and environment; something else hovered also before him.

He said to himself: The whole human organism is dependent upon its environment. What man is in body and soul cannot be regarded as of the same nature everywhere; at least one cannot know Man, by studying him in one place only. Therefore Paracelsus wandered through the most varied regions of the earth accessible to him, in order to perceive everywhere - with a gaze which penetrated deeply into the spiritual - how Man is related to Nature, according as he is affected by the influences of very different conditions in climate and the lay of the land; and only by taking account of these differences everywhere, can one arrive at enlightenment concerning the healthy and the sick, in the sense of Paracelsus. Hence he was never satisfied to know any form of sickness in one place only.

He said to himself: The delicate substances which make up the human organism, differ, according as a man lives in Hungary, for instance, in Spain or in Italy, and no-one knows a man unless he can trace the finer substances with a gaze which pierces into the depths of these things. And when he was reproached with what he called his "academy" and others called his "vagrancy", he pleaded that the Deity does not come to those who merely "sit behind the stove". He was clear that a man must go where the divine Spirit weaves and works in most diverse forms in the creations of Nature. Thus he cultivated a knowledge, which may be called, in the highest and finest sense a truly individual clairvoyance, which he alone could possess through being brought up with Nature.

He felt too, that this knowledge had grown up closely with what his own inmost soul took for granted, so that he became ever more and more conscious that what he had learnt directly in the "academy of Nature", could actually only be made clear by an intimate mode of expression. He called Nature his "book", and the different regions of the earth, the "separate pages" of this book, which men read when they pass through them.

And by degrees he acquired a deep contempt for those who only studied old Galen, Avicenna, etc., and through the books of these men, were alienated from the book of Nature, which lay before them with its pages outspread. He felt, too, that what he had learnt in this academy of his, could only be clad in intimate words, and so he realized the necessity of expressing himself, not in a language which had become alien to his inner life, the Latin language, in which everything of this kind was still carried on at the Universities, as we have already indicated. He saw no necessity to express himself in a language as strange to the human soul as, on the other hand, the scholarship which made use of it, was strange to direct Nature. For he did not believe that he could succeed in so bending and formulating the words that they would directly express what poured forth from all creation.

Hence he felt a deep necessity to express in his mother-tongue whatever he had to express. This involved two consequences. In the first place, he had - not from arrogance or to win a reputation - a high consciousness of the value of what he was able to know; for he was essentially modest with regard to what great Nature awoke in his soul.

So it came about that he said - because what he spoke concerning Nature appeared in his soul as in a mirror: One can actually learn nothing of Medical Science from any other study; for the renewal of Medical Science Nature must again be directly approached. Hence his haughty words:

"Whoever will follow truth, must enter my monarchy. After me; not I after you. After me, Avicenna, Galen, Rhasis, Montagnana, Mesue, etc., ye of Swabia, ye of Meissen, ye of Cologne, ye of Vienna and the towns on the Danube and Rhine, ye islands of the sea: thou Italy, thou Dalmatia, thou Sarmatia, thou Athens; thou Greek, thou Arab, thou Israelite; after me, not I after you. I shall be monarch, and mine will the monarchy be; I lead the monarchy and encircle your lands."

Not from arrogance or pride, but from the consciousness of how Nature spoke through him, he said: "Mine is the monarchy". He meant the monarchy of Natural Science and Medical knowledge of his day - and the second consequence was that such knowledge and such a way of thinking placed him in opposition to the official representatives of his profession. To begin with, they could not endure his expressing in the German language what, they considered, could only possibly be expressed in Latin. He was a complete innovator in this matter. Again, they could not understand his wishing to learn by wandering through the countries. One thing above all they could not grasp, namely, that he who grew up with the whole warp and woof of Nature, should have such a lively feeling for the way that Man - wherever he may be - is, everywhere, both in the evolution of his soul and in the culmination of his physical development, a flower, a fruit, natural to the region he inhabits, and one must not only see how the plants grow how the animals thrive, but how there is expressed in the soul of men who are directly interwoven and grown into Nature, all that plays into them from the whole rest of Nature.

By Hans Holbein the Younger 

Hence, Paracelsus expected something of people who, as peasants, as shepherds, even as knackers, had dealings in or with Nature. He was convinced that in what penetrated into their simple knowledge a real knowledge of Nature was contained, a knowledge from which he could learn something, so that a vagrant, as it were, himself, he learned from from vagrants. Hence he said of himself:

"I pursued my art at the risk of my life, and was not ashamed to learn from tramps, executioners and shearers; my teaching was tried more severely than silver, in poverty, fears, wars and afflictions."

That, they could not forgive him. And when, later he was called to Basle University (almost through an error on the part of those who represented his profession), one of the learned fraternity noticed with horror that Paracelsus went out, not in the paraphernalia customary with professors, but walking the streets like a tramp, like a dustman. That could not be tolerated; that injured the prestige of the whole profession.

Thus it came about that when he wished to apply what he had learnt from the great book of Nature, he stumbled against the opposition of his colleagues, and experienced what those have to suffer who must undergo envy and the sharpest hostility. What they could least forgive him, however, was that, through his deep insight into Nature, he had success where others could not think of success, or where they had applied all that was in their power and could do nothing about it. It is true, when he met with opposition anywhere, he did not hesitate to dip into his haughty consciousness for most bitter words; but if we consider the conditions under which he worked, we must admit that they were thoroughly deserved. When he was forced to discuss some medical question with this or that colleague, he went very far, for instance, when the others talked Latin, which he understood perfectly well, he shouted at them in German, what he considered to be proofs, but what they regarded as folly. And this is a picture of all his clashes with his contemporaries.

What he had gained in insight, can be shown shortly thus. He said: 

"A man standing before us as a sick or a healthy being, is not an isolated individual, an isolated species; he is implanted in the whole of great Nature. And what occurs in the man as healthy or sick phenomena, can only be judged, in a certain sense, if we know all the influences proceeding from the great world, the macrocosm, which draw the man into their circles."

Thus Man appeared to him in the first place as a single being in the whole great world, the macrocosm. That was one direction from which he regarded Man. And then he said to himself: He who wishes to judge how all the phenomena which are enacted outside in wind and weather, in the rising and setting of the stars, etc., flow, as it were, through human nature, and play into it, must procure for himself an intimate knowledge of all that goes on outside in universal Nature.

Because Paracelsus did not confine himself to the special knowledge of Man, but allowed his perceptive, clairvoyant glance to sweep over the whole macrocosm in Physics, Astronomy, Chemistry and collected together all that he could gather, Man was, for him, a part of the macrocosm.

