The
Animal and Human Realms. Their Origin and Development
Berlin, 15 April 1918
In
the three talks of this week, I would like to discuss the
results of the spiritual-scientific research concerning the
human being. In this talk I would like to establish a basis to
consider the supersensible human being next time and in the
third talk two most significant questions, those of the freedom
of will and the immortality of the soul.
Concerning our discussion today I am in a somewhat difficult
situation, first because the following will be considered in
particular compared with the contents of this talk what I have
often brought to your attention in the course of these
discussions: the fact that the results of spiritual-scientific
research are, indeed, in full harmony with everything that
natural sciences have performed as great achievements up to now
but that which shall be said from the viewpoint of spiritual
science just in harmony with the scientific results is in full
contrast to that which the naturalists or those who interpret
scientific results today say about these scientific results
concerning the human being and his nature. On one side complete
harmony with the facts, on the other side almost an unequivocal
contradiction compared with those who are used to speak about
these facts today — this is one objective difficulty. The
other difficulty is that I have this talk only, and that that
which we will discuss today would have to be the object of at
least thirty talks if it should be treated in detail. Thus, I
can represent the results only sketchily and can easily be
misunderstood in many respects. However, today I do not intend
to inform details, rather I would like to evoke a sensation of
the direction which spiritual-scientific thinking has to take
if it wants to discuss the question of the nature of the human
being with the scientific views of the present.
The
scientific views have particularly suggested the question of
the relation of the human being to the animal realm and of
everything that arises from this relationship to the
understanding of the human being. What has worked on this
question very suggestively is the form that the wholly
scientific theory of evolution assumed in the last time.
However, one forms wrong mental pictures of the scope and the
real character of this theory of evolution, because one grasps
the question always too straight, I would like to say, too
trivially. So one has the idea today, as if the relationship of
the human being with the animals was determined by
“strictly scientific research,” the evolution of
the human being from the animal realm and again within the
animal realm itself the development from imperfect to more
perfect beings.
Now
it is not at all right to believe that the view that the human
physical organisation is connected with the animals is new. It
is not new at all. Even if you disregard the fact that you find
the traces of it — or, actually, more than traces —
already in the science of Greek antiquity, and basically also
already with the Church Fathers, nevertheless, something
important is contained in the fact that, for example, already
Goethe as a very young person had to work his way through
certain fantastic ideas of development which asserted
themselves just in his time. Someone who knows Goethe from his
own biography knows how he rebelled against the idea: if one
only produced certain living conditions, animals could change
into other animals, or even into human beings. Goethe rebelled
against that, although he stood like Herder on the ground of
the emergence of one organism from the other, and although they
were followers of the “theory of evolution.”
Besides, it is important to consider that not the theory of
evolution is new as such, but that an older view was immersed
into certain materialistic mental pictures that bring on the
human organisation to the animal one in other ways as well. The
character of interpretation, the whole way of thinking about
the things is, actually, essential which has appeared in modern
time. If you consider this, it will not be so difficult to find
the transition to those mental pictures of evolution that we
have to consider here today.
Someone who believes today to stand with a certain
materialistic direction of thought on the firm ground of
science and to have to characterise this theory of evolution
says at first, the modern view of the origin of the human being
from the animals stands in contrast with the superstitious
biased way which still goes back anyhow to the Mosaic history
of creation. — It cannot be my task today to speak about
the Mosaic history of creation. I believe that it has often led
to misunderstandings about what forms its basis, and that one
deals with it in reality with an ancient human wisdom. That
just as a side note. What is important to be considered today
is that in an especially significant point the scientific
theory of evolution is in full harmony with the Mosaic history
of creation. That means this that in the course of the
evolution of the living beings the human being appeared as it
were as the most perfect animal or anything else when the
remaining animals had anticipated their development already
before him that he appears as it were as human being after the
animals. The modern scientific worldview has this in common
with the Mosaic history of creation.
Just the today's consideration must oppose that in particular.
Thus, one could say, the novel aspect of this
spiritual-scientific history of evolution consists of the fact
that it must break just with that what faces it as a quite sure
result today. Indeed, some of the mental pictures that can
originate only on the ground of spiritual science are necessary
if understanding should develop for such things, which are
discussed today. It is necessary, for example, that one gets
clear about such theoretical disputes, as they are quite usual
that they must disappear, however, and will disappear, just if
spiritual science settles more in the human souls.
Today you still meet the different worldviews that are
apparently contradictory. On the one side, there are those
human beings who interpret the world and its phenomena
materialistically. One calls them “materialists.”
The “spiritualists” are on the other side —
not the “spiritists.” are meant, but
“spiritualists” in the sense of German philosophy.
The former represents the view that only the material is the
basis of all being and becoming, and that the spiritual
develops as it were from the material and its processes. The
spiritualists emphasise, above all, that the
“spirit” is to be observed as such in the human
being that one has to take the spirit as starting point in case
of every world consideration. It is completely irrelevant to
spiritual science whether somebody takes materialism or
spiritualism as starting point. The only which spiritual
science demands from itself and from others is that one thinks
the inner contents of thoughts and research through to the end.
Let us assume that somebody becomes a materialist by his
special disposition: if he really envisages the material and
its phenomena and does research until the end, he gets without
fail from the material to the spirit. If anybody is a
spiritualist and does not deal with the spirit purely
theoretically, but grasps it in its reality in such a way that
he also grasps the manifestations of the spirit in the
material, then the spiritualist also understands the bases and
ramifications of the material processes. The starting point of
the true spiritual-scientific researcher is quite different. It
concerns that one has the inner courage to think the things
through to the end really. However, this requires a certain
power first which wants to think the things through to the end
and secondly the ability to consider the phenomena really which
one faces. Concerning the latter one can do strange
discoveries. Who believes, actually, today that he stands more
on the ground of the facts? This one stresses at every
opportunity.
