Anthroposophy, A Fragment
GA 45
Appendices
Appendix 1
An earlier version of text beginning with "We are present with our
I... " page 100, in Chapter 3.
The text below can be assumed to be the first
version of the contents beginning on page 100. These contents, however, were
rewritten by Rudolf Steiner in the form in which they then appeared in his
final manuscript and in the corrected printed sheets. The sentence "We are
present with our I..." (page 100) and the words "We are totally
justified..." (page 101) are the same in both versions, but the content of
what follows them is different.
We are present with our I in everything there is to experience in the sense world, and our soul world develops within the I on the basis of sensory experiences. We are not present at the building up of our sensory organism. Reflection, however, will tell us that existence cannot Stop at what we perceive with our senses, because without an existence that is imperceptible to the senses, we could have no senses to use for sensory perception.
We are totally justified, in contrast to the human being who is evident in the sense world, in speaking of another human being who cannot be revealed in this world. The first interacts with the sense-perceptible world and, out of it, develops a soul life; the second interacts with a different world and develops, out of it, the capacities for sense perception. The second human being is contained, as it were, within the first. But the second makes up a much finer configuration therein than the first. Soul life, as it develops on the basis of the world of sense perception, reveals itself in the outer form of the human being's configuration. Just consider the face of someone on whom the sun of life has always smiled, and see how different it is from one on which life's heavy sorrows have left significant traces. If we continue to reflect along these lines, we will soon arrive at ideas of how in the physiognomy, in the expression, in the gesture, and even in the form of the person's body, the character of the soul life is revealed. Within limits, this is also a result of the interrelationship between the human being and the sense-perceptible outer world. However, this revelation has something unspecific about it; it is constantly shifting and evolving. It does not offer a stable configuration. On the other hand, the capacity to have sense perceptions as such is, to a great extent, something finished and solid, forming a basis on which we actually build up our mobile, conscious soul life.
Just as it is not far-fetched to differentiate between the outer world and the inner human soul world — through their interrelationship, the latter appears as a reflection of the former — so it is not far-fetched to assume a comparable difference between a hidden outer world and a human inner world that lies concealed behind the one in which the I lives when basing itself on the sense-perceptible world alone. We can distinguish between the world that lies spread out before the human being — when one or more of the gates of the senses is open — and what is within the human being but connected to that world by means of the interrelationship between them. Here we will apply the term "sense world" to what is in the world spread out in this way. What we encounter within the human being, as just described, will be called the "I-human being." For the moment, let us not associate any-thing with this name other than its immediate usage here.
The world out of which the capacity for sense perception is formed — in a similar way, for example, to how mental pictures are formed out of the sense world — will be called the "etheric world"; and what is born in the human being out of this etheric world, just as the I-being is born out of the sense world, will be called the "astral being." In using the term "etheric world" we should not think of the "ether" of physics, nor should we think,of anything other than what has just been characterized here in using the term "astral being." In this way, an etheric world underlies the sense world just as an astral being underlies the I-being. Just as the etheric world cannot be sense-perceptible because it is what generates the senses in the first place, so the astral being also,cannot be experienced with the senses because it must precede the development of sensory capacities.
We can now tackle looking at the human being from yet another side. To begin with, the human being appears as a being within the sense world. This appearance, however, is subject to change. In different ages of life, the particularities of the human being are different. When we look at a child as a sense-perceptible being, we can in no way see from what the senses present what it will develop into in adulthood. And yet we must assume that the circumstances, the forces, that will cause the adult to emerge from the child are already present. Here, too, an exact reflection shows that existence, or what is real, conceals within itself more than is perceptible in the sense world.
Describing the process of growth provides contemplation with an opportunity to gain an idea of what is concealed here. Until the second dentition around the seventh year, the activity of what is concealed works primarily at configuring the outer human being. Around this time, the organs of the outer body have assumed their lasting configurations. From then on, although the limbs continue to grow, the configurations that have been established are never actually reshaped. From then on, the concealed inwardness begins a life within itself, and opens itself up to the forces that unfold their activity more in this inwardness. In the first years of life, the inner forces strive toward the outer body as formative forces; in the following years, they remain more inwardly predisposed, until they are mature enough to transpose their nature onto another being — that is, until the individual becomes capable of reproduction. We must recognize what develops within the human being, imperceptible to the senses, to the point of sexual maturity, as what can be transmitted to one's descendants.
At this point we must consider something that is important for our understanding of the nature of the human being. The conditions for what can be transmitted to one's physical descendants lie in something that achieves a certain completion in its development when sexual maturity is reached. If anything of what the human being acquires at a later stage in life is to be passed on, it must first be incorporated into the forces that are already present at sexual maturity. It can be passed on only indirectly, through these forces. Once sexual maturity is achieved, of course, all the essential conditions for heredity must already be developed.
At sexual maturity, what transmits itself from inside to outside ceases to develop in the human being. In the early stages of childhood, it reveals itself as the forces shaping the body; later, it works inwardly in such a way that the human being can pass on configurations to descendants. If human development continues beyond this stage, it can only take place inwardly. What continues to develop must primarily be experienced as inner content, as soul content. This, however, may not be equated with that conscious content of soul that is lit up by the I and develops out of sensory perception. There is a certain inner development that is not in the hands of the I in the same way as the development of conscious soul content. Coming to meet the soul life that is stimulated from outside through sensory perception is not the same as what comes from inside and causes each individual to take in the sense-perceptible outer world with a very particular nuance of soul. That is, there is something within the human being that comes to meet sensory stimuli, something that does not yet belong to the human domain of being stimulated by the senses. Through simple reflection, so to speak, we come to an "inner human being" concealed behind the I-human being, because it must already be present before the I-human being's life can begin.
It is not difficult to recognize that this inner human being is the same as the one we have described as interacting with a hidden world behind the sense world. This inner being cannot have been evoked by those inner forces whose development is concluded at sexual maturity, since it continues to develop thereafter. It cannot be attributed to the human being who expresses him or herself in giving shape to the body and in transmitting its nature to descendants. Instead, it must be rooted in an entity that has nothing to do with the manifestation of human forces that we have just mentioned. It also cannot originate in the same way as these force-manifestations, for these cause human beings to reveal outwardly what they carry within themselves. However, this inner being must actually interrelate with what is outward, because it continues to develop even when the inner shaping forces and hereditary conditions have reached completion. Everything about this inner human being justifies our equating it with what we called the "astral human being" earlier on.