Side by side with this, however, Man appeared to him as a being in the highest degree self-developmentally living in connection with, or in opposition to, the macrocosm, according to the way in which he works with the substances of the macrocosm. In so far as Man is a part of the macrocosm, Paracelsus regarded him as the lowest, most primitive merely physical and corporeal being. In so far, however, as Man receives into his organism a certain quantity, a certain series, of substances and forces, and develops himself independently, being independently active in them, so far Paracelsus saw, framed as it were in Man something which he called the archaeus, as it were a spiritual architect and overseer, which he also called the spiritual alchymist. And he draws attention to what is perhaps today no longer felt as specially significant, but which he recognized as profoundly occult and illuminating, namely, how this spiritual architect, this spiritual alchymist, transforms external materials into completely dissimilar materials of which Man makes use within himself, as, for instance, the transformation of bread and milk into flesh and blood.

This seemed to him a tremendous riddle. In it was expressed what he saw as the work of the spiritual alchymist, who either fitted harmoniously into the cosmos, or set himself in opposition to it. This was Man viewed by him from a second direction, Man who can have within him a spiritual alchymist who can cause substances either to become poisons destroying the organism, or expedients which develop the organism in the right way and bring it to full expansion.

Then he distinguished a third point: what Man is apart from the outer world. Here Paracelsus found something which we have already been able to indicate, namely that Man in his whole organism is so constituted that there exists in the collaboration of forces and organs, a little world, a microcosm - a copy of the great world.

This however, is something different for Paracelsus, from the first viewpoint. According to his first viewpoint, Man, in so far as the currents of Nature flow through him, is a part of Nature. According to this third view, in so far as the separate parts of Nature work together, he finds in the blood and heart system, the nerves and brain-system, and the reciprocal action of blood and heart, of nerves and brain, a copy of what is figuratively present outside in Nature, in the reciprocal relation of sun and moon. And in the other organs he finds an inner kingdom of heaven, an inner cosmic system. And the external cosmic system is, to him a vast symbol repeated in Man as a little world. And in any disorder which appears in this little world, he sees the third way in which Man can fall ill, that is, can be attached with maladies.

A fourth point of view he saw in passions mental, agitations, desires, impulses, which result in wrath and rage, and then react upon the physical organism.

Finally, he saw a fifth viewpoint, which already today is by no means admitted, in the way Man is articulated into the course of the Universe and how causes of sickness may come to him from the whole course of spiritual evolution.

Thus Paracelsus developed five points of view, not as a result of theoretical study, but of what he saw concerning Nature and Man, what appeared to him from the direct conception of the relationships of Man to Nature. Because, on the one hand, he directed his attention to the way Man is articulated in Nature and how the several members work together, Paracelsus was able to take up a very special attitude towards the sick. That was his unique quality, that he related himself, not with one, but with all of his soul-forces to the cosmos. Hence his splendid utterance:

 "Through Feeling we learn to know God the Father in the world; through Faith we learn to recognize Christ, the Son; through Imagination we learn to recognize the Spirit."

As the recognition of a healthy, and a sick man pursues these three lines, it was thus that he wished to present Man before his soul. He did not wish, however, to look only at Man; he wanted to see how the separate objects in Nature were related, both among themselves, and to Man. Thereby something peculiar to him resulted, namely that when he was confronted with a sick man, he immediately saw how Nature worked according to the above-cited viewpoints, his intuitive glance, rising from the depth of his soul, perceived the abnormality of the substances, the abnormality of the organs: he had the whole man before him. He could not clothe in abstract words what then rose before him; what he experienced in force of the sick man, he could not reduce to a formula; but he penetrated into the other, into the sick man. He did not need a name for the malady, but as he plunged, so to speak, into it, something quite new rose to his sight, namely, how he was to combine the substances, how he must put together the materials which he knew in Nature, so as to find a remedy against the malady. It was, however, not only the psychical element into which he plunged, but also into the moral, intellectual and spiritual. Men might call him a vagabond, they might perhaps regard what he did as charlatanry; they might lay stress upon his way of life - how completely destitute he was, the debts he must have incurred, etc. - but it must not be forgotten that he also had the selflessness to make himself one with the sickness which he faced. Hence he was able to say that if he spent all that Nature had given him, on the sick, yet the most important cure would consist of Love. Materials do not cure, said he, it is love that cures. And love certainly passed over from him to his patients, for he saw himself completely translated into the nature of the other man.

The second point, which must have arisen through his specially intimate relationship with Nature, was that in every single case, he saw the remedy which he had applied, effectual; he saw its forces expand in the human organism. This gave him the second point: confident Hope. He called Love and Hope his best healing forces; nor did he ever go to work without love and hope. This man who wandered about as a vagabond, was saturated through and through with the most selfless love. And therewith he had the strangest experiences. His love went so far as to heal those who had no money, entirely without charge. He also had to live, however; people often cheated him about his fee - well, he went on; he didn't bother about it. 

Then, however, he came to loggerheads with those about him. Thus, for instance, the following incident occurred. When he was in Basle (for, later - again through a kind of error - he was summoned to Basle as city-physician) he effected many famous cures. So once he was called in to a Canon Lichtenfels, suffering from a disease which no-one could cure. Paracelsus had stipulated for a fee of a hundred Thalers, if he should cure him, and the Canon had agreed to it. Paracelsus then gave him the appropriate remedy, and after three or four applications, the disease was healed. Then the Canon maintained that if the cure was so easy, he would not pay the hundred Thalers, - and Paracelsus had his trouble for nothing. To make an example, however, he actually took legal proceedings against the Canon; but was unjustly treated by the Basle tribunal: he was to moderate his fee. Then, it appears, he distributed abusive papers against the court of justice, and especially against the Canon. That made bad blood, and a friend pointed out to him that it was unsafe for him to remain in Basle, and so, on a foggy night, he fled from the city. Had he passed through the gates half an hour later, he would have been thrown into prison.

Anyone who knows the unique life-history of this man, will understand the impression, piercing deeply into the heart, made by the picture drawn during the last years of Paracelsus's life: a picture showing a countenance which expresses much that is spiritual. There is much life and much experience in it; it is a life in which soul and body had harshly co-operated. On the one hand, the lines of old age, the wrinkles and the bald head of the suffering, comparatively young man, show what struggle and striving, what an abstract of the evolution of his time, lay in Paracelsus; and, on the other hand, is seen the tragedy of one who has opposed himself to his age. And even if it is only a legend, if we are not able to take literally what is said to have happened in Salzburg, namely, that the physicians of that town once decided to instigate one of his servants to throw Paracelsus down from a height - he did in fact meet his death through such a crash, and was then carried into his house - even if it is not true, one is bound to say that the life of Paracelsus was such that there was no need for anyone to crack his skull; they had made it so wretched, so bitter, for him, that we can well understand his early death.

