The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Good morning, gentlemen!

Has anything occurred to you that you would like to ask me? (An article was read from the “Schweizerische Bienenzeitung” of February–March 1923 entitled “Do Bees perceive colours invisible to Man?”)

DR. STEINER.

I will say a few words on this subject. You see, these experiments made by Forel and Kühn show so plainly how thoughtlessly experiments are carried out today. One can naturally not imagine anything more absurd than such an interpretation of these experiments as is given here. Think for a moment that I might do as follows: I might take a substance—there are such substances—specially sensitive to ultra-violet rays, i.e., to colours lying beyond the blue and violet; for instance I take barium platino-cyanide. I exclude all the other colours, let us say, I exclude red, orange, yellow, green, blue—then the indigo would come in and the violet—these also I exclude (Diagram missing.) (Diagram missing.) Now I make a screen; I shut these off in the spectrum; then I have here the so-called ultra-violet rays which are invisible to man. If I now add this substance, this barium platino-cyanide (which is a white powder) then it begins to shine, In a darkened room we see nothing; now we let in these rays, screening them as they come in, allowing therefore, only the ultra-violet rays to enter, which become visible when I introduce barium platino-cyanide. Then one sees it. Then it lights up. Thus, according to this article, I must state that barium platino-cyanide is able to see with some kind of eyes because it shows an activity. But very much the same thing happens if one experiments with ants. Suppose that instead of barium platino-cyanide I take ants; then I exclude the light. The ants run towards the sugar; in the same way barium platino-cyanide lights up. I then say (according to this article) that the ants see the ultra-violet rays. But they need to see them just as little as the barium platino-cyanide needs to see in order to shine. All one can really say is, that given a certain substance it produces an effect on the ants. More than that one cannot assert. The scientists concerned are as thoughtless as it is possible to be and make statements that are pure phantasy.

The only thing one can say is this,—that through the sense-organs (once more, according to this article this is proved by the fact that no effect is produced if the eyes of the ants are varnished) that through the sense-organs an impression was made on these insects. It is characteristic that the scientist applies to ants and wasps what he has observed with bees—and vice versa. This only shows how thoughtlessly these experiments were carried out.

Now, one can add the following: you see, when one proceeds further [drawing on the black-board.] to the so-called ultra-violet rays—here you have red-orange, yellow, green, blue—then indigo would come in, and the violet—the ultra-violet rays. On the other side, the infra-red rays.

We have here the ultra-violet rays (on the right hand side) and these have the peculiarity (so he himself expresses it in the article) that they produce strong chemical reactions. Whatever is introduced here (into the sphere of the ultra-violet light) is strongly affected chemically, with the result that if I now put an ant here it will at once experience a strong chemical reaction. It feels this; that is true. It feels this effect above all in the eyes. When the ant is brought into the sphere of the ultra-violet rays it feels this, just as barium platino-cyanide reacts when brought into the same sphere of chemical activity. If I completely darken a room and have only the ultra-violet rays there, then the ant would notice at once that something was happening. For instance, if one had ants' eggs or larvae they would be completely changed, they would be destroyed the moment this powerful chemical working occurred. This is why the ants rescue their eggs.

What this article is really concerned with is effects of a chemical nature.

The statement I made recently is quite correct. I said the bees have a sense which is intermediate between smell and taste; thus these things are sensed by the bees, and it is similar in the case of ants. So little are these gentlemen aware of the real question that they do not know, for example, that when man himself perceives colours, even in perceiving the ultra-violet rays, slight chemical changes take place in his eyes. Man's perception of colour tends to be of a chemical nature.

All that has been investigated here is the reaction to the inner chemical change that takes place in the bees when they are in the ultra-violet light.

Now all that is within the sphere of black, white, yellow, grey (and grey is only a somewhat darker white), or blue-grey, in all these colours there is no ultra-violet. Thus all these colours are freely perceptible to the bees. The chemical effects which the bees sense so strongly when they come to the ultra-violet are not present in these colours. But when the bee leaves the sphere of black, white, yellow and blue-grey and comes into this other sphere it feels in the ultra-violet rays something alien to it. There the bee can do nothing. It is thus so important to note that the bee has a sense between taste and smell.

We men make a great distinction between smell and taste. The latter is primarily a chemical sense; it is entirely based on chemistry. The bee has something which is intermediate between taste and smell. This does not contradict the fact that the bee is able to distinguish colour when the front of the hive is painted in one way or another; for you must consider that as all colours differ in their chemical effects, so they can also be perceived in relation to their warmth or coldness.

If, for example, you cover a surface with red paint and the bee approaches it, it experiences warmth. How should the bee not know that this is different from coming, for instance, into the sphere of blue! Near the blue surface the bee senses coldness. The bee senses the warmth of red and the cold of blue, and then it can naturally distinguish between them. But one is not therefore justified in concluding that the bee sees with its eyes in the way man does. This of course is utter nonsense. But so it is with many other things that people think.

I have previously told you what all such experiments amount to. I once told you there is a certain plant, called the “Venus fly-trap” which immediately contracts its leaves when they are touched. Just as you make a fist of your hand when you are going to be touched—that is, when somebody means to give you a blow—so the Venus fly-trap waits for the insect and then shuts itself up. Then people say: this plant, the Venus fly-trap, has a soul like men have. It is aware of the arrival of the insect and shuts itself up.

Yes, gentlemen, but I always say: I know of a certain arrangement so constituted that when an animal approaches it and touches something inside it, then it immediately shuts up and the animal is caught. This is a mouse-trap! If one ascribes a soul to the Venus fly-trap, one must equally ascribe one to the mouse-trap! If one ascribes sight to the bees because they do something or other in ultra-violet light, then one ought to ascribe sight to barium platino-cyanide as well!

If people only took the trouble to think they would discover many quite remarkable things, for barium platino-cyanide consists of barium. This is a white metal belonging to the class of alkaline metals. Now it is interesting that such metals play a certain part in the life of man. As human beings we could not have the right working in our bodies of the albumen we take in if we had not such metals in our pancreas. They must be there. In barium we have something connected with our feeling comfortable in our digestive process. Platinum is an especially valuable metal, as you know; a metal that is also especially hard and heavy—it is a precious metal. All these metals have the property that they are, once more connected with feeling, with “sensing.”

Now remind yourselves of another thing. Cyanide is also there. This is a certain kind of cyanic acid, of prussic acid. I told you before that man always develops a little prussic acid in the working of his muscles. This substance thus resembles what man is constantly producing in his body. You can gather from this that man is particularly susceptible in his body—not in his eyes—to what happens in ultra-violet light—i.e., to the chemical components of light. We can judge for ourselves if we only pay attention to these things.

But it is only Spiritual Science that can enable one to observe such matters as the fact that where barium platino-cyanide is affected a kind of feeling arises. This applies to the bees in the highest degree. The bees sense colours with especial intensity, but they only see the colours dimly shining on the appearance of a self-luminous organism.

For this reason I say, that generally speaking, twilight surrounds the bees. But when the new Queen appears, she shines for the other bees as the glow-worms shine for us when June is here. This is so, only as regards the three small frontal eyes; the other eyes, the larger ones, have already some perception of light, but as in twilight. When it is in darkness the creature senses the presence of just those colours that work chemically, such as ultra-violet, or of one that does not work chemically at all—i.e., the infra-red.

At the end of this article in the bee journal, it is stated that further information as to the infra-red rays will be given later. Certainly, when the bees come to the infra-red, they will behave quite differently, for then there are no longer any chemical effects.

As to the facts, the experiments are correct, but one must be clear that one cannot draw conclusions such as Forel and Kühn have actually done. To do so is a totally thoughtless way of following up the experiments. Then people say: “this has been proved beyond contradiction.” Naturally, but only for those who ascribe a soul to the mouse-trap! But for others who know how far one can go, how far one is able to think in such a way that things are rightly followed up, these proofs are by no means beyond contradiction.

In ordinary life we are not in the habit of following things up accurately. When people experience some small matter or another, then, as the saying is, a gnat can become an elephant. And so it is with our scientists. When they get hold of something they don't stop their thinking, but carry it on, and apply it to what is immediately before them. This results in fantastic nonsense; a gnat becomes an elephant. When modern science makes such statements this is due to its authority, for what is thus brought forward meets, as a rule, with no contradiction, because all the periodicals are in the hands of scientific authorities. But in the long run, one will not be able to make much use of this nonsense.

if you go over the whole ground of bee-keeping, I believe you will find that just the very best bee-keepers do not trouble themselves very much about the discoveries of Forel and Kühn; for bee-keepers must work practically, and then instinctively one does what is necessary. Of course, it is best if one has the right instincts. I seem to have noticed that the bee-keeper sometimes likes to settle down on a Sunday evening, when it is snowing perhaps, and to read some such article, because naturally, it interests him, but he cannot make much out of it because in an article of this kind there is nothing he can get hold of.

But surely, gentlemen, you have other interesting things to ask me about?

HERR MÜLLER:

I should like to add something about the Queen. We have already described how she lays her eggs. Then we have the unfertilised Queens; for instance, in bad weather, and then only drones are hatched which have no value. Also, when a Queen dies and there is no young brood, then one of the worker bees is bred to be a Queen. It also lays eggs but only unfertilised eggs, from which only inferior drones come out.

-1. Then I should like to add something about swarming. At the time of the first swarm there is as yet no new Queen there. She is still asleep in her cell and cannot yet provide new brood. Only the older bees leave the hive with the Queen. I can take her out and put the whole swarm back in the hive.

0. As to the sight of the bees, I should like to say that when we are at work in the bee-house and there is too much light there (for the bee-master himself there is always too little light), then the bees are terribly agitated.

As to stinging when the bees are swarming, it is well known with us that the first swarm is rather ticklish; this is much less the case with casts. We hold the opinion that young bees do not sting, that they do not use their stings.

2. There are certain districts where people do not harvest the honey before August 8, which is held to be a Holy day. August 8 is a honey day.

3. It can happen that the swarm goes out and the Queen settles somewhere, and it seems that is an end of it, but it is not so—not altogether so.

DR. STEINER:

With regard to what I said, everything pointed to the fact that the old Queen leaves the hive when the new Queen shows herself and appears to the bees like a glow-worm. When the swarm goes out and the old Queen has been captured, then one can return all the bees into the hive, as you say, and they will go on working quietly. That does not mean that one cannot therefore say that the bees were first driven out by the strong effect of the light of the new Queen on their tiny eyes. This cannot be done away with. You must proceed quite logically here. I will give you an example from life. Imagine for a moment, that all of you here were employed somewhere, and you discover one day that you must all go on strike because something is wrong with the management. Let us suppose you all decide to go on strike. So you swarm out, gentlemen.

Then a certain time passes and you find yourselves unable to procure the necessities of life. You reach the hunger-stage, and are obliged to go back to your work. I cannot now say that therefore you had originally no reason to run away! You must consider that if you take the old Queen out of the swarm and bring it back into the hive, then naturally, the bees must endure the new Queen after all, for the old Queen is no longer there. They must bite into the sour apple! What I said is therefore not wrong; it is a question of seeing these things in the right light.

Then you spoke about the first swarm, when the new Queen is not yet there, when you cannot yet speak of her. Well, have you ever seen a first swarm when even the egg of the Queen is not there?

HERR MÜLLER:

Nine days before the young Queen has crept out.

DR. STEINER:

To begin with the young Queen is within her cell, as an egg. After sixteen days she is a full-grown Queen; then she creeps out. Nine days before this she is already there in the egg. The strange thing is that the egg shines brightest of all. Gradually it shines less and less, but the young Queen still shines for some time; she shines strongest of all in the larval state. Thus, it is quite comprehensible that you may have several swarms made up of the most sensitive of the bees which go out. It is to be explained by the fact that nothing happens before the young Queen is there. For what is the young Queen? She is already there when only the egg is there.

As to an unfecundated Queen, when the Queen is not fertilised then no worker-bees come out but only drones, and as Herr Müller said, very bad drones at that. This is true. The brood of an unfertilised Queen is useless because there are no worker-bees. One must see to it that the Queen can make her nuptial flight under the influence of the Sun.

You see, gentlemen, once more, what a great part is played by the chemical element. For what takes place on this flight is an effect on the sexual nature of the bee. But the sexual nature is entirely of a chemical character. When the Queen flies so high then naturally the impregnation is not brought about by the light, but by the chemical working of the light. Just in this instance you can see how delicately sensitive the bee is to the chemical element.

You said further that while at work in the bee-house, as a man one naturally needs light, and this makes the bees restless.

Try to form a vivid picture of the bee receiving chemical reactions from the light which it feels terribly strongly. When you, as a human being, approach and let the light in, suddenly making it light everywhere, this affects the bee as a strong gust of air affects you; it is just as if you opened the window and a strong draught were to blow in. The bee senses the light, it does not feel that it becomes light all round it, but it senses the light as a concussion, it is quite shattered by it. One could almost say, (though I have not actually seen the bee-keeper letting in too much light) the bees become terribly nervous, inwardly restless. They are thrown into these chemical workings of the light and begin to fly hither and thither almost like little swallows. They dance up and down as a sign of how restless they feel within. The bees would not behave in such a highly nervous way if they could see the light; they would then try to hide away, to creep into a corner where the light could not thus affect them.

Naturally, in all these matters, we must realise how perfectly clear we need to be as to effects that everywhere exist, and must not be compared with the effects things have upon men. Otherwise we anthropomorphise everything, and cannot but conclude that because man sees in a certain way, the animals also must do the same. One cannot make such statements straightaway.

Maybe you have observed the following. If one notices such things, one can often become aware of them. Imagine you are in a kitchen where the stove is nice and warm. The cat likes to sit on the warm stove; it curls itself up and falls asleep, has its eyes shut. Well, if there is a mouse somewhere under the cupboard, which the cat cannot possibly see with its eyes, it may happen that the cat suddenly springs down without opening its eyes, pounces with absolute certainty on the mouse, and before you have time to think the thing out to the end, the cat returns with the mouse already in its mouth.

Now naturally, you gentlemen, will not say the cat saw the mouse, for it had its eyes shut, it was asleep. Some people say the cat has a very fine sense of hearing, and by means of this very sensitive hearing the cat is aware of the mouse. Well, apart from this, that one must now state that the cat hears best when it is asleep, which is a rather doubtful statement, because sight and hearing are those senses which play so great a part in waking life, whereas the sense of smell for example, plays an extremely important part in sleep. It works chemically. Within the nose, and the whole brain something chemical is happening. Moreover, when you hear something, can you pounce upon it with absolute certainty? This is not at all the case; hearing is not at all such that it leads one to orientate oneself quickly. Hence, it is not the hearing of the cat that is in question here. But what is very strongly present in the cat is a terribly fine sense of smell, which it has within its bristly beard. This terribly fine sense of smell is there because in each bristle there is a little channel, and within each bristle (see diagram 9) is a substance, and this substance is chemically affected by the presence of the mouse. When there is no mouse near, this substance has a certain chemical quality, but if there is a mouse anywhere in the neighbourhood of the cat, even some distance away, then the cat is aware of the mouse through the chemical reaction in its whiskers.

I told you once that there are people who, though living on the third floor, are aware of some substance in the cellar, and can sometimes be made ill by it—for example, by buckwheat.

People could easily convince themselves with what certainly the sense of smell works, for otherwise there could he no police dogs. These dogs work very little by sight, but much with their sense of smell. In the animal kingdom precision and sureness cannot be ascribed to the eyes, but to chemical activity; under the influence of ultra-violet rays this activity is strongest of all.

If you wished to be especially gracious to a police dog you would do well if, for instance, you went with him and constantly held a dark lantern in front of him so that you kept him always in the ultra-violet rays. The police dog would then be even more certain in finding things, for in its “smelling hairs” (for the dog also has smelling hairs) the chemical reactions would be still more certain.

All that can be known about the animal points to the fact that the moment we enter the animal kingdom, one must not look for such conscious senses as those of man, but must descend into the senses of smell and taste—into the “chemical senses.”

You indicated, Herr Müller, that young bees do not sting. This is easily accounted for, for young bees have not yet the organ of the sting as they have not fully developed their whole inner organisation. This comes only as they grow older. There is nothing especially remarkable in this, and it does not contradict what I have said.

(Herr Müller asked about artificial feeding. He takes for this four parts of water, five of sugar, and then adds thyme, camomile-tea and a pinch of salt. What is the effect of this?)

DR. STEINER:

We are especially able to give you information in this matter, because our own remedies are partly based on the same principles as those that have been used instinctively here. Not all our remedies, but a certain number of them, are founded on similar principles.

You see, when you feed the bees on sugar, this is certainly nonsense, for the natural food of the bees is not sugar but nectar or honey, and pollen.

HERR MÜLLER:

For example, one has to empty even the half-filled combs of honey that come from the woods, because otherwise the bees get dysentery; also when the bees have at times only 4–6 lbs., left over, this is not sufficient.

DR. STEINER:

Bees are not accustomed to feed on sugar but on nectar and honey. This is in accordance with their whole nature. The remarkable thing here is that in winter the bee changes whatever food it happens to get into a kind of honey. All food is changed by the creature that partakes of it. Thus, in winter the bee is able, in its delicate digestive processes, to transform the food it takes into a kind of honey.

You can well imagine that this is a proceeding demanding much stronger forces than when you feed the bees on honey. They do not then need to expend the same amount of strength as when they must change sugar into honey. What kind of bees then will those be which within themselves can transform sugar into honey? They will only be the strongest bees, of which one can make good use. One cannot get weak bees to change sugar into honey; hence, they are more or less useless.

Now I said just now that we can well understand why you take for example, camomile tea, because you thereby spare the bee something which it has otherwise to do in its own body. If you dilute the sugar with camomile tea, then you take that part of the plant which prepares the nectar. For the substance of the camomile tea has not only camomile in it, for every plant also contains potential honey (the camomile contains this process in a greater degree, and can for this reason not be used as a honey plant). Suppose you have a plant, with a great deal of so-called starch in it. The starch has a constant tendency to change into sugar. The camomile sap already works on the starch of the plant in such a way that it directs the sugar-sap of the plant towards the formation of nectar.

If you give the bees camomile tea you support them in their inner honey-process. You make the sugar already like honey, when, you dilute it with camomile tea. We do the same with our remedies. When one takes some kind of metal, one cannot give it to a human being just as it is, because it would disappear in the course of digestion. You must dilute it with something so that it can be more readily absorbed, and so it is with the camomile tea which you add to the sugar. Salt must be added for the reason that salt especially makes otherwise indigestible things, digestible.

Man instinctively puts salt into his soup, because salt has the property of spreading rapidly through the body, and makes food digestible.

Herr MÜLLER has handed me another number of the “Swiss Bee-keeper's Journal” with an article dealing with the results of certain experiments with honey-cures—(“Our further Experiences with Honey-cures in the Frauenfeld Children's Home, Amden,” by Dr. Paula Emrich. Weeson.) (No III of the “Schweizerische Bienenzeitung” March 1923). (Certain passages from this article were read aloud).

Dr. Steiner:

It will be quite interesting, gentlemen, to add today a few remarks on this article. In this Children's Home an attempt was made to give honey treatments to children found to be suffering from some form or other of mal-nutrition. As described here, the treatment was to dissolve the honey and stir it well into moderately warmed milk, not brought to boiling point but kept just below it. This mixture was given to the children.

Excellent results were thus attained. The author, Dr. Paula Emrich, mentions the satisfactory result that the percentage of red corpuscles in the blood of these children increased to an extraordinarily high degree. For instance, two children were admitted belonging to the same family. On arrival the younger child had only 53% of red blood-corpuscles. On leaving, after a honey-treatment, the percentage had risen to 82%. The elder child had at first 70%, and on leaving this had risen to 78%. In this case there was thus less improvement, but still some improvement.

The elder child had milk only, and benefited by it, but the percentage rose only from 70% to 78%; it was therefore, to begin with, not so weakly, but did not get stronger in the same proportion.

There are still quite a number of very interesting experiments. As I shall refer to them, I should like to ask you to note carefully the ages of the children concerned. If one is to observe the effects of some special substance on a person, it is no use simply to make experiments in the laboratory; one has always first to find out the age of every patient; one must always note the age in any experiments in nutrition, or in healing.

Here we have a boy aged 11; he went through a honey-cure lasting 8 weeks, with the result of a very considerable improvement in his glands. A case of catarrh of the upper parts of the lungs also improved, the red corpuscles—those really significant elements—increasing from 55% to 75%.

Then again we have a boy aged 11. He shows a rise from 50% to 74%. Then a girl aged 11, with a rise from 70% to 88%. The rise is throughout, significant. She then gives the increase in weight also, which shows that the children became stronger. I will not read the further details.

Mention is also made of a girl aged 10, of another of the same age; then a boy aged 13, a girl of 7, a boy aged 11, a boy aged 8, a boy of 12, a boy of 9 and a boy of 7.

The experiments show that children of these ages, let us say roughly, the school-age, derive great benefit from a honey-cure.

Now, this doctor tries to discover why the children benefited so remarkably from this treatment with honey. And here, gentlemen, he mentions something very interesting, something which in a most remarkable way condemns what is so largely applied in science today.

For what does science do now-a-days when it tests food-stuffs in respect to their nutritive value? Science analyses certain food-substances to discover how many components of one or another chemical substance are to be found in it. This is what science does.

Now the following thing happened—a pupil of the famous Bunge, the Professor of Physiology—(you very probably know him by name, he was at one time in Basel)—made experiments in feeding mice with milk. These mice had a good time of it, they throve extremely well when they were fed on milk. So now he made the experiment in another way. He said:—milk consists of casein—i.e. cheese-substance, fat, sugar and salts. He said to himself:—the mice throve splendidly on milk; milk consists of casein, fat, sugar and salts; consequently, I shall give some mice casein, fat, sugar and salts. This is exactly what is contained in milk. And behold! when he gave the mice casein, fat, sugar and salts, they died within a few days! They got the same things, but they all died.

You see, gentlemen, the composition of the substance is not the whole matter. Those gentlemen ought to have said to themselves: something else must be in question here. But what did they say? They said: “substance is everything: substance must be everywhere where anything happens.”

Well, yes, but the substances that are there in casein, fat, sugar and salts—well, they do not make milk. So the gentlemen said, evidently there must be a new substance here, in such minute quantities that it cannot be found by chemical analysis. This substance is what people now call—vitamin. Vita means life; min is connected with “make”; therefore, vitamin “makes life.”

Once, gentlemen, when Heine wanted to mock at something, he said: “There are people who wish, for instance, to explain poverty, the cause of poverty. Well, the simplest way is to say—‘poverty comes from being Poor!’” One has found another term, but one has not explained anything! I was once in a society where people discussed the question where what is “comic” came from. Some of them had arrived at quite interesting ideas as to the source of the “comic”—of what one laughs at. Then however, someone got up and went to the platform in a way that one knew at once—“he has the feeling he has a great deal to say.” So then he brought forward his ideas of “comic” and said:—“The ‘comic’ originates solely from the fact that man possesses a ‘vis-comica.’ ‘Vis’ is force—‘comica’ is comic. Man has the ‘comic force.’ This is where what is ‘comic’ originates.”

This is just as though one should say in economics:—where does money come from? Money comes from the money-making force. Nothing is explained in this way. Well—in economics one would at once remark that anyone saying that money comes from the money-making-force was a queer fellow! But in science people do not notice it when someone asks:—where does the life-giving property of milk come from? and then answers:—from the vitamin! That is the same as saying that poverty comes from being poor! But it is not noticed. People think they have said something wonderful, but in truth nothing at all has been said. And that, you see, is what I should like to call the disturbing element in modern scientific methods. People claim to have something to say; they announce it in gigantic words, and everybody believes what is said. But if this continues further in the history of the world, things will come to a point where everything will dry up and perish. For the world depends on the fact that something can be done, not that things are merely discussed and many words made about them. Words must signify what is there in reality.

And truly, gentlemen, in earlier times a kind of knowledge existed that was directly connected with practise. Today there is a science which no longer knows anything about practical matters. Often it merely spins out words. This has naturally come about because a new authority has superseded an old authority.

You need only consider how short a time ago it is that we did not have so many journals on special subjects as we have today. Communications which were to be made on various subjects—let us say for instance bee-keeping—were given out at special bee-keepers' meetings. This was still so in my youth. At such a gathering of bee-keepers one could learn how things were being dealt with. One would tell the other what he knew from his own experience, and one felt at once whether a man was merely a wind-bag, or whether he had real practical knowledge behind him, which is a very different matter. When you hear someone speak, you know at once whether he knows something, or whether you can find it all in print somewhere. For printer's ink has come as a new authority in addition to all the rest. If anything is printed people believe there must be something in it!

But there is something further to be considered in this article. This doctor has indeed achieved something of great value with her honey treatments. What she has done in her practical work is really admirable. But when she begins to think it all over on scientific lines, the result is really nil. Further she says this:—“It is much to be desired that these results of our experiments should be made known as widely as possible, and that more honey should be given, especially to the young ... For the moment our communications only give the results of our practical experiences; but we do not doubt that with the further development of the theory of vitamins the pharmacologists and physiologists will give their attention to the problem of the working of honey on the human organism.”

The author also says at the beginning: “I feel obliged to give this account of the effects of honey-cures from the medical point of view. Our good results encourage us to seek their deeper connections, as I am well aware that I am far from having penetrated their innermost nature.”

It is evident from her own words that this doctor is modest enough to admit that the whole theory of vitamins does not enable her to reach the real heart of the matter.

And now let us consider very exactly the following question. Let us see on what these effects of honey-treatments really rest. You see, these experiments show us something; they show that the effect of honey is an especially strong one, and that further experiments will increasingly show this, not in the case of very young children, but with those who have reached the change of teeth, or with those who are well beyond it. This is shown by the actual experiments, and it is extremely important to take this into account.