We would therefore have to presuppose effects in the etheric world whose significance for this astral being is similar to that of sense impressions for the I-being. The astral being takes shape out of the etheric world in the same way that the I-being does out of the sense world. Behind all of the sense world, therefore, an interaction takes place between an etheric world and an astral human being. To use an image once again, we have here an expanse of ocean, imperceptible to the senses, in which an interaction is taking place between the etheric world and the astral being; the interplay between the sense world and the I-being rises like dry land out of this ocean.
Is the etheric world to be sought only outside the human being? Obviously not. Through our senses of life, self-movement, and balance, we perceive our own bodily existence in the same way that we perceive outer objects through our senses of smell, taste, and so on. The same interrelationship between an etheric world and an astral being that exists for the outer world must also be possible for when we delve down into our own bodily existence. This means that we must have something within our own bodily inwardness that is equal in nature to the etheric world. In other words, one must carry a piece of this etheric world within oneself as a special "etheric human being." The human entity is thus seen as consisting of three members: the I-being, the astral being, and the etheric being.
Now, it is this etheric human being, imperceptible to the senses, that underlies our perception when we perceive the condition of our own physical existence by means of the first three senses. When this happens, an interplay between the astral and the etheric being takes place. Real-life observation shows that in our mimicry, physiognomy, gestures, and so on, even the I-being leaves an imprint on our outer physical existence. How can it do that? It has been shown that these forces of an inner being work on the form of our outer physical existence and complete their development at sexual maturity. If the I-being is to have an effect on our outer physical nature, it can only do so indirectly by means of this inner human being.
Since this effect does occur, the I-being must have an influence on this inner human being. This inner being's connection to the astral being is a much more intimate one than its connection to the I-being. This is demonstrated by the fact that how the astral being relates to the outer world is much more strongly expressed in our physical existence than is the I-being's soul content. If someone follows all the events of the outer world with passionate involvement, this is much more evident in his or her physical existence than is the experience that person has of one thing or another through sensory perception. It follows from this that the astral being works on the inner being that we have characterized.
Here, two realms of forces within the human being contrast with each other. The astral being, which interrelates with the outer etheric world, comes up against the inner human being we have characterized, which contains the shaping forces and the conditions for reproduction. It is not difficult to recognize that their encounter is similar to the interrelationship between the astral being and the etheric world. From this, it clearly follows that the inner being we have characterized is the same as the etheric being already presented from a different perspective. Thus, the etheric being is the bearer of our bodily shaping forces and the conditions of reproduction.
We can now see how the human being and the outer world merge. To begin with, the sense world and the I-being interrelate. This interrelationship is underlain by another that exists between the etheric world and the astral being. The formative forces for outer sensory capabilities, for the sense of smell, taste, and so on, must lie, concealed from the senses, within the etheric world. Toward the inside, the astral being interrelates with an etheric being, and in this interrelationship, the perceptions of the senses of life, self-movement, and balance result. On the other hand, however, the etheric being is active in the configuration of the body and in the conditions for reproduction.
An imprint of the etheric being thus lives in what appears as the external body of the human being, but not in a simple way. Consider the shape of the ear, for example. In its own way, it is shaped from two sides. What is alive in the etheric world behind the world of sound makes it possible for the ear to be the organ of the sense of hearing. But this shaping from the outside must be met by one coming from inside, because the etheric being is active and alive also in the form of the body's organs. The reflection that follows, shows just what the relationship is. The forces of the etheric world cannot, wherever they may disperse, call up an organ of hearing. They cannot do it if what they encounter is a stone. Why not? The stone shows nothing within it that is of the same nature as the etheric being we have characterized. It does not give itself its outer form from within, as does the human being. It also does not reproduce. For the organ of hearing to form itself, what molds hearing in the etheric world must therefore encounter the etheric human being. However, that is not enough. The plant grows and reproduces. If we attribute an etheric being to the human being, we must also attribute an etheric plant to the plant. The plant, however, lacks the interrelationship a human being has between the astral being and the etheric world, as characterized above. In order to build up sensory capabilities, this interplay between the etheric world and the astral human being must insert itself into the encounter between the forces of the etheric world and the etheric human being.
The outer human being is thus a complicated being in its configuration: the way that it manifests itself can only come about because an etheric, an astral, and an I-being stand behind this outer configuration. A fourfold membering of the human being results when we add the outer configuration itself, which will be called the "physical being," to these three members of our being.
A consideration of the senses has led us to recognize the human being as a fourfold being. However, if we take these considerations exactly, we can find in them much that is unsatisfying and leads to further questions.
For example, it has been pointed out that our sensory activity presupposes an interrelationship between an etheric world and the astral being. This astral being comes to meet the impressions of our senses as the inwardness nearest them. How the astral being is constituted is expressed in the nuance that sense experiences take on once they are taken inside, without the I-being influencing them directly. Now we can immediately see that the astral being's experiences are imparted to the etheric being, since we see the formative effect of the astral being's experiences on the physical in physiognomy, gestures, and so on. As far as we can see here, however, this effect is slight. Nothing speaks against the possibility that the etheric being, if it were stimulated more strongly in the same way, could express itself with greater force in forming the physical being. However, we must admit that the forces that stimulate the etheric being to form our gestures and physiognomy cannot be the same as the ones that work so strongly on it as to mold the forms of the sense organs. What is contained in the etheric world shows itself to be a twofold entity: one that works on the astral being, and another, which is stronger, that works on the etheric being so that it can mold the forms of the senses.
This shows that something works out of the etheric world itself that is similar to the astral being and acts within the etheric being to stimulate the shaping forces that mold the senses. In that concealed.domain, where the etheric world is to be looked for, a role is played by another world that works on the etheric being and is related to the astral being. We will call that part of the etheric world that interrelates with the astral being the etheric world in the narrower sense of the word; the other world to which our reflection has led us will be called the astral world because of its relationship to the astral being. We can thus say that the sense world works on the I-being, the etheric world works on the astral being, and the astral world works on the etheric being.
Since as many sense organs must take shape in the physical being as there are separate sensory domains, we must also distinguish as many different domains of forces in the astral world. These domains of force arouse the cor-responding formative forces in the etheric being so that the corresponding sense organs are molded in the physical being. This generally stated fact is, however, subject to numerous variations due to the different characters of the sensory domains. Let us take the sense of smell, for example. Through it, the human being penetrates very little into the interior of a body of substance. Only the outer side of substance presents itself to this sense. Contrast this with the sense of warmth. Through it, the human being penetrates much deeper into the interior of an outer body. We can conclude from this that the organ of the sense of smell must have been built up by weaker forces working from outside and stronger ones working within, while the organ of the sense of warmth must have been built up by stronger forces working from the outside and weaker ones working within.
