These two forms of visual perception - which we may briefly call: (1) perception of post-images, and (2) perception of co-images - represent successive rungs on a 'spiritual ladder' pointing beyond themselves to a further rung. By the logic of succession this may be expected to consist in some sort of seeing of pre-images, with the characteristic of being a still less physical mode of seeing than the two others. This seeing must be based on an activity of the inner light which will be similar to that in dream by its arising without any stimulus from external light-impressions, yet at the same time there must be no arbitrariness in the contents of this perception. Further, our consciousness in this perceptive activity must be such as to allow us to be in full control of it, as we are of ordinary day-waking seeing.

Indispensable as is such a training in reading by turning to past conceptions of man, it does not suffice to meet the present-day demands of a scientific understanding of the universe. For this, we need a 'technique' of reading that cannot be attained along these lines alone. Awareness of this fact led Rudolf Steiner to pursue his spiritual-scientific investigations and to communicate the results in such a way that they can be a 'school of reading' for those who study them.² In point of fact we have already made use in this sense of one of the results of Rudolf Steiner's researches, for at the very beginning of this book his picture of the threefold psycho-physical organism of man was taken as the basis of our own investigations. The reason why the present remarks were not then included is that the relevant results of higher research were in that case of such a nature that, once known, they could be confirmed by the simplest kind of self-observation. The fact, however, remains that from the very beginning we have called upon one fully trained in reading, to help in deciphering certain facts of nature - in this case of human nature.

What Goethe wants to show here by applying to the activity of nature the same image which he used originally to depict the act of thinking, we can express to-day by saying that it is the identity of the activity of the light-ether in human thinking and in external nature which is responsible for the fact that the objective ideas operating in nature can become the content of man's consciousness in the form of thoughts.⁵

This comparison of the activity of the sound-ether, as the form-creating element in nature, with Chladni's phenomenon is drawn correctly only if we recognize that the conception of form, as an expression of that which is called forth through the etheric forces in nature, comprises more than the external spatially bounded shape of an organic or inorganic entity. Apart from the fact already indicated, that for the formation of such entities the co-operation also of life-ether is necessary, we can judge the activity of sound-ether correctly only if we conceive it as a much more inward activity, compared with the formation in external space of Chladni's figures. In the latter case, the reason why the influence of sound causes nothing beyond the ordering of form in outer space is because on this plane of nature the only changes that can occur are changes in the positions of separate physical bodies. Where the forces of sound in ether-form are able to take hold of matter from within, they can produce changes of form of a quite different kind. This effect of the activity of sound-ether has given it its other name: chemical ether.

Yet nature makes use of number as a regulating factor in quite a different way from its appearance in the purely electrical and gravitational connexions of inorganic matter, namely where sound-ether from the upper boundary of nature so regulates nature's dynamic that the manifold sense-qualities appear in their time-and-space order. When we interpret the arrangement of numbers found there on a nominalistic basis, as is done when the axis- and angle-relationships of crystals are reduced to a mere propinquity of the atoms distributed like a grid in space, or when the difference in angle of the position of the various colours in the spectrum is reduced to mere differences in frequency of the electromagnetic oscillations in a hypothetical ether - then we bar the way to the comprehension not only of number itself, as a quality among qualities, but also of all other qualities in nature.

This kind of pure sense-free perception does indeed exist, and it can be aroused by means of a well-ordered training from the dormant state in which it is present in every human being. Anyone who learns to see in this way gains perception of the activity of cosmic light, contacting it directly with his own inner light - that is to say, without mediation of his corporeal eye which is subject to gravity. So this eye-of-the-spirit becomes capable of perceiving the levity-woven archetypes (ur-images), which underlie all that the physical eye discerns in the world of ordinary space.

A similar need, though now in an amplified form, arises at the present stage of our studies. And here, out of the wealth of knowledge conveyed by Rudolf Steiner from the realm of supersensible Imagination, it is his characterization of the four modifications of levity which will now give the guidance necessary for our own observation. Adopting the terminology chosen by him for the description of this sphere, we shall in future speak of it as of the 'Ether' pervading the universe (thus using this word also in its true and original meaning). Accordingly, we shall refer to its fourfold differentiation as to the four kinds of ether: Warmth-Ether, Light-Ether, Chemical Ether and Life-Ether.

Following our previous procedure when we gave the warmth-ether a second name by calling it chaoticizing ether, we can denote the light-ether also as 'weaving ether'.

We have mentioned once before that our conception of 'form' in organically active nature must not be limited merely to that of a body's spatial outline. This was in connexion with Ruskin's definition of the spiritual principle active in plant-formation as 'the power that catches out of chaos charcoal, water, lime and what not, and fastens them down into a given form'. Besides the external order of matter revealed in space-form, there exists also an inner qualitative order expressed in a body's chemical composition. Upon this inner chemical order is based all that we encounter as colour, smell, taste, etc., of a substance, as well as its nourishing, healing or harmful properties. Accordingly, all these parts of an organism, both in the plant-kingdom and within the higher organisms, have a certain inner material order, apart from their characteristic space-structure. The one is never present without the other, and in some way they are causally connected.

(e) LIFE