But the experiments indicate something further. They indicate that honey is most effective when one gives it in moderately heated milk. It is this admixture of milk and honey that has such especially favourable results with children. If one went a little further one would discover that honey is important even in the case of the younger children. One must then put only a little honey in the milk—more milk and less honey. With old people it is the honey without any milk that is good. Excellent results can be obtained with really old people if one persuades them to take honey without milk. We must say that milk and honey have very great importance in human life; these experiences make it evident.

You see, the old wisdom, as I have often told you, was not so stupid as modern learning thinks. This old wisdom is sometimes expressed in very simple words, but it was really wise. In the ancient saying:—“This is a land where milk and honey flow,” the meaning is that it is a land of health, a country where men can live healthily. Thus, of old, men knew that milk and honey have a tremendously strong relation to human life.

Nature often speaks in a very reasonable way. One observes her utterances if only one takes simple matters sufficiently simply.

If one knows that Nature works with great wisdom, one does not need much proof of the fact that milk is good for little children, for were it not so, honey would flow from the breasts of women and not milk. This would by no means be beyond the sphere of Nature's possibilities, for the plants produce honey and it certainly might be possible that the glands of the female breast secreted honey. One must only take things simply enough. One must not say:—Nature is a bungler, she makes only milk to flow from the woman's breast and not honey, but one must say:—Behind this lies the knowledge that for the small child, milk above all else is necessary; one can add the honey as the child grows older.

Well, then, surely we should not form such an idea as the above, which is nothing but mere words, and say to ourselves; “poverty comes from being poor; the comical from the vis-comica, and the life-giving power of honey from the vitamin!” One must look for what has reality in this connection.

We will now, gentlemen, gather together some of the things we have long learnt to know from these lectures, for the important thing is that one should always observe things in the right way.

When you go into the mountains you find, just where the rocks are hardest, where so to speak, the very hardest earthly substance pours in—there you find the quartz-crystals. They are very beautiful. You find many kinds of crystals. You will remember I drew these quartz crystals for you; they look like this:—(Diagram 10). When they are entire, they are formed below just as they are above, but usually, they are not perfect. They come out of the rock; they grow, as it were, out of the rock in the form I have just drawn for you here. What does this signify?

It signifies that the earth permits crystals to grow out of itself which are hexagonal, growing to a point. Within the earth there is thus the power to build up this six-angled form.

As I have so often explained to you, the forces that are within the earth and in the universe, are also in man. The earth in her turn receives this force from the universe; man has it from the earth. Man has the same force within him which, in the earth, drives out the crystal. How is it then within him? Truly, gentlemen, the human body is full of quartz.

Quartz as you find it in the mountains is one of the very hardest of substances, But substances are not everywhere just as they present themselves to us here or there. In man there is something quite similar to quartz, but it is in a more fluid form. Why?

You see, if one observes—and one must really observe in the right way, and with a true inner vision—what flows continually from man's head into his limbs (see Diagram 11), and this is most interesting, there streams incessantly downwards from the head what the earth once upon a time caused to flow from within outwards, and which became hard up above there, and settled down, for instance, as quartz crystals. It streamed out from the interior of the earth. In man it flows from his head through the whole of his body. It is quartz, or silicic acid. But the human body does not permit the quartz to become a crystal. That would indeed be a fine business if we were all to be filled up inside with quartz crystals!

Only to a point where the quartz is about to become hexagonal does man allow the thing to go; there he stops it; he does not allow it to go any further. Thus we have only the beginnings of the quartz formation in our body, and then it is arrested; it must come to an end.

Our whole life rests on this—that we are perpetually on the point of forming hexagonal crystals from the head downwards, but we do not permit it actually to come about. These hexagonal crystals always wish to take form in us, but in reality they do not do so. They are interrupted, arrested, and then we have, so to speak, the quartz fluid in the highest possible state of solution within us.

If we had not this quartz-fluid within us, we could for example, eat ever so much sugar and we should never have a sweet taste in our mouth. This tasting of the sugar is brought about by the quartz we have within us, not by its substantiality, but by what is the will within it to become hexagonal like a crystal. That is what causes it; that is the essential.

You see, in the interior of the earth this crystallising process is continued. Man arrests the silicic acid when it wants to grow spiky up above inside him. The earth allows it to become spiky up above.

But man needs this force, this silicic acid force—i.e., this power to bring forth hexagonal forms—man has need of it.

I imagine that you are not all of you good geometricians. Geometry is not exactly familiar to you all; you could perhaps not straight away, draw a quartz crystal, or model one in clay. But your body is a very good geometrician, and wants always to be forming such crystals. We are prevented from doing this. All life consists in the holding back of death, and when we can no longer hold death back, we die.

Now let us look at the bees. The bee flies out and gathers nectar. This it works upon in its own body, and in so doing provides its own life-forces. Further the bee prepares the wax. What does it do with the wax? It makes hexagonal cells. You see, the earth makes hexagonal silicic-acid crystals. The bee makes hexagonal cells, and this is extremely interesting. If I could draw the bees' cells for you—or if you remember Herr Müller showing them to you—then they look just like quartz crystals, only they are hollow. But in their form they are the same.

You see, these cells are hollow (Diagram 12), but what is put in them? The bees' eggs are laid there. Where there is silicic acid in the quartz, here in the cell is a hollow, and there the bee places its eggs. The bee is shaped by the same force that is within the earth and forms the quartz. Here the finely dissolved silicic acid (Diagram 13) is at work. A force is at work there, though this cannot be physically proved. The nectar works in the body of the bee so that it can shape the wax in a form which man really needs, for man must have those six-cornered spaces within him. Man needs the same thing. Inasmuch as the bee is the creature best able to give form to this hexagonal force, the bee is the creature that everywhere collects that particular food which can best be transformed in the body into this hexagonal force.

You need only eat some honey and you receive an immensely strengthening force. If you are too weak to develop this hexagonal force in yourself which has to pass from the head into the whole body, if you no longer have the power to give the blood so much firmness that this force is always present in it, then honey must intervene—or milk in the case of the child. The child has not yet got this hexagonal force; therefore, it must receive it from what is prepared in the human being as milk.

Now you see, gentlemen, that you can give as much casein, fat, sugar and salts to the mice as you please—and they will die. Why? Because the animal also needs this hexagonally-working force. If one only mixes together chemically casein, fat, sugar, and salts, then the force present in the hexagon is not there. When you give the mice milk then it is there. Only in milk it is not so strongly present that when the milk is turning sour it crystallises hexagonally. If this hexagonally-working force were a little stronger in milk, one could drink sour milk and it would form little silicic-acid crystals on the tongue. This would taste as though the milk were full of tiny little hairs. But it does not go so far, because milk comes from the human or animal body, and there it remains fluid. This is sufficient for the child but not for the grown man. But to become adult is something that already begins in childhood, so we must give the child the more powerfully-working hexagonal force that honey contains.

You see, gentlemen, it is very interesting that when you take milk, even if it comes from the human being, it is still something belonging to the animal-nature in man. In man it is animal. If you take honey, it comes from the plant kingdom—indirectly through the bee. But it comes from the plant world and has a plant nature. If you take silicic acid—quartz—then this has a mineral-nature; it has quite a definite hexagonal form. The wax which is produced within the bee itself through the food which is its nourishment, the wax has received its form; it does not originate it, it receives the form as developed in the hexagonal cell. In milk this form is dissolved again; only a shadow-picture of the hexagonal crystal remains in the milk (see Diagram 14). Thus, one can say that honey is a substance most suitable and health-giving for man.

One might however, be inclined to think that it would be just as good if man were to take some silicic acid instead of honey, for then he would also obtain this hexagonal force. But the silicic acid which has been driven as far as the hexagonal form, as far as to evolve this silicic acid form, contains too powerful a crystallising force; it would work much too strongly in man.

Now let us imagine the following. Picture to yourselves some poor child not so fortunate as to be given this honey-cure (as described in the article), at the age of 16 or 17, or at 13 or 14, when it is most suitable. This child has not had this good fortune and the iron-corpuscles in the blood get weaker and weaker.

The percentage in the blood gets less and less. The child grows up, let us say to the age of 30, and has grown up into a weak man. The writer of this article describes this also when she says, “they collapse.” When the man is 30 years of age it may often be a very good thing to give him a honey-treatment, but he is already too much exhausted; he would have to eat so much honey to get any real benefit from it that his digestion would be ruined. Honey teaches man moderation; if you eat too much honey you ruin your stomach.

This rests on quite a simple fact. Honey is sweet; it contains a great deal of sugar. The stomach especially needs acids, and when you put too much sugar into the stomach you hinder the working of the acids. Thus, briefly put, honey must only be eaten in moderate quantities, and when a man is already exhausted at the age of 30, one would have to give him so much honey, if a honey-treatment was to help him (and this it would doubtless do), that he would first get bad stomach disturbances and then intestinal troubles. Thus, one cannot do this, but one can do something else. One can at first give the man very highly diluted, pulverised quartz, that is, silicic acid as a remedy. When you have given him this highly diluted silicic acid as a medicine for a time, then after a time he will be able to benefit by small quantities of honey. The strongly diluted silicic acid will have called forth in him the power to make use of the hexagonal force, and then a small amount of honey can follow. The silicic acid has prepared the way for the honey.

One might also help a man with whom the content of the blood in regard to hæmoglobin has become exhausted, by adding to the honey, suitable to an adult, some highly diluted silicic acid the honey can then take effect. In the case of a child one should give plenty of milk.

You see, it is necessary to know these connections. One might ask: what then is it that works through the honey into man? It is the formative forces of the hexagonal principle. This is within the bees themselves. One can see it in the waxen cells of the comb, and it is this that makes honey so beneficial. It was for this reason that I said just now that it is primarily the force of milk that works in the child, and this can be further enhanced by the addition of honey, whereas in the adult person the forces of the honey are more especially active.

Nevertheless, when a man has grown older this honey force must be strengthened by that of silicic acid, as I told you. Also, a milk and honey cure can be of use because the forces of early childhood still exist in the older man; this is beyond contradiction the good effect of a honey-cure remains undoubted.

In practise, this is well-known, and one should really insist on making these things so clear to people, that a right amount of good honey should be available. On this matter people are very readily deceived. I do not mean this in a bad sense; I might say people are easily mislead by the conditions of present day civilisation. If you have ever asked for honey in hotels when travelling, it was certainly not honey that you were given there, it was sugar-honey, artificially produced.

If people realised that this is by no means the same thing, for there can be no question of any hexagonal force being in such honey, they would never claim that imitation-honey could have the same effect as pure bee-honey. One could very well feed mice with pure honey, they would like it very well. But if you were to feed them on this artificial honey, they would die, though not perhaps in a few days. I have now added what I wished to say about this article on milk and honey cures.

Now another interesting question has been put to me about which I would like to speak, and also to hear what you yourselves have to say about it; also what Herr Müller has to say to you. You see, there are so many matters to be considered that it will really be worth our while to discuss these things further next time. You will then be able to ask your questions, and Herr Mailer or I will answer them.

I want first to touch quite briefly on two other points. They may seem rather strange to you, but I am really eager to know what you will have to say about them.

Written Question:

Among old-fashioned bee-masters there is a conviction that a certain soul-relationship exists between the bee-master and his bees. It is said that when the bee-father dies, then his death must be at once announced to all the bees. If this is not done, then the whole stock will die out in the course of the following year. That a certain relationship of soul does exist between the two is again indicated by the fact that one gets far more stung when one approaches one's work in the hive in an angry or irritable mood, then when one does the same work in a peaceful and harmonious one. Is there any objective reality at the base of this old idea of the bee-masters?

DR. STEINER:

It would be interesting if Herr Müller would tell us quite simply whether he believes such things to be quite in the air or no? Such things are customary among the peasant bee-keepers; they announce a death to the bees. But this soul-relationship, this connection between the bee-father and his bees, is what I now have in mind. Perhaps Herr Müller can tell us more.

HERR MÜLLER:

Two cases were cited which had occurred in Basel and in Zurich. In one family a woman who had helped a good deal with the bees had died, and in the course of a year all the bees were dead. In the other case, at Basel, it was also a woman who died who had given much care to the bees; the same thing happened. It was a very large apiary; in a year's time twenty-eight stocks were reduced to six. One cannot explain this by anything connected with the general conditions, or with the bees themselves. One could trace no disease that the bees may have had. It may have been a “soul” connection.

DR. STEINER:

Let us remember what I once told you about the relation between man and the animals. You may perhaps have heard, gentlemen (I have spoken of it before), that some time ago people talked a great deal about the so-called “counting” horses, horses which, for instance, were asked the question: “How much is four and five?” Then one counted—1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9—and the horse stamped its foot at nine. Really remarkable and not inconsiderable sums were done in this way—by the horses. You may perhaps have heard of these “Elberfeld counting horses;” they were very celebrated. Whole delegations went to investigate the matter.

I did not myself see these horses, but I saw another horse belonging to Herr von Osten that could count equally well. One could form an exact judgment of the whole matter. People simply racked their brains over these “counting horses,” for it is naturally something fundamentally terrible that horses should suddenly begin to count. Science itself was put to shame by such a thing! Naturally one was quite aware, for it is an obvious conclusion to reach, that a horse cannot count; one had to find out how it was that the horse stamped its foot at a correct number. In reality, it cannot count; it would be quite idiotic to think a horse could count. Even a University lecturer knew this who scientifically investigated the matter, but he constructed a theory. He said: “Herr von Osten makes a slight facial movement when he counts; the horse observes the lines in his face, and in response to those it stamps its foot.” But he himself then made the following objection: “Yes,” he said, “but in that case the horse should be standing in front of Herr von Osten, and be looking at him, observing his face so that it knows when to stamp.” So he then took this position himself and saw nothing. Still, he did not give up his theory, he merely said: “The change of face is so minute that I cannot perceive it, but the horse can!”

Well gentlemen, it then follows that a horse can see more than a University lecturer! Nothing else can be inferred!

The matter was naturally otherwise. If one is trained by spiritual science and then observes the facts, one does not then lay much stress on some small facial change, for it happened in this way: there on the one side stood the horse; there stood Herr von Osten, very lightly holding the bridle. In his right hand waistcoat pocket Herr von Osten had plenty of sugar. Now Herr von Osten perpetually gave the horse little lumps of sugar. The horse licked them, found them sweet, and loved Herr von Osten very dearly. It loved him ever more and more through these little lumps of sugar, and thus an affectionate relation was set up between the horse and Herr von Osten. The latter had no need to make faces, he had merely to think—nine is the correct number; then the horse could sense it, for animals have a most delicate perception for what is going on around them. They sense what is going on there inside man's head even if he indulges in no small grimaces which a horse might be able to see but not a man. The horse senses what is happening when the brain thinks—nine—and then it stamps. But if the horse had not had any sugar its love would be a little changed into hate, and it would not have stamped with its foot any more.

Thus, you see, the animal has a very delicate perception of things; not of little grimaces, but of things actually not visible; for instance, with the horse, this sensing of what is going on in the brain of Herr von Osten. One has only to observe the facts, and then one knows how wonderful a sensitiveness the animals have.

Just imagine for a moment that you go near a number of bees, and are very much afraid of them. The bees will feel this fear in you, that is undeniable. Well, what does it mean when one is afraid? When one is afraid of something or other one grows pale, fear makes people pale. When one turns pale the blood flows inwards, it does not go outwards into the skin. When the bee comes near a man who is afraid, it senses more than it normally does when the blood is in the skin. It senses the hexagonal force of the blood, and stings into it; it would like to get honey or wax from you. On the other hand, when a man works quietly and his blood is flowing evenly in his veins, then the bee senses something quite different.

And now think of a man who is angry, and in his anger he goes to the bees. Anger makes a man red, and a great deal of blood flows into the skin, for the blood would absorb the hexagonal force. This, too, the bee senses in its delicate feeling and believes you would deprive it of this force—and it stings you. So fine are the subtle sensibilities of the forces of nature at work here.

And now we come to the question of habit. Think of the bee-father, the bees do not see his approach as men would do, the bee “senses”—if I may use this expression—everything that emanates from him—how all this is constituted. The bees get used to this, and should the bee-father die they must re-adjust themselves, and this means a great deal to them.

And now, for a moment, think what one finds even with dogs when the master dies. It has been known to happen that the dog will go to the grave and die there, because it cannot adjust itself to a new master. Why should one suppose that the bee with its fine sensitiveness should not be aware of what happens, why should one not think that the bee also, accustomed as it is to the bee-master cannot at once adapt itself to a new one? Indeed something very significant lies at the root of all this.

But you may say: “Is it then the same with these tiny little creatures as with dogs and horses?” Well, perhaps you may not have noticed, but it is nevertheless true, that one finds men who have, as the saying is, a specially lucky hand in the cultivation of plants. Even when they sow plants, or grow flowers in a pot, everything thrives with them, while another person may take equal care of the plants, but none will thrive; he is not successful. This is due to the “emanations” man has, and which work favourably on the plants in the one case, and unfavourably in the other. It is quite impossible for some people to cultivate plants. They have an unfavourable reaction which above all affects the forces in the flower that produce nectar, the forces that sweeten the flower. So we can say, Man works even on the flowers, and in a much more pre-eminent way upon the bees.

One need not wonder at this, but one must bring the facts before one as they appear; then one begins to understand that things really are so, and can bring them to bear in practical life.

QUESTION:

According to an old peasant rule it is held that if it rains on the third of May, the Day of the Finding of the Holy Cross, the honey is washed out of all the flowers and trees, and there will be no good honey harvest that year. My observations of the last four years seem to confirm that there is some truth in this rule. Is such a thing at all possible?

DR. STEINER:

This question leads us very deeply into the great processes of Nature. You see, it is just this day of the Finding of the Holy Cross, this third of May which is of less importance; it is of much greater importance that it is just this season of the year. What does it actually mean when it rains at the beginning of May? It means this. You know that on March 23, the Sun enters the Sign of the Fishes. I have told you before that the spring equinox is now in this Sign of the Fishes. The Sun remains in this Sign till April 20, then it passes on into the Sign of the Ram. Thus the rays of the Sun come at the beginning of May from an entirely different corner of the Universe than at other times.

Suppose now that it is fine weather in the beginning of May—on the third of May—what does this signify? It signifies that on the third of May the Sun has a powerful influence on all that is earthly. Whatever happens on the earth is under the influence of the Sun when the weather is fine.

What then does is mean when it rains on May the third—that is in the beginning of May? It means that the earth has the strongest forces, and hinders the influences of the Sun. This is immensely significant for the whole plant kingdom, for when the rays of the Sun come from the direction of the Ram, they can so work that their whole power is directed to the plants. Then the flowers can develop the sweet substance which is present in honey. Then the bees can make honey.

When, however, the earth has the greater power, when it rains at this season, the flowers cannot develop in the rays of the Sun which come from the Ram, but must await later events, or maybe even be altogether interrupted in what they have already developed. Then the flowers do not mature the nectar rightly and the bees find none.

A matter such as this only becomes comprehensible when we know that everything that happens on this earth is, as I have repeatedly told you, under the influence of the Cosmos, of all that is outside and beyond the earth. Rain means that the influences of the Sun are chased away. Fair weather means that the Sun forces can unfold in all their power. The question here is not that the power of the Sun comes only in a general way, from where we look up to it, but that it comes definitely from that part of the heavens where the Ram is. The forces of the Sun differ according to the particular corner of the heavens from which they come. This is not due to the Sun alone, but because as the Sun shines down upon the earth, behind it, in this instance, in the Cosmos stands the constellation of the Ram. What the Ram gives, the Sun first absorbs and then pours it forth again with its rays. Thus, it is quite different if the Sun sends its rays to the earth at the beginning of May, or at the end of May. In the beginning of May the full force of the Ram is working; by the end of the month the Sun is already in the Sign of the Bull. These forces of the Bull cannot work with the same strength on the plants, they tend to harden and dry up the plant, and this means above all that the plant is no longer able to mature the forces for honey-production.

Thus something has really come to light from these old peasant rules that has sound reason, and one should take note of it. Naturally, as I have previously said—the consciousness of these things has been lost, and we have fallen into superstitions, for when one is no longer able to distinguish things one may easily become superstitious. Then these old peasant rules are of about the same value as the saying: “If the cock crows on the dunghill the weather will change, or will remain as it was before!”

This does not apply however, to all these old rules, for many of them are based on deep wisdom, and this we should once more study. The peasants who have applied these rules have sometimes done very well! A deeper wisdom will also lead us to the point where we can once more make use of them.

HERR ERBSMEHL remarked that in modern bee-keeping the bee-master is primarily concerned with making a profit: it is the material side that has to be considered. In the “Bienenzeitung” (No. 10) it says:—“Honey is for the most part a luxury, and those who can afford to buy it can well pay a good price for it.” An instance is then given of how a certain Balmesberger who was travelling in Spain, found a number of very healthy children in a bee-keeper's house, and how in answer to the question where he sold his honey, he replied: “Here are my customers.” Here in Middle Europe we want to get as much profit as possible from our honey. An employer of many workmen must see that he gets as much as possible out of them, and the same also applies to the bees.

In the eleventh number, the further question is asked as to whether there was any truth in the matter when people thought that moonlight had an influence on the production of honey or nectar in the flowers.

HERR MÜLLER replied:

1. That Herr Erbsmehl can gather from the Journal that the bee-keeper in question was only working on a small scale, and did not sell his honey. Erbsmehl is evidently not aware what bee-keeping is in our days, and all the things connected with it so that one is obliged to keep accounts. If one does not reckon on making a profit out of it, as with other matters, one might just as well give it up.

Honey would never be available in the necessary quantities if one did not have recourse to artificial methods. One gets perhaps 4–8 pounds of honey and may need rather more than this to keep the stock in good condition. Then a bad year comes and one has not enough to last till April or May. One must help the stock that has sufficient vitality by artificial feeding—with sugar, camomile tea, thyme and a small seasoning of salt.

Then the hours which the bee-keeper spends in working are noted down quite exactly in a modern apiary—how much time the bee-keeper has given to it and so on. Let us say five and a half hours;—(the hour is reckoned at the rate of one franc or one franc, fifty)—thus a pound of honey costs seven francs. Then one must reckon with wear and tear; the combs get used up, and one must replace them. The whole enterprise should surely make a profit. But if the bee-keeper remains at the old standpoint, he does not get along. Herr Erbsmehl may be able to do so, but if I have a large stock, then I must reckon up and say to myself—I have already made a loss if I sell my honey at six francs. The American bee-keepers take exactly this view.

2. I myself, cannot understand that within the next eighty to a hundred years the whole stock of bees will die out. I really cannot understand what Dr. Steiner means by saying that within eighty to a hundred years bee-keeping will be endangered.

3. As to the second point—i.e., what announcing the death of the bee-master to the bees has to do with the bee-master, I have already stated that the greater part of the stock dies after the death of the person in charge. How it came about, I am quite unable to understand.

4. With regard to impure honey in hotels I would like to say that first-class hotels frequently buy American honey. When bees are fed oil this honey, they die—and yet it is produced by bees.

5. As to stinging, sweat is the very worst thing; when you hear shrill buzzing sounds, it is advisable to stand still.

6. As to the question how far can a bee sting affect a man, I know of a case which I should like to mention. A strong man was stung by a bee. He cried out: “Hold me, I have been stung!” He was extremely sensitive to it. He was a man with slight heart trouble. Perhaps Dr. Steiner will tell us to what extent a bee-sting may be really dangerous.

For instance, it is said that three hornet stings will kill a horse. A little while ago I found a hornets' nest in my bee-house. I was taking away the brood. The hornets were such cowards they did not sting me in the dark; perhaps they might have done so out of doors.

DR. STEINER:

Let us go back to the recognition by the bees of their bee-master. I should like to add a few remarks that we may discuss these matters in a reasonable way.

You have formed an opinion that is naturally completely justified if you consider the thing intellectually. But now I should like to tell you this: imagine you have a friend, you came to know him, let us say, in the year 1915. This friend stays here in Europe and you go to America, returning in the year 1925. Your friend, let us suppose, is in Arlesheim. You come to Arlesheim, meet your friend and recognise him. But what has happened meanwhile? I have already described to you how the matter, the substance of the human body is completely changed after seven or eight years. There is then nothing at all left of it; so that your friend when you see hint again after ten years' interval, has nothing of the old, actually nothing, of the substance you saw in him ten years ago. Yet you recognised him! When you look at a man externally, he certainly looks like a coherent mass, but if you were to see him through a big enough magnifying glass, you would then see the blood flowing through his head. Very well, this blood when you see it with the naked eye, or with a small magnifying glass—this blood looks like blood. But if you imagine a gigantic magnifying glass then what flows there as blood no longer has the same appearance; then it seems to consist of little “dots” which are like minute animals. But these little dots do not remain at rest, they vibrate continually. And when you watch this going on it has the strangest likeness to a mass of bees. When sufficiently magnified in his substances, man appears exactly like a mass of bees.

If we thoroughly examine the whole matter it must seem just as incomprehensible that one man should be able to recognise another after ten years (for not a single one of these small vibrating dots is any longer there). His eyes are quite different dots, quite different minute creatures are there, and yet one man recognises another again

So you see, it is entirely unnecessary that it should be due to these minute creatures and plants of which we consist, that we are able to recognise one another, for it is the whole man, who again recognises us. The colony is not only just so and so many thousands of bees, the whole host of bees is a whole and complete unitary being that recognises a man or does not recognise him. If you had a diminishing glass instead of a magnifying glass you would be able to gather all these bees together; you could then visualise them as united in the same way as a human muscle. It is just this fact that one has to bear in mind with bees—that one is not dealing with single individual bees but must consider them as a whole, as belonging together as one whole.

With the intellect alone this cannot be grasped; one must be able to visualise it as a whole. It is for this reason that the bee colony is so profoundly instructive; it completely refutes all our usual ideas. Our ideas really always tell us that things ought to be different But the most marvellous things happen in the hive; not at all such as we think out with our reason.

