Man or Matter Part 17

Our observations have led us to a concept of heat essentially different from that held by modern science. Science looks on heat simply as a condition of ponderable matter. We, on the contrary, are led to recognize in heat a fourth condition into which matter may pa.s.s on leaving the three ponderable conditions, and out of which it may emerge on the way to ponderability.

Before showing that such transitions are actually known in nature, it may be well to discuss here an objection which the customary way of thinking might plausibly advance against our whole method. It could be said that to a.s.sume a continuation of the sequence of the three ponderable conditions in the manner suggested is justified only if, as solids can be turned into liquids and these into gases, so gases could be transformed into a fourth condition and, conversely, be produced from the latter.

In reply it can be said that the fact of our not being able at present to change gases artificially into pure heat does not justify the conclusion that this is in principle impossible. We know from previous considerations that the earth has reached an evolutionary stage at which all elements, including fire, have in certain degree grown 'old'.

This applies in quite a special degree to the manipulations to which man, led by his death-bound consciousness, has learnt to submit matter in his laboratories. To decide what is possible or not possible in nature, therefore, can by no means be left to the judgment of laboratory research. As is shown by the following instance, taken from the realm of vegetable life, a case of the creation of matter 'out of nothing' is already known to biology - though biology, bound in its concepts to the Law of Conservation, shows some natural reluctance to recognize the true significance of the phenomenon.

The plant which performs this strange feat is the Tillandsia usneoides, indigenous to tropical America, and generally known as 'Spanish Moss'.

Its peculiarity is that it grows and flourishes without taking from its support any material whatsoever for the building up of its substance.

Its natural habitat is the dry bark of virgin forest trees. Since civilization invaded its home it has acquired the habit of growing even on telegraph wires, which has given it the popular name of 'telegraph tresses'. Chemical a.n.a.lysis of this plant shows the presence of an average of 17 per cent iron, 36 per cent silicic acid and 165 per cent phosphoric acid. This applies to samples taken from districts where the rainwater - the only source from which the plant could extract these substances in physical form - contains at most 165 per cent iron, 001 per cent silicic acid and no phosphoric acid at all.

The Tillandsia phenomenon is to a certain extent reminiscent of another well-known plant activity. This is the process of a.s.similation of carbon from the carbon dioxide of the air. If we leave aside the change in the chemical combination which the carbon undergoes, there remains the picture of the plant drawing this matter to itself from its environment and at the same time subjecting it to a spatial condensation. A similar but even more far-reaching process is exhibited by the Tillandsia as regards the three substances referred to above.

From the conditions given, it follows that the plant cannot possibly get these substances elsewhere than out of the surrounding atmosphere, and that in drawing upon them it submits them to a high degree of condensation. A special role, however, is played by the phosphorus, which shows that the a.s.similative power of the plant is sufficient to transform phosphorus from a physically not traceable state into one of spatially bounded materiality. Following Goethe in his coining of the concept of 'spiritual anastomosis' for the pollinating process of plants, we can here speak of 'spiritual a.s.similation'.

In this respect Tillandsia provides an instance 'worth a thousand, bearing all within itself. For what nature here unmistakably demonstrates serves as an eye-opener to a universal fact of the plant kingdom and of nature in general. The problem of the so-called trace-elements may serve as an ill.u.s.tration of this.

Modern agricultural chemistry has found of a number of chemical elements that their presence in the soil in scarcely traceable amounts is necessary in order to enable the plant to unfold healthily its latent characteristics. All sorts of deficiencies in cultivated plants have led to a recognition that the soil is impoverished of certain elements by intensive modern cultivation, and that it is to the lack of these elements that the deficiencies are due. Much work has meanwhile been done in cla.s.sifying the various deficiencies and in devising ways of giving the soil chemical subst.i.tutes for what is lacking.

A large part of the work here involved could be saved were it only to be acknowledged that the soil owes the natural occurrence of the proper elements to a process which the plants themselves bring about in the soil, if men refrain from hindering them by cleverly thought-out methods of cultivation which fail to reckon with the nature of a living organism.