Such a man - to have him modeled still more clearly before us, we should have to fill in many lines and details - such a man as Paracelsus has made a deep impression upon all who in after-times sought the way to the spiritual world. And he who knows the life of Goethe, feels that Paracelsus with whom he made himself early acquainted, left a great impression upon him. For in Goethe also there lay, as with Paracelsus, something which we may call a growing up with surrounding Nature. On another occasion I emphasized how Goethe, as a seven-year-old boy, showed his interweaving with Nature by building his own altar - thus revealing how much religious enlightenment concerning Nature he had gained from his surroundings - He took his father's music-desk, laid stones and plants from his father's collection upon it, then, having this natural altar, he waited till the sun rose in the morning, gathered the sunbeams with a burning-glass,  and thus lighted a pastille which he had fastened on the top, to kindle a sacrificial fire set alight by Nature itself; so to bring a sacrifice to the God of great Nature. 

This growing up with Nature appeared so early in Goethe, and unfolded itself later in such a way that through the fragrance of Nature, great clairvoyant ideas sprang up in him. And we see in Goethe, when he was already in Weimar, how this way of thinking was working further in him, in the prose-hymn To Nature: 

"Nature! we are encircled and entwined by her, powerless to escape from her, powerless to enter more deeply into her. Unbidden and unwarned she draws us into the circle of her dance and urges us forward with her, until, wearied, we sink into her arms."

(Goethe's Writings on Natural Science, Rudolf Steiner.)

In another way, too, we see much resemblance between Paracelsus and Goethe. Thus we see how Goethe was a true disciple of Nature in Botany and Zoology. We can also observe him on his Italian tour, striving to recognize spiritually the character of natural objects, by observing how they show unity in multiplicity. How beautiful it is when he sees how the simple coltsfoot, which he had known in Germany, shows itself transformed in Italy.


There he learnt how external forms could express the same being in most diverse ways. Thus we see how - everywhere seeking unity in multiplicity - he tried to recognize the Spirit in what was uniform. And how significant are the words which Goethe addressed to Knebel from Sicily on August 18th 1789: 

"According to what I have seen of plants and fish in Sicily, and Naples, I should have been much tempted, if I had been ten years younger, to make a journey to India, not to discover anything new, but to look at what has been discovered in my own way". 

To look in the right intuitive spiritual way at what is displayed to the world of sense was what he wanted. It was the Spirit in Nature that Paracelsus pursued; Goethe also pursued the Spirit.

No wonder, then, that he made acquaintance with the life of Paracelsus, that this Paracelsus-life rose to life side by side with the Faust-life in Goethe's soul. And if we let the life of Goethe work powerfully upon us, then his Faust stands before us, not merely as the Faust of the 16th century, who, in a certain relationship, was a contemporary of Paracelsus, but Paracelsus himself stands before us, as he impressed himself upon Goethe. In the Faust-figure we have something with which Paracelsus collaborated. Let us consider for a moment the answer to the question: Why did Goethe precisely hit upon Faust?

We are told in the legend of Faust that, for a time he laid the Bible on the shelf, became a Doctor of Medicine, and studied the forces of Nature. Paracelsus did indeed remain true to the Bible, and was even an expert in the Scriptures, but we see in him, how he "shelved" the old medical authorities, Galen, Avicenna, etc. - even on one occasion burnt them - and went straight to the great book of Nature. That was a trait which made a strong impression upon Goethe. And moreover, do we not see similarity, when Faust translates the Bible into his "beloved German", so that what can be derived from it, may flow directly into his soul - and Paracelsus renders what is Natural Science for him, in his beloved German? And many other trails we could cite, showing that there dwelt in Goethe something of the resurrected Paracelsus, when he created the Faust-figure. Yes, we might say that where Faust tells of the intimate relationship between himself and his father - Goethe only transposing into the ideal - we see what often passed between Paracelsus and his father when they sallied forth together. In short, Paracelsus may appear before our eyes, when we are impressed by Faust as a figure of Goethe's creation, of Goethe's art.

When we have the two figures side by side before us, something rises to meet us, which shows in a no less characteristic fashion, how Goethe could have made something quite different, both of the Faust-figure and of the 16th century Paracelsus-figure. Let us study Goethe's Faust: he is dissatisfied with what the different Sciences - Medicine, Theology, etc. - can give him. Goethe, however, could not represent Faust in such a way as to place his direct merging into Nature, before us. Not that Goethe was incapable of doing this; he must have had some reason for not doing it. Why did he not do it?

To begin with, it strikes us - and this is not merely an external circumstance, an external fact - that Paracelsus - his inwardly harmonious soul having grown up with the Spirit of Nature - died at just about the age in which we can picture Faust saying to himself:

"I've now, alas! Philosophy,
Med'cine and Jurisprudence too,
And, to my cost Theology,
With ardent labor, studied through".

And then, what Faust further experienced, he experienced at an age that Paracelsus never reached in the physical world. Thus Goethe sets before us a kind of Paracelsus, at the age at which Paracelsus died; but a Paracelsus who could not have grown up with the spirit of Nature.

And how does he set him before us? Although he shows that Faust had attained to a deep understanding of Nature, and to a kind of kinship with Nature - although Goethe shows this, yet there is a difference between Paracelsus and Faust. We feel this when Faust speaks thus to the Spirit in Nature:

"Spirit sublime! Thou gav'st me, gav'st me all
For which I prayed. Not vainly hast thou turned
To me thy countenance in flaming fire.
Thou gav'st me glorious Nature as a royal realm,
And also power to feel and enjoy her.
Not merely with a cold and wondering glance,
Thou dost permit me to look in her deep breast,
As in the bosom of a friend to gaze.
Before me thou dost lead her living tribes,
And dost in silent grove, in air and stream
Teach me to know my kindred."