That it should have a certain effect upon the bees when, for instance, through the death of the bee-master another has to take his place, is undeniable. Experience has shown it to be a fact. Those who have had to do with many apiaries, and not only with one, know this quite well.

I can tell you that bee-keeping in a variety of ways interested me extremely when I was a boy, though the economic side, the financial problem of bee-keeping did not interest me so much then as later, or today—because honey even in those days was very dear and my parents could not afford to buy any. We got all our honey from our neighbours as a gift, for Christmas or at other times, indeed we had so much given us that we had honey all the year round. Honey was given away in those days.

You see the economic problem was not of great interest to me because, as a boy I ate a terrible lot of honey, as much indeed as I wanted of the honey that was given us.

How could this be? Nowadays, under the same circumstances one could not get so much honey as a gift, but in those days the bee-keepers in the neighbourhood of my parents' home were mostly farmers, and honey was just a part of the general farm produce. This is quite a different matter, gentlemen, from starting bee-keeping as some of you do while living on the wages you earn. On a farm, bee-keeping goes on without one's paying much attention to it. The time it takes up is not considered, is not taken into account. On the farm this was always so, it was time that remained over. Time was saved somewhere or other, or a bit of work was put off till another time and so on. At all events the honey was looked after between-whiles, and one had the idea that honey is something so precious that one cannot really pay for it at all.

In a certain sense this is quite right, but at the present time conditions are such that all price levels are quite false. It is fundamentally impossible to discuss prices today, for the whole question ought to be discussed on a much wider basis, on the basis of economics. Nothing much results if one discusses the price of separate food substances, and honey is a food substance, not merely a luxury or a pleasure. In a healthy social order a healthy price for honey would naturally be found; this is undoubted.

But because we do not live under healthy social conditions at the present day, all our problems are placed in an unhealthy position. When you visit big farms today and hear what the farm-bailiff has to say (as a rule it is not a peasant, but a bailiff) when he tells you how much milk he gets from his cows, it is horrible! He gets so many gallons of milk a day that anyone knowing the nature of the cow realises it is quite unnatural to get so much milk from a cow. But they manage to get it! Quite certainly gentlemen, they manage to get it! Some of them in my opinion, get up to twice as large a quantity as the cow should really give. In this way the farm can obviously become exceedingly profitable. One cannot even say that it is as yet very noticeable, but the milk has not got the same force as milk produced under normal conditions; one cannot immediately prove the great harm that is being done.

Perhaps I might tell you the following. We have made experiments with a remedy for foot-and-mouth disease in cattle; we have made many such experiments during the last few years. They were carried out on large farms as well as on smaller ones where the milk production was not pushed so far as on the big farms. Much could be learnt in this way because one had to test how the remedy worked in foot-and-mouth disease.

The matter however, was not carried to a conclusion, for the officials in charge did not agree, and today so many concessions and so on, are necessary. But the remedy succeeded well, and with a slight alteration, it has also had very good results in distemper in dogs, under the name of “Distempo.”

When one makes these experiments one discovers the following:—

One finds that calves bred from cows that have been brought to an excessive production of milk, are considerably weaker. You see it in the way the remedy affects them. The working or nonworking of the remedy, so to speak, can be tremendously increased in such cases. The calf grows up if it does not die of the disease, but the calf bred from a cow that has been over-stimulated to this over-production of milk, a calf of such breeding is weaker than calves bred from cows that have never been so forced. This change can be observed through the first, second, third or fourth generations, but is then so slight that observation is not easy. This breeding for milk-production is still of short standing, but I know very well that if it continues, if a cow is forced to yield six gallons of milk a day, if you continue thus maltreating it, all breeding of cows will after a time go absolutely to ruin. There is nothing to be done.

Well, in artificial bee-keeping things are, naturally not fundamentally so bad, because the bee is a creature that can always help itself again, that is indeed, incredibly able to help itself because the bee lives so much nearer to Nature than the cow that is being bred in this fashion. It is not even quite so bad if cows so maltreated for milk-production are nevertheless at times taken out to pasture. But on the big dairy farms this is no longer done. These farms have nothing but stall-feeding; the cow is completely torn away from natural conditions.

You cannot afford to do this in bee-keeping. Thanks to its nature the bee remains united with external Nature; it helps itself again. And you see, gentlemen, this self-help in the bee-hive is something extremely wonderful.

We now come to what Herr Müller said about the bumblebees and hornets he sometimes finds in his bee-hives, which did not sting him, whereas it can be sometimes rather a disaster to meet a hornet.

I would like here to tell you something else. I do not know whether those of you who are bee-keepers have already experienced this; it may happen that you have an empty hive, and I once saw a strange thing in an empty hive, something like a lump. At first one could not make out what it was. The bees appeared, apparently for no good reason at all, to have made a lump out of all their usual products, out of all sorts of things. A lump just like a big stone and surrounded by all manner of resin and pitch, glue-like substances, wax and so on; such things as the bees also collect. I was curious to know what this was and I took the lump to pieces, and behold, there was a dead mouse inside

You see, the mouse had got into the hive and died there, and now imagine what a terrible thing the smell of a dead mouse would have been for the bees. In this emergency the whole colony had the instinct to surround the dead mouse with a shell. When one took this shell to pieces it smelt horribly, but the smell had remained quite shut up within the shell.

You see, gentlemen, within the hive was not only the instinct to build cells, to feed the brood, but, in an emergency, the instinct for something unusual, for what has to be done when a dead mouse is in the hive! Since the bees were not sufficient in number to carry the mouse away, they helped themselves; they made a shell all round it.

I have heard from others that snails or slugs which had crept inside hives were also thus encrusted. In the hive not only ordinary instincts are living, but true healing instincts; these are exceedingly active in the hive.

Well—if there is a hornets nest in the hive the bees do not enclose it with a hard shell, but continually surround the nest with excretions of their poison, so that the hornets lose all energy, all power to attack. Just as the mouse, the dead mouse in there can no longer send its smell in all directions, so the hornet, though not so firmly imprisoned, is continually exposed to the exhalations with which the bees surround it, and thereby gets so weakened that they can do nothing. The hornet loses all its strength, and can no longer use its sting to defend itself when you come near it.

It is really so, that one only does justice to the bees when one goes beyond mere intellect and actually follows up the facts with a certain inner vision. It is quite wonderful, this picture. One must therefore say, the bee-colony is a totality. It must be seen as a totality. But in a totality the harm does not appear all in a moment.

You see, if one knows men well, one can say for instance, the following:—A man—there are such men—is fairly fresh and strong at the age of 65 or 66; another man is not so fresh because he suffers inwardly from too much lime in his arteries, etc. To observe this, and to bring it into connection with what had occurred in his childhood, is extremely interesting.

For example, one can give a child milk that comes from cows who get too much fodder from a lime-stone soil. Even in the milk with which the child is nourished, the child gets some elements of this limey soil. This may not perhaps be at once evident. A doctor of the kind we have today, may come along and show you a child fed on milk derived from a limey soil, and another child fed with its mother's milk and he says, “It makes no difference at all,” and so on. But the child fed on its mother's milk is still fresh at the age of 65 or 66, and the child fed on the cow's milk has too much lime in the blood-vessels at the same age. This is so because man is a whole, and what works in one period of time still continues to be active at a much later period. A thing can be entirely healthy at one moment, and yet it works on later.

This is what I mean when I say that from the conditions. of bee-keeping today, you cannot draw conclusions as to what artificial methods of bee-keeping signify, or do not signify. One must think how will it be 50, 60 or 100 years hence! It is quite comprehensible that someone should say today—I do not understand how this will be quite different in 50, 60 or 100 years time—this is quite comprehensible.

It once happened to me on a farm, that all in good nature, I was nearly killed when I began to say that one ought not to get so much milk, for the breeding of cows would suffer even sooner, and would be ruined within a quarter of a century. One cannot as yet say very much against these artificial methods in bee-keeping today, because we are now living under conditions in which nothing can be done in the social domain.

But it must be recognised that there is a great difference in whether one allows Nature to take a free course, or whether one brings artificial methods into the matter. I do not want to protest against what Herr Müller has said. It is quite correct. Today one cannot as yet confirm these things; one must wait for this. We will discuss it together in a 100 years time, Herr Müller, and see what your opinion is then! It is a question that cannot be decided at the moment.

(HERR ERBSMHEL once more points out that modern bee-keeping is entirely a matter of making it profitable).

DR. STEINER:

The more you find that a man does his bee-keeping as a hobby, the more you will find him in agreement with the Spaniard whom you quoted just now. This farmer did not do much reckoning up as to profit; this is not generally the case today, but 50 or 60 years ago the farmer did not do much reckoning as to what he could make out of his bees; it was hardly taken into account. He either gave the honey away, or if he sold it, he put the money into the children's money boxes—or something similar. Today, the whole conditions are quite different. One cannot imagine that a man paid by the hour, or in any sense dependent on time for his payment, would not feel himself obliged to take profit-making into account. He is simply driven to it by circumstances. Today there are bee-keepers who as working men, must stay away from their work now and again, must take leave of absence if they want to carry on their bee-keeping in the right way—this is so is it not? (Certainly.) Then, quite naturally, they count up what they did not get—from other work.

Just think for a moment; bee-keeping is so ancient that no one can say today from any external evidence what bee-keeping really was when the bee was still undomesticated. For the most part people know only our bees, I mean the European honey-bees, and they know only domestic bee-keeping. Natural History books write mostly about the bee which is universally spread in Europe, as “the common. hive-bee.” Thus one only knows about domestic bee-keeping. This is well worth our attention, gentlemen, that one knows only domestic bee-keeping; one is not aware what it was all like when only Nature herself was at work. Bee-keeping is very ancient. And when things are so old as this prices must be fixed on quite a different basis from that on which we mostly work today. For this reason we really have to say that here also we must trust that little by little men will come to realise that better social conditions must be brought about. I believe there will then be less talk as to whether things are profitable or not. These competitive ideas, even if they do not imply competition among those engaged in the production of similar goods, have at any rate to do with those who produce different goods.

I will now answer any other questions connected with what has already been said.

QUESTION:

There are people who cannot digest honey at all. They immediately get stomach trouble. Is there any way of preventing these bad effects of eating honey?

DR. STEINER:

People who cannot take honey are, as a rule, those who in early life have had some tendency to sclerosis, to a hardening of the whole body, so that the whole digestive process is too slow. That is why they cannot digest honey which tends to accelerate the metabolic process. Because these persons digest too slowly, the honey wants to make It quicker, and so they quarrel with their own digestion, with the result that they have pains in the stomach.

Everybody ought really to be able to enjoy a little honey—that is, not only to “enjoy” it, but to have the inner capacity to do so. When one finds people unable to digest honey, one has first to look for the actual cause. You must not think there is a general remedy, an universal remedy, but one can make use of one remedy or another, dependent on the causes which have resulted in this hardened body. For example, the cause might be as follows: let us say, a man cannot take honey; he gets indigestion. One asks oneself: “Does this man get indigestion because, as we say, he has a tendency to a sclerosis of the head, as it is called, to a calcifying of the veins and arteries, the blood-vessels of the head?” It can happen, in this case, that at a certain age he is unable to digest honey. To cure such a man we must take a preparation of phosphorus, and if one can cure him he will then be able to take honey. Or it may also happen that one finds the trouble in the lungs. One must then not take phosphorus, but a preparation of sulphur. Thus the answer to the question is that one cannot say in general that a man has indigestion when he eats honey, how can we cure it? But one must say: If a man at a certain age is not able to eat honey, it is an illness. A healthy man can eat honey. If he cannot digest it he is ill, and one must find out what is wrong with him and cure it. Not to be able to digest honey is, however, less important than not to be able to take sugar, as, for instance, when a man has “diabetes mellitus,” or sugar-sickness. This, of course, is worse, then he is really ill, much more so than when he cannot digest honey. But even in this case he is somewhat ill and one must cure the illness.

QUESTION:

Like most other insects, in the dark, bees will fly towards candle or lamp-light. I have been frequently assured by experienced bee-keepers that bees are much less attracted by electric light. When one goes to them with a pocket electric torch they keep quite quiet, as though they did not notice the light at all. Only after some little time do they get restless Lamp or candle-light affects them much more quickly, and in greater numbers. Is there any explanation for this behaviour? Herr Müller says he has observed the same thing.

DR. STEINER:

You will probably have seen, gentlemen, in the old Goetheanum, that the cupolas were painted inside with different colours, colours made from pure vegetable substances. But this making of colours from various plant-substances finally proved that they would have completely faded away if the Sun had shone into the cupola. If one had exposed these colours for some little time, they might have lasted perhaps for some months, perhaps a few years, but exposed to direct sunlight they would have faded so much one would have seen nothing more of the paintings once there.

But exposed to the electric light, they remained. We therefore, used these colours in a way that a painter working in sunlight could not have done at all. In the sunlight they would have faded completely away, whereas in electric light they were permanent.

So you see, sunlight which has chemical properties (and you said bees were aware of this) has effects quite different to those of electric light. Electric light works on all substances in a much more hardening way, it does not dissolve them. That is why the bees feel something like a very slight cramp which they do not feel with sunlight, though of course, they recover again.

QUESTION:

With regard to the influences of the Signs of the Zodiac on honey production, the peasants lay great stress on sowing seed when the moon is in the sign of the Twins, and so on. The question is whether this idea as to the Signs of the Zodiac is founded on external data, or if there is more than this in it?

DR STEINER:

You see, gentlemen, today these things are never dealt with scientifically. But one can treat them scientifically. On the whole colony of bees, as such, there is as I told you, an influence. The bee, and above all the Queen is, in a certain sense, a Sun creature, and thus all that the Sun experiences in that it passes through the Zodiac, has the greater influence. But the bees naturally, depend on the plants, and here indeed, the sowing, the scattering of the seed, can he very much affected by the passage of the moon through a zodiacal sign; this concerns the preparatory substances the bees are able to find in the plants.

These things are by no means fanciful, but as a rule they are represented quite superficially; they should be much more deeply studied.

We have now come to the end of our time. What has to be said further we will discuss next Saturday at 9 o'clock. I think many of you have questions at heart. Bee-keeping is so beautiful and of such great value that one cannot ask enough about it. Ask questions of one another, of Herr Müller, and of me. I believe we shall find a balancing of our contradictory opinions. We need not get our stings ready like the bees but can peacefully discuss them all. But questions must be asked honestly and without reserve.

HERR DOLLINGER wishes to ask a question about the honeycomb. There are people who eat the wax as well as the honey, and in restaurants they used at times to serve honey in the comb. He would like to know if it was a bad thing to eat the comb.

As to the diseases of bees, he thinks these could not formerly have been as bad as they are today when the bees are over-exploited.

HERR MÜLLER said that eating comb-honey was an idiosyncrasy with some people. Naturally, these are the natural combs and not artificial ones. He does not think that bee diseases are the result of exploitation, but that formerly they were less considered. In those days there were not so many weak stocks and so one was not so much on the look out for them. A disease had appeared in Switzerland from England which had not been known in the past. Herr Erbsmehl thinks this may perhaps be owing to the use of artificial manures, even the flowers sicken as the result of this.

DR. STEINER:

With regard to these two points, one might say it is quite true that the eating of honey-comb is a fancy with some people; the real question is whether it is good for them, and this can, unfortunately only be answered medically. It is only possible to answer this question when one is really able to observe these people who eat the honey-comb, thus the wax, from the point of view of their state of health. I have seen various people who eat the comb, but they always spat it out when they had sucked out the honey. I have not so far come across people who eat any considerable quantity of wax. One should take into consideration that people digest in very different ways, not everyone in the same way. There may be people who would get some kind of gastric trouble simply by eating the wax, and such persons should be advised not to take it. But there can also be people who are able to digest the wax without any trouble and get rid of the residue by excretion. With regard to these people one could certainly say that because they eat the wax with the honey, (thus leaving the honey as long as possible still in connection with the wax which has entered the body), the honey is digested more in the intestines, whereas otherwise it is not digested till it has left the intestines and has passed into the lymphatic vessels. It is a question of the state of health of the person concerned. There are people who digest more in the intestines, and others more in the lymphatic vessels; one cannot say that one way is better than the other, for one is just as good as the other. It depends on the individual. One could only speak with certainty if one took a number of people who eat honey in the comb, and others who eat it without the comb, and then investigated how these two matters are related.

With regard to bee-diseases the question is, as is usual in disease, namely, that we must take into account what Herr Müller has just said. It is so even with human beings that certain things were not much noticed formerly, whereas today they are most carefully studied. But here something essentially different comes in question. The bee-keeper of the past had really many good instincts: he did many things without being able to say just why he did them. Today these instincts no longer exist. Today people always want to know the reason why. To determine this why it is, however, necessary to study the whole matter very fundamentally. Modern knowledge is not as a rule in a position to do this.

You see, the bee-keeper of old had very good instincts as how to treat the bees, I should like to say, in quite a personal manner. For instance, you should consider that there is already a considerable difference between giving the bees the old straw skeps as in former days, and giving them wooden hives as one does today. Box-hives are made of wood, and wood is an entirely different substance to the straw of which the old skeps were made. Straw attracts quite other substances from the air than does wood, so we have already a difference in the external handling. When I add to this all the bee-keeper did in former times, and above all, the strong instincts he had to do them even if he did not always know the reason why, he would, for example, place his bee-hives on some chosen spot, where the wind would blow more often from one quarter or another, and so on. Today one sets the bee-hives wherever there is room for them, from reasons of convenience. The climatic elements are still considered, but no longer to the same degree.

HERR MÜLLER stated that he pays great attention to this; he places his hives on a ridge where they are sheltered from the north wind and the east wind, and so on.

DR. STEINER:

In such matters wood is less sensitive than straw. I have no intention of agitating in favour of straw skeps; nevertheless differences do exist, and just such things as these certainly, very definitely, affect the bees with regard to their inner activities. A tremendous activity goes on in the body of the bee when it must first gather the nectar from the plants, and in absorbing it, transforms it. This is really an immense work. How does the bee accomplish it? It is accomplished through the quite special relationship between the two different fluids in the bee. One of these is the gastric juices and the other the blood-fluid. When you study the bee you find the whitish gastric juice and the reddish sap of the blood; these are the two main elements of which the bee is constituted, and all the other parts are arranged according to the workings of the gastric juice and the blood. The main point then is this definite proportion between these two fluids; they differ very considerably in themselves. The gastric juice is what one calls acid in chemistry, and the blood sap is chemically called alkaline, which means that it is not acid though it can be made so; in itself it is however, not acid. When the pepsin is insufficiently acid, something takes place within the bee which greatly disturbs its inner organism in the honey-producing process. The blood sap is only kept sufficiently strong when the necessary climatic conditions of light and warmth, etc., are present.

It will therefore be very important to take the right means of establishing the proper balance between the gastric fluid and the blood if one is to overcome the many diseases which have recently appeared among the bees. As bee-keeping can no longer be carried on as in past days, it is no longer possible to arrive at preventive methods through climatic conditions of warmth, etc., for these are no longer able to work so effectively upon the stocks of bees today; one will have to discover what will be able to work most favourably on the blood sap of the bee. It will be necessary in the future that bee-keepers take special care that the blood sap of the bee is rightly provided for. The following is important: you all know that there are years when the bees are obliged to get nectar almost exclusively from trees. In such seasons the composition of the blood sap is endangered, and the bees are much more liable to disease than at other times. It will be necessary in the future that the bee-keeper even contrives a small green-house—it need not be a large one—in which he can cultivate those plants which the bees not only like, but must have at certain times of the year. It will be necessary to have at least some small plot of flowers for the bees especially, for instance in the month of May. They will not fail to discover them for themselves whenever the plants they need have failed elsewhere. By this special cultivation of the necessary plants in the neighbourhood of the hives it will be possible to combat these diseases. These are methods I can recommend; I am giving only indications, but they will most certainly prove satisfactory for they are derived from a knowledge of bee-keeping, If they are put to the test you will find that one day they will bear very good fruit for the bee-keeper, for he will find that the diseases of bees can be prevented by these means. But if one is to proceed in a practical way all the connections mentioned above must be taken into account. I have no wish to make assertions; I only wish to say that these things arise out of the whole nature of the bees, and that it would be well to make experiments with especially cultivated plants in seasons when those most needed have failed, either partially or altogether. It should be possible in this way to considerably improve the health of the bees. I am myself quite convinced that these methods will prove successful when one is able to enter once again into these questions with a true understanding of nature. You see, it is not possible to go back to the old methods of bee-keeping. Just as little as there is any need to be reactionary in the realms of politics, or of life, is there any necessity to be a reactionary in any other domain. One must move with the times; but what really matters is that while we leave the old methods we are careful to balance this by something which will replace what we have lost. This is essential.

HERR MÜLLER stated that bee-keepers were already working in the direction of the special cultivation of certain plants. For example, the yellow crocus, which is grown in large quantities for the bees; other plants were cultivated also with similar small yellow blossoms. Indeed, more than this, for a large amount of American clover is now planted; a clover which grows six feet in height and flowers the whole year round. It is cut only in the autumn; till then the blossom is left for the bees. This might also be necessary perhaps?

DR. STEINER:

Certainly, such things are no doubt done, but as a rule the right connections are not known. What Herr Müller had mentioned at first, was excellent and should be continued, but with regard to the American clover that flowers all the year round, this will in future be avoided, for this plant cannot bring about any improvement at all in the blood-sap of the bees; it acts only as a stimulant, and for a very short time. It is very much the same as trying to cure a man with alcohol, the bees are stimulated to more activity for a certain time. The very greatest care should really be taken today not to grow plants for the bees that are totally foreign to them; bees in their whole organic nature are bound up with a particular country. This is very evident, for the bees from different parts of the world differ widely from one another. There is, for instance, the mid-European bee already referred to here, the common domestic bee. The Italian bee again is quite unlike the Spanish bee, and so on. Bees are most strongly bound by their habits to their native country, and one cannot help them in any real way by giving them the nectar or honey belonging to entirely different countries. They have then, so much work to do in their own bodies that there are great disturbances there; the bees are forced to try and adapt themselves, to make their organisation as much as possible like that of the bees over there, in those countries where the clover comes from. Hard facts will prove in time that though such methods may appear successful for a few years, disastrous results will follow. It is quite true as has been said, that so far there are no definite indications of this, but it will none the less occur, and then people must abandon all such methods, or continue them as was done in the case of the vines. You will remember that in the seventies or eighties, phyloxera appeared and is destroying the vineyards of Europe, over immense areas. At the time I was able to study this matter, as I had a very good friend who was a farmer, and who also edited an agricultural paper, and gave much attention to this whole problem. People began to wonder why the American vine appeared immune to this disease. But what did it all amount to? It amounted to this, that the remedies by which the disease could be got rid of with the American vine, could not be used with the same result on the European vine. The consequence was, that even when everyone began to cultivate the American vine, they could succeed in keeping it in health, whereas the European vines died out. The cultivation of the European vine had to be given up altogether; the whole cultivation of the vineyards was Americanised, and everything has been completely changed. This has happened in many places. To think in this mechanical manner is valueless; one must be quite clear that things through their whole nature may be bound up with definite localities, and this fact must be taken into account. Otherwise though some temporary success may follow, it cannot be permanent.

Are there any other questions you would like to ask? Or are all you gentlemen content to eat honey without so much discussion about it? Perhaps some question may occur to one or another of you.

Meanwhile, I should like to say something quite briefly about the nature of this honey-making process of the bees. It is something so really wonderful that there should be these tiny little creatures that are able to transform what they have gathered from the flowers or plants in general, into the honey which is so health-giving, and which should really play a far greater part in the nourishment of men and women today. It is not realised how important the consumption of honey actually is. For example, if it were possible to influence the social medicine of today, it would be discovered that if people about to be married would eat honey as a preparation for the future, they would not have rickety children. Honey when assimilated can affect the reproductive processes, and greatly influence the building up of the body of the child. The consumption of honey by the parents, and above all by the prospective mother, works especially into the bony structure of the child. Results such as this will appear when these questions are considered in their essential aspects. In the place of the trivialities put forward in scientific journals today, it will be asked, when once we have some real knowledge of these things: “What is it best to eat at this or that time of life?” “What is best at another time of life?” Indeed, gentlemen, this will be of immense value, for the general state of health will then essentially improve, and more especially will this affect a man's vitality. Today people attach very little value to such matters. Those whose children do not suffer from rickets are naturally very pleased, but they do not think very much about it, it is taken as a matter of course. Only those complain whose children are born with rickets. It is just in the case of such most valuable social and medical methods that people remain indifferent, for it is generally taken for granted that such measures are concerned merely with what they regard as a normal condition. They have first to be persuaded that this is not the case. It should, however, be recognised that extremely favourable results would appear in this direction, and I am sure that if it could in this way be realised that through spiritual science it is possible to arrive at such conclusions, people would begin to look towards the things of the spirit. They would do this to a far greater extent than at present, when they are only told to pray that this or that may happen. Truly, gentlemen, these things which can be learnt by the spirit, and which modern science ignores, are such that one is able to know that during the times of betrothal and pregnancy, honey can be of inestimable value.

I have just said that it is a most wonderful thing that the bee should be able to gather substances from the storehouse of nature and then transform them into this honey which is of so great value to human life. You will best understand on what the origin of honey actually rests if I describe to you the sane process in the quite different form in which it appears in those relatives of the bees, if I may call them so, the wasps.

The wasps do not provide man with honey, but they prepare a substance that can be made use of medicinally, though of a very different kind to that prepared for us by the bees. In the next lecture I will also speak about the ants, but first, will we consider a certain species of wasp. There are wasps that have the peculiarity that they do not deposit their eggs at random, but place them on plants or on the leaves or bark of trees, even into the blossoms of trees. [Drawing on the blackboard.] Here for example is the branch, here an oak-leaf, and the wasp with its ovipositor which is hollow, (the sting would be here) lays its egg in the oak-leaf, or in some other part of a plant. What then happens? Where the egg has been placed the whole surrounding tissue of the leaf is changed; the leaf would have been quite different if the egg had not been laid there. Very good, let us now see what has happened.