Let us be clear what it is that occurs when a plant exhibits any of the observed abnormalities. Expressed in a Goethean manner, these are the consequence of an insufficient direction of the organic processes in the plant body by the spiritual plant-type underlying it. That which Ruskin called the 'spirit' of the plant, and to which he drew attention in his aphorism 'Stand by Form against Force' (by 'form' all the peculiar qualities of the plant are to be understood), is unable to express itself in full measure. Now we know that, in order to unfold its activities on the physical plane, spirit requires 'young' matter - that is, matter which is either in, or has just emerged from, a purely dynamic state. Normally a definite spiritual type co-ordinates the dynamic functions present in the superphysical sphere of nature in the manner required to give the plant-organism its appropriate form. As, through the action of the type, these functions are brought down from the sphere of levity into that of gravity, they condense to the corresponding material elements and thus reach the soil in material form via the physical organism of the plant.

The pattern as usually seen is now reversed; the presence of the various elements in the soil no longer appears as the origin of one or another function in the building up of the plant-body, but quite the reverse. The functions appear now as the cause, and the soil-elements as the effect. We may thus recognize the value of the latter as symptoms from which we can read the existence of a healthy connexion between the plant and the corresponding form-creating functions working on it from its surroundings.

With this reversal of the relationship between cause and effect it is not, however, intended to represent the commonly accepted order of things as entirely incorrect. In the realm of life, cause and effect are not so onesidedly fixed as in the realm of mechanical forces. We may therefore admit that a reverse effect of the soil-elements upon the plant does take place. This is plainly demonstrable in the case of phosphorus which, however, by reason of its appearance in the soil in proportions hardly to be called a mere 'trace', represents a borderline case. What may apply within limits to phosphorus is wholly valid for the trace-elements - namely, that they are playing their essential role while they are themselves about to a.s.sume ponderable form.

It thus becomes clear how mistaken it is to attempt to cure deficiencies in plants by adding to the soil chemical subst.i.tutes for the trace-elements. In the condition in which this material is offered to the plant, it is truly 'old' material. In order to be able to use it functionally, the plant has first to convert it into the 'young'

condition. This indeed happens whilst the material is rising in the plant combined with the juices drawn by the plant from the soil under the influence of levity-force. Only when this has occurred are the chemical elements able to serve the plant functionally. Thus, by trying to give help to the plant in this way, we injure it at the same time.

For by forcing it to perform the operation described, its general life-forces are diminished. A seeming success brought about in this manner, therefore, will not last long.6

There is, nevertheless, a way of helping the plant by adding to the soil certain material substances, provided these are first brought into a purely dynamic condition. That this can be done is a fact long since known, even if not recognized in its true significance. So far then, as serves the purpose of this book, we shall deal with it here.

The method in question is a.s.sociated with the school of medicine known as h.o.m.oeopathy, founded by the German doctor, Hahnemann. The word 'h.o.m.oeopathy' means 'healing through like'; the basic principle is to treat disease symptoms with highly diluted substances which produce similar symptoms if ingested in normal quant.i.ty. Experience has in fact shown that the physiological effect of a substance taken from external nature is reversed when the substance is highly diluted.

The method of diluting, or 'potentizing', is as follows: A given volume of the material to be diluted is dissolved in nine times its volume of distilled water. The degree of dilution thus arrived at is 1:10, usually symbolized as Ix. A tenth part of this solution is again mixed with nine times its bulk of water. The degree of dilution is now 1:100, or 2x. This process is continued as far as is found necessary for a given purpose. Insoluble substances can be dealt with in the same manner by first grinding them together with corresponding quant.i.ties of a neutral powder, generally sugar of milk. After a certain number of stages the powder can be dissolved in water; the solution may then be diluted further in the manner described. Here we have to do with transfer of the quality of a substance, itself insoluble, to the dissolving medium, and then with the further treatment of the latter as if it were the original bearer of the quality concerned.

This fact alone shows that potentization leads into a realm of material effects at variance with the ordinary scientific conception of matter.

Moreover, we can carry the dilutions as far as we please without destroying the capacity of the substance to produce physiological reactions. On the contrary, as soon as its original capacity is reduced to a minimum by dilution, further dilution gives it the power to cause actually stronger reactions, of a different and usually opposite kind.

This second capacity rises through stages to a variable maximum as dilution proceeds.

A simple calculation shows - if we accept the ordinary scientific view as to the size of a molecule - that not a single molecule of the original substance will remain in the solution after a certain degree of dilution has been reached. Yet the biological and other reactions continue long after this, and are even enhanced.

