The Radius-Sphere antithesis appears most obviously in the human body, the radial element being represented by the limbs, the spherical by the skull. The limbs thus become the hieroglyph of a dynamic directed from the Point to the Plane, and the skull of the opposite. This indeed is in accord with the distribution in the organism of the sulphur-salt polarity, as we learnt from our physiological and psychological studies. Inner processes and outer form thus reveal the same distribution of poles.
In the plant the same polarity appears in stalk and leaf. Obviously the stalk represents the radial pole. The connexion between leaf and sphere is not so clear: in order to recognize it we must appreciate that the single plant is not a self-contained entity to the same degree as is the human being. The equivalent of the single man is the entire vegetable covering of the earth. In man there is an individual centre round which the bones of his skull are curved; in the plant world the equivalent is the centre of the earth. It is in relation to this that we must conceive of the single leaves as parts of a greater sphere.
In the plant, just as in man, the morphological polarity coincides with the biological. There is, on the one hand, the process of assimilation (photosynthesis), so characteristic of the leaf. Through this process matter passes over from the aeriform condition into that of numerous separate, characteristically structured solid bodies - the starch grains. Besides this kind of assimilation we have learnt to recognize a higher form which we called 'spiritual assimilation'. Here, a transition of substance from the domain of levity to that of gravity takes place even more strikingly than in ordinary (physical) assimilation (Chapter X).
The corresponding process in the linear stalk is one which we may call 'sublimation' - again with its extension into 'spiritual sublimation'. Through this process matter is carried in the upward direction towards ever less ponderable conditions, and finally into the formless state of pure 'chaos'. By this means the seed is prepared (as we have seen) with the help of the fire-bearing pollen, so that after it has fallen to the ground, it may serve as an all-relating point to which the plant's Type can direct its activity from the universal circumference.
In order to find the corresponding morphological polarity in the animal kingdom, we must realize that the animal, by having the main axis of its body in the horizontal direction, has a relationship to the gravity-levity fields of the earth different from those of both man and plant. As a result, the single animal body shows the sphere-radius polarity much less sharply. If we compare the different groups of the animal kingdom, however, we find that the animals, too, bear this polarity as a formative element. The birds represent the spherical (dry, saline) pole; the ruminants the linear (moist, sulphurous) pole. The carnivorous quadrupeds form the intermediary (mercurial) group. As ur-phenomenal types we may name among the birds the eagle, clothed in its dry, silicic plumage, hovering with far-spread wings in the heights of the atmosphere, united with the expanses of space through its far-reaching sight; among the ruminants, the cow, lying heavily on the ground of the earth, given over entirely to the immensely elaborated sulphurous process of its own digestion. Between them comes the lion - the most characteristic animal for the preponderance of heart-and-lung activities in the body, with all the attributes resulting from that.
Within the scope of this book it can only be intimated briefly, but should not be left unmentioned for the sake of those interested in a further pursuit of these lines of thought, that the morphological mean between radius and sphere (corresponding to Mercurius in the alchemical triad) is represented by a geometrical figure known as the 'lemniscate', a particular modification of the so-called Cassinian curves.2
1 For further details, see the writings of G. Adams and L. Locher-Ernst who, each in his own way, have made a beginning with applying projective geometry on the lines indicated by Rudolf Steiner. Professor Locher-Ernst was the first to apply the term 'polar-Euclidean' to the space-system corresponding to levity.
2 For particulars of the lemniscate as the building plan of the middle part of man's skeleton, see K. König, M.D.: Beitrage zu einer reinen Anatomic des menschlichen Knochenskeletts in the periodical Natura (Dornach, 1930-1). Some projective-geometrical considerations concerning the lemniscate are to be found in the previously mentioned writings of G. Adams and L. Locher-Ernst.
CHAPTER XIII