Faust, who was previously dissevered from Nature, now grows as it were together with her. But it cannot be shown that Faust penetrates so vitally into the details of Nature, into the close particularisations of Nature, as Paracelsus did; it cannot be shown that this appears directly, while he is speaking to the sublime Spirit of Nature. Goethe cannot show us that Faust grew up with Nature; he is obliged to show us a purely inner soul-evolution: Faust had to experience an evolution purely of the soul and spirit, in order to arrive at the profundity of created Nature and the World. So we see that, although Faust often reminds us of Paracelsus, yet all that he experiences is gone through in the moral sphere, intellectually, or in the life of emotion, whereas Paracelsus has so to speak, antennae reaching out directly into Nature. And so far does this go, that when, at the end of Part II, Faust is able to rise to selflessness, to fervent love, to a spiritual height, this is not because he grows closer to Nature, but rather because he is farther withdrawn from her.

Goethe makes Faust go blind:

"Night seems to penetrate deeply and still more deep,
"But yet, within, clear light is shining."

Faust becomes a mystic, becomes a personality developing his soul in every direction, a personality who, in the Mephisto-forces, sees himself opposed to all adversaries of the soul. In a word, Faust has to develop himself purely within his soul, has to waken the spirit in his soul. Then when this spirit is awakened within him - not, as with Paracelsus, in direct intercourse with Nature - then indeed, what is clear to the senses is destroyed by his going blind, by his being no longer able physically to see, "but yet within there shines a brilliant light". Faust becomes aware (this we learn from the end of the poem) that when a man unfolds his inner soul-forces, the Spirit which prevails in Nature also, urges him upward. And when this Spirit is sufficiently developed, he then attains directly to that which pervades both Man and Nature as the spiritual force. To this then, Faust attained eventually.

Thus to bring his Faust to the same goal as that which Paracelsus reached, Goethe made him take an inward, spiritual path. If we consider the cause of this, we arrive at the explanation that the Powers of the age condition the successive evolution-epochs, condition historical life. Then we come to realize that there is meaning in the fact that the year of Paracelsus's death lies slightly before that great upheaval for Natural Science evoked by the work of Copernicus. Paracelsus's life falls in the epoch when it was still accepted as correct that the Earth stood still in the universe and the Sun moved round it; this still operated for Paracelsus also. It was not until after his death that the completely different way of regarding the Sun - and world-system -  came in. The ground was actually dragged from under men's feet; he who now-a-days accepts the Copernican system as a matter of course, can have no idea of the storm which broke out, when the Earth was "set in motion". We may say that the ground beneath men's feet literally rocked. The effect of this however, was that when Man stood at the peak of culture, the Spirit no longer flowed directly into his soul like an aroma, as it did with Paracelsus. Had Copernicus confined himself to what the senses perceive, he would never have established his world-system; but as he did not credit the senses, he was able to establish it by going beyond sense-appearance by means of intellect and reason. Such was the course of evolution. Man had to develop his spirit and his reason directly. And the centuries since the 16th have not passed without significance.

While Goethe had to raise his Faust from a Paracelsus-figure of the 16th century to a Faust-figure of the 18th, he had to take into account that Man could no longer unite with Nature in such a direct and primitive way as Paracelsus did. Hence Faust was a character who could not reveal the forces of existence, the meaning of being, through a direct growing up with Nature, but only through the hidden forces from the depths of the soul. At the same time, however, the essential point appears, namely, that the stream of existence does not flow meaninglessly past mankind. As a great, outstanding figure, Paracelsus is a son of his age. And in Faust, Goethe has given us a picture, a figure poetically created, whom in a certain sense, he made a son of his age, who learnt to use reason and intellect for the Natural Science of his age, and could also elaborate the mystical element. Hence we must say, the fact that Goethe felt himself compelled to present, not a Paracelsus-figure, but something different, shows the whole section of time between the 16th and the 18th centuries, in which the evolution of European humanity was carried out. The significance of such a section appears in the greatest geniuses, and therein lies the difference between these two figures. For those who wish to understand Goethe, it is in the highest degree interesting to study his creation of the Faust-figure, for his Faust makes clear to us more about himself than any of his other characters.

If we consider Spiritual Science or Anthroposophy from the point of view of these observations, we can feel that it is clearly related to Goethe, and in another way, also closely related to Paracelsus. In what way to Paracelsus? Paracelsus could obtain the deepest insight into Nature from the forces developed in his soul through direct intercourse with Nature; but the age in which he who advances with evolution, can reach the foundations of existence as Paracelsus did, passed away with Copernicus, Galileo, Giordano Bruno and Kepler. Another age has dawned in Faust, and Goethe has shown the type of this age - an age in which work must be done with the hidden forces of the soul, so that from the depths of the soul, higher forces of the sense may grow. As the eyes see colors, the ears hear tones, so will these higher senses perceive what is in the environment as Spirit, and what with the ordinary senses, cannot be seen as Spirit. So then, it is not by growing one with Nature as Paracelsus did, that modern Man must experience the deeper soul-forces, but by turning away from Nature. When however, he reaches the point of raising these deeper forces out of his soul, of developing an understanding for the spiritual and supernatural, which lives and weaves unseen behind the visible, the sense-perceived, in Nature, when Man elaborates the Faust-element in himself, then at last, the Faust-element will become clairvoyant insight into Nature. And in a certain way, by the unfolding of the inner Spirit, every man can experience (he does not need to go blind, for this), even if he does not believe the riddle of the world to be solved - he can yet experience, through what his eyes and external senses teach him, that he can nevertheless say: "Within, there shines a brilliant light". And that is something which can lead us nearer to the Spirit that bears sway within us all.

And so the path from Paracelsus to Goethe is, in the highest degree, interesting, when we see coming to life again in the Faust-figure, that which for Paracelsus, and also for Faust, was the essential thing, namely, that Man cannot penetrate with his external senses into the depths of the universe, and into the laws with which the eternal, immortal Spirit of Man is akin, but only through a direct growing up with Nature, as in Paracelsus, or through the development of higher senses, as Goethe indicated - though only poetically - in the continuation of the 16th century Faust-figure. So more and more for Paracelsus, that became a principle, which Goethe had emphasized for his Faust, with the words:

"Inscrutable in broadest light,
"To be unveiled by force she doth refuse.
"What she reveals not to thy mental sight,
"Thou wilt not wrest from her with bars and screws."

This does not mean - either in the sense of Paracelsus or of Goethe - that Man cannot search out the Spirit of Nature, but that the Spirit in Nature, does indeed reveal itself to the Spirit awakened in the soul, though not with the instruments used in the laboratory, not with levers and screws. Hence Goethe says:

"What she reveals not to thy mental sight,
"Thou wilt not wrest from her with bars and screws".