What this potentizing process shows is that, by repeated expansions in s.p.a.ce, a substance can be carried beyond the ponderable conditions of matter into the realm of pure functional effect. The potentizing of physical substances thus gains a significance far wider than that of its medical use.7 There opens up, for example, the possibility of stimulating deficient functions in the plant by giving it the corresponding elements in h.o.m.oeopathic doses. By this means the plant is brought into direct connexion with the relevant spiritual energy, and then left to carry out for itself the necessary process of materialization, instead of being forced by mere chemical additions to the soil first to potentize the substance itself.8

The same principle holds good for man and beast. They also need 'young material' for their nourishment, so that the type active in them - which in animals is the group-soul of the species and in man is the single individual - can express its true form and character. (We saw earlier that the will requires 'young' material in order to penetrate into the material layers of the muscles, as happens when the limbs are set in motion). In this respect, the difference between ensouled creatures and plants is that, what is harmful to plants is natural for men and animals: when taking nourishment the latter are able to bring about quickly and purposefully a transformation of matter into the purely dynamic state. Their metabolic system is designed to enable them to take alien material from outer nature and to transform it through the forces of the various digestive enzymes; in the course of this process the material pa.s.ses through a condition of complete 'chaos'.

Having in this way established the existence of certain processes of materialization and dematerialization in single organisms within the earth's vegetable and other kingdoms, we shall now turn to the earth as a whole to find out where - organic being that she herself is - she manipulates corresponding processes on a macrotelluric scale.

In an age following van Helmont's discovery of the gaseous state of matter and the statement of the Contra Levitatem maxim, men were bound to think that the circulation of atmospheric moisture was limited to the three stages of liquid, vaporous (peculiar to the clouds, etc.) and the invisible aeriform condition. Yet the role played by clouds in the myths of early peoples shows that they were once given a quite different status, between the 'created' and 'uncreated' worlds. Our observations lead to a corresponding conception, but along the path of knowledge, guided by sense-perception, as befits our own age.

In discussing Howard's discovery of the stages of cloud-formation we found something lacking, for it was clear that the three stages of cloud proper - stratus, c.u.mulus and cirrus - have a symmetry which is disturbed by the addition of a fourth stage, represented by the nimbus.

This showed that there was need for a fifth stage, at the top of the series, to establish a balanced polarity. We can now clear up this question of a fifth stage, as follows.

In the three actual cloud-forms, gravity and levity are more or less in equilibrium, but in the nimbus gravity predominates, and the atmospheric vapour condenses accordingly into separate liquid bodies, the drops of rain. The polar opposite of this process must therefore be one in which cloud-vapour, under the dominating influence of levity, pa.s.ses up through a transitional condition into a state of pure heat.

Such a conception by no means contradicts the findings of external research. For meteorology has come to know of a heat-mantle surrounding the earth's atmosphere for which various hypothetical explanations have been advanced. Naturally, none of them envisages the possibility of atmospheric substance changing into the heat-condition and back again.

But if we learn to look on the chain of cloud-forms as a 'spiritual ladder', then we must expect the chain to conclude with a stage of pure heat, lying above the cirrus-sphere.9

The line of consideration pursued in the last part of this chapter has led us from certain observations in the plant kingdom, concerning the coming into being of ponderable matter from 'nothing', to a corresponding picture of the earth's meteorological sphere. When discussing the plant in this respect we found as an instance 'worth a thousand, bearing all within itself the case of Tillandsia and more particularly the surprising appearance of phosphorus in it. Now, in the meteorological realm it is once more phosphorus which gives us an instance of this kind. For there is the well-known fact of the presence of phosphorus in conspicuous quant.i.ties in snow without a source being traceable in the atmosphere whence this substance can have originated in ponderable condition. The phosphorus appearing in snow, therefore, brings before our very eyes the fact that the heights of the atmosphere are a realm of procreation of matter. (In our next chapter we shall learn what it is in phosphorus that makes it play this particular role in both fields of nature. What interests us in the present context is the fact itself.)

The knowledge we have now gained concerning the disappearance and appearance of physical water in the heights of the atmosphere will enable us to shake off one of the most characteristic errors to which the onlooker-consciousness has succ.u.mbed in its estimation of nature.

This is the interpretation of thunderstorms, and particularly of lightning, which has held sway since the days of Benjamin Franklin.

Before developing our own picture of a thunderstorm let us recognize that science has found it necessary to reverse the explanation so long in Vogue. Whereas it was formerly taken for granted - and the a.s.sumption was supposed to rest upon experimental proof - that the condensing of atmospheric vapour which accompanied lightning was the consequence of a release of electrical tension by the lightning, the view now held is that the electrical tension responsible for the occurrence of lightning is itself the effect of a sudden condensing process of atmospheric moisture.

