Although Spiritual Science is necessary, although the times demand it, nevertheless in a certain respect we must feel it to be a skeleton in comparison with the living realities of existence. It is indeed so. When anthroposophy keeps only our intellects busy, when with our intellects we draw up tables and coin all kinds of technical expressions, anthroposophy is nothing but a skeleton — above all when it is speaking of the living human being.
It begins to be a little more bearable when we are able to picture, for instance, the conditions of existence on Saturn, Sun and Moon, the earlier epochs of Earth-evolution or the work of the several Hierarchies.
But to say that the human being consists of physical body, ether-body, astral body and Ego — or Manas and Kama-Manas … this is really dreadful, and it is even more dreadful to have charts and tables of these things. Thinking of the human being in all his majesty, I can scarcely imagine anything more horrible than to be surrounded in a great hall by a number of living people and to have on the blackboard beside one a chart of the seven principles of man! But so, alas, it must be … and there is no getting away from it.
Source: Rudolf Steiner – GA 286 – And The Temple Becomes Man – Berlin, December 12, 1911
Translated by D.S. Osmond
Previously posted on February 1, 2018
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