The whole growth of the plant has been affected, and protruding from the leaf, entirely surrounding the little wasp-egg, we find the so-called gall-nut or gall-apple, those little brownish coloured nuts or apples so often seen on trees. They are there because a wasp deposited an egg at this spot, and all round the egg there is this metamorphosed plant-substance which entirely envelops it. The wasp egg would perish if it were laid in any other place; it can only exist and develop because this protective substance encloses it which the gall-wasp steals from the plant. The wasp robs the plant of this substance. You see, the bee lays its egg in the cells of the comb; the larvae develop and emerge as bees, which in their turn steal the substance of the plant, and elaborate it within themselves. The wasp does this at an earlier stage, for in the depositing of the egg the wasp already takes from the plant the substance it needs. The bee, as it were, waits a little longer, the wasp does it earlier. In the case of the higher animals, and with man, the egg is already surrounded with a protecting sheath within the body of the mother. In this instance what the wasp has to take from the plant is provided by the mother. This gall-nut is simply built up from the substance of the plant, just as the chorion is formed as a sheath round the egg in the body of the mother, and is ejected later with the after-birth. You see how close is the relationship between the wasp and the plant. In districts especially rich in wasps one can find trees almost entirely covered with these galls. The wasp lives with the trees; it depends on them, for its eggs would never develop if it could not procure this protective covering from the different trees or plants. These galls have very many and various forms, there are some which do not look like small apples, but are interwoven and hairy, but everywhere the small germ of the wasp is in the centre. At times these galls look like shaggy little nuts. We see how close is the relationship between the wasps and the plants with which they share their existence.

When the wasp has matured, it eats its way with its sharp jaws out of the gall-nut, and emerges as a wasp, and after a period of living in the outer world lays its eggs on a leaf or the bark of a tree; the egg and larval stages are always passed through as a living together with the plants.

Well, gentlemen, you may perhaps say—what has all this to do with the production of honey? It has actually a great deal to do with it, for when such things are observed in the right way one learns to know how the honey was first prepared in nature, and we find once more an instance of how the instinctive knowledge of the people in older times took these things into account.

Perhaps some of you know that in the south, and more especially in Greece, the cultivation of fig trees is of much importance. These are the so-called wild figs which are certainly rather sweet, but there are people with a still sweeter tooth, who wish to have fig trees that bear still sweeter figs than those of the wild trees. What do these people do?

Now just imagine you have a wild fig tree; this wild fig tree is a special favourite with a certain kind of wasp which lays its eggs upon it. Let us picture this tree, and on its branches a wild fig into which the wasp inserts its egg. Now the grower of the figs is in his way a clever fellow; he lets the wasps lay their eggs in the wild figs which he cultivates just for this very purpose. Later this fellow gathers two of these figs, just at the moment when the wasp eggs are not quite fully developed, when the wasps are not yet ready to creep out, and he takes a reed and ties the two figs together so that they are held firmly. And now he goes to a fig tree that he wants to improve, and he hangs the two figs he has tied together, and within which are the eggs of the wasp not yet fully developed, and binds them on to the fig-tree which he wishes to sweeten. And now the following happens: the wasps within the figs feel that something has happened, for the figs which were gathered now begin to dry up, for they are no longer supplied with the sap of the tree, and get very dry. The immature wasp inside senses this, even the egg is aware of it, and the result is that the wasp is in a terrible hurry to come out of the fig. The grower always starts this process in the spring; he first lets the wasp lay its eggs, and in the month of May he quickly gathers the two figs and carries out his plan. The little creature inside thinks, now I must hurry up, now the time has come when the figs dry up. In a terrible hurry the wasp emerges much earlier than it would otherwise have done. If the fig had remained where it was before, it would only have crept out in the late summer; now it must creep out in the early summer with the result that there is a second brood. It lays eggs in the summer which would otherwise have been laid in the following spring. Now these late eggs which are deposited on the tree that is to be further cultivated, do not reach full maturity, they only develop to a certain stage. The result of this is, that those figs into which the second brood has been placed become twice as sweet as the wild figs. This is the method of improving the figs, of making them twice as sweet.

What has actually happened here? The wasps, which though they differ from the bees are yet related to them, the wasps take just that substance from the plant which is on the way to become honey. If in the clever way of the cultivator of the fig trees, the figs of the wild tree containing the eggs of the wasp are thrown up and tied so that they remain hanging up there, and if one then is clever enough to induce the wasps to weave again into the tree what they have taken from the other tree, then honey in the form of sweetness is, as it were, filtered into these grafted fig-trees; it enters into the figs in the form of sweetness because the wasps have prepared it in an extremely fine state of dilution; Nature itself has brought it about in an indirect way.

You see, gentlemen, nothing has been taken away from Nature, the essence of the honey remains within Nature. The wasp cannot prepare the honey in the way the bee does, for its organisation is not adapted to this. But when, by this by-path, it is compelled during the stages of its growth, to carry the sweetness of the honey from one fig-tree to another, the sweetness of the grafted figs can be increased; a kind of honey-substance is then within them.

You see, gentlemen, we arrive here at something very interesting. It seems that these wasps have a body which is unable to gather the nectar, the honey-substance from Nature, and transform it into honey within itself. But man can bring it about that from one fig-tree to another a kind of honey-making takes place. The bee is therefore a creature that develops a wasp-like body so much further that it is able to accomplish this quite apart from the trees; in the case of the wasp the process must be left within the tree itself. So we must say: the bee retains within itself more of that force which the wasp only possesses at a very young stage, as long, that is, as it is in the egg, or larval state. When the wasp develops further it loses the power of producing honey; the bee retains it and can make use of it as a fully matured creature.

Just think, gentlemen, what it signifies that one can in this way look into Nature's processes, and can say to oneself: within the plants there is concealed this honey, this substance that tends towards sugar-sweetness. It is there; it shows itself, if only one follows the right path; one has only to assist Nature by seeing that the wasp comes at the right moment to the tree that is to be improved.

Here, in our country such things cannot be done, it is no longer possible today. There was once a time in the evolution of the earth when from the wasps, which as long as 2,000 years ago, and indeed, still today, could be persuaded by some clever fellow to produce a second brood as I have described. These wasps crept out and were given the opportunity of laying their eggs in the figs, which were then again and again gathered. Thus, in the course of time, it was possible that bees could be developed from these wasps.

The bee is a creature which in very ancient times was developed from the wasp. Today one can still see that it is by means of an animal activity, namely that of the wasps, that honey is first prepared in the realms of nature.

So now, you can also understand how closely related to this is the fact that the bees place their honey in the cells of the honey-comb. This comb consists mainly of wax, and wax is not only necessary in order that the bees may deposit their honey there, for the bee can only produce honey when its whole organism is active in the right way. It must therefore secrete wax.

The second fig tree in which sweetness arises of itself, is also richer in wax than the wild tree. It differs especially from the wild tree in that it is richer in wax. Nature has herself increased the wax so that the cultivated figs, the sweetened figs, grow on a tree which in a certain way, Nature has made richer in wax.

You can already see here a model, as it were, for what appears in bee-keeping.

If you now go to work very carefully, and make a cross-section from the trunk of the cultivated fig tree, you will find, if you look carefully, patterns just like the wax cells of the comb. Within the tree-trunk you find certain growths similar to the honey cells, formed from the precipitated wax of the tree. The tree that is richer in wax uses it in a kind of honey-cell formation.

So we can say: when we study this special cultivation of the fig trees we discover a kind of honey production in Nature that has not yet appeared openly, for the honey remains within the figs. The bees, if I may so express it, bring out into the open what remains still within Nature in the sweetened figs. Thus, what would otherwise have remained within the tree-trunk, forming there these natural cells, which are only less definite, less substantial than the bee cells, and fade away again, this whole wax and honey-making process is driven up into the figs, so that Nature is herself a bee-keeper. The bees have drawn it forth from Nature and have these processes within themselves.

What does the bee then do? The bee deposits its eggs within the hive, and the egg matures there. It does not need to change the substance into a gall-apple, it takes the nectar directly from the plants, neither does the bee need to go to the tree that is richer in wax, for she accomplishes in herself what takes place in the tree-trunk, and deposits in the comb the juices of the plant which she transforms into honey, which in the case of the cultivated tree, remains in the juices of the fig. One can say that what in Nature lies concealed in the tree through the wasps, now happens outwardly, and it becomes clear what it really is that we have before us, when we look into the hive with its marvellously built comb of waxen cells. It is indeed, gentlemen, a wonderful sight, is it not Herr Müller? A wonderful sight is the artistic construction of these waxen cells with the honey within them.

You have only to look at it gentlemen, and you will say to yourselves—the bees with their waxen combs really show us a kind of artistically formed tree-trunk with its many branches. The bee does not need to go to the tree to lay her eggs there, but they build for themselves a kind of picture of a tree, and in the place of the figs growing there, she puts honey into the finished cells. We find, as it were, a copy of the artificially cultivated fig tree which the bees have made.

Truly, gentlemen, this is to look into the very heart of Nature, and realise what can be learnt from her. Men have yet to learn much from Nature, but for this they must first learn to recognise the spiritual in Nature. Without this recognition of the spirit in Nature, one merely stands and gapes, and should one journey to the south and see how those clever fellows there tie the figs together, the figs pierced by the wasps, and throw then up into the trees and bind and fix them there we shall gape as tourists do, even when they are scientific gentlemen, and not know what to make of it, They do not know that he saves the bees their labour, for Nature will put the honey into the figs for him.

In those countries where figs are plentiful, they are as health-giving as honey, for it is honey at an earlier stage of development that is already in the figs.

You see, these are things which we ought to know if we are to discuss a matter of such importance as bee-keeping. I believe that by such means we shall in time arrive at points of view of true value.

(Questions were asked as to the affinity between bees and flowers which unites them so closely; also, what honey should be, and is, in relation to mail.

The question of the laying of eggs when the Queen is not fecundated was again raised, as in a normal hive there are three kinds of eggs: queen-eggs, worker-eggs and drone-eggs).

DR. STEINER:

Very well, we will discuss these things once more in today's lecture. It is like this: we have first the fertilisation of the Queen during the nuptial flight. The Queen is then fecundated. Then we have to consider the time which elapses between the laying of the eggs until the insect is completely matured, till the bee is there. With the Queen this period is sixteen days, with the worker-bee twenty-one—twenty-two days, and in the case of the drone twenty-two—twenty-four days. We have then to begin with these three types; they differ from one another in so far as they mature during differing periods of time. What lies at the root of this? When a bee develops as a Queen it is due to the special feeding it has been given; the Queen larva are differently fed so that growth is accelerated. Now the bees are creatures of the Sun, and the Sun needs approximately the same time to revolve once upon its own axis as the worker-bee needs to come to maturity. The Queen does not wait in her development till the Sun has quite completed this revolution, and for this reason her whole development remains entirely within the influence of the Sun. Thereby she becomes a creature capable of laying eggs; all that is connected with a capacity to lay eggs is under the influence of the Sun, and indeed, of the whole cosmos also. The moment the feeding is such that development proceeds at the rate of the worker-bee, which is that of almost a complete revolution of the Sun, the nearer the bee approaches the influence of the earth-evolution. The farther the Sun moves, the more the bee comes under the influences of the earth. The worker-bee is indeed largely a creature of the Sun, but already somewhat of an earthly creature. But the drone which develops during a longer period than is necessary for a complete revolution of the Sun, becomes a creature wholly of the earth. It withdraws itself from the influence of the Sun.

We have then this trinity; we have the Queen, the worker-bees, in which there are still super-earthly forces, and we have the drones which have no longer anything to do with the Sun, but are fully creatures of the earth. All else that happens occurs no longer under the influence of the earth, with the one exception of the actual fecundation of the Queen.

Now this is the remarkable point. Just consider this nuptial flight of the Queen. The lower animals dislike fecundation, they seek to avoid it. This is everywhere in evidence. Thus the flight of the Queen is an escape towards the Sun, and no fecundation can take place when the day is dull. The drones who try to bring an earthly element into the Sun element must even wrestle in the air, and the weaker ones are left behind. Only the very strongest can fly as high as the Queen, and fertilise her. But even after this has taken place it is not all the eggs that are fertilised, but only a portion of them, and these can become Queens or worker-bees; the remaining portion that are unfertilised within the body of the Queen become drones. When the Queen is not fecundated then only drones can emerge, when she is fecundated, Queens, worker-bees and drones can emerge, because the seed is fertilised and the heavenly has made contact with the earthly. Thus even when there are worker-bees and drones, the latter still owe their origin to a longer exposure to earthly influences, because no fertilisation has in their case taken place, and they must therefore be all the more exposed to earthly influences if they are to become fitted for life; they must be fed for a longer period of time.

QUESTION:

Some years ago, I was told that if anyone has rheumatism and gets stung by a bee or a wasp, the rheumatism will get better.

DR. STEINER:

This touches upon a question which was perhaps not fully considered last Monday. Herr Müller then told us of a man who evidently had some slight affection of the heart, and who collapsed on being stung by a bee.

HERR MÜLLER:

The doctor advised him to give up bee-keeping, as otherwise it might be the death of him.

DR. STEINER:

Disease of the heart is a sign that the ego-organisation is not functioning rightly. You have already heard something of these things in former lectures. You will remember that we distinguished four different parts of a man; first of all, the ordinary physical body, which we can touch, secondly the etheric body, thirdly the astral body, and fourthly the ego-organisation.

This ego-organisation is active in the blood; actually, it brings the blood into movement, and in accordance with the movement of the blood, the heart beats. In text books you will always find the facts quite falsely stated, for it is represented as though the heart were a kind of pump, and that this pumping of the heart sends the blood all over the body. This is nonsense, because it is in reality the blood which is brought into motion by the ego-organisation, and moves throughout the body. If anyone asserts that it is the heart that drives the blood, then he must equally assert that if he has a turbine, it is the turbine that sets the water in motion, though everyone knows that it is the water that drives the turbine. Man has the same kind of points of resistance in his heart; the blood comes up against them and sets the heart in motion; thus it is that the ego-organisation works directly in the circulation of the blood.

Now it is actually the case that this ego-organisation is in a mysterious way present in the poison of the bee; it is a similar force to the force that circulates in your blood that is present in the bee-poison. It is of great interest that the bee should have need of this poison within her. The bee does not merely need it in order to be able to sting; that is merely incidental. The bee needs the poison throughout its whole organism, for it must have the same force of circulation that man has in his blood.

The colony of bees, as I told you, is like an entire man. Now consider, you get some of this bee-poison into your body, that is, into your blood, for any poison entering the body goes immediately into the blood. You are, let us say, a normal man, your blood will come more into motion, and inflammation may follow, but your heart can bear it. If however, a man has some disease of the heart, and his ego-organisation is made stronger by the poison, then this affects the weak heart, and the result may be that the man faints, or may even die. This explains the case mentioned by Herr Müller.

The remarkable thing is this; that substances that can make a man ill or even kill him, can also cure him. This is one of the great responsibilities one has in the preparation of medicines, for there are no real remedies which, if wrongly applied, cannot cause the same illnesses which they can also cure.

What then actually happens when a fainting fit or even death results from the sting of a bee?

You see, when a man faints, then his astral body, and more especially his ego-organisation, has withdrawn from the body as happens in sleep, only in sleep this happens in a normal way, and in a swoon in abnormal way. In a swoon, or fainting fit, the astral body does not withdraw completely as in sleep, it gets stuck fast, and when a man has a weak ego-organisation, he cannot bring it back again. One has to shake him, wake him up, rouse him out of his faintness by making him breathe more strongly by certain movements. You know how in these cases, one has to take the man's arms, cross them over on his breast, put them back, then again bring them forward and so on, and this artificial breathing really always means that one is trying to bring the ego-organisation back into the body in the right way.

And now let us suppose someone is suffering from rheumatism, or perhaps gout, or other deposits in the body; then one must try to strengthen the ego-organisation. Why do people have gout or rheumatism? Because the ego-organisation is too weak and cannot bring the blood into the right movement. The blood must be made to move more quickly. When the blood is not in the right state, when for instance, it flows too slowly, minute crystals are precipitated everywhere, and pass into the neighbourhood of the blood-vessels. These minute crystals consist of uric acid, and they go all over the body, and cause gout or rheumatism—the ego-organisation is too weak.

If I now give this man the right dose of bee or wasp poison, his ego-organisation is strengthened; only one must not give too much, or the ego-organisation might not be able to hold its own. But if one gives just enough to strengthen the ego one can then find a very good remedy prepared from the bee or wasp poison; only one must combine it with some other substance. These things are done. For instance, the old Tartarus remedy is manufactured in a similar way, though from different substances.

Remedies can always be prepared from poisonous substances, as in this case for the strengthening of the ego-organisation, but in applying them it is necessary to know all about the particular patient. For example, someone has gout or rheumatism; the first question must be—is his heart sound? that is, does it function well under the influence of the blood-circulation? If this is the case, he can be cured with bee or wasp poison. If the heart is not sound (but here one must distinguish between a nervous heart trouble, where it is less harmful) but if you have a patient with a serious heart disease, when the trouble is due to a valvular disease, then one must be very careful in the use of this remedy. Bee or wasp poison acts very powerfully on the cardiac valve, and when this is diseased these remedies cannot sometimes be made use of at all. This is why it is so dangerous to speak in a general way of some medicine or another as a cure for this or that illness. But one is entitled to say—I make a certain preparation, a remedy; I put wasp or bee poison into it (we actually have such a remedy) combining it with some binding substance, some gelatinous or other vegetable binding substance, which is then put into an ampoule and injected, just as the sting of the bee is injected, only the re-action from the bee sting is much stronger. One can prepare this remedy, and can call it a cure for rheumatism.

But even so, this is not the only anxiety one has, for one has first of all to discover whether the patient's general state of health can well bear the remedy; medicaments which enter deeply into the body must only be given when one has most thoroughly examined the patient's whole state of health. For this reason such remedies as enter deeply into the body must only he administered when one has thoroughly examined the patient's state of health.

When one hears of all manner of remedies such as are commonly advertised as cures for one thing or another, they are usually more or less harmless, and may be of use. There are many of these remedies to be bought, and one may agree that this is so, even when they have unpleasant results. Cures very frequently have unpleasant consequences, and the patient usually has to recover from the remedy which has cured him!

If we have some fine strong fellow who has rheumatism, it is as a rule, not true rheumatism, but a gouty condition, and then, as Mr. Burle said, “a few bee-stings can affect him very favourably.” He can be cured because he is able to stand the reaction. It is usually so, that a normal man who suffers from rheumatism, and is given the correct dose of bee-poison, can take this remedy well and be cured by it. On the other hand, a bee-sting may cause such severe inflammation that this must first be reduced and the poison, as far as possible, removed, in which case not very much will remain for curing the rheumatism. In the case of a normal man, it will very probably happen that not sufficient will remain over to cure the rheumatism.

But now let us consider the following case. Rheumatism can also come about in this way. A man is perhaps not a very hard worker, and has a very good appetite. Well, generally speaking, a man will have quite a good sound heart if he does not work too much and eats heartily, until the whole situation begins to be rather doubtful.

The heart is an organ with extraordinary powers of resistance, it can hardly be seriously damaged unless there is some hereditary tendency, or if it has been injured in youth; the heart can only be injured after many years. But a man who is a heavy eater often takes a good deal of alcohol with his meals, then the ego-organisation is over-stimulated, and the circulation of the blood becomes too violent; the heart can no longer keep pace with its beats. Poison, uric acid, is deposited all over him; the heart may still be strong for quite a long time, but already gout and rheumatism are lurking everywhere. Under these conditions, a bee-sting may render him extraordinarily good service.

HERR BURLE:

I do not know whether there was a trace of alcoholism about this man I mentioned.

DR. STEINER:

You mean you made no inquiries? You see, gentlemen, when one has such remedies as bee-poison, which is a very powerful one, then one must be quite sure that most careful attention is given to the patient's whole state of health.

HERR MÜLLER stated that he got an attack of rheumatism by catching cold; he treated it with exposure to the Sun, after which it disappeared. This summer he had it again slightly. He also believed that one could be cured by bee-stings, but one unlucky day he was badly stung on both legs, and had about thirty-two stings. The only ill effect was that for a week he was all colours of the rainbow. Swelling did not always follow; human bodies are very differently constituted. As already stated, one man may die of a bee-sting, while another may get as many as sixty without his heart beating any faster for it. One man has more resistance than another.

DR. STEINER:

When you got so many stings, was it after you had been working many years with bees?

HERR MÜLLER:

Many years.

DR. STEINER:

Probably you no longer remember the first time you were stung. After the first time one gets to feel it either more, or less. The man of whom you told us, was no doubt, stung for the first time. When one has once had a poison in one's body, that is, in the blood, one gets more and more able to cope with it, one gets increasingly immune, as it is called. When someone is stung a hit at the beginning of his bee-keeping, and is otherwise a man with a healthy heart, then the poison so works on him that he becomes less and less sensitive to it. If one knows one is strong and healthy, one can even let oneself be stung once or twice in order that one can be stung afterwards. Rainbow colours show that the poison only affects the skin; the blood has become immune. This does not depend only on the organisation, but on what has been previously introduced into the blood. I am surprised that the doctor who saw this man of whom you told us, did not tell him that the second time it would not be so bad, and the third time he would be immune. But perhaps his heart was so bad he could not safely have taken this risk. That also has to be considered.

And indeed today it is a dangerous affair, because the doctors having once got hold of such things, now think that every bee-master should be inoculated before he starts bee-keeping.

When men go to war they are inoculated with all sorts of poisons, a thing not at all to be recommended, for the blood is then very greatly injured. The blood always deteriorates somewhat when such things are put into it. After a time it recovers its balance, the blood becomes healthy again, but is protected against any fresh poison of the same nature.

HERR MÜLLER:

About the drones and the different kinds of eggs, Dr. Steiner has said so much, but one point is perhaps not familiar to him. When one has reason to believe the colony to be healthy, there may be times when the Queen is inferior, or is too old, and all the eggs she lays turn out drones. After many years of experience he is convinced that the Queen, when not a good one or too old, is still capable of laying eggs, some of which are good, but the majority will produce only drones.

Then about honey; how the bee actually makes the honey, and whether the bee-keeper should not help by sugar-feeding. From what had been said here, it would seem that the bee-keeper is on no account to use sugar; it seems that anyone who feeds his bees with sugar will get his name on the black list. It is true that one can have bad experiences with feeding foreign honey.

DR. STEINER:

Naturally, it is quite right to say that one does not get the same product if sugar is fed artificially. If anyone likes taking sugar with honey he can add some for himself. Just as one does not water the wine you offer people on the ground that people should not drink it so strong, one offers what is printed on the label. The best thing in regard to honey is reciprocal control by the bee-keepers, because they best understand the whole question.

With regard to the drones, I should like to say this. One may certainly suspect that the Queen is not properly fertilised; too many drones come out. If one does not wish to leave the matter to the bees to settle, something can be done by means of special feeding, (these experiments have been made) the brood then emerges earlier, i.e., after twenty—twenty-two days, instead of twenty-three—twenty-four days, The drones then appear as somewhat drowsy, but still approximately similar to worker bees. One cannot certainly continue this for long; it is merely an example of the effects of the time-periods.

Such things are however, not done in practical bee-keeping theoretically, it can certainly be stated that a very great deal depends on the feeding, and it is undeniable that an irregularly egg-laying bee can be developed from a worker-bee, though it will certainly not be a real Queen. These things all go to show how readily transformable these creatures are, but such matters have no great value in practical bee-keeping.

HERR MÜLLER:

One calls these “laying workers;” it is an illness in the colony.

DR. STEINER:

In practical bee-keeping it is of no great importance, but by special feeding, the colony is able to make an egg-laying bee out of an ordinary worker-bee. It is a kind of illness. The colony is a unity in itself, and the colony is then ill. If you take a goose and overfeed it till the liver is over-developed, then the whole organism is ill. If a worker-bee becomes a layer of eggs, it is an over-developed worker-bee, but the whole colony must then be regarded as ill.

Perhaps some other questions may occur to you later, we can then return to them. Meanwhile I will add a few words in reply to the question asked by Herr Dollinger.

One can clearly distinguish those insects that in the wider sense are bee-like, the bees, wasps, and ants. These small creatures are related to one another, and I have already told you the interesting story of the gall-wasps which deposit their eggs in trees and similar places. I explained further how a kind of inner preparation of honey takes place through these wasps. There are also other kinds of wasps beside these gall-wasps, which more closely resemble the bees as they make a kind of honey-comb. There is, for example, an interesting wasp which builds in the following way: when it finds a rather stiff leaf on some branch, it fetches small particles which it bites off from the bark of neighbouring trees, or some similar substance; these it permeates with its saliva, and then proceeds to build a number of small stalks which it attaches to the leaf. When it has completed these attachments the wasp goes on working, mixing these substances with saliva and building on to these stalks something very similar to the single cell of the honey-comb. On a closer inspection of this substance it is, however, seen to be different. Honey-comb, as you know, is made of wax, but when you take a piece of this wasp-comb it has a greyish colour, it is very much like what we manufacture as paper. It is actually a kind of paper-pulp. Then second, third, fourth pieces are added and hung up there.

When eggs have been deposited in these cells, they are covered over, but during the time of laying, the wasp in a most curious way, makes a kind of loop out of its paper, (Diagram 15) and then again a kind of covering with an opening at one side for a flight hole, so that the wasps can go in and out and attend to these little cells, Then more rows of cells are added, covered in, again a loop, a cover and a flight hole, and so on, till there may be quite a long cone, like a fir-cone. The wasps build themselves this cone-like structure out of paper, and in its separate parts it is similar to the brood nest of the bees. Other wasp nests are, as you know, covered in with a kind of skin, and have many and varied forms.