Taking each of the separate sensory domains in turn, we find a hierarchy with regard to how they were built up from the outside and from the inside. The first three senses — the senses of life, self-movement, and balance — are essentially built up from within; that is, the part of the etheric world that develops into the etheric being is active in building them up. This etheric being shapes the physical body in such a way that it is adapted to the perceptions of these senses. The etheric being can shape it in this way because it has been stimulated to do this by the forces of the astral world. We can see that the building up of the human being as it manifests in these three sensory domains has to do with an interaction between the astral world and the etheric being, which has nothing at all to do with the interplay that takes place between the etheric being and the astral being.
It is different with regard to the senses of smell, taste, sight, warmth, and hearing. The etheric being must man-age to build them up in such a way that in the corresponding sensory domains, an interplay between the ether world and the astral being is possible. This means that a force must work out of the astral world onto the etheric human being for each of these senses. These forces, working out of the astral world, bring about in the etheric human being the shaping forces that bring the corresponding senses into function. We can therefore say that in the senses of life, self-movement, and balance, the astral world works together directly with the etheric being, while in the senses of smell, taste, sight, warmth, and hearing, it works in a way that takes the astral being into account in forming the sense organs.
It is different again with regard to the senses of language and concept. Here, a much more direct interaction between the outer world and the astral being is necessary than with the five preceding senses. This direct interaction begins to approximate the one that takes place between the I-being and sensations, which leaves its physical imprint in facial expression and physiognomy. This is why these sensory domains develop only after birth, when the human being can come into contact with the outer world, whereas the formative forces for the other senses are already brought into the world at birth. We are justified in saying that, while the forces for building up the senses of life, self-movement, and balance lie deeply concealed behind the sense world, the forces for the senses of speech and concept lie directly behind the sense world. The forces that serve to build up the senses of smell, taste, sight, warmth, and hearing are found in between.
This relationship becomes outwardly clear in the way anthropology describes the sense organs that are present in the sense-perceptible world, that is to say, those of the physical human being. There are essentially no clearly delineated sense organs that can be described for the first three senses. Only for the sense of balance is there an indication of such an organ in the semicircular canals of the ear. The reason for this is that the corresponding shaping forces for these senses serve the general buildup of the physical being, and this is what is sensed in the corresponding sensory domains. The senses of smell, taste, sight, warmth, and hearing are served by specific organs that have been built into the physical being's general structure, because forces of the outer world play a large part in building them up. Such specific organs are essentially no longer present in the case of the senses of language and concept, because these senses approach the domain where the physical being tends toward the soul qualities of the human being.
The I on the one hand and the sense of touch on the other are not to be reckoned as belonging to the domain of the senses, as has been shown. In a way, however, they form both boundaries of our sensory life. The I takes in sense perceptions and transforms their impressions into soul experiences. These are fully inner experiences and cease to belong to sensory life. To the sense of touch, the objects remain wholly external. What is experienced of them through the sense of touch are actually inner experiences that have related to what is outside in the world through a hidden judgment. These inner experiences belong to the domains of the senses of life, self-movement, and balance. It is clear that the outer world revealed to us through the sense of touch is the only one that can be called a completely external world, in a certain sense, because, in order to be perceived, it does not need to build any particular sense into the human being. Between this outer world and the human I lie the domains out of which the fourfold human being develops.
However, the differences among the sensory domains require us to make further distinctions among them. In the domains of the senses of life, self-movement, and balance, shaping forces of the etheric being — forces that play themselves out in the physical being — reveal themselves. In the case of these forces, the astral being is not taken into account. We are dealing here with forces that work on the inner physical existence of the human being as if, in a certain respect, the astral being did not exist for them. To take effect, they descend into such hidden depths of human existence that they are out of reach of the astral being. In the fields of the next five senses, forming forces manifest that do take the astral being into account. In the senses of language and concept, forces are apparent that are already very close to what is manifested through the senses. We must thus distinguish: the sense world, which reveals itself in the I-being, whose conscious life it shapes; the etheric world, which is hidden directly behind this sense world and shapes the astral being; in this etheric world, the astral world is concealed, which shapes the etheric being in such a way that it develops the shaping of forces of the physical human being. But we must presuppose still another world behind this astral world, for, as has been demonstrated... [gap in the text].
...senses of hearing and warmth prove to belong together with the processes of breathing and warming more than the former do with the processes of maintaining and growing. We can recognize, however, that these latter processes, which express themselves in the interior of the body on a more feeling level, belong together with the interior senses of self-movement and balance. The life processes of growing and maintaining work more on the side of the interior senses; the processes of warming and breathing work more on the side of the senses through which the human being opens the gates of his or her life to the outside. Thus, the exterior senses are intensified by the life processes in one direction, while the interior senses are intensified in the opposite direction.
This fact can be illustrated with an image. Let us think of the set of the sensory domains as a sphere, with sensory experiences working from its surface. In order to do justice to the contrast between the workings of the external and internal senses, we will imagine an indentation at one place on the sphere so that the interior senses can thus also be imagined on the inside of the sphere. If we also want to illustrate, using this sphere, how the life processes intensify the working of sensory experience in one direction or another, we must imagine the sphere as being elongated in two opposing directions. The life processes such as breathing and warming, which have to do with interior experiences that bring the life process into a relationship with the outer world, work toward one end, while the life processes such as secreting, maintaining, and growing, which reveal themselves in inner experiences, work in the other direction. 1See "Secreting [life process]" on page 204 for a schematic presentation of these relationships. — ED. We can therefore say — speaking symbolically, of course — that the human body is given a spherical configuration through the forces that are manifested in its sense organs; this configuration is then elongated by the life organs.
Now, the two directions that come about in this way are of different value for life. On one side, where breathing, warming, and nourishing appear, life opens up to the out-side to renew itself; with the processes of secreting and maintaining it pushes its processes into the actual interior of the body. It thereby, in a way, repeats itself within itself. Further processes then show that, with growing and generating, something is given that, through its own particular nature, is withdrawn from the direct renewal of life. The forces that act to renew life in breathing and warming no longer flow toward it. Toward the interior of the body — or, better said, running from within outward — finished formations come about that must be subject to dying off. (In the animal kingdom, we see how these for- lose their ability to live and are cast off, as in lower animals shedding their skins. A shedding of this sort takes place constantly, if less noticeably, in the human being. We need only observe how our fingernails grow out from the inside and pass over into ends that are dying off.) The two sides of life that we characterized symbolically above therefore show themselves as a polarity between renewing life and destroying life. [Here the text ends.]
Appendix 2
An earlier version of Chapter 6 (page 127 ff.). Presumably, this is the original wording of Chapter 6 before it assumed the form in which it appears in the printed version. The first two sentences of this version are almost word-for-word the same as in the printed version.