To the Spirit, however, she can be revealed. This is the correct interpretation of Goethe's words. For when Goethe evoked the echo of Paracelsus in Faust, he was in complete understanding with Paracelsus, and Paracelsus would have accepted, with Goethe, the truth of the sagacious words:
 

"[If he] Who would describe and study aught alive, 
Seeks first to drive out the living spirit; 
Then are lifeless fragments in his hand, 

Missing, alas! only the spiritual bond!"

And to this, Goethe adds - this was when he first conceived Faust, when he himself was still youthfully arrogant, and in the sense of Paracelsus, not belonging to the "super-fine, the cat-in-pattens" type:

"This process, chemists name, in learned thesis, 

(Themselves, quite unawares, they branded themselves donkeys), 
With the high-sounding words: Naturae encheiresis."

Later he altered this to: "Mocking themselves quite unawares", as we find it now in Faust. This means, however, that no one attempting to approach Nature without having developed the higher forces of knowledge, can discern the foundations of Nature, nor can he discern to what extent the immortal Spirit of Man is interdependent on Nature, how he resembles it, or to quote Jacob Boheme, where he "stood of yore".

He who follows the path from Paracelsus to Goethe, as we have tried to sketch it with a few strokes today, finds that Paracelsus and Goethe are living adherents of the opposite principle - not of that conception of Nature and the world, met with in Goethe's lines:

"Who would describe and study aught alive,

Seeks first to drive out the living spirit;
Then are lifeless fragments in his hand,
Missing, alas! only the spiritual bond!"

   No! Paracelsus and Goethe so approach Nature, so approach the human being, that for them, the following is true:

"Who would discern and 'stablish aught alive,
"Seeks, in the depths of being, Spirit-light to find;
"He has the fragments then within his hand,
"And never, therefore, can mistake
"The truth of things, within the spiritual bond."

Life of the Earth in Past & Future- 17th February 1923

Answers to questions about Colors and Rocks

I will deal first with the question concerning rocks, for that can well be treated in connection with the matters we have been studying hitherto.

You know, of course, that when anything is built on earth it is necessary to take into consideration the laws of gravity, weight, and many other things, for instance, (we shall be speaking of this later) elasticity.

Now, let us suppose a tower is to be built, a tower like that of Cologne Cathedral, or like the Eiffel Tower. Of course, one must be certain to build in such a way that the thing in question does not fall down; and if the laws of gravity are exactly known, it can be built so that it will not fall. But the highest towers on earth are not built without a base; and if the height is about ten times the base - 1 to 10, that is - the highest towers can be erected.

Thus a tower of 1 to 10 is the highest that can be built, otherwise, at any shock - which may always be given by a movement of the earth, a gust of wind, etc. - the tower would fall.

But besides this, care must be taken that such a tower has something elastic in itself. The tip of it always swings a little; so that what is called elastic force must be taken into consideration. The tower will always swing, but as soon as it swings too much, it will come to grief.

The Eiffel Tower swings quite considerably at the top; but care must always be taken that it does not swing beyond its base.

Now, gentlemen, when you look - let us say - at a wheat-stalk, you will find that these laws are disregarded. A wheat-stalk has a small base. It is in reality nothing else than a tower; yet a wheat-stalk, with so small a base, grows very tall, and if you work it out, the proportion is by no means that which must be maintained in mechanical building - approximately 1 to 10; it may be, for instance, 1 to 400, in some stems 1 to 500.

And so, gentlemen, according to the laws which we, as mechanicians, apply on earth, such a tower must unconditionally fall. For when the wind shakes it, its elastic forces are not such as you can understand according to the laws which mechanicians must observe.

Then, if you wanted to put something especially heavy at the top of the Eiffel Tower, you would see that it was impossible. But this tower which is a stalk, has the ear fixed to the top of it, and rocking in the wind. You see, this contradicts all architectural laws.

Now, if we examine the material of which the corn-stalk is made, we get, first, wood, that is to say, a woody material; then that which you know as bast. You see that in trees. And what is within this, is now the real building material: silica, quartz, true silicic acid. And it is hard quartz, such as is found in the Alps, and, for example, in granite or gneiss. Thus this quartz forms a complete framework.

And besides these, the fourth material is water. This mortar then, made of wood, bast, water and flint, defies all earthly laws. So a blade of grass is also a tower, built entirely out of these materials; it can be rocked in the wind, does not break, rights itself when the wind ceases, calmly regains its position when the weather is favorable. All this you know.

But gentlemen, such forces - forces with which such things can be built out of the earth, are non-existent on the earth, completely non-existent. And if you ask: Well, then, where do these forces come from? the answer must simply be: The Eiffel Tower is dead, the wheat-stalk is alive. But it does not receive its life from the earth; it receives it from the whole cosmic surrounding. Just as gravity only draws the Eiffel Tower downwards, so the stalk grows in such a way that it is not supported from below. - When we build the Eiffel Tower, we must lay one material upon another, and thus the lower does indeed always support the upper. With the wheat-stalk this is not the case; the wheat-stalk is, indeed, drawn out into cosmic space.

If you picture the earth thus (he draws it), and the stalks there, they will all be drawn out into cosmic space, because the latter is completely filled with a fine substance called ether, a substance which also lives in the plants. But this life does not come from the earth; it comes from cosmic space. So we can say: Life comes simply out of cosmic space.

And that is how it is that when the ovum develops in the body of the mother, the mother's body gives only the substance. What works upon the ovum is the whole cosmic space. It is that which gives life to it. So, you see, cosmic space works into all that lives.
Now look at plants; they grow, first of all, under the earth. If this is the earth (he draws it), the plants grow within it. But this earth is not an indifferent mass; it is actually something quite wonderful.

In this earth there are all sorts of substances; but in ancient days three substances were quite especially important in it. One was a substance called mica. Very little of it is found in plants today, but though there is so little of it, it is extraordinarily important. You may perhaps remember having seen flakes of mica - mica is in the form of flakes or scales, little flakes which are often transparent. The earth was at one time interspersed with these flakes of mica. They lay in this direction (he draws). Then the earth was still soft, there were forces of this kind. And there were other forces opposite to them, running in this direction (again he draws), so that there was an actual network in the earth. These other forces are contained today in silica, in quartz.

And between them there is still another main substance: that is clay. And this clay unites the other two, filling as it were in the network. As a rock it is called feldspar.

Biotite Mica

Thus at one time the earth was composed mainly of three kinds of rock. But it was all soft and pulpy. There was the mica, which was endeavoring to make the earth scaly, so that the earth would have become scaly in a horizontal direction. Then there was the quartz, which radiated in this way; (vertical line) and finally the feldspar, which cemented the two together.