Just think what is happening here. If you ask me what the bee does in order to build its waxen cells, then I must say that the bee gathers what is needed from the flowers, from flowering plants, and what is of a similar nature from trees, but not concerning itself at all with the bark, or woody substances. The bee gathers only what is of the nature of the blossom, or more rarely what is leaf-like in its nature. The only time when such higher insects as the bees go to what is not of the nature of the blossom (to woody parts and such-like they do not go) is when they go after a substance that at certain times seems to be extremely tasty to them. The bees certainly do this much less than the wasps, and most especially the ants. Though the ants and wasps make use of what is lignified for their nests, they greatly relish the juices that are exuded primarily by the aphids:. This is really most interesting. The harder the substances used by these creatures for their structures, the more do they relish not only the nectar that is within the blossom, but something that is upon the blossom or leaf, namely, the aphis. These are really noble creatures, (forgive me if I now use the language of the ants, in human speech I could not say the same), the aphis is for the ant a noble animal. It is absolutely all blossom; it is really the finest honey in the world. The wasps also have a discriminating taste for the aphis. But when we come to the ants, which are not able to build the same kind of nest as the wasps, they must set to work quite differently. The ant makes heaps of earth, and these heaps have many passages within them, a whole labyrinth of passages along which the ants then carry all they need in the way of harder substances from the bark or rind of trees. Above all, the ants like the dead parts of wood, and these materials they use to continue their building, piling it up with particles of soil. They chiefly visit the stumps of trees that have been cut down, selecting what they need from the hardened core and carrying it away for their nests.

Thus the ants use the very hardest substances, and cannot elaborate their building as far as a cellular structure. You see, the bees make use of the substances that are within the plants; with these they build their waxen cells, and are thus still dependent on the juices of the blossom for their food, on pollen for instance, and the juice-like substances in the blossom. In the case of the wasps, it is already a harder material that they need for building their cells, but it is at the same time, thinner and more brittle than honey-comb, though as a substance it is harder.

A wasp may have a fine taste for aphis, but it nevertheless feeds also, in bee-fashion, on what is contained in the plants. The ants mostly make use of such hard material that they can only make tunnels into the earth, constructing little caves without any combs or cells. They are most especially fond of the aphis; they even capture them and carry them away to their dwellings; one can find them there in the ant heaps. It is really most interesting. When you go into a village you see a row of houses, and behind them the cow-sheds where the milking cows are; the ants have just the same plan. Throughout the ant heap you will find little dwellings where the aphis are placed, for they are the milch-cows of the ants. It is only all on a minute scale, for there you will find little stalls, and the aphis are the cows. The ants go to them and stroke them with their antennæ; this is extremely pleasant to the aphis, and they exude their juice which the ants now absorb. In this juice of the aphis the ant receives the most vital element of its food, for the aphis gives up this juice when it is milked by the ant. It is really just like a cow, only the cow must be stroked much harder. The aphis are picked off the plants by the ants, and are well cared for, so that we really must say it is quite splendid for these little creatures that there should be an ant hill in the neighbourhood, and that they should be carried off by the ants and made use of in their little cow-stalls. In the wise arrangements of Nature quite a little cow market in aphis is carried on by the ants.

Thus you see, gentlemen, that the ants which make use of hard substances only for their dwellings, are no longer able to be satisfied with the pure saps of the plants for their food; they must take as food what the sap of the plant has already given to the animal. So one must say: with the bees the pure juices of the flowers suffice for food; the wasps need both the flower saps and the animal saps, hence their harder shell structure. In the case of the ants their actual food is animal sap only; hence there is no construction of cells at all. The ant has no longer the power to build cells. Even when it takes something from the flowers it still needs this substance from the little cow-stalls, otherwise it cannot live.

You see how interesting are the relationships that exist between the flowers and these creatures. The bees must use the pure saps of the flowers; the wasps, and more especially the ants, must first allow these flower juices to pass through the animal before it can serve them as nourishment. As a result of this, they are able in the building of their house, to use what is no longer the sap of the plant. There is really a very great difference between the waxen honey-comb of the bee, the paper nest of the wasp, and the structure made by the ants which can only be made from outside material, and cannot be carried to the stage of the cell. For this reason their food must be so entirely different.

On Saturday I must go to Schaffhausen, and there will be no lecture; I will let you know when the next one will take place.

Good morning, Gentlemen!

Today I shall continue the subject dealt with last time in answer to Herr Dollinger's question. Should anything else arise, we can consider this also.

In my answer to this question of Herr Dollinger, I spoke of the ants, and how these creatures, bees, wasps and ants are related to one another, though their modes of life are totally different. Taking our starting point from this fact, we can really learn a very great deal about the whole household of Nature, for the more one learns to understand these small creatures and their ways, the more one realises how wisely regulated their work is, and all they are able to accomplish in the realm of Nature.

Last time, I told you how the ants make their nests, how they either build up mounds of the soil itself, or gather together minute particles of decaying wood, or of wood which has become quite hard, and is no longer living; also from various other substances which they mix together. Within these ant-hills are innumerable passages, along which the ants move in procession, whole hosts of them. One sees them coming out at the entrances, searching their surroundings, and collecting what they need. Sometimes however, it happens that these creatures do nct first build up a mound, but make use of something suitable they find there already. Perhaps, for instance, a tree has been cut down and the stump has been left standing; an ant colony comes along and makes a little chamber inside it, hollows it out, and makes all kind of passages with their exits. Then perhaps, they heap up a little earth, make one passage, then another, then a third and so on, and within these passages are all inter-connected.

You see, to say of all this that it is due to the instinct of the creatures may be all very well, but nothing very much has then been said, for when the creature cannot make use of a tree stump, it builds up a sand heap; when it finds a suitable tree stump, then it so arranges the matter that it saves the labour that would be needed to heap up a hillock. The small creature adjusts itself to the individual situation, and it becomes very difficult to state that this is due to instinct. This would only enable the creature to do everything in accordance with instinct; but it actually adjusts itself to the external circumstances. That is the important point.

Here, in our country, it does not frequently happen, but the further one goes south the greater nuisance do the ants become. Imagine a house, and in one corner of it, without the owner having noticed anything, the ants have gathered; they have carried in all sorts of things, particles of earth, minute fragments of wood, and in some corner that has been overlooked in cleaning, have made a small dwelling place which no one notices. From here they make passages into the kitchen, into the pantry, following the most complicated ways, and bring back all they require for food or other purposes, from the kitchen or pantry. This can happen in southern countries, and the house may be quite pervaded by a colony of ants without anyone living there knowing they are mere fellow inhabitants of the ants, until they discover by chance, or by sight, that something in the store cupboard has been nibbled, and the real source only comes to light when the passages are traced. Here again, one cannot get very far by speaking of mere instinct, for you would then have to say that Nature has given these creatures an instinct to take up their abode precisely in this very house; what they build there must be so constructed that it is adapted to this particular house.

But you see, these creatures do not work out of mere instinct; there is wisdom in what they do. If you test some individual ant, you would certainly not arrive at the conclusion that it was especially wise, for what it does when separated from the colony, or what it may be forced to do, does not reveal any special wisdom. One then begins to realise that it is not the individual ant that can reason, but the entire colony of ants as a unity; the colony of bees, for example, is wise in this sense. The separate ants of the colony have no individual intelligence, and for this reason the work is carried on by the whole colony in an extremely interesting way. There are, moreover, many other more interesting happenings within these ant-hills. There is, for instance, a kind of ant which does as follows: somewhere or other it builds on the ground a kind of wall (drawing on the board); here it is raised; here, it forms a circle on the surrounding earth, there, digs a hole. Within are the ants. Sometimes the hole is at the top, like the crater of a volcano; within are the many passages with their outlets.

Now these ants do something very peculiar. They destroy all the grasses and plants which grow round about, with the exception of one particular kind of grass. All other grasses are destroyed, even at times, all other plants. Thus, in the centre we have a kind of hillock, and all round it looks as though the ground had been very finely paved. Through the ants biting away everything, the soil has become very compact, and is very firm. There is the ant-hill, and all round it a smooth pavement, almost like asphalt, but rather lighter in colour.

The ants then search all round about and collect a certain kind of grass which they then begin to cultivate. As soon as the wind brings other seeds, they bite off the new plants the moment they begin to grow; they will not have them in the place they have made so smooth, and in all the surrounding area nothing else is permitted to grow but just this one special kind of grass. The ants have established a little property of their own, as it were, and regularly cultivate the kind of grass that best suits them; nothing else is allowed to grow there; all other plants are bitten away. The grass which is allowed to grow becomes quite different in character from the same grass where it grows further away, where, for instance, it is growing in loose soil. In the hardened soil made by the ants, the cultivated grass has quite hard seeds, as hard as stone. One can find these ant-hills. Round about them there is a regular little farm, 'and the ants are engaged in agriculture. Darwin, who especially observed these things, calls it so. One finds in the soil very hard seeds somewhat like small grains of maize, and when all is ready, the ants come out, bite off the tops, and carry them into their dwelling. For a while they stay inside; one does not see them, but they are very busy inside there. Whatever they have no use for, like the little stalks that were still attached to the hard seeds, they bite off, and after a time they come out again and run all about, and throw away all they do not want, keeping in their ant-hill only the hard silica-like seeds. These they partly use as food, biting them with their very hard teeth, or they use them for their building. Everything they cannot make use of they throw out. After all, we men do very much the same. These farming ants manage to provide themselves with all they need in a very fine way!

One has really to ask oneself: what is actually happening here? Actually, an entirely new kind of grass is brought into existence. These silica-hard seeds cannot be found anywhere else. They are only produced by the ants, and the ants work further upon them. What then is really happening here?

Before considering this, we will approach the question from another side. Let us go back to the wasps, among which I told you, we find creatures that deposit their eggs on the leaves, and in the bark of trees; gall-nuts are then formed out of which the young wasps emerge. But quite other things can also happen. There are certain caterpillars which look like this (drawing on the blackboard). You all know them; these caterpillars are covered with woolly hairs, with quite prickly-woolly hairs. The following can happen to these caterpillars. One or more wasps of a special kind simply insert their eggs into the caterpillar, and when the eggs mature the grubs creep out of them. Bees, and other insects of this kind, all make their first appearance as grubs, also the ants. You know how, when one clears away an ant-heap, one finds the white, so-called ants' eggs, which are given to caged birds. They are however, not eggs, but the larvae that have crept out of the eggs. It is not correct to call them eggs.

Now when the wasp lays its eggs into the caterpillar, it is really very remarkable. As I have already told you, these grubs when they first emerge are very hungry, and there are a great number of them in the caterpillar. It is really remarkable, for if one of these grubs were to begin to eat the caterpillar's stomach, the whole affair of the wasp's development would come to an end, for the caterpillar could not live if any organ, an eye, or to do with the heart or with the digestion, were eaten into. The thing would then come to an end. But these minute wasp grubs show their intelligence by not biting into, or feeding upon any vital organ, but by eating only those organs which can be injured for quite a long time. The caterpillar does not die, it is ill; but the wasp grubs can still go on devouring it. It is most wisely arranged that the wasp grubs do not bite into anything that would fatally injure the caterpillar. Possibly, you may have seen how these larvæ emerge from inside the caterpillar when they are mature? The caterpillar has been their foster-mother, nourishing the whole brood with her own body. Now they creep out, develop further, and seek their food from the plants. When they are fully developed, the eggs are once more deposited in a similar caterpillar,

You might well say that there is something extremely clever in all this, and indeed, as I have already said, the more one observes such things, the more do they arouse one's deepest admiration. It cannot be otherwise; wonder is kindled, and one asks oneself the meaning of such things.

If one would discover their meaning, one must first say; we have the plants growing out of the earth; we have the caterpillars. Then these insects appear, and eat their fill from the flowers, and caterpillars, and then reproduce themselves. So it goes on, over and over again. To us men it seems as though the whole insect world might just as well not exist at all. Naturally, as human beings, when we see the bee, we say; the bees give us honey, therefore bee-keeping is of use to us. Very good; but this is from the point of view of man. If the bees are robbers, and merely take away the nectar from the flowers, and we men then use the honey for our food, or as a remedy, then this is all to our advantage. But from the point of view of the flowers, it looks like a mere robbery in which we, as men, take part. The question therefore, is whether from the point of view of the flowers they would say, as it were; out there are those robbers, the bees, wasps and ants who rob us of our saps; we should thrive much better if they did not take away our saps.

You see, gentlemen, this is a point of view that a man usually takes as regards the flowers. But it is not so; it is absolutely not so. The matter is entirely different. When one is looking at some flower, and an insect, let us say a bee, is sucking the juices of the flower, or from the willow blossom, one must say to oneself: how would it be for the plant if the bee, or the wasp or some other insect, did not come to suck out this nectar? Now would it be then?

This is naturally a question far more difficult to answer than that of a mere robbery, for one must look deeply into the whole household of Nature. It is not possible to reach the right conclusion unless one is able to look back into the earlier stages of the earth's evolution. You see, the earth was not always the same as it is today. If the earth had always been as it is today, when we find the dead lime-stone, the dead quartz or gneiss, or mica-schist, and so on; when we find growing out of the present-day seeds, the plants, when we find the animals. If the earth had always been like this, the whole of what we see today could not exist, could not be there at all! Those who begin their science only at the point of what exists today, give themselves up to complete illusion.

He who would seek all the mysteries, all the laws of the earth in that alone wherein modern science seeks them, is as if a dweller in Mars should come down to the earth, who had no idea of living men, who only went to a mortuary and saw there the dead men. The dead could not be there at all if they had not first been living men. The inhabitant of Mars who had never seen living men, and saw only the dead, would first have to be guided to living men; then he would be able to say—“Yes, now I understand why the dead have these forms; before I did not understand this, because I did not know the living form that preceded the dead one.” Thus, one must go back to earlier conditions if one would know the laws of the earth evolution. The earth had long ago a very different form; I have spoken of it as the Moon-condition, and in my book, “An Outline of Occult Science,” it is also called the Moon-condition, because the present Moon is a remnant of this ancient earth. Other stages of evolution in their turn preceded this one of the Moon. The earth has transformed itself; it was originally altogether different.

Now the earth was once at such a stage that plants and insects such as we have today, did not exist at all. The matter, gentlemen, was thus; there was, let us say, something that can be compared with the earth of today. Out of this grew plant-like forms, but plant-like forms that were continually changing, that continually assumed different forms, as the clouds do, for instance. There were then such clouds in the environment of the earth, but they were not clouds like the clouds we see today, which are dead, or at least seem to be dead; they were living clouds, as living as the flowers of today. If you can imagine to yourselves that our clouds could become alive and turn a greenish colour, then you would have a picture of the plant kingdom of that time.

The scientific gentlemen of today have very strange ideas on such matters. There was recently a most ludicrous article in the newspaper. Once more a new scientific discovery had been made, quite in the modern way. It was really absurd! It was stated that if prepared in a certain way, milk was a good remedy for scurvy, a very ugly disease. Well, gentlemen, what does the scientist of today do? I have already referred to this. He analyses the milk. Then he finds that milk contains such and such chemical components. But I have also told you that one can feed mice with the chemical substances in the milk, but if one gives them these only, the mice die within a few days. Bunge's pupils confirmed this, (see previously mentioned article in the “Schweizerische Bienenzeitung”) and merely said; “Well, yes, there is a life-substance in the milk, as also in honey, Vitamin.” You remember, as I said before, one might just as well say “poverty comes from being poor,” as say what is said here, “there is Vitamin in it.”

Well gentlemen, an important discovery has been made, there are various substances in milk, that have very complicated names and milk when prepared in a special way, is a remedy for scurvy. Then in a truly learned way investigations were made to see whether the scurvy could be cured if one gave the scurvy patients only all the things with the learned names that were contained in the milk. They were not in the least cured by any of the component substances. But when all of these were present (in the specially prepared milk) then the scurvy was cured. No single component by itself cured, only the whole together. Well says the scientist to himself; what remains over when one subtracts all the components? What then remains over? For now he eliminates them all. He does not admit that these components have an etheric body, he reckons them all out, and what remains?

The “Vitamin!” The vitamin which must be what cures the scurvy is not to be found among the component parts. Where then is it? So now they make this fine tale—it must be in the water of the milk! Therefore, the remedy for scurvy is the water! This is really absurd, but it is a learned affair today. For if water is to contain vitamin, then with our learning we should arrive up there in the clouds. We should have to look around us and say: “Water is everywhere and vitamin is in the water.” But then we would be at the stage at which the earth once was. Only today, it is no longer so. Plant-life was there, a living plant covering, and this living covering of plants was fertilised from all directions from the environment. There were then no separate animals, no wasps for instance, but from the surrounding regions there came a substance which had an animal-like nature. Our earth was once in a condition of which one could say that it was surrounded by clouds that had plant-life within them; from the periphery, other clouds approached and fertilised them; these clouds had an animal nature. From cosmic spaces came the animal nature; from the earth the essence of plant-being rose upwards.

All this has changed. The plants have become our clearly outlined flowers which grow out of the earth, no longer forming great clouds. But within the plants there remains a longing to receive an influence from without. Here we have a rose growing out of the earth; here a rose petal, here another, then a third and so on. Now comes a wasp. This wasp immediately bites a piece out of the rose petal, carries it off to its nest, and uses it for building, or gives it as food to its young. A piece of the rose petal is simply bitten out by the wasp, and carried there, Well, as I said before, our rose bushes are no longer clouds: they have become sharply defined things. But what once lived within them, what was once united with all that entered in as the essence of animal life, this has remained behind within the rose leaves and blossoms. It is there within them. In every rose leaf is something which must of necessity be in some way fertilised from without, from the whole environment.

You see, gentlemen, what the flowers need, what they actually need, is a substance that also plays an important part in the human body. When you study the human body the most diverse substances are found in it. But everywhere within the human body these substances are transformed into something which, in certain quantities, is always present within the human body which has need of it. This substance is formic acid.

If you go to an ant-hillock, and collect some ants and squeeze them, you get a juice. This juice contains formic acid and a little alcohol. It is inside the ants. But this juice is also very finely distributed over your body. Whatever you eat during your life time is always transformed into formic acid, not of course, exclusively, for there are other substances also, but in small quantities. This formic acid permeates your whole body. When you are ill, and have not sufficient formic acid within you, it is a serious matter for your body, for it then has a tendency, just because you have not enough formic acid within you, (and here I come once more to Herr Müller's question, in answer to it) your body has a tendency to become gouty, or rheumatic. It develops too much uric acid, and too little formic acid. The ants also have in their bodies this substance that the human body needs. This formic acid, gentlemen, is indeed something that is made use of throughout nature, You actually cannot find any bark of any tree that does not contain some formic acid. Formic acid is everywhere in the tree, just as it is in the human body. In every leaf, everywhere there must be formic acid.

But not only formic acid must be there, but also what is closely akin to it, and later becomes the bee poison. All these insects contain a certain substance within them which is poisonous. If one is stung by a bee, one gets inflammation; if one is stung by a wasp, it is sometimes even worse. This business of wasp stings can be pretty bad. Brehm describes how these insects can play bad tricks on men and animals.

It happened that a young cow-herd had taken a large number of cows out to graze, and the pasture was full of wasp nests. The cow-herd's dog ran about; suddenly the cow-herd's dog goes mad, rushes round like a mad dog, and no one knows what has happened. As fast into it can the dog rushes to a neighbouring stream, flings itself into the water, and shakes and shakes itself. The lad was much disturbed by this, and goes to the rescue of the dog. He does not jump into the water, but tries to help it from the bank. Most unluckily he steps on a nest, as the dog had probably done before, and the wasps sting him too, and he begins to rush about like a madman, and finally jumps into the water. And now, because the dog has vanished, and the cow-herd has vanished, confusion arises in the herd of cows. The cows which tread on nests also get stung, and behave as though mad. Finally, most of the herd are in the stream also—as if they were all mad.

You see, insect stings can do one a very bad turn. All these creatures have poisons in them; even an ant stings one, and causes a little inflammation because it injects some formic acid into the wound. This formic acid, moreover, is present in all living things in a right dilution. If there were no ants, bees and wasps, which are the preparers of these poisons, what would happen?

Truly, gentleman, the same thing would happen that would also come to pass in the propagation of the human race if all the men were beheaded, and only women were left on the earth. Humanity could not then continue to exist, for the male semen would no longer be there. Well, these creatures all have the semen in addition, but they none-the-less need what comes from these poisons for their existence, for these poisons have remained over from what was once in the whole environment. In the finest state of dilution, bee poison, wasp poison, ant poison, once descended upon the plants from cosmic spaces, and the remnants are still present today. So when you see a bee sitting on some willow-tree or on some flower, you must not say: the insect only wants to rob the flower of something; rather must you say: when the little bee sits there and sucks, the flower is so content that it lets its sap flow to the spot where the bee sucks. While the bee is taking something from the flower, bee or wasp poison flows from the bee to the flower. From the wasp, the wasp poison flows, and more especially when the ant attacks the tree stump which no longer has life, formic acid flows in. If the ant visits a flower, then the sap of the flower unites with the formic acid. This is necessary.

If these things did not happen, if bees, wasps and ants did not exist and continually attack the plants and bite into them, then the necessary formic acid, the necessary poisons, would not flow into the flowers, and the plants would in time die out.

You see, substances such as are usually called life-substances, are highly valued by man; yet it is precisely only these substances that are truly life-substances. If one has deadly nightshade, within it is a poison, a very powerful one. But what is the deadly nightshade? It collects spirituality from the world's environment. Poisons are gatherers of what is spiritual; for this reason they are healing remedies. Fundamentally speaking, the flowers sicken through the life-substances, and the little bees, and wasps and ants, work continually as small physicians bringing to the flowers the formic acid they need, and at the same moment, healing their sickness. Thus all is once more healed.

The bees, wasps and ants are not mere robbers, for in the same moment they bring life to the plants.

It is even the same with the caterpillars which would also die out, and none would remain after a time. You will probably say no great harm would be done if all the caterpillars were to disappear; but in their turn the birds feed on them. Throughout the whole of Nature there are these inner relationships. When we see, for example, how the ants permeate everything with their formic acid, we look into the whole household of Nature and its splendour. Everywhere things happen that are essential for the maintenance of life, and of the world.

You see, here is a tree, and the tree has bark. The bark decays when I cut down the tree; then it moulders. People say: “Well, let it rot away.” Just try to imagine all that moulders away in the forests, fallen leaves and so on, within the course of the year! Men are willing to let it all rot away, but Nature orders it otherwise. Everywhere there are ant-heaps, and from these ant-heaps formic acid enters into the soil of the forest. When you have both forest soil and an ant-heap, it is the same as if you take a glass of water and add a drop of something else to it; the whole contents are at once affected. If you put in salt, all the water is at once made salty. If you have an ant-heap then the formic acid goes in the same moment into the forest soil, and all the soil which is already decaying is saturated with this formic acid.

It is not only into the inner parts of the living plants, and into the still living caterpillars that formic acid penetrates when the bee sits on the flower, and the flower absorbs what it receives from the bee. All these things can only be learned by means of spiritual science; the other kind of science is only concerned with what the bee takes away from the flowers. But the bees would never have been able to sit for thousands of years on the flowers had they not fostered them in the act of biting into them.

So it is also with the lifeless substances of the woods. Even physical science as it is today, concludes that the earth will one day be quite dead. It would indeed be so, for a state of things would eventually come about when decay would prevail, when the earth would be dead. That this will not be so, is because wherever the earth decays it is in the same moment penetrated by all that is yielded up by the bees, wasps and ants. The bees, it is true, give it only to the living flowers, the wasps for the most part also to the living plants. But the ants give what they hand over in the formic acid directly to what is mouldering and dead; in a certain degree they rouse it to life, in this way doing their part that the earth in its decaying substances shall still retain life. Well may one say that wonder is awakened at the activity of the spirit in all things, but when one can approach it more nearly, then one realises it has immense significance.

Let us look once more at those farming ants which cultivate their little field, and change the character of the plants they grow there. Truly, gentlemen, a man could not nourish himself with what grows there, for if a man were to eat those little rice grains that are as hard as silica, he would first get strange illnesses because he would have too much formic acid inside him, and in addition to this, so injure his teeth that for a time the dentists would be kept busy. At last, he would die wretchedly, because of these silica-hard rice-grains which had been thus developed.

But the ant-heap would say: when we ants go out into nature and suck that out of the plants which is everywhere there, then we get far too little formic acid, and can give far too little formic acid to the earth. Let us therefore, select the plants which we can cultivate so that they get quite hard, stony hard, and then we can get plenty of formic acid from this hardness. So these farming ants do this that they may get the greatest possible amount of formic acid. It is these ants again that give back so much formic acid to the earth. That is the connection. From this you can see that poisons when they cause inflammation, or the like, are also perpetual remedies for the holding back of the processes of death. One can say, it is precisely the bee that is of great importance in this regard, that all may be preserved within the flowers; there is a great affinity between the bees and the flowers.

This preservation actually shows that every time the insects are developing their activities on the earth, the earth is, as it were, quickened by their poison. This is the spiritual relationship. If anyone asks what are the spiritual relationships, I never like merely to say they are so and so; I give the facts, and from the facts you can judge for yourselves whether they have significance or no. The facts are such that one sees significance everywhere. But the people who call themselves scientists today, do not tell one so. In life this has certain effects. In our country this is perhaps less taken into account, but when you go further south, the simple folk, the peasants, will often say out of a kind of instinctive knowledge; one must not destroy these ant-heaps, for they prevent the mould from becoming harmful. Those who are still wiser, will say something quite different if you walk with them through the forest, and especially where trees have been cut down and young trees are growing up. Then these people who are wise in their noses, not in their top-story (one can be wise also in one's nose) when these people go where the trees have been felled and young trees are being cared for, they will say: “Here, it will all go well; it does not smell so mouldy as it often does; there must be an ant-heap near, and it is proving its usefulness.” These people smell this; they are clever with their noses. Much homely and useful knowledge is derived from a clever nose! Unfortunately, modern civilisation only regards the cultivation of the brain, and rejects all that is instinctive; instinct has become merely a word.