Within the experience of the I lies nothing that is incited by a sensory process. On the other hand, the I assimilates the outcomes of the sensory processes into its field of experience, fashioning from them its particular structure of inwardness, the actual "I-human being." Within this I-human being thus lie directions of force that meet in the following way: in a certain sense the I lives out its being toward all sides; its own experience encounters forces from different directions, which appear differently according to the particular sense experiences.
In the experience of the so-called sense of touch, the experience is such that its content remains shut up inside; based on the inner experience of what is approaching from outside, only judgments are made. The I therefore feels justified in assuming that the objects of the sense of touch are of the same nature as the I itself, the only difference being that the same actuality that, as experience of touch, takes place within, works in the opposite direction from outside. This judgment, in fact, more or less underlies all perceptions of touch, whereby its nature as judgment usually remains completely unconscious. The I experiences itself in the opposite fashion. To have a perception of touch, the I must unfold its experience outwardly, but constrain it through contact with the object and then let it return upon itself. The I-experience is only present when the totality of the inner experience can unfold unimpeded — when it fills itself solely with its own nature.
The experiences of the other senses lie somewhere between these two extremes. In the sense of concept, the I's experience is constrained least from outside. This experience is such that, in comparison to the I-experience, it feels subdued. It has lost something of its richness. It has given up something of its own strength. We can now recognize the following: in perceiving a concept, the I gives up something of its own content; this occurs because it feels a force coming toward it. The I, as it were, lets itself stream into this oncoming force. If only this ebbing of the I-experience were to occur, the I would merely feel impoverished in its experience. The oncoming stream of force is a reality, however, and works together with what flows out. The result of their working together is the experience of concept.
Let us now imagine that the two streams of force both flow in the same direction, but that one has been present for a long time when the other joins it. Then the second changes the first, and this change is based on the nature of the second. Through this image, the perception of concept can be illustrated. Let the two streams represent I-experiences. Let the older stream flow in experiences of concept, the more recent one in the human I-experience proper. Their confluence results in a change in the older I-experience. This change then stands as a fact alongside the two I-experiences as a third. If we now see in this change the organ of the perception of concept, the meaning of this allegory appears. Two I-experiences work into each other; the newer one brings about the organ of con-cept in the older one and, depending on the change that the older one has undergone, the impact of the older one is revealed to the younger one.
The same image can be applied to the sense of language; but we will have to imagine that here the younger I-experience is confronted far more with the change in the older experience than its original character, so that,alongside the older I-experience streaming toward it, the younger experiences the change in the older to a considerable extent. This is even more the case for the sense of hearing. Here, the older I-experience recedes behind the change it undergoes through the impact. In the case of the sense of warmth, the change in the older I-experience is such that the nature of this change is essentially the same as the nature of the newer I-experience itself. The impact is then felt in the younger experience of concept as if something present in the change were also present as an impulse in the younger I-experience. When warmth, coming from outside, flows into the I-experiences proper, it is apprehended in a way that proves it to be of the same nature as the inner experiences of warmth.
It is a different situation with the sense of sight. Here the image of the two streams must be chosen such that the stream representing the younger I-experience itself undergoes a change, alongside the change of the older. After the impact, it is not the I-experiences themselves that act on one another, but rather the changes both have undergone. The younger I-experience sends its own change toward the change of the older. If the change in the older I-experience is as strong as the change in the younger, the older lets something of its nature flow into the younger and vice versa, resulting, in fact, in a balance of a sort between the older and younger I-experiences. This is a way of illustrating the reciprocal relationship between the human being and the outer world that occur in the experiences of the sense of sight.
In the case of the sense of taste, the change in the younger I-experience proves to be stronger than the change in the older one; and the result is, in fact, as if the change in the younger I-experience were resisting that of the older. Only a part of the younger I-experiences flows out, as it were; the rest again steps back into the younger I.
The force of the younger I-experience proves to be even stronger in the sense of smell. It occurs most strongly in the so-called sense of touch. There it retains its full character in the face of the older I-experience and, upon contact, wards off the latter in order to experience its entire contents within itself. In the sense of touch, the human I proper sends out its forces so that they are not changed through contact with the outer world, but experiences them again working back from the opposite direction. Therefore, we can also say that, in the case of the sense of touch, the stream of I-experience flows outward, giving up nothing of itself to the outer world, but re-experiencing its entire content in the direction from outside to inside.
In the sense of smell, the I-experience streams outward, loses a part of its content, and experiences the rest in a state of having been changed by an impression from outside. The I supplies its own content, as changed by the impression from outside, as the experience of smell. In the experience of taste, the I must give up more of its content; the change in, and impression on, its own being is thus experienced more strongly than in the experience of smell. In the experience of sight, the I gives up approximately as much as it receives. In the experience of warmth, the older I-experience proves to be the stronger; the younger I must give up more than it receives; it thus experiences a different kind of change through having something impressed upon it. This change is not one that is worked upon it from outside, but rather one that it works upon itself from within outward. How this change from within outward proceeds then becomes clear in the sense of hearing. Tone no longer lives in the same outer world where the causes of the sense of taste and smell must be placed. Tone unfolds from within outward. This is even more so for the sense of language, and most of all for the sense of concept. [Text ends at this point.]
Appendix 3
This essay is not part of the manuscript of the book, but in content it belongs with Chapter 10, "The Human Form."
Let us imagine that the initial, latent human organization, with all the forces it can contain in the physical world, is taken hold of by a force that proceeds directly from the higher spiritual world; this force works from below upward and would, if working on its own, generate only as much of the human being as bears the I. Let us further imagine that before the thus-constituted human being can come about, this force is taken hold of by other forces that work from back to front. (Actually, this only means that they allow the first force to continue working, but deflect it at a right angle.) These other forces proceed directly from the lower spiritual world. They would consist of the contents of the senses of life, self-movement, and balance. Different as these contents may be, they all have in common that they constitute the I's experiences of its own body in the physical world. In order to experience them, they thus presuppose nothing but one's own bodily existence. They have to be experienced through one's own body in the physical world. They thus work there through the individual bodily nature.
The exact opposites of these three senses are the experiences of the senses of concept, tone, and hearing. The experience of the latter senses must be perceived in such a way that, within them, one's own body is shut out. It is characteristic of these experiences that they are independent of one's own bodily nature. Within these experiences the I must therefore experience something that it can incorporate without deriving it from a bodily existence. At the same time, this "something" must be independent of the organs that mediate these experiences — independent in the same sense as is the I itself. In concept, tone, and sound, therefore, there is something that joins the bodily nature proper within the physical world in the same way that the I itself joins this bodily nature. Within human physical nature, latent organs must therefore assert themselves without first having this bodily nature as their prerequisite. These then constitute a particular organism that, within the physical world, comes into contact with the contents of the senses of balance, self-movement, and life, without first coming into contact with the other organs. These contents must therefore work in such a way that they create life-filled organs in an already-existing organism. They are thus forces that, within the physical world, reveal the nature of the lower spiritual world as the I itself reveals the nature of the higher spiritual world. The contents of these senses must ray directly into the physical world, just as the I rays into it directly.
