Translations:Benutzer:Arian/Klett-Mini-Test/1016/en

In living nature, this processual activity is no longer derivable solely from the properties of the physical elements of substance. On the contrary, the life processes estrange these elements, to the greatest possible degree, from their physical determinability. Protein, for example, is built up from the five elements carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, hydrogen and sulphur. These are taken, with their properties, to become bearers of forces that are of cosmic origin. These cosmic forces stream in from every quarter out of the planetary periphery and configure themselves, in accordance with the essential nature of a plant or an animal, into an etheric body or life body. This is through and through a creator of processes. It becomes the architect of the physical organisation, lifts the physical substances out of their captivity in the earthly, places them in the service of the life processes, and holds them so long in the stream of life until this stream dies into the forms of the organic formations. The etheric body then dissolves into the world-ether. In the bacterial breakdown — mineralization — the earthly substance elements are released from the organic formations; they fall back again into their own physical lawfulness.