Creatures like the bees know all this collectively, as a colony, as an ant-heap; it comes about by a kind of sense of smell. As I said before, much that is instinctive knowledge may come from a cleverness of the nose.

Well, gentlemen, we shall continue the subject next week Today, I wished to say that the bees, wasps and ants do not only rob Nature, but help to make it possible for Nature to live and thrive.

We should perhaps say something further on the subject of Herr Dollinger's question. He asked, on your behalf, for it is probably of interest to you all, what the spiritual relationship is between the hosts of insects which, fluttering about, approaches the plants and what is to be found in the plants. I told you yesterday, for we began to answer this question last time, that all around us there is not only oxygen and nitrogen, but that throughout Nature there is intelligence, truly intelligence. No one is surprised if one says that we breathe in the air, for air is everywhere, and science today is so widely included in all the school books that everyone knows that air is everywhere, and that we breathe it in. All the same I have known country people who thought this a fantastic idea, because they did not know the air is everywhere; in the same way there are people today who do not know that intelligence is everywhere. They consider it fantastic if one says that just as we breathe in the air with our lungs, so do we breathe in intelligence, for example, through our nose, or through our ear. I. have already given instances in which you could see that there is intelligence everywhere.

We have been speaking of an especially interesting chapter of natural science, of the bees, wasps and ants. There is, may be, little in Nature which permits us to look so deeply into Nature herself, as the activities of the insects; the insects are strange creatures, and they have still many a secret to disclose.

It is interesting that we should be discussing the insects just at the time of the centenary of the famous observer of insects, Jean Henri Fabre, who was born on December 23, one hundred years ago, and whose life time coincides with the age of materialism. Fabre therefore interpreted everything materialistically, but he also brought to light an enormous number of facts. It is therefore quite natural that we should remember him today when we speak of the insects.

I should like to begin with, to give you an example of a species of insect which will interest you in connection with the bees. The work of the bees is perfected to a very high degree, but the most remarkable thing about the bee is really not that it produces honey but, that it produces the marvellous structure of the honey-comb entirely out of its own being. The material it makes use of, it must itself bring into the hive, but the bee actually works in such a way that it does not use this material directly, but completely transforms it, completely transforms what it brings into the hive. The bee works from out of its own being.

Now there is a kind of bee which does not work in this way, but shows, precisely in its work, what immense intelligence there is in the whole of Nature. Let us consider this bee; it is commonly called the wood-bee, and is not so valued as the domestic bee, because it is mostly rather a nuisance. We will consider this wood-bee at its work.

It is a tremendously industrious little creature, a creature which in order to live—not the individual bee, but the whole species—must do a terrific amount of work. This bee searches out such wood as is no longer on a living tree, but has been made into something. One finds the wood-bee which I shall presently describe, with its nest in a place where wooden rails, or posts have been driven in and the wood is therefore apparently dead. The nests can usually be found in wooden rails or posts, in garden benches, or garden doors, in fact wherever one has made use of wood. Here the wood-bee makes its nest, but it does so in a very singular way.

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Imagine to yourselves a post (Diagram 16.) The wood is no longer part of a tree. The wood-bee comes along and first of all bores a sloping passage from outside. When it has got inside, when it has bored out a kind of passage, it starts boring in quite a new direction. It makes a little ring-like hollow, then flies off and collects all manner of things from round about, and lines out the hollow with these. Having finished the lining, it deposits an egg which will develop into a larva. This is now inside the hollow. When the egg has been placed there, the little bee makes a covering over it, in the centre of which there is a hole. Now it begins to bore again above the cover, and makes a second little hollow for the second bee that is to creep out, and having lined it and left a hole it lays another egg. The wood-bee continues in this way till it has constructed ten or twelve of these superimposed dwellings; in each one there is an egg.

You see, gentlemen, the larva can now mature in this piece of wood. The bee puts some food next to the larva which first eats what has been prepared for it, and grows till it is ready to creep out. First we have the time when the grub becomes a cocoon, then it is transformed into a winged bee which is to fly out. Inside there it is so arranged (see Diagram 16), that the larva now developed can fly out at the right moment. When the time comes that the larva has developed, has turned into a cocoon, and then into a complete insect, then it is so arranged that it is able to fly out through the passage. The skill employed has enabled the fully formed insect to fly out through the passage that was first bored.

Well and good, but the second insect that is a little younger, now emerges, and the third that is still younger; because the mother insect had first to make these dwelling-places, the creatures would not find any outlet, the situation would be fatal to the larvae in the upper chambers, they would slowly die. But the mother insect prevents this by laying the eggs so that when the young larva creeps out, it finds this other hole which I described, and lets itself down there, and flies out. The third creature comes down through the two holes and so on. Because each insect that comes out later is matured later, it does not hinder the one below it which had emerged earlier. The times are never the same, for the earlier has always already flown out.

You see, gentlemen, the whole nest is so wisely planned that one can only wonder at it.

Today when men imitate mechanically, the things they copy are often of this kind, but as a rule they are far less cleverly constructed. Things that exist in Nature are extremely wisely made, and one must really say that there is intelligence in them, real intelligence. One could give hundreds and thousands of examples of the way the insects build, of the way they set about their tasks, and how intelligence lives within these things. Think how much intelligence there is in all I have already told you about the farming ants which establish their own farm, and plan everything with wonderful intelligence.

But in considering these insects, the bees, wasps and ants, we were at the same time dealing with another matter. I told you that these creatures all have a poisonous substance within them, and that this poisonous substance is also, if given in the right dose, an excellent remedy. Bee-poison is an excellent remedy; wasp-poison is the same, and the formic acid secreted by the ants is a most especially good remedy. But as I have already pointed out, this formic acid which we find when we go to an ant-heap and take out a few ants and crush them, these ants have the formic acid inside them; by crushing them we get the formic acid. It is found more especially in the ants.

But gentlemen, if you knew how much, (of course, comparatively speaking,) how much formic acid there is in this hall, you would be greatly astonished. You might say, surely we are not to look for an ant-heap in some corner! But all of you, as many as are sitting here, are really yourselves a kind of ant-heap, for every where in your limbs, muscles and other tissues, in the heart and lung and liver tissues, above all in the tissues of the spleen, everywhere there is formic acid; certainly, it is not so concentrated as in the ant-heap, nevertheless, you are quite filled with formic acid. It is a highly remarkable fact.

Why do we have formic acid in our bodies? One must be able to recognise when a man has too little of it. If someone seems ill, and people are mostly a little ill, he might have one or another of a hundred different illnesses which externally, would seem similar. One must know what is really the matter with him; if he is pale or has no appetite, these are only external symptoms. One must find out what exactly is wrong with him. In many cases, the trouble might well be that he is not enough of an ant-heap in himself, that he is producing too little formic acid. Just as formic acid is produced in the ant-heap, so in the human body, in all its organs, especially in the spleen, formic acid must be vigourously produced. When a man produces too little formic acid, one must give him a preparation, a remedy with which one can help him to produce sufficient formic acid. One must learn to observe what happens to a man who has too little formic acid in him. Such observations can only be made by those who have a true knowledge of human nature. One must make a picture of what is happening in the soul of a man who, to begin with, had enough formic acid, and later, has too little. It is a singular thing, but a man will tell you the correct thing about his illness, if you ask him in the right way. Suppose, for instance, you had a man who tells you: “Why, good gracious, a few months ago I had ever so many good ideas, and I could think them out well. Now I cannot do so any longer; if I want to remember anything, I cannot do so.” This is often a much more important symptom than any external examination can give. What is done today is of course justifiable, one must do these things. Today one can test the urine for albumen, or sugar and so on; one gets quite interesting results. But in certain circumstances, it can be far more important when a man tells you something of the kind I have just told you. When a man tells you something of this kind, one must of course, learn other things about him also, but one can discover that the formic acid in his body has recently become insufficient.

Well, anyone who still thinks only of externals, might say: “This man has too little formic acid, I will squeeze out some formic acid, or get it in some other way, and give him the right dose.” This could be done for a certain time, but the patient would come to you and say it has done him no good at all. What then is the matter? It really has not helped him at all. It was quite correct; the man had too little formic acid, and he has been given formic acid, but it did him no good. What is the reason? You see, when you examine further, you come to this point. In the one case formic acid has done no good, in another case, it has continued to do good. Well presently one learns to see the difference. Those who are helped by formic acid, will usually show mucus in the lungs. Those who got no help from it, will show mucus in the liver, kidneys, or in the spleen.

It is very interesting. It is therefore a very different matter if the lung, for example, lacks formic acid, or the liver. The difference is that the formic acid which is in the ant-heap, can immediately take effect upon the lung. The liver cannot do anything with the formic acid, it can make no use of it at all.

Something further now comes in question. When you discover that a man's liver, or more especially his intestines are not quite in good order, and if one gives him formic acid it does not help him, though he actually has not enough of it, then one must give him oxalic acid. One must take wood-sorrel, or the common-clover that grows in the fields, extract the acid, and give him this.

Thus you see, anyone with lung trouble must be given formic acid, whereas if the trouble is in the liver, or the intestines, he must be given oxalic acid. The remarkable thing is that the man to whom one has given oxalic acid, will before long himself change the oxalic acid into formic acid. The main point therefore is, that one does not simply introduce such things into a man's body, but that one knows what the organism can bring about by means of its own resources. When you introduce formic acid into the organism, it says;—“This is not for me; I want to be active, I cannot work with ready-made formic acid, I cannot take it up into my lungs.” Naturally, the formic acid has gone into the stomach; from there it finally passes into the intestines. Then the human body wants to be active, and say, as it were: “What am I supposed to do now? I am not to make formic acid myself, for formic acid is given me; have I to send this from here up into my lungs? This I shall not do.” The body wants oxalic acid, and from this it produces formic acid.

Yes, gentlemen, life consists of activity, not of substances, and it is most important to recognise that life does not merely consist of eating cabbages and turnips, but of what the human body must do when cabbages and turnips are put into it.

You can see from this what strange relationships exist in Nature. Outside there, are the plants, The clover is merely especially characteristic, for oxalic acid is to be found in all the plants; in clover it is present in greater quantities, that is why it is mentioned. But just as formic acid is everywhere in Nature and everywhere in the human body, so also is there oxalic acid everywhere in Nature and in the human body.

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There is something further that is very interesting. Suppose you take a retort, such as are used in chemical laboratories. You make a flame under it, and put into the retort some oxalic acid—it is like salty, crumbly ashes. You then add the same quantity of glycerine, mix the two together, and heat it. The mixture will then distil here, (Diagram 17) and I can condense what I get here (Diagram 17). At the same time I notice air is escaping at this point. Here it escapes. When I now examine this escaping air, I find it is carbonic acid. Thus carbonic acid is escaping here, and here, where I condense (Diagram 17) I get formic acid. In here, I had oxalic acid and glycerine. The glycerine remains, the rest goes over there, the fluid formic acid dropping down and the carbonic acid giving out the air.

Well, gentlemen, when you consider this whole matter thoroughly, you will be able to say: suppose, that instead of the retort we had here the human liver or let us say some human or animal tissue, some animal abdominal organ, liver, spleen or something of this nature. By way of the stomach I introduce oxalic acid. The body already possesses something of the nature of glycerine. I have then in the intestines oxalic acid and glycerine. What happens?

Now look at the human mouth, for there the carbonic acid comes out, and downwards from the lungs formic acid everywhere drops in the human body in the direction of the organs. Thus everything I have drawn here we have also in our own bodies. Within our own bodies we unceasingly transform oxalic acid into formic acid.

And now imagine to yourself the plants spread out over the surface of the earth. Everywhere in the plants is oxalic acid. And now think of the insects; with the insects all this occurs in the strangest way. First think of the ants; they go to the plants, to all that decays in the plants, and everywhere there is oxalic acid, and these creatures make formic acid from it in the same way that a man does. Formic acid is everywhere present.

The materialist looks out into the air and says:—Yes, in the air there is nitrogen and oxygen. But gentlemen, in very, very minute quantities there is also always some formic acid present, because the insects flutter through the air. On the-one hand we have man. Man is a little world; he produces formic acid in himself, and continually fills his breath with formic acid. But in the great world without, in the place of what happens in man, there is the host of insects. The great breath of air that surrounds the whole earth is always permeated with formic acid which is the transformed oxalic acid of the plants. Thus it is.

If one rightly observes and studies the lower part of the human body with its inner organs, the stomach, liver, kidneys and the spleen, and further within, the intestines, it is actually the case that oxalic acid is perpetually being changed into formic acid, this formic acid passes with the inbreathed air into all parts of the body. So it is within man.

On the earth the plants are everywhere, and everywhere the innumerable hosts of insects hover above them. Below is the oxalic acid; the insects flutter towards it, and from their biting into the plants formic acid arises and fills the air. Thus we perpetually inhale this formic acid out of the air. What the wasps have is a poison similar to formic acid, but somewhat different; what the bees have in the poison of their sting, though actually it pervades their whole body, is likewise a transformed, a sublimated formic acid.

Looking at the whole, one has this picture. One says to oneself: we look at the insects, ants, wasps and bees. Externally, they are doing something extremely clever. Why are they doing this? If the ant had no formic acid it would do quite stupidly all that I have described as so beautiful. Only because the ants are so constituted that they can produce formic acid, only because of this, does all that they accomplish appear so intelligent and wise. This also applies to the wasps and the bees.

Have we not every reason to say (for we produce this formic acid in ourselves): In Nature there is intelligence everywhere; it comes through the formic acid. In ourselves also there is intelligence everywhere because we have formic acid within us. This formic acid could not be in existence had not the oxalic acid first been there. The little creatures hovering over the plants see to it that the oxalic acid is changed into formic acid, that it is metamorphosed.

One only fully understands these things when one asks: How is it then with the oxalic acid? Oxalic acid is essential for all that has life. Wherever there is life, there is oxalic acid, an etheric body. The etheric body brings it about that the oxalic acid is renewed. But the oxalic acid never becomes a formic acid that can be used by the human or animal organism unless it is first transformed by an astral body from oxalic into formic acid. The formic acid which I here extracted from the oxalic acid, is of no use at all to the human or animal organism. It is an illusion to think it can be of use; it is dead. The oxalic acid which is produced in man, and through the insects is living, and arises everywhere where sensation, or something of the nature of the soul is present.

Man must produce formic acid in himself if he wishes to bring forth something of the nature of the soul out of the mere life-processes of the lower body where the oxalic acid prevails. Then, in the formic acid of the breath there lives the soul quality that rises up to, and can be active in the head. The soul needs this transformation in man of the oxalic into formic acid.

What then is actually happening when oxalic acid is changed into formic acid? You see, the first thing that I told you can show us this. The wood-bee which I described, is especially interesting for it works in wood that is no longer living. If this wood-bee could not make use of the wood in the right way, it would seek a dwelling place elsewhere. It does not make its nest in a tree, but in decaying wood, and where rails and posts begin to rot away; there it makes a nest and lays its eggs.

If you study the connection of the decaying wood and the wood-bee, wasps, etc., then you find that similar processes of decay constantly take place in the human body. If this process of decay goes too far, the body dies. Man must constantly carry on in himself what happens externally; he must build up cells, and this he can only do by transforming all that is plant-like within him and permeated with oxalic acid; he must change all this into formic acid so that all is permeated with formic acid.

You will say: What significance has all this for Nature?

Let us imagine one of these decaying posts or rails. Should one of these wood bees never discover it, a man would certainly not regret it, for these bees increase quickly, and the post they have hollowed out would fall down the following year. Men may not appreciate this, but Nature finds it good, for if there were none of these creatures all woody substances would gradually crumble into dust, and would become entirely useless. The wood in which the wood-bees have worked does not perish in dust, it is given new life. From all this decaying wood that is quickened a little by the wood-bee, or by other insects, much arises which rescues our earth from complete decay, from being scattered as dust in cosmic space; our earth can live on it because it has been quickened by the insects. As men we breathe in formic acid; in Nature the formic acid is prepared by the insects from the oxalic acid of the plants, and so works that the earth renews its life.

Consider the connection. We have man, and we have the earth. Let us take first a young child, for a young child readily transforms the oxalic acid of the lower organism into formic acid. The organs of a young child are sufficiently supplied with formic acid; the human soul develops in the child. We have the formic acid as the basis for the soul and spirit. But when a man grows old and is unable to develop sufficient formic acid, then the soul and spirit must take leave of the body. Formic acid draws the soul and spirit to the body; otherwise the soul and spirit must leave it. It is deeply interesting.

If for instance you observe a man who has developed a number of independent inner processes, you will find that it Is formic acid that helps him to master these independent inner processes. The right relationship is then brought about between the astral body and the physical body which were hindered by these independent processes in the body. Formic acid is always needed as the right basis for the soul and spirit. When the body has too little it decays, and can no longer retain the soul; the body ages and the soul must leave it.

We have then, man on the one side and Nature on the other side. In Nature formic acid is continually being prepared from oxalic acid, so that the earth may always be surrounded not only by oxygen and nitrogen, but by formic acid also. It is formic acid that prevents the earth from dying every year, gives it each year renewed life. What is beneath the earth longs as seed for the formic acid above, for renewal of its life. Every winter the spirit of the earth actually strives to take leave of the earth. The spirit of the earth benumbs the earth in winter, to quicken it again in spring. This happens because what waits as seed beneath the earth draws near-to the formic acid which has arisen through the whole intercourse of the insect world and the plant world throughout the preceding year. The seeds do not merely grow in oxygen, nitrogen and carbon, but in formic acid; this formic acid stimulates them in their turn to develop oxalic acid, so that once more the formic acid of the succeeding year may come into existence.

Just as in man formic acid can be the basis for his soul and spirit, so the formic acid which is spread out in the cosmos can be the basis for the soul and spirit of the earth. Thus we can say that for the earth also, formic acid is the basis for earth-soul and earth-spirit (see Diagram 18).

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You see, it is actually much more difficult to telegraph in a district where there are no ant-heaps, for the electricity and magnetism necessary for telegraphing depend on formic acid. When the telegraph wires go through towns where there are no ant-heaps, it is from the fields outside the town that power must be collected to enable the electric streams to pass through the towns. Naturally, the formic acid is present in the air of the towns also.

Thus we can say: What is within man as production of formic acid, is also outside in external Nature. Man is a little world, and between birth and death he is able to produce formic acid from oxalic acid. When he can no longer do so, his body dies. He must once more take a body which in childhood can develop formic acid from oxalic acid in the right way. In Nature the process is unbroken, winter-summer, winter-summer; ever the oxalic acid is undergoing transformation into formic acid.

If one watches beside a dying man one really has the feeling that in dying, he first tries whether his body is still able to develop formic acid. When he can no longer accomplish this, death takes place. Man passes into the spiritual world, for he can no longer inhabit his body. Hence, we say that a man dies at a given moment. Along time then passes, and he returns to take another body; between whiles, he is in the spiritual worlds.

Well, gentlemen, as I told you, when a young Queen slips out in the hive, something disturbs the bees. Previously they had lived in their twilight world; now they see the young Queen begin to shine. What is connected with this shining? It is connected with the fact that the young Queen robs the old Queen bee of the power of the bee poison. The whole departing swarm feels this fear, this fear that they will no longer possess a sufficiency of poison, will no longer be able to protect, or save themselves. They go away just as the human soul goes away at death when it can no longer find the formic acid it needs: so too, the older bees go away when there is not sufficient formic acid, bee poison, in the hive.

So now, if one watches the swarm, still indeed visible to us, yet it is like the human soul when it must desert the body. It is a majestic picture, this departing swarm. Just as the human soul takes leave of the body, so when the young Queen is there, the old Queen with her company leaves the hive; one can truly see in the flying swarm an image of the departing human soul.

How truly magnificent all this is! But the human soul has not carried the process so far as to develop its forces into actual small creatures; the tendency to do this is nevertheless there. We have something within us that we wish to transform into tiny creatures, into bacilli and bacteria—into minute bees. But we suppress this tendency that we may be wholly men. The swarm of bees is not a whole man. The bees cannot find their way into a spiritual world, it is we who must bring them into a new incarnation as a new colony.

This is, gentlemen, directly an image of re-incarnating man. Anyone who is able to observe this, has an immense respect for these swarming bees with their Queen, for this swarm which behaves as it does because it desires to go into the spiritual world; but for this it has become too physical. Therefore these bees gather themselves together, and become like one body; they wish to be together, they wish to leave the world. Whereas they otherwise fly about, now they settle on some branch or bush, clustering together quietly as though they wish to vanish away, to go into the spiritual world.

If we now bring them back, if we help them by placing them in a new hive, then they can once more become a complete colony.

We must say that the insects teach us the very highest things of Nature. This is why in bygone times men were always enlightened when they looked at the plants; they possessed an instinctive knowledge of these things of which I have been speaking to you, a knowledge completely lost to modern science. These men observed the plants in their own way. When people today bring into their houses a branch of a fir-tree for a Christmas tree, they remind themselves that all that is outside in Nature can also work in our human and social life. This fir branch from which the Christmas tree is made should become for us a symbol of love. It is commonly thought that the Christmas tree is a very old custom, but the fir-tree has only been so used for 150 to 200 years. In earlier times this custom did not exist, but another plant was made use of at Christmas time. When the Christmas plays, for example, were performed in the villages, even in the 15th and 16th Centuries, there was always a man who went round to announce them who carried a kind of Christmas tree in his hand. This was a branch of the juniper that has such wonderful berries; the juniper was the Christmas tree. This was because these juniper berries, so greatly loved by the birds, contain something of that poison which must pervade all that is earthly, so that this earthly may rise again in the spirit. Just as the ants give to the wood, or the wood-bee to the decaying posts, so when the birds eat the juniper berries every morning, a certain acid, though a weaker one, is developed. People in olden days knew this instinctively, and said to themselves: “In winter when the birds come to eat the juniper berries the earth is quickened through the juniper tree.” It was for them a symbol of the quickening of the earth through Christ.

Thus we can say: When we observe things in the right way, we see how the processes of Nature are actually images and symbols of what happens in human life. These men of olden times watched the birds on the juniper trees with the same love with which we look at the little cakes and gifts on the Christmas tree. To them the juniper tree was a kind of Christmas tree which they carried into their houses; the juniper became a kind of Christmas tree.

As you are now all of you especially hard at work, we must close. I did not want today's lecture to end without touching on a subject of real importance. I have therefore spoken of the juniper tree which can truly be regarded as a kind of Christmas tree, and which is the same for the birds as the blossoms for the bees, the wood for the ants, and for the wood-bees and insects in general.

In conclusion, I should like to wish you a happy, cheerful Christmas Festival, and one which may uplift your hearts.

Extract from a Lecture given by Dr. Steiner at Dornach,
November 10, 1923.

... THERE is something that exists in Nature which is like a head without a bony skull; something in which the same forces work from outside that work within the head.

Now a bee-hive is similar to a head which is open on all sides. What the bees do is really the same, only in the outer world, as the head carries out in man's inner organisation, only in the hive it is not cut off and separated, but operates, and is brought about from without. Thus we have in the bee-hive under external spiritual influences, the same that in the head is under inner spiritual influences.

In the hive we have also honey, and when as grown-up human beings we take it and eat it, the honey supplies us with what we need in the way of formative forces, from outside. It is the same force which milk supplies for the head during babyhood. So long as we are little children we strengthen these formative forces in the head when we take milk. At a later age we also need formative forces, and we must therefore eat honey. We do not need to take a large quantity, it is merely a question of absorbing the forces within the honey.

Extract from a Lecture given at Dornach, December 30, 1923.

WE can actually find certain places in Nature where the physical forces of the earth enter into the midst of the etheric forces that stream in from all sides. You may imagine albumen, for instance, as a substance present in the physical earth. So long as sulphur, carbon, oxygen, nitrogen and hydrogen are in any way chemically recognisable in it, the albumen is in fact subject to the earthly forces. But the moment it enters the sphere of the reproductive process, it is lifted out of the physical forces. The forces of the circumference of the universe begin to work upon it in its disorganised condition. A new albumen comes into being as an image of the whole universe.

But you see, sometimes the following situation arises. The dis-organisation, the breaking down of the albumen cannot go far enough. You may have albuminous substance of this kind in connection with some animal, for example. For reproduction to take place, it must be possible for it to be broken down completely, so that it may submit itself to the forces of the whole Cosmos. But the animal is somehow prevented from delivering over, for purposes of reproduction, such albuminous substance as would be able straightforwardly to submit itself to the whole macrocosm. To be capable of reproduction, albuminous substance must in fact, submit itself to the whole macrocosm. But the animal is in this case, somehow unable to form albuminous substance capable of reproduction without further assistance. This is the case with the gall-wasp. What then does the gall-wasp do? It lays its egg in some part of a plant. Again and again you may find these galls, in oaks, or in other trees where the gall-wasp or fly lays her eggs. In a leaf, for example, you see these remarkable formations. Within each one is the egg of a gall-wasp. Why is the egg of the gall-fly laid in an oak-leaf so that the oak-apple arises in which the egg is enclosed, and now capable of development? Could it not have developed freely? It is for this reason. The plant-leaf contains within it an etheric body adapted to the whole cosmic ether, which now comes to the aid of the egg of the gall-wasp. By itself, the egg is helpless. Thus the gall-wasp deposits it in a portion of the plant, which already contains an etheric body related to the whole system of the cosmic ether. The gall-wasp comes to the oak in order to bring about a complete breaking down of its albumen, so that the world periphery may be able to work via the oak-leaf, via the oak. The egg of the gall-wasp alone would be doomed to destruction, for it cannot be broken down, it is held together far too strongly.