We find these constituents today, if we take the clay found anywhere in the field. These three materials were at one time mixed in the earth; and today they are to be found out in the mountains. If we take a piece of granite, we find that it is quite granular, there are splinters in it. These splinters are split up mica-flakes. Then there are quite hard grains; those are quartz. Then there is the uniting grit, which is feldspar. These three substances have been softened and granulated; and they are to be found today out in the mountains. They form the foundation of the hardest mountain ranges.

Thus, ever since the Earth was soft, they have been pounded, ground down and mixed by all the various forces which are at work in the earth; and today they are disintegrated in the mountains. But the remains of these ancient substances, and especially the forces of these ancient substances, are still found everywhere in the earth. And out of these remains the plants are built up from the Cosmos.

So we may say: Well, if these cosmic forces do still work out there in the mountains, they can do no more. These rocks are crumbled, disintegrated, granulated; and they are too hard to become plants. But with that which is within the earth, they can still be used to build up the plants in cosmic space, especially because a plant always gives its most important substances and forces to the germ.

You see, gentlemen, a study of this kind which takes into consideration how the whole Cosmos collaborates with all that is alive, has no place in modern Science. Lately, as you have perhaps read, a lecture was given in Basle, in which the speaker explained how life must have originated on earth. He said: One can hardly imagine that through a mere mingling, or chemical compounding, of substances on earth, life can have arisen.

Then it must have come out of cosmic space. But how? - Now it is interesting to see how a modern scientist imagines that life can come out of cosmic space. He says to himself: Well now, if it is not on the earth, it must come from other stars. Now, the nearest star, which might perhaps at one time have shot forth material which then flew to the Earth - the nearest star is so far from the Earth that the material which was thus split off, would have needed forty thousand years to fly to the Earth.

So one must imagine - people say - that the Earth was once a fiery fluid body, a fiery body. Then there can have been no life on it, otherwise it would, of course, have been burnt up. But the Earth gradually cooled. When it had cooled off, it was in a condition to receive life, if it had flown to it from the nearest star, as it was thought to have done, (taking 40,000 years to do it).

Now, said the lecturer, one cannot imagine that a germ of life, a tiny life-germ, wandered for 40,000 years through cosmic space, which, besides, had a temperature of minus 220 degrees Celsius of cold, not heat! And that then, when it reached the Earth, life would arise. Before, however sufficient germs had flown to the Earth, they would have been burnt up.

It is further supposed that when the Earth had cooled enough, they would thrive, said the speaker but that simply could not be. So we do not know whence life comes.

But we do see that it comes out of cosmic space. We clearly see that, in all that lives, it is not merely the forces of the Earth that are at work. For we only make use of the forces of the Earth for the Eiffel Tower, for instance. And in such a tower as the grass-stalk, it is not merely the forces of the Earth, but the forces of the whole Cosmos, which are at work. And when the Earth was still soft, gentlemen, when mica, feldspar and silica were liquefied together, then the whole Earth was under the influence of the cosmos, and was a gigantic plant.

Therefore if you go out into the mountains today, and find granite there, or gneiss, which is distinct from granite because the mica is more plentiful in it , more apparent - if you go out today into the mountains, and look at the granite or the gneiss, you are looking at the remains of those old plant-formations. The whole Earth was a plant. And precisely as, when a plant withers today, it gives up its mineral constituents to the earth, so, when it was still a plant, the whole terrestrial globe gave up, later, its mineral constituents to the Earth. And so we have today the mountain-ranges.

Thus we may say: The hardest mountain-ranges that exist, had their origin in plant-beings, and the whole Earth was a kind of plant.

I have already told you how the earth looked when this primeval rock had ceased to be in a plant condition, but all was still soft. Our present animals and men were not then in existence, but the Megatherion and all the creatures I described to you. But before all this came about, the earth was a giant plant in cosmic space. And if you observe a plant to-day and enlarge it, you find even now that it resembles the mountain formations outside. For the universe only acts on the plant as a whole; its minutest parts are already stone. Thus, briefly, the earth has once been alive and what we find to-day in the hardest mountain rocks is the remains of a living earth.

But the earth's solid, mineral matter has originated in yet another way. If you go out on the ocean you find island formations. Here is the sea (sketch) and at a certain depth under the sea there live tiny creatures in real colonies — the coral-organisms or polyps. These coral polyps have the characteristic of continuously secreting chalk. The chalk remains there and the island is finally covered by their deposited chalk secretions. And then sometimes the ground sinks in here, is submerged, and a lake is formed. There is a ring of chalk which the coral polyps have left behind. Now the earth as a whole is continually sinking in the very regions where these polyps are depositing their chalk. They can only live in the sea itself, so they go down deeper and deeper, while the chalk is left behind up above.

Thus one can still find in the sea chalk deposits which are derived from living creatures, namely, the coral polyps. Formerly there was animal life where now in the Juras we find limestone or chalk. The limestone is the deposit of former animal life. If you go into the central Alpine region where the hardest rocks are, there you have the deposited plants. If you go into the Juras, there you have what is deposited by animals. The whole earth has once been living; originally it was a plant, then an animal. What we have to-day as rock is the remains of life.

It is simply nonsense to imagine that life is built up from dead substances through chemical combination. Life comes out of the ether-filled universe. It is nonsense to say that dead substances could unite and come to life — what is called “original creation.” No, it is precisely the dead substances that are derived from the living, are deposited by the living. As our bones are separated out — in the mother's body they are not there at first — so is everything, our bony structure, etc., formed out of the living. The living exists first and only afterwards comes the dead. The ether surrounds us and it draws everything upwards just as the earth's gravity draws everything down. It draws upwards but it does not bring death, as gravity does. The more you inhale gravity, the more you become gouty or diabetic or something of the sort. To that extent we become dead. And the more the upward forces prevail in us, the more living we become.

HEALING FORCES IN HUMAN NATURE

I now come to a part of the question which Herr B. has asked. Let us imagine then that I have someone before me who is ill, and I can say to myself: What is wrong with him is that he has not enough of the forces that work outside in the universe. He has too much of the forces of gravity — everything imaginable is deposited in him. Now I remember! Yes, I say to myself, it was quartz, silica, that at one time let forces stream out into the universe. If I prepare silica in such a way that the original forces become active again, that is, if I make a preparation from silica, mix it with other substances by which the silica element gets etheric force again and give this as a remedy, then I may be able to make a cure. Very good results can come from a silica preparation. And so in medicine one can make use again of forces which at one time existed in silica in living form. Great achievements in medicine can be secured if one reflects upon the condition of the earth when it was fully alive, when the silica was still under the influence of the universe.

