The Human Form: Jacob's Ladder: Upright and Upward

 

Excelsior!

Rudolf Steiner:

The first thing about the human form that arrests our attention, the first thing in his form that makes man, is what I laid stress on in the opening words of these lectures: the fact that it is upright. Man is a being who walks upright. That is the first important thing about him — so to speak, the first member of his form: his upright posture.

It will perhaps seem to you as though there were something arbitrary about the way I am dissecting the form of man. But if you follow closely and carefully, you will see that it is not really so at all; the fact is, the essential being of man, as described for us in occult knowledge, is reflected in his form or figure.

The second thing that makes man man, and that will also be readily recognized as essential to the human form, is the fact that he is so constituted as to enable him to be a speaking being. Sound can be born in him. Consider how essential a characteristic this is. In general, man is organized in an upward direction, and in particular he is so organized that his speech organs, beginning from the heart and larynx, go upwards — up to the face. Study the human being from this aspect and you will find that all the forms of the limbs are so arranged as to suit the creation and the molding and forming of spoken sound. Thus we can say: the second important factor in the ordering of the members of the human form is that they are ordered and disposed with a view to speech.

Source: June 7, 1912