Here indeed, we gain an insight into the strange workings of Nature, a working present in other places also. Assume for example, that the animal is not only unable to provide a germ substanceable to expose itself to the cosmic ether, but is also not even able to transform any substances within it into inner means of nourishment, that is, to use them for its own inner nourishment. The example of the bees lies near at hand. The bee cannot eat anything and everything; it can only eat what the plant has already prepared for it; and here is the strangest fact of all. The bee goes to the plant, seeks out the nectar, absorbs it, assimilates it within, and then builds up the wonderful cell structure of the honey-comb which we so greatly admire. Here we can observe two of the strangest and most wonderful processes; the bee sitting on the flower and sucking in its juices, and then having returned to the hive, building up from within itself, in connection with the other worker-bees, the cells of wax that they may fill them with honey.

What is actually taking place? You must carefully observe the shape of these cells. They are similar in form to something else we find in Nature, though here the hollowed space is filled up; they are formed like quartz crystals, like the crystals of silicic acid. If you go into the mountains and examine the quartz crystals you will find that you can draw them in the same form, but the cells the bees make are of wax, and the quartz crystals are of silicic acid.

When we follow this up further, we find that long ages ago, at a certain definite point in the evolution of the earth, these quartz crystals were first formed in the mountains. They were formed under the prevailing etheric and astral forces, with the aid of silicic acid. There you have the forces that come from the circumference, working as etheric and astral forces, and forming the quartz crystals in the siliceous substance. Everywhere in the mountains you can find these crystals with their wonderful hexagonal forms. What you find in the solid crystals, you find again as hollow forms, as hollowed spaces, in the waxen cells in the bee-hive.

The bee takes up from the flower that which once upon a time brought the quartz crystal into being. The bee takes it from the flower, and from the substance of her own body makes an image of the quartz crystal. A process takes place between bee and flower that is similar to what took place in past ages in the Cosmos. I tell you these things that you may understand how necessary it is not merely to be aware of the presence of carbon, nitrogen, hydrogen and oxygen, of which all analysis is pitiably abstract, but to take into account the marvellous formative processes, the intimate inner conditions that prevail in Nature and her processes.

A QUESTION AND AN ANSWER.

1. At the conclusion of one of the foregoing lectures, (December 10, 1923) a question was asked about the disease of “foul-brood.” Dr. Steiner replied that as he had not yet studied this disease he could not make a definite statement. It might possibly be the result of a deficiency in the balance of the uric acid in the Queen bee. He said further: “The bee has also uric acid in its organism, and the cause of the disease will be found to be a wrong relationship in the uric acid.”

2. In answer to a question as to the development of the bees from wasps, referred to in the same lecture, Dr. Steiner said: “This development occurred during the ancient Atlantean civilisation, when the individual animal forms were not so firmly established as today, when there were no such clearly defined boundaries between the different species. Today, such a thing would no longer be possible.”

Good morning, gentlemen! Have you thought of anything?

Questioner: The doctor once said that the stars, for example the moon, are much larger than we can see them. Could we perhaps hear something more about this?

Dr. Steiner: Today I want to tell you something that makes it possible for us to go into these heavenly bodies in more detail in the next lesson. Of course, firstly, we have to understand what these heavenly bodies are and how they relate to the earth; and on the other hand, we have to understand that there is something spiritual everywhere in these heavenly bodies. Of course, their size, position and so on do not make much of a difference. Therefore, today I will tell you a certain basis from the earth that will show you how to understand the sun and the moon from the earth. It is of course the case that the sun is much larger than the earth and the moon is smaller than the earth. The moon is of course larger than it appears to us, but it is smaller than the earth. And the sun, as it is spread out there, is larger than the earth.

But now, above all, we have to be able to see what these heavenly bodies are made of, what they actually are. We have to ask ourselves what would be encountered if one were to travel there in an airship. In all of this, we must start with the human being. We have discussed time and again how humans depend on their entire environment: you breathe in the air, you breathe out the air. When you breathe in the air, you take into your body what is outside in your environment. The air that is outside consists of oxygen and nitrogen. That itself is an airy, gaseous body. And this oxygen is absolutely necessary for our life. We need oxygen. We need it in such a way that we inhale it in the dark at night, and inhale it during the day in such a way that the sun's rays can pass through. We need all of this. So that we can say: we would not live if we did not have the oxygen in the air. But this oxygen in the air is mixed with another gas: with nitrogen. So in the air we have oxygen and nitrogen. Now you might say: Do we also need the nitrogen?

If there were only nitrogen, we would suffocate. Imagine if, instead of bringing you all into this room where oxygen is mixed with nitrogen, we brought you into a room where there was only nitrogen: You would all suffocate together! So we could say: maybe we could be completely indifferent to whether the nitrogen is there or not, maybe we could have just the oxygen. But then it would be like this: if there were only oxygen, then at most the youngest person sitting there would still be alive – all the rest of us would have died long ago. The youngest would still be alive, but he would have a long beard and white hair and wrinkles, he would be an old man! So we would all live too fast if there was only oxygen. It is only because oxygen is mixed with much more nitrogen – only 21 percent is oxygen, the rest being almost all nitrogen – that we live as long as we can as humans. So if we didn't have nitrogen, we would live too fast. We would only live long enough to be about sixteen, seventeen, eighteen years old, and then we would already be old.

However, the nitrogen in the air has another very special property. You might say: What if there was a little more or a little less nitrogen in the air? Assume there is less nitrogen in the air than the percentage that is already in it. Gentlemen, that would be a very curious story: You would all start breathing out more nitrogen in the air you breathe out than you would otherwise breathe out, where there is just as much in the air as there is now. So if there were too little nitrogen in it, you would pump the nitrogen out of your body in order to pump as much out of your own body into the air as is in it now. If there were more in the air than is now in the air, you would start to retain the nitrogen you breathe in and exhale less than you do now, so that there is less nitrogen in the air again. This is very strange: man not only needs nitrogen mixed with oxygen to breathe properly, but he also needs a certain amount of nitrogen in his environment. It must be there. So it is not important that we have enough nitrogen and oxygen inside us, but that the right amount is in our environment. And if it is not enough, we add it ourselves.

This is something that today's science does not know at all. Today's science completely excludes the human being from the world, not knowing that the human being can in fact be the master of the world if he is only aware of it. If, for example, it were necessary to found a colony somewhere where there is too little nitrogen, then it would be possible to produce enough nitrogen by simply recommending food to people that would enable them to exhale a lot of nitrogen themselves. So you see how a real science can be put into practice immediately.

But now something else comes into play. Let us first consider the nitrogen that we do not just let out, but that we also continually inhale and exhale. If we had only that nitrogen, we would suffocate. In our lungs, we suffocate from the nitrogen. But our kidneys, our digestive organs, our hands and feet need the nitrogen; it is transported there by the blood and is necessary there. So that we can say: When a person is standing (see diagram $. 36), nitrogen, which I have marked in red here, is constantly going into his arms and hands, into his abdomen, into his legs and feet. That is where the nitrogen has to be. Nitrogen must not remain in the lungs, it must only pass through and have oxygen for the lungs. The lungs can only live when they have oxygen; but the nitrogen goes further, into arms and hands. So everywhere I have marked in red, the nitrogen must go in. And in the heart, too, it must still be deposited, the nitrogen. There must be nitrogen everywhere inside.

This nitrogen, which is inside, goes, I would say, all the time in brotherhood with the carbon. Carbon is in coal, in diamond, is in graphite. But carbon is also in us. Only in us it is liquid, floating around. So in there (see drawing) is the nitrogen, which I have drawn in red; now I want to draw in the carbon in blue. It is also everywhere inside, so that the red is everywhere with the blue, the carbon. This is something very strange: you carry carbon and nitrogen together in your insides, in your legs, your feet, your arms and hands, in your stomach, in your liver, in your kidneys, in your spleen, in your heart – nitrogen as it is in the air and completely liquid carbon, as if you were dissolving coal and this black stuff were floating in the water. You have that inside you.

But that is actually a dangerous story when carbon and nitrogen are next to each other. If carbon and nitrogen are present next to each other, there is always the danger, if the right conditions are present, that they form prussic acid, cyanic acid; because prussic acid consists of what I have marked red and blue in the diagram. So you walk around and while you walk around, there is always the danger that prussic acid is formed in you. So everywhere where I have marked in blue, there is always the danger that prussic acid is formed throughout the whole human being. And because the bones have lime, the prussic acid can also combine with the lime; then a cyanide-calcium compound is formed. And then potassium cyanide is formed. You know that potassium cyanide is the most technically perfect way to poison yourself. Of course, there is no better means than potassium cyanide for this purpose; it is immediately right. But now there is a constant danger in man that he will form prussic acid and potassium cyanide. This must be so. Because if you did not have this ability to form potassium cyanide within you, then you could not walk and you could not move your arms. The power to move, to move your arms and legs, comes from the fact that you are constantly exposed to the danger of forming prussic acid.

Now there is something very subtle: this prussic acid wants to form in us all the time and we constantly prevent it! That is what our life as a moving human being consists of. Even the movement of blood depends on our preventing the formation of prussic acid. Our movements arise from this resistance to the formation of prussic acid. And our will actually arises from the fact that it is constantly compelled to prevent the formation of prussic acid and prussic acid in us.

Now, gentlemen, prussic acid does not form; because if it did form, we would be poisoned. But at every moment we have the possibility of prussic acid forming in us and we have to prevent it. Of course, it is not much prussic acid that wants to form, but it would add up to something over a lifetime if it were to form. And the power that lives in the prussic acid that wants to form, this power that lives there, connects the human being on earth with the sun. So that what lives in the prussic acid flows continuously from man into the sun. So you can say when you look up at the sun: I have a connection with the sun; and the power that lives in me to break down the prussic acid that constantly wants to form in my body, this power goes from the earth up to the sun. If you have the earth here and the sun here – I have to draw it large now – then such currents of Zyankali are constantly flowing from the person to the sun, and currents flow back from the sun. This dissolved Zyankali flows from the person to the sun, and from the sun flows back what the sun makes out of this dissolved Zyankali. And this distance is twenty million miles – one mile is calculated as seven and a half kilometers. If a light is now lit on the sun, we see it first because the light takes so long to get here, much later. So we are connected to a world body that is so far away from us simply by the fact that we radiate this power, which is constantly striving to form potassium cyanide. In particular, there is always something like a cyanide center in our bones, like a source of cyanide.

If that were not the case, then we would be very peculiar people on earth. If we did not have this connection with the sun, then we would also stare up at the sun and say: Yes, that is a world body that has nothing to do with us. - We would see that plants grow; but these plants could not grow either if this potassium cyanide did not go back and forth. So we would stare at the sun and we would not know what relation it has to man. Of course, people today also do not know this connection that I have told you about, but they feel that they belong to the sun. And they feel this very strongly. Because when the sun goes down – especially in ancient times, when people still lived healthier lives, slept at night and watched during the day, it was still like that – then people feel that they do not absorb the sun in the same way. Then potassium cyanide is only in him, albeit only in small quantities; then he falls asleep. It is indeed the sun that always wakes people up and puts them to sleep. Only because man withholds something can he commit the folly of continuing to work at night or not working but continuing to enjoy himself. But the forces that we summon up during the night also come through the connection of these forces with the sun. And I would like to say: when hydrocyanic acid is formed somewhere on the earth itself - for example, hydrocyanic acid is formed in certain plants - when hydrocyanic acid is formed on the earth itself, then this solar force is applied to the plant, so to speak, in such a way that it brings about what actually wants to be done in the human being.

You see, gentlemen, in order for this to be formed – and it has to be formed because the nitrogen is in the prussic acid – you need the nitrogen in the environment. And the sun needs the nitrogen to be able to work on us in the right way. We could not stand on earth as human beings if the sun did not have the nitrogen through which it can act on our limbs, on our digestive organs and so on. But with the head it is quite different, with the human head, quite different. You see, in the lungs, the nitrogen is no good there; it has to go through the lungs. In the lungs, only the oxygen is of any use. And when the oxygen passes through the lungs, the part that then goes to the head must not go so fraternally to the nitrogen. The oxygen that goes to the head must go to the carbon instead. And instead of hydrocyanic acid being formed towards the feet, carbonic acid is now continuously formed towards the head — I want to emphasize this. So, towards the feet, humans produce prussic acid, towards the head, they produce carbonic acid. If we had to breathe carbonic acid, we would suffocate; but we need it in our heads. You see, gentlemen, that is a very interesting thing: our head needs the carbonic acid.

Now, you all know carbonic acid, of course. You have probably all had a fizzy soft drink or sparkling water: it contains bubbles, these gas bubbles. This is often carbonic acid, because in carbonated water, the carbonic acid is inside and rises in small bubbles. Gentlemen, you would not think that you have your head to anything at all if it were not for the fact that you are constantly producing little bubbles in your own body through the blood. Just as the bubbles shoot up in the bottle in the fizzy lemonade, tiny little bubbles are constantly going up in you towards your head. You could use your head for nothing if you were not a bottle like that yourself. One thirteenth to one fourteenth of the weight of your own body is taken up by blood. So you can imagine: you are actually such a bottle, filled with blood instead of fizzy water, and these bubbles swim upwards, striving upwards, just like in the fizzy water bottle, only much smaller, like in the lemonade bottle. Your head would not be able to think if these bubbles did not constantly rise up in you.

But now this carbonic acid must not be inactive in your head. You can well imagine that, with regard to your blood, you are like a bottle of fizzy pop, with bubbles rising up to your head. Now you have the same carbonic acid in your head, these bubbles, as in the bottle of fizzy lemonade. If you have too little in your head, you fall asleep; so you need it in your head. But this carbonic acid comes into contact with something in your head – nowhere else – but in your head it comes into contact with the iron in your blood. The iron is everywhere in the blood. But the iron that is in the blood in the hands cannot do anything with the carbonic acid; only in the head does the carbonic acid come together with the iron. And I would like to say: they kiss in the head, become very intimate with each other, the iron and the carbonic acid; and from there, through the veins, the iron passes into the whole blood. The carbonic acid then carries the iron into the whole blood when it has come into contact with it in the head. Iron and carbonic acid can only have a rendezvous in the head; but afterwards, when they have had their rendezvous, they can stroll around in the whole blood. Therefore, if a young girl becomes anemic, if she has too little iron in her blood, it means that there are too few rendezvous in her head, too few trysts between iron and carbonic acid. The girl does not have the strength to let enough iron and carbonic acid come together in her head.

But now you have probably already heard of such carbonic acid waters and even drunk some yourself. These carbonic acid waters, which are called ferruginous waters, are particularly healthy. You see, wherever there are ferruginous springs – and there are a great many carbonated waters in the earth – that is where nature exercises in the earth that which the human being exercises in his head. Large ferruginous springs are to be found here and there in the earth. And people are sent there when their own minds have become too weak. For every human mind is such an iron-containing source; even a ferruginous acid is still constantly forming in there, carbonic acid iron. There are as many sources in you as there are people sitting here. It is only when someone has been muddling through the winter that his mind becomes weak, and then the carbonic acid iron content in his mind becomes weak. He feels something that many people feel in spring: he feels as if something is wrong with his blood – of course, if he has been drinking! – he feels weak in the head, and must be sent to a carbonic acid bath, so that he gets through the stomach and from there through the head what he should actually produce himself through a more solid life. The ferruginous springs are not so rare: there are as many as there are people on earth! So we have what we need in iron in our blood through this carbonic acid iron.

We must, however, constantly produce it ourselves in our heads. But just as we must prevent it at the moment when it wants to arise, just as we must prevent the prussic acid. It may only just begin to form. You know, today chemists only talk about: well, we can put iron and carbon and oxygen together, and get iron carbonate. That must then be there, this iron carbonate. But that is not how it happens in life! Just as there is a difference between a stone and a piece of your liver, there is a difference between what the chemist does in the laboratory with iron carbonate and what exists in your mind as iron, as iron carbonate. That is alive! The difference is that it is alive. And you see, from this carbonic iron, which is in your mind, currents are constantly going up to the moon. Just as the currents of potassium cyanide go to the sun, so these currents, which a person develops by having the strength within himself to control the ferrous carbon, go up to the moon and back again.

Think, gentlemen, that you are looking up at the moon. You can say to yourself: It has a lot to do with my head. And so it is when you come to any area – I will mention, for example, Sauerbrunn in Hungary or Götsch in Styria, Gießhübl and so on; I believe there are also some in Switzerland – when you come there, it is a place where the moon can best affect the earth through the soil, because only there can such waters arise. So we see how the earth and man on the earth are connected with the sun and moon in that one comes to it: the cyanide currents ruled by man go according to the sun, the iron-carbonic acid currents ruled by man go according to the moon.

If one were reasonable, one would examine all such things properly. That is not done today. You just have to consider that the plants that are on the earth constantly need carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide is there. We humans and the animals exhale carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide is there! The plants that are on the earth do not breathe oxygen, but carbon dioxide. They throw away the oxygen, they keep the carbon in themselves. Therefore, the plant is built on carbonic acid. But this whole process, which develops best in the plant, is such that the plant can develop out of carbonic acid when the full moon is shining, because it is connected with the power of the moon. On the other hand, when there is a new moon, it develops less. And so it is always a basic condition for the plant that it is illuminated by the full moon. Growth is dormant during the new moon and develops particularly strongly during the full moon.

That is how you also explained the influence of the moon in “old superstitions”! Of course, such things were observed in the past, when people had no science. That is why you will find references everywhere in old country sayings to the importance of the full moon for plant growth. And you see, gentlemen, one should not just talk about the relationships between the individual heavenly bodies, but one should start from how this actually manifests itself on earth among people. Man has, as you have now seen, an extraordinary amount from the moon and from the sun. Man owes it to the moon that he can use his head. Man owes it to the sun that he can use his heart and his legs and hands. Just as we need the ground under our feet so that we can walk on it and not keep falling over, we need the sun and the moon. When we walk at night, we walk by the stored-up solar energy that we received during the day. We need these heavenly bodies!

But now, when you know what I have just said, you will also be able to say to yourself: Yes, but what about the early days? I have already told you that in the early days the sun and the moon and the earth were one single body; only in the course of time did they separate. Today we have the sun, the earth and the moon, that is, three bodies, distributed in space. In the beginning we had the sun, huge; inside it was the earth and inside the earth was the moon itself. They were one inside the other (see diagram $44). If we go back in the process of development, we come to a point in time when things were as if you, gentlemen, were very powerful, we were all very powerful and would now start here in the assembly to pack up the whole earth, load it onto a world wagon, quickly drive to the moon and then we would take the Earth and the Moon, which we had packed up, and drive up into the Sun. We would have reestablished the conditions that once existed. Only all the substances of the earth and all the substances of the moon would immediately take on a different form than they have now. But that was once the case! And when that was the case, there was not the same air as there is now, but there was prussic acid on the earth. So there was prussic acid and carbonic acid everywhere in the sun. You will say: But there was no real oxygen; in hydrocyanic acid and carbonic acid, man cannot live! Yes, gentlemen, as man is today, he could not live in that either; but in those days man did not yet have a physical body. He lived as a soul in this structure, in this heavenly body, which was the sun and earth and moon at the same time. And if we look at it properly, we simply come back to the fact that the whole nature of the heavenly bodies was different in those days, that when we still lived in the sun we naturally did not live on oxygen, but on prussic acid and carbonic acid. The sun, in which we lived, gave us prussic acid; the moon, which was inside the earth, gave us carbonic acid.

Today, all that remains of this is nitrogen in the air, which we cannot live on either. That remained from the prussic acid. The enormous prussic acid air of the sun left us the nitrogen when the sun and the earth separated. So the nitrogen remained from the prussic acid. And the oxygen remained from the carbonic acid after the moon came out. So we can say: Our air, our ordinary air, which consists of nitrogen and oxygen, has not been around forever, it has only been around since the sun separated from the earth; that's when the nitrogen came. And since the moon has separated from the earth, that's when the oxygen came.

But now it goes further! I told you that there is actually only a little oxygen in the air, about 21 percent, and quite a lot of nitrogen, around 78 percent. Now, I also told you: the sun is big, the moon is small; we get our oxygen from the moon, so there is less of it in the air; we get our nitrogen from the sun, so there is a lot of it in the air because the sun is much bigger than the moon. So you can see from the nitrogen in the air that the sun is bigger than the moon, because we get our nitrogen from the sun and our oxygen from the moon.

But I also told you that carbonic acid consists of oxygen and carbon. The carbon that is in black coal is there; the oxygen is in the air. Now I have told you that when the moon came out of the earth, the oxygen was created. But then the carbon that remains in the earth, that is the black coal in the earth, was formed from the carbonic acid. So think, we dig the black coal out of the earth today. What do we have to say to ourselves when we don't just drill into the earth like earthworms, but educate ourselves about how this coal was formed? —Once the moon came out of the earth, gave the air oxygen and the ground coal. We really must say: You, Moon, you gave us plenty when you left the Earth; you didn't just slip away when you left the Earth; you left us oxygen in the air and coal in the Earth! - So the moon, it's actually a very fine fellow out in space; because when he was still with us, he entertained our souls by always developing carbonic acid himself; he left that behind for us. And outside he left us the carbon and in the earth the coal. He did not act like a thief, leaving nothing behind or even taking it with him, but he made the physical human possible in the first place. Before that there was no physical human, but only a spiritual human in the sun with the moon and the earth.

And even earlier, the Earth and the Sun separated. The Sun provided the Earth with prussic acid, actually with potassium cyanide. This is needed to live spiritually, that is, when one does not have a physical body. You have to have prussic acid in the environment where you cannot use it when you are supposed to live as a physical person. Prussic acid immediately dissolves the physical person. But the sun is also such a fine person: it left us the nitrogen in the air when it went away, when it separated; and in the earth it left us the potassium cyanide and other cyanide compounds. These consist of carbon, nitrogen and potassium – potassium is a substance that shines as finely as silver – or also calcium. So the sun left behind nitrogen in the air for us, and also some carbon, but this did not become coal, but lives in plants, this carbon; but it secreted calcium and that is where the limestone mountains, the Jura and so on come from. The fact that we have a solid earth at all comes from the fact that the sun was once with us and went out into space and left us the lime. The moon left us the coal, the sun left us the lime in the earth. The moon left us oxygen in the air, the sun left us nitrogen in the air.

And so the earth was formed out of the sun and the moon. And after it was formed, we look up and see the sun and the moon. But when everything was still together, when the sun, moon and earth were together, man could only live as a spiritual being, could not live otherwise! Yes, gentlemen, in those days man was able to live as a soul-spiritual being despite the fact that he never received a physical body because oxygen and nitrogen and all that was not there. But now, when we bring potassium cyanide into our bodies as we are on earth, it destroys all our movements and vital forces in our bodies. And the terrible thing is that there is always a danger when someone poisons themselves with potassium cyanide that it takes its toll on the soul and instead of being able to live on in the soul, the person is scattered all over the world and especially in the sunlight.

If anthroposophical knowledge were to spread, no one would poison themselves with potassium cyanide anymore. It would not even occur to him! The fact that poisoning with potassium cyanide occurs is only the consequence of the materialistic world view, because people believe that dead is dead, no matter whether one dies from potassium cyanide or from inner dissolution. But it is important! When someone dies through inner dissolution, then the soul and spirit have to take the usual path into the spiritual world; they simply continue to live. But when you poison yourself with potassium cyanide, then the soul intends to go with every body part, and especially to spread out in the nitrogen and dissolve into the universe. That is the real death of soul and spirit. If people only knew that the soul and spirit are the actual human being, then they would say: We cannot possibly cause this terrible explosion, which is then caused throughout the whole universe in a subtle way, when a person poisons himself with potassium cyanide. – Because every person who poisons himself with potassium cyanide connects himself in an improper way to the current that goes from the earth to the sun. And if one had the right instruments, one would see a small explosion in the sun every time a person poisons himself with potassium cyanide. And the sun is deteriorating as a result. Man corrupts the universe and also the power that flows from the sun to the earth when he poisons himself with potassium cyanide. Man really has influence on the universe. When a person poisons himself with potassium cyanide, he is actually ruining the sun! And so it is with every case of cyanide poisoning.

And that is something that does not evoke such an artificially created religious mood, but what really evokes a religious mood, is that man knows: I belong to the universe, and what I do continually evokes influences in the universe. That is precisely what has been completely forgotten by people, that this is the case and that people do not even know: the nitrogen that is around me was created by the sun; the oxygen that is around me was created by the moon. And that is why a real science is basically no longer there today. There is no real science at all anymore! Real science takes the other heavenly bodies into account. And so people look up at the stars through their telescopes, do mere calculating, but do not know that, for example, there is an intimate connection between every iron particle, of which millions swim around in our blood, between every iron particle in our blood and everything that happens in the moon. And so it is that, for example, a young girl suffering from anemia cannot develop a proper relationship with the moon and thus becomes completely disconnected from the cosmic context. So that such a pale anemia young girl, for example, loses her memory, everything that relates to the head, and that as a result the living relationship does not arise, everything that, as I have told you, should arise between iron and carbonic acid - all that is not present in the pale anemia young girl: the head becomes empty of thoughts.

But again, if a person is unable to properly combat what wants to arise in his body in terms of prussic acid, then too much lime is deposited in the bones; the bones become brittle and gradually even the lime pushes into the blood vessels: everything in the person becomes brittle. The human being can no longer develop the right relationship with the sun. But this must be. The human being must develop his right relationship with the sun through that which lives in his movements, in which the bones, of course, play an important part. And the human being must develop the right relationship with the moon through that which lives in his head. Yes, gentlemen, it is indeed the case that if a person does not think, is too lazy to think, then little by little the moon will not take care of that person! Then the person becomes dull, stupid. And if the person does not walk at all, but lies in bed all the time, then the sun will not take care of that person. Then the person becomes dull and lethargic and sluggish in relation to his limbs. Whether someone is very lazy in their movements or in their thoughts depends on their

relationship with the sun and moon. If you are on good terms with the sun and moon, you like to think and like to walk around and like to work. If you are on bad terms with the sun and moon, you stop thinking and you no longer enjoy walking around and working. But man is very closely connected to the sun and moon. If you ask one or the other today what he has learned from all that can be learned today - one tells you how to work with the microscope, the other tells you how to look at the sun and moon with the telescope, how to calculate the angles, how much distance are the distances, that the sun has sunspots, that it has a corona around it, how the nebulae rise – he tells you all that.