When these forces thus work on the physical human being, inasmuch as it is the bearer of the I, they will divide this physical human being into two physical members, one of which consists of dispositions for life that go on to form physical organs of life; while the other will form these dispositions for life in such a way that they can become the bearers of experiences in the I that proceed from the lower spiritual world, just as the I itself proceeds from the higher. These experiences are, however, directly related to the character of the I itself: the experience of concept, tone, and sound. If we now imagine that the contents of the senses of life, self-movement, and balance are the forces that work out of the lower spiritual world from back to front to take hold of the original disposition for the physical body as bearer of the I and impress their own nature upon it, then they would have to imprint into it the organs, through which the I has experiences that thereby bring it into relationship with the lower spiritual world, just as it is in relationship with the higher spiritual world through itself. In their content, sound, tone, and concept are such direct revelations of the lower spiritual world, just as the I is a revelation of the higher spiritual world.
Let it now be further imagined that the original disposition for I of the physical human being is not something at rest within itself, but striving from below upward. Then this disposition would be further fashioned by the content lying in the senses of life, balance, and self-movement into the experiences of sound, tone, and concept through being taken hold of by these contents and being permeated by them in the direction from back to front.
If it is assumed that this physical human disposition, thus transformed, were then to be taken hold of from right to left by the contents of the senses of sight, taste, smell, warmth, and hearing, then these obviously could not act on the disposition if no corresponding dispositions for these senses were present. However, substance itself could, in a way, impinge on this disposition; in latent organs — which through the contents of the senses of balance, self-movement, and life would otherwise develop into organs for concept, tone, and sound — the disposition would thereby turn into those organs that experience the outer effect of substance in themselves. This is possible in the physical world only when organs of life exist.
Now, it is clear that the processes of breathing, warming, and nourishing are possible only through already existing organs of life. In contrast, the processes of secreting, maintaining, growing, and generating call forth I-experiences in the physical world that are not influenced by outer processes of this physical world. To the extent that these life processes reveal themselves in the senses of life, self-movement, and balance, they only presuppose inner organs of life. Life organs thus exist that incorporate into the I without influence from outer substance, just as concept, tone, and sound incorporate themselves into the I from the physical world. For the experience of the senses of warmth, sight, and taste, outer substances must exist from which the I disengages its experience. Thus life processes exist that are only sensed inwardly; and experiences of warmth, sight, and taste are incorporated into the I as sensations disengaged from the outer substances.
Let it now be assumed that the I, as it lives in the physical world, were to be related to the astral world in the same way that it is related to the higher spiritual world through itself, and to the lower spiritual world through concept, tone, and sound. This can be the case only if it were to have inner life processes within itself that are enkindled by other life processes in such a way that a corresponding outer life process would stimulate an inner life process. It then suffices to recognize generating, growing, maintaining, and secreting as those life processes that can also be stimulated from outside, and breathing, warming, and nourishing as those that can also be stimulated from within. However, at the same time it would have to be assumed that inner breathing, warming, and nourishing are associated with processes that stimulate processes directly in the I from the outer world, just as sound, tone, and concept incorporate them directly into the I. That means: the disposition for I must be affected by the astral world in a way that disengages life processes from life processes in the same sense that the I disengages sound, tone, and concept, and indeed, I-perception, from itself. If inner breathing, warming, and nourishing were stimulated by an I that receives directly from the astral world what is disengaged in the experience of taste, sight, and warmth from the I living in the physical world, then such an I could act as described above. The physical human being would therefore have to encounter an I from the astral world that, by its nature, does not exist outside of the experience of taste, sight, and warmth — organs for their perception are needed first — but rather, in its nature, would itself be inside these experiences. Experiences of taste, sight, and warmth would have to be imagined, not in the manner of dead matter, but as being ensouled by this I that is related to the higher and lower spiritual worlds. Then such an I could let its inner life act on the physical disposition of the human being; and the experiences of taste, sight, and warmth would radiate through this physical disposition from within. If the contents of these sense experiences were then to penetrate the physical disposition for the I, they could call forth a transformation in those latent organs that bring about the life processes for the senses of balance, self-movement, and life. This would transform these latent organs into organs for generating, growing, maintaining, and secreting. If, therefore, the I were external to the physical human disposition up to a certain point in time, from this point on it could stimulate those organs that are on the way to becoming organs of breathing, warming, and nourishing to become organs of secreting, maintaining, growing, and generating.
If the I that radiates experiences of taste, sight, and warmth out of the astral world into the physical world is now imagined not to be at rest in itself, but as striving from left to right, then life organs would come about that, toward the right, would develop as organs of breathing, warming, and nourishing, and toward the left, as organs of secreting, maintaining, growing, and generating. Since the living I, as presupposed, is present in these organs, it would not take the processes of these organs passively, but would dwell in its processes; these would simultaneously be I-experiences. The approach of substance from the left in the organs of nourishing would correspond to maintaining from the right; warming from the left would correspond to growing from the right, breathing from the left with generating — which would be exhalation in this case — from the right. Secreting would hold substance in balance from both sides.
The reversed processes would have to take place when nourishing, warming, and breathing work from the right; then maintaining, growing, and generating would come about from left to right.
Now it is clear that freely hovering experiences of taste, sight, and warmth cannot be present in the physical world to the extent that substance is clearly present, which not only serves breathing, warming, and nourishing, but can be experienced by an I through mere contact, in pure soul experiences. This is the case when substance itself appears as image sensation; desire and impulses for movement link up with image sensation. Thus substance can appear only for the sense of smell. Now, when the substance impinging outwardly upon the latent physical human being is inwardly faced with desire and the impulse to move, simply its impact onto the latent physical human being can entail an image sensation; when this image then releases, through desire, an inner impulse for movement, then a newly forming breathing organ can be arrested in its formative development, but it can also be led beyond the level of its own forces of formative development. If the impulse for movement is stronger than the desire, it continues to develop into an outer organ of breathing; ... 2For an alternate version of the rest of this section, see "alternate version of page 200" below. if the desire is stronger, then ...if the desire and the impulse for movement are equally strong, then the image sensation, to which it is subjected on its boundary through the impact of substance, confronts its own original disposition from below upward.