Therefore when too little is living in a patient and he needs a connection with the universe, give him substances which lie hardened outside, and which one can very well employ as medicaments.

The head is mostly outside in cosmic space, so it can most easily be cured with silica; the stomach is more closely connected with the earth, hence it can most easily be cured with mica. And that which lies more in the centre, the lungs, etc. can well be cured with feldspar, if it is prepared in an appropriate way.

Now you see, if we understand Nature, we actually understand also what are the healing forces for human nature. But one must have a sense for the way in which the cosmos collaborates with our Earth.

 You see, one can always explain definite matters only for definite occasions. Thus, now that we are further advanced, I can give you a more definite explanation of the migration of birds. Our modern Science is very abstract concerning bird-migration in autumn and spring. In spring the birds forsake their warmer haunts; and in autumn when it grows colder, the more northerly regions. But there are birds which fly over the ocean in a south-easterly direction - and, it is very strange, these birds fly extremely fast and do not rest on the way. That can be proved, because it can be proven that there are no islands at all on the paths which these birds often follow. And they fly very high, so that ordinary Science cannot answer the question: What, actually do they breathe up there? For one would expect them to be suffocated at that height. And the scientists have not hit upon an explanation of how these birds find their way. Some have said: Well, it is an inherited faculty; the young ones have always inherited it from the old. And then the old birds teach the young ones, and so it is quite easy for the young ones to do it. Thus, when the autumn comes, the old swallows set up a school, the young are taught, the old ones fly in front, the young, behind, imitating them. That is how men have pictured it.

But gentlemen, not all migratory birds do this; this is quite a peculiar case. It often happens with migrants - for instance, in Africa - that when spring comes to us, the old migrants fly away first, returning to us. The young ones hold out longer, because they are still strong; the old ones make their escape earlier, and leave the young ones behind. They neither teach them, nor act as guides; the young ones have to find their way alone.

Some people have said: Oh, well, birds see to a great distance. In fact if it is a case of Africa they would even have to see through the earth! One doesn't get very far with these things. But I will give you an example by which you can see how the matter really lies. There is something else about which one can wonder how it makes its way — namely, a ship. How does a ship find its direction if it is to sail from Europe to America? It takes its direction from the compass. When as yet there were no compasses it went rather badly with the ships; they had to find their direction from the stars. So they steer their course by the compass, that is to say, by forces which are invisible, which are present in the ether. These are the very forces by which the birds find their direction! Only we men have no longer a sense for these invisible forces. The birds, however, have a sense for them, they have an inner compass. What we only learn laboriously, by observing the etheric forces with compass, magnet, etc., a bird has within itself. It flies by the ether, by what is working in universal space.

And so we can say: the earth is everywhere surrounded by ether and the ether contains life-forces. They come from the universe, take hold of earthly substances and from them bring about the living.

But something always remains within as remains of life. When, for instance, you take coral chalk, there is always something left that a little recalls life, something that has branched off from the living. So it is possible to find all sorts of things within it still, which can be administered as quite a good remedy.

And if, as I said, you take silica, which has already become terribly hard, and make use of it as a medicament, you can heal head ailments very effectively.

Thus life is still within it. The whole of it has once been alive. We cannot say that minerals are still living to-day, but they have lived once. They were once constituents of life. There is a remnant left in them which we can extract by all sorts of means and through which they can serve very well as remedies.

So this question as to whether there is also life in stone has been answered. If people only calculate with the forces acting on earth, then they proclaim that the earth looked different millions of years ago. They take no account in this of heavenly space. I said to you lately that if one takes into account what comes from the heavens one does not arrive at anything like such vast numbers of years.

One discovers, however, that here in our regions everything was still frozen and covered with ice, while over in Asia there was already quite a high degree of civilisation with much wisdom spread among the inhabitants.

But one comes to see that in a certain way our earthly life depends on the life outside, the life in the universe. When one goes back six, seven, eight thousand years, the earth with its mineral rocks was quite different from what it is to-day; not so much externally, but internally quite different. And then one goes back farther and farther to the soft condition of the earth. If we want to direct ourselves by the cosmos, we must observe it in the right way.

Now one can observe the cosmos by observing the position of the sun's rising. At the present day the sun in spring rises on the morning of 21st March with the constellation of Pisces behind it. But if one goes farther back — for instance, into the times before the Birth of Christ, the sun rose, not in Pisces, but in the constellation of Aries. That means the vernal point has moved along. If the sun rises in spring on 21st March in Pisces, then about 2,160 years ago it rose in Aries, still earlier in Taurus, still earlier in Gemini. There are twelve such constellations.

Thus the rising position of the sun is always moving in a backward direction; it moves round a whole circle, so that the vernal point goes quite round the earth. Is that understandable? It is always moving farther round from west to east.

One therefore arrives at the fact that formerly the sun rose in Aries, earlier in Taurus, still earlier in Gemini, then in Cancer, Leo, Virgo, then in Libra, in Scorpio, Sagittarius, Capricorn, Aquarius and then, as to-day, in Pisces. So when we go back 2,160 years it rose in Aries, another 2,160 years in Taurus, another 2,160 in Gemini, still another in Cancer, another in Leo. Then we come round again until at one time it was rising in Pisces. We come right round. (Sketch.) In 25,920 years the sun makes a revolution round the whole universe.

That is very interesting, and by such a course of the stars one can see how everything on earth changes. With the conditions brought by our present vernal point, we have our high mountains with the dead granite masses, containing feldspar, quartz and mica. It is all dried up, devastated. So it was, too, 25,920 years ago: similar conditions then prevailed on earth. But in between it was all different. For instance, the sun rose at one time in spring in Libra, between Virgo and Scorpio. Then the whole earth was alive, soft, was in fact a kind of plant. We need not go back more than 15,000 years at most, then through the quite different position of the sun the earth had a plant nature, and later an animal nature. We should be able to follow from the sun's course how the influences coming in from cosmic space have altered conditions on the earth.

You must think to yourselves, as you go back in time: the rock in the primeval Alps which is quite hard and solid to-day begins to flow, somewhat as iron flows in an iron foundry. It is naturally not quite the same, for when we go back the flow is reversed, as it were, it is in process of becoming solid. And if we go forward into the future, we shall again have the sun in Libra — for now it rises in Pisces, after 2,160 years in Aquarius, then in Capricorn, Sagittarius and once more in Libra, the Scales. At this future time when the sun rises once more in the Scales, the whole primeval Alpine range will have dissolved. The dense quartzes will have become fluid again, the earth will once more be plant-like and men and animals return to the condition in which they formerly were. In the meanwhile, however, they have absorbed all that they could take in on the earth.

