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.But that is a very unjust statement.For without separating the systems spatially, the nerves and senses may be said to be organised principally in the head, but they are also to be found in the other two systems.The rhythmic system is principally located in the middle organisation; but it again is spread over the whole man; similarly the metabolic organisation.It is not a question of making a spatial separation between the organs, but of understanding their qualitative aspect and what is living in and permeating the single organs.When we study the system of nerves and senses from this standpoint, we find that it spreads throughout the whole organism.The eye or the ear, for example, are organised in such a way that they pre-eminently contain the nerves and senses, in a lesser degree the rhythmic, and in a still less degree the metabolic system.An organ like the kidney, for instance, does not contain so much of the nerves-and-senses system as of the rhythmic or metabolic organisation, yet it contains something of all three.We do not understand the human being if we say: here are sense-organs, or there are digestive organs.In reality it is quite different.A sense-organ is only principally sense-organ; every sense-organ is also in a certain way a digestive and a rhythmic organ.The kidneys or the liver are to be understood as being principally assimilatory or excretory organs.In a lesser degree they are organs of nerves and senses.If, then, we study the whole organisation of man with its single organs from the point of view of the system of nerves-and-senses (in its reality, and not according to the fantastic concepts often formed by physiology), we find that man `perceives' by means of his separate senses — sight, hearing and so on; but we also find that he is entirely permeated by the sense-organisation.The kidney, for instance, is a sense-organ which has a delicate perception of what is taking place in the digestive and excretory processes.The liver too, is — under certain conditions — a sense-organ.The heart is in a high degree an inner sense-organ and can only be understood if it is conceived of as such.Do not imagine that I have any intention of criticising the science of to-day; I know its worth and my desire is that our view of these things shall be firmly grounded upon it.But we must nevertheless be clear that our science is, at present, not able to penetrate fully and with exactitude into the being of man.If it could, it would not relate the animal organisation so closely to the human in the way it does in our time.In respect of the life of sense, the animal stands at a lower level than the human organisation.The human nerves-and-senses organisation is yoked to the Ego-organisation; in the animal it is yoked to the astral body.The sense-life of man is entirely different from that of the animal.When the animal perceives something with its eyes — and this can be shown by a closer study of the structure of the eye — something takes place in the animal which, so to say, goes through the whole of its body.It does not happen like that in man.In man, sense-perception remains far more at the periphery, is concentrated far more on the surface.You can understand from this that there are delicate organisations present in animals which, in the case of the higher species, are only to be found in etheric form.But in certain of the lower animals you find, for instance, the xiphoid process which is also present in higher animals but in their case it is etheric; or you may find the pecten or choroid process in the eye.The way in which these organs are permeated by the blood, shows that the eye shares in the whole organisation of the animal and is the mediator to it of a life in the circumference of its environment.Man, on the other hand, is connected with his system of nerves-and-senses quite differently and therefore lives, in a far higher sense than the animal, in his outer world, whereas the animal lives more within itself.But everything which is communicated through the higher spiritual members of the human being, which lives itself out through the Ego-organisation by way of the nerves and senses, requires — just because it is present within the domain of the physical body — to receive its material influences from out of the physical world.Now if we closely study the system of nerves-and-senses at a time when it is functioning perfectly healthily, we find that its working depends on a certain substance, and on the processes that take place in that substance.Matter is something which is never at rest; it merely represents what is, actually, a `process.' (A crystal of quartz, for instance, is only a self-contained, definitely shaped thing to us because we never perceive that it is a `process,' though indeed it is one which is taking place extremely slowly.) We must penetrate further and further into the human organism and learn to understand its transformative activity.That which enters into the organism as external physical substance has to be taken up by it and overcome, in the way described in the introductory lecture
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