Translations:Benutzer:Arian/Klett-Mini-Test/398/en

Between the poles of Below and Above there stretches, spread out horizontally, a paper-thin skin — the soil, forming the germinal middle. This middle has in its processes no independence, as does the rhythmic system of the human being. One cannot therefore say that the soil has a lung, a heart. In this connection it is worth noting that the earth's soil has its tides just as water does, rising and falling on average by 80 cm each day in Central Europe. And yet the soil breathes in oxygen and breathes out carbon dioxide, as do animal and human being. Only this breathing does not come about through an inwardly autonomous impulse but is the result of the exogenous interworking of the forces of the poles of Below and Above within the soil. In the dynamics of the clay minerals, a kind of heart-function can be discerned. But this too is stimulated from without and follows a rhythm impulsed by the sun, which regulates and harmonises the processes of dissolution and binding of substances in the soil according to the seasons. From this one can begin to understand why Rudolf Steiner characterized the soil as the "diaphragm" of the individuality in question here. This diaphragm-skin mirrors in its functions the interplay of the elements of earth, water, air and warmth in the rhythms of the solar year. The cultivated soil is therefore characterized by having received, through centuries of arable and horticultural measures — above all through manuring with cattle dung — beyond its "natural endowment," the disposition toward developing an independent rhythmic organ: the disposition toward the equilibrating and developable "middle."