So everything really goes in a circle. We look back to an earlier time when the earth and its hardest formations were fluid. Then the cosmos above brought forth such creatures as I once described to you; they arose through the in-working of heavenly forces and died out. Then all cooled down, solid formations arose and gradually there came the life of to-day. But it all goes back again. The granular quartz and granite, etc., are dissolved and former conditions return, but at a higher stage of evolution.

If you take in your hand a piece of granite containing quartz, you can say: This piece of granite with its quartz will at a future time be alive again. It has lived in former ages and to-day it is dead. It has formed solid ground upon which we can walk about. When we did not need to walk, the solid ground was not there. But one day it will come to life again.

In fact we can say that the earth sleeps as regards cosmic space — only the sleep is long, 15,000 years at least. When the earth was alive it was awake, it was in connection with the whole universe and the life forces of the universe brought forth upon it the great beasts. Later, as solidity was reached, these forces brought forth the human beings. Human beings nowadays have a pleasant time of it on earth — of course in regard to the universe too — they can go about on solid ground. But this solid ground will wake up again — it is really only asleep — it will wake up again and become active life.

If we take a piece of chalk, limestone, just an ordinary bit from the Juras, it is the remains of a portion of life. It is deposited from life, but someday it will be alive again, it is between life and life and is really only asleep.

Now we can use chalk, or calcium, very well as a medical preparation when, for instance, we find that children cannot absorb proper nourishment. This is particularly the case in Germany to-day — it is dreadful there now. When I recently went to Stuttgart to inspect the Waldorf School again, I visited the first Class. We have twenty-eight children in this Class, of whom only nineteen were present, the others were all ill. In another Class, fifteen were ill. And when one goes into it one finds terrible conditions. They brought a little boy into my consulting room and asked: What is to be done with him? He can no longer eat and the doctor has given him up.

Through persistent undernourishment, the digestive organs gradually form the habit of not being able to digest and they refuse everything. People can no longer eat, no matter how much one gives them. You can give them Quaker meals (The Society of Friends supplied the Waldorf School with food gifts) and everything possible, but nothing can help the child because his organs have ceased to act. He looks rather fat and greyish-yellow. What is to be done? The organs must first be made fit again to take in nourishment. Here one is well served by the little bit of life that is in calcium. When calcium is rightly used as a remedy, one can reawaken these sleeping digestive forces so that the child can live. One must give a mixture of calcium with other substances as it does not work by itself alone; it must be made to pass over into the organism. The calcium is absorbed if it is given in 5 per cent dilution.

But what is one using in giving calcium in this dilution? One is using the forces which once, in earlier times, were life forces in the chalk. They are still in it and can be used to reawaken life. But if one uses calcium in high dilution, in homeopathic doses, as one says, not 5 per cent but 5/10,000 — not even 5 per 1,000 but 5/10,000 — this, mixed with the other substances, acts on the head. It immediately becomes a remedy for the head.

If one gives the calcium allopathically it acts on the digestive organs, but in a quite high dilution it acts on the head and one can vary one's treatment in this way. It is also possible to ask: what is one using in the high dilutions of calcium? Here one is using the forces of the future which are still in it and will come into existence again in future ages.

You see, we must know nature in this way and then it can give us remedies. For there was once life everywhere and will be so again; death only stands between two lives. From primeval rock it is possible to use both past and future life forces in the right way.

This makes us realize something else. We find in our modern world both allopaths and homeopaths. The allopaths cure allopathically and the homeopaths, homeopathically. Well, but as a matter of fact many illnesses cannot be cured homeopathically, many must be cured allopathically. Remedies must be prepared differently. One cannot be a fanatic who swears by words, one must administer the remedies out of a full knowledge — sometimes so, sometimes so. Anthroposophy does not go in for catchwords — allopathic — homeopathic — but it studies the matter and says: the allopath works principally on the stomach, intestines, kidneys; there he is successful. Homeopathy is successful when the source of the illness is in the head, as in influenza. Many illnesses have their origin in the head. One must know how things really take their course in nature. People invent catchwords to-day as they no longer have real knowledge. Catchwords are always invented when things have ceased to be understood.

It is naturally not easy to arrive at the truth, for the Allopath says: I have often cured such and such ... and the Homeopath says: I have often cured such and such. ... Naturally they always leave out the diseases they have not cured!

But take a man like Professor Virchow of Berlin, a doctor and professor who certainly could not be accused of not standing completely in modern medicine, who has even been called a genuine Liberal by the Free Thought Party. Yet with regard to cures he has been obliged to admit the following: “When a doctor in our modern medical world can show that he has cured one hundred people, the truth really is that fifty of these would have got well without him, and 20% would have recovered even if he had used quite different remedies. So 70% of cures are not to be attributed to modern medicine — 30% at most.” This is what Virchow calculated and he stood fully within the world of modern medicine.

It can definitely be stated that the right remedy, rightly employed, is effective; everyone can convince himself of that. Quicksilver, for instance, although it has aftereffects, is nevertheless efficacious. And so one must just find the right thing. Sometimes it is terribly complicated, sometimes the organism has even become too brittle to stand the cure. But in a certain sense, through a real knowledge of what exists in nature, we can see how the various substances work. As dead substances they are really only in the middle between two periods of life and we can see their effect on man. But it is essential to have a real knowledge concerning their life.

Now the peculiar thing is that if one wants to understand anything, one must always start from life. Even in regard to colors we must take our start from life.

Sometimes when one sees modern pictures one has the feeling that there is no flesh behind, but that wood has simply been smeared with color. Modern painters are quite unable to reproduce the tint of flesh-color, because they have no living feeling that flesh color is created out of the human being. Nowhere does it appear on any other material. One has to understand flesh color and then the other colors can be understood. I will speak more about this on another occasion. Flesh color must be understood first.

The child that they brought to me in the Waldorf School and who had been treated with calcium/lime by the school doctor had completely lost the flesh color and had become yellow from within outwards ... let us hope that people don't say that a proper remedy was not used! Living activity is inherent in color and we are therefore experimenting in using the less dead for colors. So when we painted the Goetheanum we used plant colors as they come more out of the living element. In color too you must go to the living things.

Next Wednesday I will explain more about this. You see, the question as to whether rocks also have life was not too stupid; it was quite sensible. For we have been able to observe how, in the course of the life-periods of Earth, stones live, become dead again, and so on, and how this affects human life. 

-Rudolf Steiner