Speech has its source in the artistic life

 

Rudolf Steiner:

Speech proceeds, not directly from the I or ego of man, but from the astral organism. The animal has also its astral organism, but does not normally bring it to speech. How is this? The explanation lies in the fact that the members of the human being, and also of the animal, are not there merely on their own; each single member is interpenetrated by all the others, and its character modified accordingly.

It is never really quite correct to say: Man consists of physical body, etheric body, astral body, and I; for the statement may easily give the impression that these members of the human being are quite distinct from one another, and that we are justified in forming a conception of man which places them side by side. Such a conception is, however, quite untrue. In waking consciousness, the several members interpenetrate. We ought rather to say: Man has not just a physical body as such (the physical body would look quite different if it simply followed its own laws), but a physical body that is modified by an etheric body and again by an astral body, and then again by an I or ego. In each single member, the three other members are present. And so, if we are considering the astral body, we must not forget that every other member of man's nature is also present in it. It is the same with the animal: in the astral body of the animal the physical body is present, and the etheric body too. But man has, in addition, the I, which also modifies the astral body; and it is from this astral body modified by the I that the impulse for speech proceeds. It is important to recognize this if we want to carry our study of the art of speech right into the single sounds. For while in ordinary everyday speech the single sounds are formed in entire unconsciousness, the activity of forming them has to be lifted up into consciousness if speech is to be raised to the level of art.

How then did speech begin? Speech did not originate in the speaking we use in ordinary life, any more than writing originated in the writing of today. Compare with the latter the picture-writing of ancient Egypt; that will give you some idea of how writing first came about. And it is just as useless to look for the origin of speech in the ordinary talking of today, which contains all manner of acquired qualities — the conventional, the intellectual, and so on. No, speech has its source in the artistic life. And if we want in our study of speech to find our way through to what is truly artistic, we must at least have begun to perceive that speech originates in the artistic side of man's nature — not in the intellectual, not in man's life of knowledge, as knowledge is understood today.

Source: September 5, 1924