However, the I that emanates from the astral world no longer works from below upward, because it characteristically works on the human being only in directions lying in the horizontal plane. Then the only force that can be in an upward direction would be the force that initially worked out of the higher spiritual world from above downward, and the latent senses and life organs that were formed previously and were not taken hold of in the movement from right to left and left to right, because, through the position they attained prior to the action of the astral I, they could not experience any of this I's influences in the above direction that would have led to their completion. These could only be organs for sound, tone, and concept in the process of formation. These organs would not have been completed by the movement from back to front because the force working from above downward restrained their completion. Assuming that only the contents of the senses of balance, self-movement, and life are active in the movement indicated here, the only interactions to develop could be between the upward-working, latent physical human being and the I itself, working from above downward, and related to the higher spiritual world; furthermore, between these latent senses and the I, which is related to the lower spiritual world, working from front to back. This latter I could itself then come into interaction with what can be self-experience for the I in the senses of balance, self-movement, and life. Since inner organs are now present in the latent physical human being, so . [At this point the text ends.]
Alternate version of page 200:
... If the desire and impulse for movement are equally strong, then the image sensation, to which it is subjected on its boundary through the impact of substance, confronts its own original direction from below upward.What would then come into consideration for the subsequent processes would be the forces of the I related to the higher and lower spiritual worlds and to the astral world; furthermore, those of the senses of hearing; tone, and concept still in process of formation, which have so far resisted the astral working in the horizontal plane. Only now do they finally become subject to its influence. They could only develop further through inner life processes that are subjected to the image sensations, desires, and impulses for movement of the I that relates to the astral world in such a way that the completion [of the organ] occurs up to the limit of what is possible when the movement is completed, or the completion is held back before it has reached this limit. The first would occur if the effect of the I related to the astral world on the disposition of the physical human being were to be exhausted in the very moment that the movement from front to back ceases. The second would occur if the effect of this I persists after the completion of the movement. The first is the case for the organ of hearing, in which the I's image sensation brings the formation to a close; the second instance is realized in the senses of tone and concept, which are not led up to the surface of the latent physical human organization, but are held back in its interior. They therefore remain capable of development even after cessation of the movement.
The interaction between the original direction from above downward of the I related to the higher spiritual world, and the striving from below upward of the latent physical human being, now shows itself in the upright stature. In the latter is manifest that the I itself has the same direction as the latent physical human being, so that the forces working from back to front and front to back and those working from left to right and right to left are not the only ones active; rather, the latent physical human being orients itself upward in the wake of the I...
The processes that have been indicated here correspond to the image of the human form, as well as to the human course of life... [Text ends at this point.]
Appendix 4
These notes have been included in this volume because Rudolf Steiner specifically designated them as belonging to Anthroposophy.
The perception of another human being is image sensation; as actuality, opposed to this, stands the fulfillment of what the sense of touch gives, so that, in this inwardness, the reality is given wherein the sense of touch is grounded.
In the perception of concept from the outer world, something is given that, as actuality in the physical bodily nature, has to be regarded as the sense organ of informtion. 3 Ein-Bildung in original text. — TRANS. The concept lives in this sense organ. Thus, a life organ is given the form of the organ of concept from outside . Behind the life organ is the formative concept: the sense of life.
In the perception of tone from the outer world, something is given that, as actuality in the physical bodily nature, has to be regarded as the sense organ of tone-formation. The tone lives in this sense organ. Behind the life organ is the formative tone: the sense of self-movement.
In the perception of sound from the outer world, something is given that, in the actuality of the physical bodily nature, has to be regarded as the sense organ of sound-formation. The sound conies to perception in this sense organ. In this organ is active, before being the organ of hearing, the sense of balance.
- Life organs that bring the states of the soul to manifestation in the physical world: on one side.
- Life organs that transform themselves into sense organs: on the other side.
- The entire organism: I-consciousness: the form of the head
- The blood circulation: strivings/desires: fantasy
- The muscle organism: impulses for movement: language
The I lives initially in its soul states, then in life processes, and the perceptions of the outer world are imprinted into these.
Secreting [life process]Disposition for hearing Disposition for the warmth sense...maintaining....|disposition for ......................................................warming........|sight Disposition for sight.......................growth...........| Disposition for taste.......................nourishing......|disposition for Disposition for smell............................................|taste Balance
Secreting
Appendix 5
These pages constitute an independent and unfinished treatment of their subject and are reprinted here because they are so similar in tone to the content of this volume. They contain an epistemological study based on the senses of language and hearing.
From the I-experience it can be recognized that the human entity works from within to fashion an organism that can, within itself, make immanent the image of an equal yet separate I. What fashions itself into such an organism can be considered as the archetype of an organ of perception. Now the inner constitution of this organism, its law-governed nature, is lost to direct view within the sense world. It is lost to view in the depths of the interweaving activity of soul life and organic life. We become aware of this organism only when we apply it to perceiving the sense world.
When in the midst of immediate sensory life, we do not at first even pay attention to the activity we perform when we turn the content of a perception into I-experience. In order to know something about this activity, we must turn our I away from the content of the perception and direct it toward our own activity. In doing this, we become able to discover soul processes that we carry out at the same time the perception is present as an experience in our I.
These soul processes already do not actually belong to the experiences of consciousness that we have in everyday life. Investigators of the soul find themselves obliged to distinguish between experiences based on confronting the outer world and those based on perceiving our own soul life. If we confront an external object or fact, we can continue to observe it with the same instruments of cognition we first use to perceive it. A soul phenomenon, however, is already over when we attempt to make it the focus of cognition through our observation. This state of affairs has been well described by Franz Brentano in his Psychology, where he strongly emphasizes that the inner perception of soul processes can never become inner observation. 4Steiner is referring to Brentano's Psychologie vom Empirischen Standpunkt, volume I, 1874, pp. 35-36. Brentano (1838–1917) was an influential German philosopher who wrote on psychology, ethics, logic, Aristotle, etc. His "intentionalism" influenced Husserl, the creator of phenomenology, while his work on being influenced Husserl's student, Martin Heidegger. Freud was also briefly his student. For Steiner's assessment of Brentano, see Vom Seelenrätsel (The Riddles of the Soul, partially translated as The Case for Anthroposophy). — ED.
Objects that we perceive outwardly (as we are in the habit of putting it) can be observed; in order to grasp the phenomenon exactly, we turn our full attention to it. But with objects we perceive inwardly, this is completely impossible. This is especially unmistakable in the case of certain psychological phenomena such as, for example, anger. Obviously, the anger burning within us must have already abated if we were to attempt observing it, and thus the object of our observation would have disappeared. The same impossibility exists, however, in all other cases.