The reason for this uncertainty is that the physical conditions in the sphere where lightning occurs, according to other experiences of electric phenomena, actually exclude the formation of such high tensions as are necessary for the occurrence of discharges on the scale of lightning. If we look at this fact without scientific bias we are once again reminded of the Hans Andersen child. We cannot help wondering how this child would behave in a physics cla.s.s if the teacher, after vainly trying to produce a lightning-flash in miniature with the help of an electrical machine, explained that the moisture prevalent in the air was responsible for the failure of the experiment, and that he would have to postpone it to a day when the air was drier.

It would scarcely escape the Hans Andersen child that the conditions announced by the teacher as unfavourable to the production of an electric spark by the machine, prevail in a much higher degree exactly where lightning, as a supposed electric spark, actually does occur.

To conclude from the presence of electric tensions in the earth's atmosphere as an accompaniment of lightning, in the way first observed by Franklin, that lightning itself is an electrical process, is to be under the same kind of illusion that led men to attribute electrical characteristics to the human soul because its activity in the body was found to be accompanied by electrical processes in the latter. The identification of lightning with the electric spark is a case of a confusion between the upper and lower boundaries of nature, characteristic of the onlooker-consciousness. As such, it has stood in the way of a real understanding both of non-electrical natural phenomena and of electricity itself.

What we observe in lightning is really an instantaneous execution of a process which runs its course continually in the atmosphere, quietly and unnoticed. It is the process by which water reverts from the imponderable to the ponderable condition, after having been converted to the former through levity set in action by the sun (as usually happens in a high degree just before a thunderstorm). We form a true picture of the course of a storm if we say that nature enables us to witness a sublime display of the sudden bringing to birth of matter in earthbound form. What falls to the ground as rain (or hail) is substantially identical with what was perceptible to the eye, a moment before, as a majestic light-phenomenon. The accompanying electrical occurrence is the appropriate counter-event at nature's lower boundary.

Since the two form part of a larger whole they necessarily occur together; but the electrical occurrence must not be identified with the event in the heavens. The reason for their conjunction will become clear later, when we shall show how electrical polarity arises from the polarity between gravity and levity.

If one learns to view a thunderstorm in this way, its spiritual connexion with the earth's volcanic processes becomes manifest; there is in fact a polar relationship between them. For just as in volcanic activity heavy matter is suddenly and swiftly driven heavenwards under the influence of levity, so in a storm does light matter stream earthwards under the influence of gravity.

It is this combination of kinship and polar opposition which led people of old to regard both lightning in the heights and seismic disturbances in the depths as signs of direct intervention by higher powers in the affairs of men. A trace of this old feeling lingers in the Greek word (theion), divine, which was used to denote both lightning and sulphur. Influenced by the same conception, the Romans regarded as holy a spot where lightning had struck the earth; they even fenced it off to protect it from human contact. Note in this respect also the biblical report of the event on Mount Sinai, mentioned before, telling of an interplay of volcanic and meteorological phenomena as a sign of the direct intervention of the G.o.dhead.

1 See Chapter IV. The other t.i.tle of the paper, 'Radiant Matter', will gain significance for us in a later context.

2 Since the above was written, certain conclusions drawn from modern subatomic research have led some astro-physicists to the idea that hydrogen is continuously created in the cosmos 'out of nothing'. This does not affect the considerations of the present chapter.

3 Note the expression!

4 For a vivid description of the interplay of both types of force in nature, see E. Carpenter's account of his experience of a tree in his Pagan and Christian Creeds.

5 Note how this picture of thermal expansion fits in with the one obtained for the Solfatara phenomenon when we took into account all that is implicit in the latter,

6 This throws light also on the problem of the use of chemicals as artificial fertilizers.

7 See L. Kolisko: Wirksamkeit kleinster Ent.i.taten ('Effects of Smallest Ent.i.ties'), Stuttgart, 1922, an account of a series of experiments undertaken by the author at the Biological Inst.i.tute of the Goetheanum following suggestions by Rudolf Steiner. Her aim was to examine the behaviour of matter on the way to and beyond the boundary of its ponderable existence.

8 Instead of using the trace-elements in mineral form, it is still better to use parts of certain plants with a strong 'functional tendency', specially prepared. This is done in the so-called Bio-Dynamic method of farming and gardening, according to Rudolf Steiner's indications.