Man or Matter: Introduction to a Spiritual Understanding of Nature on the Basis of Goethe's Method of Training Observation and ThoughtLehrs, Ernst
Religion
Man or Matter: Introduction to a Spiritual Understanding of Nature on the Basis of Goethe's Method of Training Observation and Thought
Lehrs, Ernst
Anthroposophy; Cosmology; Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, 1749-1832
In this inner order of substance we must see in the very first place
the work of the sound or chemical ether. And we should be aware that by
the word 'chemistry' in this connexion we mean something much more
far-reaching than those chemical reactions which we can bring about by
the reciprocal affinity of physical substances, however complicated
these reactions may be. A few examples will illustrate the difference
between chemical processes caused by direct influence of the chemical
ether, and others in which only the physical consequences of the ether
are effective.
In his book, Man the Unknown, Professor Carrel shows very impressively,
by an example from the human organism, the difference of quantitative
ratio in externally similar processes, one of which occurs within the
domain of life, the other, outside it. He compares the quantity of
liquid necessary to keep artificially alive a piece of living tissue
which has been reduced to pulp, with the quantity of blood doing the
same within the living organism. If all the tissues of a human body
were treated in this way, it would take 45,000 gallons of circulating
fluid to keep them from being poisoned in a few days by their own waste
products. Within the living organism the blood achieves the same task
with 1J gallons.
Very many chemical changes within living organisms are effected by the
two polar processes of oxidation and reduction. We have discussed them
repeatedly as hieroglyphs of much that occurs in nature by way of
polarity. In accordance with the principle ruling the physical plane of
nature, that differences of level tend to disappear, oxidation can
occur by itself, whereas reduction requires the expenditure of energy.
Let us from this point of view compare the transformation of oxidized
into reduced iron, as it takes place inside and outside the realm of
life.
An example of this process in its purely physical form is the reduction
of iron-ore to metallic iron in blast-furnaces, where, with the help of
high temperature and high pressure, carbon is made to combine with the
oxygen ingredient of the ore and to impart to it its own imponderable
energy. Precisely the same process is going on continuously and
unobtrusively within the human body under normal bodily conditions of
temperature and pressure, when the oxy-haemoglobin of the arterial
blood changes over into the haemoglobin of the venous blood. A
macrotelluric counterpart of this is the transformation of the red
river-mud into the blue-black continental mud at the bottom of the sea,
around the continental shores. Here, again, reduction takes place
without those preliminaries that are necessary for carrying through the
process by technical means.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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