Elementary Beings @ 1 19
earth so that it may be united with the ideal plant form. "Fire spirits
love to follow insects to introduce concentrated warmth-ether into the
ovaries of plants; the aura of the bee is really the fire spirit which ac-
companies it."
The fertilizing force, says Steiner, is what the fire spirits in the blos-
som take from the warmth of the world; all of this while the cosmic
male seed-to be united with the female element-is resting below. In
anthroposophy, earth is the mother of plants, heaven the father. "It is a
colossal error," says Steiner,"to believe that the mother-principle of the
plant is in the seed-bud. The fact is that this is the male principle,
which is drawn forth from the universe with the aid of the fire-spirits.
The mother comes from the cambium, which spreads from the bark to
the wood, and is carried down from above in ideal form." (In botany the
cambium is a zone between the wood and the bark of exogenous
plants from which new tissues are developed.) Plant fertilization, in
spiritual science, takes place through the fact that the gnomes take from
the fire spirits what the fire spirits have carried into the seed bud as
concentrated cosmic warmth "on the little airships of the anther
pollen." Fertilization takes place in the earth during winter, when the
seed comes into the earth and meets with the forms that the gnomes
have received from the activities of the sylphs and undines, carrying it
to where these forces can meet with the fructifiing seed.What now re-
sults from the combined working of gnome activity and fire spirit ac-
tivity is fructification. The gnomes are the spiritual nidwives of plant
production.
"With the help of what comes from the fire-spirits, the gnomes
down below instill life into the plant and push it upwards.They are the
fosterers of life. They carry the 'life-ether' to the root-the same 'life-
ether' in which they themselves live."
Thus the plants, adds Steiner, can be understood only when they
are considered in connection with all that is circling, weaving, and liv-
ing around them, which, he adds, is why Goethe instinctively argued
with botanists who held that fructification takes place in the blossom.
Steiner's explanation of the mechanics of bird and sylph life, far-
fetched to the materialist, are only so for lack of a basic emulsifiing