The picture we have thus received of the outer part of the acoustic process has a counterpart in the processes inside the organ of hearing. Hearing, like seeing, depends upon the co-operation of both poles of the human organism-nerve and blood. In the case of hearing, however, they play a reversed role. In the eye, the primary effect of light-impressions is on the nervous part; a secondary response to them comes from the blood organization. In the ear, the receptive organ for the astral impulses pressing in upon it is a part which belongs to the body’s limb system, while it is the nervous organization which functions as the organ of response. For in the ear the sound-waves are first of all taken over by the so-called ossicles, three small bones in the middle ear which, when examined with the Goethean eye, appear to be a complete metamorphosis of ah arm or a leg. They are instrumental in transferring the outer acoustic movements to the fluid contained in the inner ear, whence these are communicated to the entire fluid system of the body and lastly to the muscular system.⁹ We shall speak of this in detail later on. Let it be stated here that the peculiar role played by the larynx in hearing, already referred to by us in Chapter XVI, is one of the symptoms which tells of the participation of the muscular system in the internal acoustic process.