If you ask me what the connection between the heavenly bodies is, then I can tell you the same thing, because I have also learned what the others have learned. But if it is to become a living science, I have to tell it to you in such a way that it ultimately comes out that human walking and standing is connected with the sun; that is living science and the other is dead science, living science and dead science! This living science and this dead science, that is precisely the difference between the Goetheanum and, let us say, a modern university. If you go to a modern university, they tell the young doctor that when any body combines with oxygen, it burns. So you have a candle; there is all kinds of fuel, fats, there is the flame and there these substances combine with the oxygen in the air. And that is combustion, the combining of substances with the oxygen in the air, therefore combustion. And then the professor goes on to say: There is also combustion in the human being, because there is carbon in it, oxygen is inhaled, combines with the carbon; there is also combustion in the human being. – And so the professor tells you about the combustion in the human being. But that is just as much nonsense as saying: “Guy, your liver has gone terribly bad, I'll cut one out of wood and put it in for you.” Yes, that's a dead liver! But man needs a living liver. If you light a candle, you have a dead combustion; but the combustion that is inside man is a living combustion! The same difference that exists between a candle and the living combustion inside a person also exists between a living liver and a liver made of wood. So when the professor talks about a combustion taking place inside a person, he is not talking about a real person at all, but about someone he has carved out of wood. That is all nonsense! The combustion itself is alive in the human being. And that is the big difference between the combustion that is outside, the dead combustion, and the living one that is inside the human being. But they look at the combustion in the same way, saying: outside, fat, tallow or something similar burns in the candle, and inside, carbon burns to form carbonic acid. It is the same nonsense as saying that you could just as easily make a liver out of wood or stone. That would be a dead liver! In the body, there cannot be just any old kind of combustion like there is in a candle. There is a living combustion in the human being, and it is different from what is otherwise called combustion, just as the liver is different from a piece of wood. That is why I distinguish these expressions that are used by ordinary natural science from combustion and so on; I only say it by also explaining that it is a living combustion. Even in the word, when one says that a combustion takes place in the body, there is nonsense in the word, because everyone thinks: the same thing that happens in a candle happens in a human being. Even when you speak the words, you are talking nonsense.

Next Saturday, if I'm there, I'll give a lecture; otherwise on Monday.

Good morning, gentlemen! Perhaps you noticed something in particular during the last lecture that would prompt you to follow up with a question?

Questioner: Yesterday, Mr. Seefeld showed me a photograph of snowflakes. The forms come from the universe. It interested me very much; there is a connection. It has already given me food for thought.

Dr. Steiner: I will try to present this to you in context as well, especially since it will then easily lead on from what we discussed last Monday. I have often pointed out that the human being is a very complicated creature. This is not so much apparent from the human being's appearance, but can be seen from the human being's inner life, including the physical interior of the human being. I can point out to you, for example, that in areas in the so-called hot zone, where it is warm for most of the year and only a very short rainy winter alternates with the warmth - say in southern Egypt or India - that people there actually look quite different on the inside than where it is constantly cold, in areas close to the North Pole, for example. Regions close to the North Pole have a great deal of what you just asked about; they have a great deal of the forces that are then expressed in the beautiful forms of snowflakes. So we can say that on Earth we have areas that are strongly warmed and illuminated by the sun, where the sun has a great influence, and we have areas where the sun actually has little influence, where snow and ice prevail. You know that not only snowflakes have beautiful, all kinds of wonderful shapes – snowflakes have, firstly, shapes that resemble a hexagon, but also all kinds of other shapes (see figure $. 52) – but you have certainly also looked out the window in winter when there is ice, when the water freezes that otherwise covers the entire window surface as vapor; then you have seen what wonderful flowers are formed, wonderful figures in which the water is formed. So that we can say: water, which is the basis of snow as well as of ice – because when it gets warm again, both snow and ice melt into water – forms the most beautiful figures when the sun is not quite strong. Of course, they cannot be in the water. Because something that forms its own figure out of itself retains its figure. You all have a figure. But you cannot say of the human figure that you all only have the human figure in pictures, which melts away when the sun comes. That would also be a shame, but it doesn't. The water does not have this figure within itself; it comes from outside. Now let us examine where the water gets this figure from, which causes these beautiful images in both snow crystals and frost flowers. That is the answer to your question. When such a question is posed, it must be possible to address the person as a whole. Now there are two organs in the human being; they are different in a person where the sun has great power throughout the year, as in the hot regions of southern Egypt and India. The inner form of these organs differs in these people from those people where it is cold, so to speak, all year round, where there is always a tendency in nature to form snow crystals and frost flowers, as with the Eskimos. They live up there, wherever snow and ice actually want to be, where water does not melt much. But now let's look at the outside. People will say: Well, people in hot areas may be a little taller on the outside, but the Eskimos are small people. But that is not what makes the difference. The big difference between people in the hot zone and the Eskimos, the people in the cold zone, lies in the difference in the formation of their livers and lungs. The Eskimos have large lungs and small livers in relation to their bodies, and the people in the hot zone have relatively smaller lungs and a large liver. So you see, people in areas where ice flowers and ice crystals form differ from the others in that they have a small liver and large lungs in relation to their bodies. And in people where nature does not tend to form such figures, but where the sun always melts everything, removes everything, there is the peculiarity that they have relatively small lungs and a large liver. Whenever we ask about something in nature, including ice flowers, we must always look at the human being. If you don't start with the human being, you understand nothing in nature, absolutely nothing.

So the thing is this: the liver in humans is a very important organ. If a person had no liver, they would have no bile, because the liver secretes bile continuously. The bile comes from the liver, passes into the gallbladder, from there into the digestive juices, from there into the blood and then passes into the whole body. So we can say: Man has the liver in his right side; from the liver, bile flows out into the gallbladder, from there into the blood, and goes into the whole body. So man actually has his liver to secrete bile.

You may ask why this bile is constantly coming from the liver. Gentlemen, if you had no gall, you would be strange people. It is distributed throughout the body in very small quantities, but it must be in the whole body. If you had no gall, you would be terribly phlegmatic; you would let your hands, arms, and head hang, and it would be unpleasant for you to answer someone's questions and so on. So you would be completely lethargic, phlegmatic people if you had no bile. Man must have bile; the bile must come from the liver. And if the liver is relatively small, then the person is phlegmatic; if the liver is relatively large, then the person has a lot of fire in him, because the bile produces fire. And you see, there can also be too much bile in a person; they can produce too much bile; then they actually feel like hitting out when someone says just a little something to them. In particular, people with a violent temper have a lot of bile flowing out of their liver; a lot of bile flows into the digestive juices and into the blood. So that if you observe inwardly the person to whom you say something or who does not like something that makes a particular impression on him – a lot of bile quickly flows out of the liver and spreads very quickly throughout the body, and he hits you a few times or rants like a trooper. That is what you observe inwardly when a person has too much tendency to secrete bile. But as I said, if he did not secrete any bile at all, he would have no fire at all, but would just flop around as I told you. So you see, the secretion of bile is something that is absolutely essential to a person. I don't know if any of you has tasted bile: it tastes terribly bitter, really poisonous, and a larger amount of bile properly absorbed by the mouth is also a poison. This is related to what I told you last Wednesday. I told you: when a person comes to life, moves, walks, even when he curses and slaps you around a bit, yes, there is so much poison that he has the tendency to produce a lot of the potassium cyanide I told you about. He has to mix that with his blood. I have seen many cases where people have simply developed internal blood poisoning from their anger. One can become so angry, especially when one becomes angry quickly, that one secretes an excessive amount of bile as a result of this anger - actually first a lot of cyan, then bile. Then one gets a terrible toxic mixture in the blood, and that ruins the blood. Wrath can cause terrible blood poisoning. From this you can see how necessary and how harmful something can be for a person, depending on what kind of organ it is in his body. Because everything that happens is connected with the soul again. Anger is something of the soul, the secretion of bile is something physical; but there is nothing in the human being that is not also of the soul and everything of the soul somehow has a physical form.

Let us move on. Now suppose a person is very often exposed to what are often called colds, especially abdominal colds. So a person gets abdominal colds very often; then his stomach says: Yes, I am like an Eskimo, I am like in the coldest region of the earth. - And then it happens that the stomach constantly contracts the liver, so that it is small like an Eskimo's. So if a person has a lot of abdominal colds, then his liver contracts, and then it squeezes out the bile. Bile constantly trickles into the gallbladder and from there into the body.

Now, gentlemen, you have all experienced what is called, for example, overstraining yourself. You lift something that is too heavy for you; then you tear your muscles apart, then you destroy your muscles. If you use too much strength for any organ, you destroy the organ. But that is the case with the liver. If it continues to secrete too much bile, the liver gradually shrinks and becomes ineffective. So most liver diseases that people get arise from the fact that the person has developed a tendency to secrete too much bile due to cold in the abdomen, causing their liver to atrophy. Liver diseases come from cold in the abdomen due to the liver shrinking. Of course, all kinds of other conditions can occur as well. When a person suffers from abdominal colds, the heart does not work properly. Doctors then say that liver diseases come from the heart. But in reality they come from the fact that the abdomen is cold.

But all this – as you can already see from what I have told you – has to do with the sun. Therefore, it is always very good for someone suffering from abdominal colds to expose their lower body to light. The sun cure, for example, is extremely good for this. So we have to say: everything that is connected with the liver is also connected with the sun. Solar activity promotes liver activity. A lack of solar activity disrupts liver activity. It is a very interesting connection between the sun and the liver.

I have always admired the fact that the German language has a word for liver. All other languages don't have such a nice word for this organ in the right side of the abdomen. Because, according to what I have explained to you now, we have to say that the fire, even that which comes to man from the sun, this invigorating firepower, must first be cooked properly in the liver for the human being; the bile must be prepared there for him, which then passes into his body. The sun prepares the bile in the human being. What the human being does there, we call living, and the one who fuels this life can be called a liver. Just as one says: wagon, wainwright, drawing, draftsman, so life is the verb, and liver, the liver - one has only forgotten that this is the case, one says “the liver” instead of “the liver”; actually it is called the liver - that is what gives life! Sometimes language is wonderfully instructive, because in the old folk instincts there was always a knowledge of this, and things were named correctly. The liver is what fires, what invigorates the human being. This is to be said with regard to the liver. Now, if one has a liver in its bile secretion, then one must say: the secretion of the liver is that which is connected with the sun.

Now we turn to the lungs. We have often discussed this and you know it: the lungs breathe. But the lungs drawing in oxygen, breathing, is only part of their activity. The lungs have something else to do. Just as the liver secretes bile, so the lungs secrete what is called mucus. So the lungs secrete mucus. The lungs, like the liver, cannot keep what they have inside. The liver could not fill up with bile; the liver has to release bile into the body. But the lungs have to constantly secrete mucus, constantly secrete mucus. And now it is so that when the lungs secrete mucus, the mucus then goes to all other parts of the body. It goes out with sweat, it even goes into the exhaled air, it goes out with the urine, it goes everywhere, the mucus. But the organ that secretes the mucus is the lung.

If you now examine the air that a person exhales, you will discover something wonderful. You just have to examine the air exhaled from the nose, not the air exhaled from the mouth, which is too irregular; you have to examine the air exhaled from the nostrils.

It is very interesting when someone exhales very slowly. You have to be very careful: if you breathe on a glass plate, something similar to snow will appear in the exhaled breath. You have to do it very carefully, and in such a way that, for example, if you hold your left nostril while exhaling, you only breathe out slowly with your right nostril onto the glass plate in front of you, and then with your left. You have to breathe very slowly, because if you breathe quickly, you smear the whole thing with the breath. You have to breathe very gently and softly. Actually, you have to learn that first. But then it's interesting: when you breathe through one nostril, the exhaled air forms figures on the glass plate, just like snow! The exhaled air is not just a little crumb on it, but a figure. And the really interesting thing about it, I would say, is that if you hold your left nostril closed and breathe out, you get one figure; if you hold your right nostril closed and breathe out, you get a different figure. They are not even the same figures! So we can say: the air from you, from your own person, comes out in figures. It doesn't come out just as a drop, it comes out in figures, and even so strangely that the left nostril gives a different figure than the right nostril.

Now, gentlemen, what is in the exhaled air, which, because it contains water vapor, gives these figures, which evaporate again immediately, but forms these figures, is the mucus that passes from the lungs into the exhaled air. It forms these figures. The mucus, so to speak, sticks the individual, tiny water droplets together into such figures. So that you do not just have the tendency to expel mucus in your lungs in any old shape, but you have the tendency to actually exhale or expel mucus from your lungs in crystals – in crystals! Only these crystals evaporate immediately, dissolve immediately, because they come into contact with the sun.

Just as the bile is related to the liver and the sun, so the lungs and their mucus secretion are related to the moon. We know that the carbon dioxide rises up into the head, as I have told you, and I have shown you that if a person did not send carbon dioxide up into his head, he would become stupid. This tingling carbonic acid, which continuously rises in very small quantities into the head, makes us clever people. We are all so terribly clever people, aren't we! You know, when you drink fizzy drinks, it tingles; that is very noticeable. But humans always produce carbonic acid very weakly. He sends it up into the head. And this tingling in the head makes the head active; that is why he is clever and not stupid. Those people who are really stupid – I don't know if there are any – they have too little strength to combine the carbon with the oxygen and don't send any carbon up, but they combine the carbon with a completely different gas. So a clever person connects the carbon with the oxygen: and that's how sparkling carbonic acid is created. But as I said, those people who are really stupid connect the carbon not with the oxygen but with the hydrogen. So they connect carbon with hydrogen, and that's how this gas is created, which is sometimes found in mines: mine gas, swamp gas. We all send some of this mine gas into our heads; we need it, otherwise we would become too clever. So that we can always remain a little dull, and not be too clever, we also develop swamp gas. But those who become too stupid develop too much swamp gas. In those people who are reasonably clever, the carbonic acid goes to the head. That tingles. And when a lot of marsh gas has gradually accumulated, they become sleepy, then comes sleepiness. This occurs at night, when a lot of marsh gas develops. Only in those who are stupid does the marsh gas also develop when they are awake. So the carbonic acid has to keep rising. But the carbonic acid alone does not do it: the mucus has to go from the lungs to the head. It even comes out through the nostrils in the form of crystals, just as it does in the liver and gall bladder. Now, that will be clear to you from the description I gave on Wednesday.

Just as the liver is related to the sun, so the lungs are related to the moon. Take a look at the moon. The moon is just very different from the sun. When you look at the sun, the sun is round, but it actually spreads its rays in all directions. The sun, which shines on all sides; it flows out in all directions, just as the bile in the human body goes in all directions. One can then compare the sun in its flowing out, in its flowing apart, with the flowing out of the bile. But the moon - yes, gentlemen, when you look at the moon, it always has a very definite shape. The moon is very firm. And in its interior, too, what constitutes the substance of the moon is crystallized, just as our exhaled air forms, which come out of the nose, are crystallized. The moon's effects are at work inside, just as the sun's effects are at work in the liver and gall bladder. The moon's forces are at work in the lungs, and the moon causes this secretion of mucus.

Now we can say: let us go to the hot regions, yes, then the sun is at work. It makes everything melt; people get a lot of fire. Fire, it does not only live in the wrath of anger, but also lives in the beautiful things and in the beautiful wisdom of zeal. People get a lot of fire. If we go to cold regions, then in these cold regions, where the sun does not have the strength to work, where the moon shines in particular on cold nights in the freezing cold, the lungs, which are relatively enlarged, have to work very hard: a lot of mucus is secreted. And those who are not accustomed to this catch cold and secrete too much mucus.

You see, gentlemen, now you also have the cause of lung diseases. The lungs have to secrete a certain amount of mucus, just as the liver has to secrete a certain amount of bile. But just as the liver ruins itself when it secretes too much bile, so the lungs ruin themselves when they secrete too much mucus. This is the case with lung diseases. The lungs are shaken up by what they experience, by secreting too much mucus. So imagine that instead of living in moderately humid air, instead of living in a little humid air, you live in very humid air: then the lungs have to make a very great effort. But when the lungs strain, they secrete mucus. And so, by breathing too much moist air, the lungs begin to strain. And the person coughs when they get lung disease; little by little they cough up their entire lungs when they are too sick.

You can then help the lungs by preparing a certain medicine. You must not use roots for this, but you must use the leaves of plants to prepare a certain medicine. This is the case, for example, with very specific plant species. If you take the juice correctly and prepare certain medicines, you can help the lungs when they are too active. Because such medicines have the property of taking over the lung activity; then the lungs exert themselves a little less. The healing process therefore usually consists of asking oneself: the lung is secreting too much mucus; this is a sign that it is making too great an effort. So what do I do? I look for a plant that has a juice that can take over the lung's activity.

Or I notice that the liver is secreting too much bile: I look for a plant that can take over the liver function. There is, for example, a plant called Cichorium intybus, chicory. If the juice from the root of this plant is made into a medicine and given to a person, then it takes over the liver function, and one can then find that although at first the person does not secrete less bile, and although at first his mental anger does not decrease, but that his liver gradually strengthens again and gradually improvement occurs.

So you help a person by knowing, for example, that the juices of the leaves - not the roots - of certain types of cabbage can take over certain lung activities, and that the juice from the root of Cichorium intybus - it also grows out there, you will all know it, it has such blue flowers - is particularly beneficial for the liver.

So we can say: In hot areas, water melts; warmth, the warmth of the sun dissolves everything. When the sun is less active, when the sun's power diminishes or is weak throughout the year, as in northern areas, the moon becomes all the more powerful. When the direct rays of the sun are not effective, these strange rays of the sun, which are reflected by the moon, are effective. These, however, produce the crystal forms and the ice flower forms. That is very beautiful. We can therefore say: If we have the earth here (see drawing), then we have the hot zone here. The sun's rays have a particular effect on the hot zone. Oh, that is very beautiful how the sun's rays work there! These sunbeams stimulate liver activity. The liver sends bile everywhere, and the bile spreads throughout the body. And when the bile spreads into the feathers of birds or the wings of hummingbirds, for example, it becomes the beautiful colors. That is why hummingbirds glisten in the hot zone because their bile is secreted very quickly and goes into the feathers very quickly.

In cold regions, this does not happen, because the sun has little power there. Instead, the reflected sunlight, the light of the moon, is particularly active, and this light causes the snow to form crystals, and the ice to produce frost flowers. This only happens here when the sun loses its power in winter. But in the regions of eternal ice, at the North Pole or on the high mountains, because the sun also has no power there, because the sun can only develop power in the dense air, these beautiful forms of ice are formed.

We already get a wonderful impression when we look into nature in this way! We get the impression that wherever the sun shines, life appears, life that melts and evaporates, that spreads. Wherever the moon has an effect, shapes and images arise. That is quite an impression that one gets there. And one can only understand these things if one is open to spiritual influences. It is really true that one must say: in the lungs, where man actually produces mucus, the powers of the moon are also at work. And they work in such a way that they do not need direct sunlight, but use reflected sunlight. Therefore, when the lunar forces are predominantly active here in the north, and the sun is inactive, something else happens: the air above becomes such that something that is always in the earth here comes out. For magnetism and electricity are everywhere in the earth. The earth is full of magnetism and electricity. You can see that magnetism and electricity are everywhere in the earth from the following: if you have a telegraph set at a station (diagram), if it is in Dornach, for example, then you have one here, let's say in Basel; you can telegraph to it; but you can only telegraph when there is a wire. Wires must go through the air; only then can you telegraph. But that is not enough if you were to set up a telegraph here and one in Basel, and pull a wire! You could telegraph as long as you like with the button, you would get to Basel, but you have to connect back again, it has to be a closed current. And when you do that, then you can telegraph here, and the signals will arrive there. You know - I only mention this for the sake of completeness - that there is a paper strip wrapped around here, and when a tip presses on this paper strip, either a dot or a dash is created, and when it presses for a long time, and the telegraphic alphabet is then composed of dots and dashes, a -, b----, c-+--. But the strange thing is: you don't need this second wire after all if you run a wire from the apparatus into the ground and put a copper plate in there, and then put another plate there; you can then remove the wire, because there is a connection. Why? Because the earth itself has electricity and the electricity is conducted from one plate to the other. The earth replaces the wire with its own substance. The earth is full of electricity. But when the sun shines on the earth, as at the equator, in the hot area, this electricity, when it wants to come out into the air, is immediately destroyed. The sunlight is a force that extinguishes the electricity. But where the sun's effect is weak, electricity goes up into the air, and you can see it above the earth. You see, gentlemen, the northern lights are the electrical force of the earth, which flows under the influence of the moon's forces. That is why the northern lights are very rare in our regions; but they are frequent, almost always there in northern regions.

This is another point where science reaches a dead end at a certain point. Of course, science today knows that the earth is full of electricity. This science also always looks at the northern lights. But if you read in the books what this northern light actually is, people always believe that it is something that flows from the world into the earth. But that is nonsense, it does not flow in, but flows straight out! What science does with the northern lights is so interesting because it is the same as when someone confuses their debts with their capital. That is the case. It makes a difference in human life when you confuse your debts with your wealth. But science can do it with impunity, it can look at the aurora borealis as something that flows in from the world, while in reality the aurora borealis is something that flows out from the earth. But in the hot areas, it is immediately received by sunlight, and there it is extinguished. In the northern regions, the moonlight is more active when it shines; and when it does not shine, it remains active in the after-effect, and there the northern light, the outgoing electricity, becomes visible. Now, this northern light is particularly strong there because the moon's forces are particularly strong. There is actually a little northern light everywhere, only it cannot be seen because it is weak. In our regions, the aurora borealis, that is, the escaping electricity, is also weak. But in wireless telegraphy it is so strong that it has an effect. What works in wireless telegraphy is the same as what you see glowing in the aurora borealis. There you have the reason. Electricity, together with moonlight, makes the ice flowers and snow crystals. You have to study the northern lights and the moonlight if you want to study the ice crystals, the frost flowers and the snow crystals. Because the power of the sun is less in winter, the power of the moon gets the upper hand and the electricity is less extinguished by us, the snow is formed into such beautiful crystals. It is the moon and electricity together that form the beautiful crystals and cause the frost flowers.

Now, I have already told you, just remember: if someone has too little moon activity, if someone develops too much marsh gas in his head, then, as the vernacular says, he becomes a “Sumser”, that is, a fool. And so he develops too little moon power in himself. Now, what must one have in one's head? One must get everything that comes from the moon, the carbonic acid from breathing, the mucus from the lungs, into the head, that is, a power that constantly wants to form crystals in the head. Snow, gentlemen, wants to form continuously in our heads; we only dissolve it again and again. But it wants to form. Think, gentlemen, you actually all have a very strange organ in your brains. Namely, when Mr. Seefeld showed Mr. Burle these beautiful snow crystal figures, he was interested in them, and he thought to himself: It must be interesting to see what the connection actually is. Yes, Mr. Burle photographed these snow crystals inside himself! It is like taking a very quick photograph, and what arises in a flash disappears again when you exhale through your nostrils. If one could quickly photograph what is going on inside Mr. Burle's head, or in the heads of all of you, one would find the same photographs. They would form such pieces of snow crystals, of ice flowers, window flowers; they could be photographed by your ether heads, and they would be the same! Your head is a very strange thing. If you had such a photographic apparatus, as it does not yet exist - you would have to do it terribly fast, because it always dissolves immediately - you would find: we look in our brain like a pretty piece of snow or a pretty window of ice flowers! It must disappear again immediately, otherwise they would sting us, these sharp crystals, we would not think with them. So that when we look out at the snow, or when we look out at our window flowers, ice flowers, we can say to ourselves: “Gosh, that's the same thing that's going on in our own heads!” – except that it quickly dissipates. All of nature thinks! And in winter, when it gets cold, it really starts to think. In summer, it's just too hot to think. Then it lets the sun scatter and turns it into food and so on. But in winter, when it's cold, thoughts form in the snow and ice. If there were no thoughts out there, we wouldn't have any in our heads either. So you see, it is actually beautiful, this correspondence of nature outside in winter, where nature becomes so clever that it makes visible, external, what is always going on in our heads as our cleverness. We can see everywhere in nature what is going on in ourselves. We just have to understand it in the right way.

Now, all this has a great, practical significance. So, gentlemen, suppose someone gets, let us say, a very specific type of head disease from secreting too little mucus. You can get a head disease from that. If, when someone secretes too little mucus, you give him some silicic acid iron as a remedy, then this silicic acid iron takes over the mucus secretion activity and pushes the mucus up into the head, and you can again cause healing with it. You see, that is the difference between anthroposophic medicine and other medicine, which only ever tries things out. In anthroposophy, you learn that a person who has a certain head disease is too weak to form crystals in his brain, this perpetual formation and decay of frost flowers. Now you have to help him. You can do that with mere silicic acid. If you go up to the high mountains and see the beautiful quartz there, that is silicic acid. It is a beautiful crystal. It has the tendency to form these crystals. If you treat this quartz accordingly, you get the silicic acid preparation that is so effective among our remedies. And this silicic acid preparation is so effective for all diseases that originate in the human head. If the head does not form crystals from within, then it must be helped from the outside by such beautiful crystals, which have such beautifully formed crystal formations within them. But when he stands before his beautiful snow window with the frost flowers in his room like an ox on Sunday when it has been eating grass all week, as our science does, yes, then he also stands with science before the human head; then he can do nothing because he knows nothing about it. All these things show you how science must be deepened through a real knowledge of the human being.

This then naturally extends to the art of education, because one must first know: if one teaches the human being the letters for my sake, it is such a strong activity of the moon that if it is done too much, if it is done incorrectly, it completely erases the crystallization power of the ether head. It is really the case that a person can become even more stupid through much learning, that is, if he does not learn in the right way. It is true. But in order to understand this, we will have something else to discuss next time. It is necessary to know all this.