Because Brentano strictly limits himself within his treatment to what is accessible to ordinary consciousness within the sense world, an important distinction escapes his attention: the distinction between the perception of soul phenomena that occur due to perceptions of the outer world, and those that are fused into these perceptions of the outer world. Within the sense world, we can perceive the joy or sorrow we may have due to certain perceptions, but not the soul processes that run their course while our I is fully given over to perceiving the outer world. These soul processes are not present before perception occurs, and, as soon as the perception is over, they disappear as far as ordinary consciousness is concerned. This is because our ordinary inner perception extends only to soul processes involving inner experiencing that is not wholly given over to the outer world.
The soul processes that occur while the I is completely absorbed in an object do not lie in the world in which that object lies. With objects in the sense world, these processes lie in a supersensible world. Perceiving such soul processes becomes possible only when the I makes use of totally different capabilities than the ones available to it in the sense world. The I must be able to direct its cognitive capacity to processes that begin when we focus our attention on a sense object, and disappear when this attentiveness ceases.
At this point it should simply be pointed out that this kind of perceiving is possible. To engage in it, the I must totally extricate itself from the realm of the sense world and must be able to contemplate the structure of soul activities that take place while it is absorbed by an outer object in everyday life. The I would have then shifted itself into a supersensible world, in which it would perceive the soul activities that otherwise disappear from consciousness. We only want to mention how the taking up of specific soul exercises makes it possible for the I to shift out of its usual experiences. (To learn about such soul exercises, see my book How to Know Higher Worlds.)
Perceiving the corresponding soul processes, therefore, belongs to a supersensible world. However, thinking that remains within the sense world must also be able to infer such processes, since the sense world points to them as surely as smoke points to fire, even if we do not see the fire itself. (This comparison of Herbart's is quite apt.) 5Johann Friedrich Herbart, 1776–1841, philosopher, psychologist, and educator. Complete works in 12 volumes. It has not yet been possible to trace this comparison. Using the same comparison, Rudolf Steiner also mentions Herbart in The Riddles of Philosophy, Anthroposophic Press, Spring Valley, NY, 1973, pp.185 ff. — ED.
According to what has been said above, it seems that ordinary consciousness, active in the sense world, can at most acknowledge the supersensible world that has been described, but that it must necessarily be denied access to any more precise insight into it. This would indeed be the case unless something could appear in this realm of consciousness that can present the soul's inner activity and the perception of an object to our awareness at the same time. Precisely what would the nature of this "something" have to be? Not only would the experience of a perception have to be present within the sense world, but we would also have to be able to turn our attentiveness to this experience in a way that lets us perceive our own activity during the experience. In the domain of sensory experiences, this is possible to a somewhat limited extent in our relationship to our own speaking. However, hearing our own phonetic tones with our ears is not what is meant, because hearing our own phonetic tones differs in no way from hearing the tones of others. It only brings about a sense perception. We must rather turn our attention to the dim consciousness we can have of the movements of our organs of speech when a tone is to be brought forth. If this consciousness were not present, we could never attain the power necessary to produce a particular phonetic tone.
What, then, is present in the soul when a phonetic tone is produced? In addition to the tone itself, which belongs to the sense world, an image of the movement of the corresponding organs is present.
This image is in no way similar in character to a mental image acquired through outer perception. The latter is the more correct the more it coincides with the perception. But the image of how our speech organs move when a tone is uttered cannot coincide with the tone itself. Indeed, a human being may never bring this image to consciousness; then the self-movements required for speech will simply always be carried out unconsciously. However, deep within the organism of such an unaware speaker, the same thing must be taking place that takes place in someone who penetrates ever deeper into the speech organism and thus raises the configuration of the organs of phonetic tone up into consciousness in image form. The speaker's knowledge of the latter does not, of course, call into being the reality of what is perceived. What is perceived is a soul process that takes place concurrently with the sensory phenomenon of intonation.
In the speech process, this soul process, however, is more or less covered up because the I is absorbed in the spoken intonation. Under these circumstances, specific exercise is required to turn our attention to our organism's self-movement. Now, perceiving self-movement while speaking is not essentially different from perceiving the self-movement that takes place when we lift a leg or move an arm. But since no tone is voiced in these movements, there can be no question of outer perception. That we may also see our own movements, for example, is of no con-sequence for what lives in the soul as the perception of self-movement.
When we are absorbed in the perception of self-movement, a soul process occurs like those that must that take place concurrently with an outer perception. But, with these soul processes, the perception of a process corresponding to outer perception remains at first completely outside our ordinary consciousness. Only a soul process comes to consciousness; what is actually going on in the body while this soul process is taking place cannot directly become an object of consciousness.
In the sense of what has been presented here, it seems justified to conclude that in the case of outer perceptions, the content of what is perceived becomes conscious, while the corresponding soul processes remain concealed; in the case of the perception of the organism's inner processes, these processes themselves do not become directly evident, but the corresponding soul processes do appear in our consciousness.
On the basis of this conclusion, we can gain an idea of the nature of these two types of perceptions. In outer perceptions, the content of the perception rises on the horizon of consciousness, while below this horizon a stimulus that does not rise into consciousness plays upon the human being. This stimulus is of the same type as, for example, the soul process that enters into consciousness in the case of the organism's self-movement. If, in the corresponding case, outer sense perception could remain unconscious while the I could absorb itself com-pletely in the inner soul process, the I would have to experience something similar to self-movement. However, in this case it would find no inner process causing the soul process.
Let us take another look at the process of hearing a phonetic tone. Let us, however, imagine that we are listening not to our own speech, but to the speech of another human being. The movement of our speech organs and thereby the I's activity in our own organism are, in this case, absent. The other's I takes the place of our own; its activity produces the tone. Present in the listener is the above-characterized soul process that doesn't come to consciousness. Since it is present, however, it does confront the tone. The tone encounters the resistance of the soul process and is thereby raised to consciousness. We must now simply imagine that the I interweaves itself with the tone after the latter is arrested by the soul process, and we will have an idea of how the tone becomes conscious. It is the reverberation of the tone on our own soul process that comes to consciousness in our I. In this case, the tone first lives with the speaker; then it is thrown back by the listener's own soul process; after having been thrown back, it lives in the listener. If we realize how the tone in question is essentially present in the same way in both speaker and listener, imagining it becoming conscious in the way described here will present no difficulties. And it then seems quite evident that in hearing tone voiced by a speaking human being, the conscious I is present, not within, but outside its own unconscious soul processes present in tone perception.
Let us now compare this to perceiving a sound that proceeds from a lifeless body. The conscious I is interwoven with this sound in exactly the same way it is interwoven with the external tone. It must therefore become conscious in the same way. A soul process must offer resistance to the sound, and the sound captured in this way must then be incorporated into the I.
This is what the process looks like when it is compared with the perception of a tone. However, if we look at it from the realm of the sense-perceptive world, scruples arise with regard to such a view. In this world of perception, the starting-point of the sound is a body whose parts are in motion in a particular way. We become aware that this movement continues into the air. The air that has been set in motion reaches the ear; as a result of the air's movement beating against the ear and the nerve organism, the sound comes about in the I-consciousness. One can now easily arrive at the idea that absolutely nothing is present in the outer world except the movement of the body in question and the movement of the air, and that the sound itself comes about within the soul only as a response to the physical movement. This idea is so tempting that it lives as a belief in many philosophical worldviews. It is then extended to all sense perceptions, so that it is said that sound, light, and so on, are present only within the human soul; the world outside it is silent and dark.
We should not have unquestioned faith in this idea because of the perception of tone of a speaking human being. In this case, there is no doubt that the tone heard is in essence identical to the tone that is spoken. To say that the speaker's tone is carried to the listener by the stream of outer mediators is thus no mere picture, but certainly corresponds to the actual process; in what the listener perceives is a true counterpart of what is present in the outer world, not merely a soul response to a soundless outer process.
Here too an objection is possible. One could say the following: the speaker causes certain movements of his or her organs of speech and therefore also of the air. Outside of the speaking being there is, however, nothing present except these movements in the air. Because of the particular character of these movements, the response that comes about in the listener's soul indeed corresponds to the process through which the speaker produced the movement. This objection, however, is not relevant. The issue here is whether that which is eventually brought about in the I has any reality as such outside of the I. And this is undoubtedly so when a spoken tone is heard.
Now the connection the I makes with a sound that proceeds from a lifeless body is no different from the connection it makes with the tone of a speaking being. Therefore, we can think no differently about the outer or inner existence of a sound with regard to the whole human organism than we do about the existence of a phonetic tone.
The objective existence of a tone is in the speaker. The listener relates the tone to this speaker. In what way does this happen? Certainly in that the listener connects the tone with the immediate impression — this tone proceeds from a being of my own kind. If someone were certain of being in a room devoid of other human beings, and if a tone were to emanate from some corner, he or she would obviously not relate the tone to a speaking human being. In addition to the perceptions of tone, other perceptions play a role in bringing about a relation of this kind. Now these other perceptions are certainly not, for example, the visual perceptions that we receive from the speaker's form, but rather everything that makes us arrive at the judgment: the speaker is a being like myself, and that the cause of the voiced tone lies within this being, as it can similarly lie within myself. The process through which we arrive at this judgment is a very complicated one and is lost in the multiplicity of experiences through which we come to recognize entities of our own kind in other human beings. When the I finds itself interwoven with a tone, the result of all such experiences is, however, the basis for associating this tone to an entity of our own kind. Arriving at the conclusion that "a human being is speaking" seems simple to naive consciousness, but is actually the result of very complicated processes. These processes culminate in concurrently perceiving within a tone, in which you experience yourself , another I. During this experience, everything else is disregarded; and — inasmuch as we turn our attention to it — we are focused on the connection from I to I. The whole mystery of empathy with the I of another is expressed in this fact. If this fact is to be described, this cannot be done without saying: we sense our own 1 in the I of the other. If we then perceive a tone coming from the other I, our own I lives in that tone, and therefore in the other I.
Now, if our I lives interwoven with a sound coming from a lifeless object, the only sensory object to which it can relate the sound is this lifeless object. If the I approaches the object, however, it finds that it cannot live within the object initially, as it can live in another I through tone. It is interwoven with the sound, but not with the lifeless object. However, observation of the sense world does demonstrate a relationship between the lifeless object and the organ of hearing (and the corresponding nerve organism). But the same relationship also exists between the speech organism of a speaker and the ear and nerve organism of the listener. Yet in the latter case the relationship signifies only a mediating stream for the tone that is objectively present in the speaker's I. This relationship therefore does not suggest that in it is to be found the objective reality of a lifeless object's sound, and that the perceived content of the sound is only a response on the part of the human soul. The only possibility is to think that also in this case the I is bound up with the sound just as it is with the tone. In the sense of what was presented above, then, a lifeless sound would have to confront the listener, the soul processes we have described would have to originate below the horizon of consciousness, and the I would then live in the sound, because the latter encounters its resistance in the corresponding soul processes. The sound would then have to be present in the outer world just as the tone is present in the speaker — the difference being that no reason would exist that could induce the listening I to relate the sound from a lifeless object to a being of its own kind. This can only mean that in the case of human tone, the listener imparts his or her Ito the I of another, while in the case of a sound from a lifeless object, the I is imparted only to the sound itself. The listening I feels induced to penetrate through the phonetic tone, but not through the sound from the lifeless object. In other respects both tone and lifeless sound belong to the sense world in the same way, and the listening I is linked with both in the same way. For this reason, the relationship of sound to what takes place as air movements, and so on, between the sounding object and the listening human being must not be thought of as any different from the relationship of tone to the corresponding outer movement.
The sound must thus be brought into a relationship to the outer lifeless object that is similar to the tone's relationship to the speaking human being. This cannot happen without relating the lifeless object to an inner life of its own. This will present certain difficulties as long as we consider the lifeless object as a self-contained entity. Conceiving of it in this way, however, would be similar to considering the human larynx as a self-contained entity. In order for the larynx to produce a tone or a sound, it must be in connection with the speaker's processes of soul and I. In the sense world, these processes of soul and I cannot be examined from outside. They are supersensible processes. Only those aspects of the human being that are sense-perceptible may be considered as belonging to the sense world. The tone belongs to the sense world; its soul content does not. What can be observed in the sense world as the movement of a sounding, lifeless body — as air movements and so on — must be thought of as effects, within the sense world, of what lives in the sound. Inasmuch as the sound, as perceived by the I, cannot itself be taken to be the cause of a movement, we must assume the existence of a super-sensible world in which sound is based, and that generates the movement wherein the nonliving manifests itself as sound to the I. The connection that an I, through the human tone, establishes within the sense world to a being of its own kind, must, in the case of sound, be sought in a super-sensible world lying behind the sound.
When a singing human being produces a sound, we can distinguish, first, the sound that is finally heard by the I: it belongs to the sense world; second, the soul movement (soul process) in which the sound is based. The latter cannot be observed in the sense world, but belongs to a supersensible world of which the human being is aware only because the human being lives in this world. [Here text ends.]