I
have repeatedly pointed to an event in the sixties of the last
century. However, it is always interesting to point to this
fact once again. The philosophy of
Eduard von Hartmann attempted to overcome the
materialist interpretations of scientific results. When the
Philosophy of the Unconscious appeared, the naturalists
agreed that there a completely dilettantish philosopher talked
about nature in such a way and knew, nevertheless, nothing
right about that. Refutations of the Philosophy of the
Unconscious were written. Among these refutations, one
appeared by an anonym under the title The Unconscious from
the Viewpoint of the Theory of Evolution and Darwinism. The
author of this writing set himself to oppose this dilettantish
opponent of Darwinism. Haeckel, Oscar Schmidt, and others said
about this writing: it is a pity that this anonymous has not
been called; we consider him as one of ours; since nobody can
say the truth better than this anonymous against this
scientific dilettante Hartmann. — They also contributed
to the fact that the writing was quickly out of print. The
second edition appeared, now with the name of the author: it
was — Eduard von Hartmann! — This was once a lesson
which was necessary and by which all those should be lectured
who believe that somebody must always be a dilettante who does
not speak about scientific results like a scientist.
Those listeners who were present at the former talks know that
I have emphasised a book of the last time as an especially
valuable one, namely The Origin of Organisms - a Refutation
of Darwin's Theory of Chance by Oscar
Hertwig (1849-1922). I regard this book as especially
excellent and especially typical for our time for following
reason: Oscar Hertwig, a disciple of Ernst Haeckel, came as a
young man from the more or less materialist interpretation of
the Darwinist research results.
In
his book Oscar Hertwig unravelled — it is a kind of
Penelope problem — everything that one regarded as
particular achievements of the Darwinist research results. Now
from the same Oscar Hertwig a book was published which deals
more with other problems; it is called: On the Defence of
the Technical, Social, and Political Darwinism. I am in a
special position now: I will always regard The Origin of
Organisms as one of the best books that was written about
these things, and I will have to regard Hertwig's last book as
one of the most thoughtless, most impossible products of modern
thinking. It shows how clumsy the modern naturalist becomes if
he should go over from the accustomed ground to another area.
Such a fact is very instructive, and one is in a tragic
conflict if one has to admire on one side and to condemn
radically on the other side. Now I do not want to speak about
this last writing by Hertwig generally and in detail; but I
would like to mention one thing only:
I
have said just now, every naturalist will stress that he stands
on the “ground of facts.” You find a place in this
impossible book by Hertwig that one reads possibly in such a
way: one has to admire how the modern natural sciences have
been initiated by the astronomical researches of Newton,
Copernicus, and Kepler. Science has become great because it got
used to looking at the things of physics, chemistry and biology
just like at the astronomical things. Now I ask you, the
consideration of the facts that are immediately round us should
take place after the pattern of that area where the facts are
so far away from us? I am convinced that most readers overlook
such an unbelievable contradiction. It appears just in such a
contradiction that a significant researcher cannot think so far
that this research can be lifted into the spiritual.
Because of those and similar things it has happened that the
whole modern theory of evolution has taken its starting point
from too straight, too abstract mental pictures which are not
able at all to approach the real facts, in particular not the
facts which also refer to the solution of the big riddle of the
human being.
This human riddle is to be characterised from the start in such
a way that the human being seems to be assigned by his whole
position in the world not to know at first what he represents
in the world and how he stands there in it to get that only
from the depths of his being what can enlighten him about his
real being. This is also the sense of spiritual-scientific
research that that is brought up from the depths of the human
mind by special exercises which slumbers, otherwise, in him,
which the usual consciousness does not apply at all, and which
enables the human being for the “beholding
consciousness.” Not before from the depths of the human
soul that is brought up what I have called the beholding
consciousness in my book
The Riddle of Man where the human being has to
deal with that which one can call “spiritual eyes”
and “spiritual ears” to have a spiritual world
around himself, then only one can generally tackle a solution
of the big riddles.
These explanations should confirm it: the human being
oversleeps his being. A part of the talks should show that the
human being oversleeps a part of his being and continues the
sleeping state into the waking state. In the depths of his
being, something is perpetually sleeping, and his being must be
awakened only. As you need that in the usual day life which
sleep gives, you need for the usual knowledge if it should be
fertile that which the human being oversleeps in his being
perpetually. I said, we have to consider the facts at first
that are round us. It matters in particular that you put
yourself in the position to consider the difference of human
being and animal from the viewpoint of the beholding
consciousness; since, otherwise, you cannot attain knowledge of
the development and origin of the human being and the animal.
Now I want to explain sketchily what one can say from the
spiritual-scientific viewpoint about the difference of human
being and animal.
The
animal realm faces us in most different forms. The animals are
variously developed. Hence, one divides them into
“genera” and “species.” You know that
there have been numerous philosophers who were of the opinion
that that which one calls “genus” or
“species” — “wolves,”
“lions,” “tigers” and so on — are
only comprising names. What we meet in reality, is always the
“material” which is formed most different by its
own configuration only. Against it, one has to observe once
impartially what there is, actually. There I have to recall a
picture repeatedly which my old friend, Professor Vincenz
Knauer (1828-1894, Austrian theologian and philosopher) always
used when was talk of these things. He said, nevertheless,
those people who state that these are only names that are
expressed in these genera and species that it is, however,
everywhere the same material they should think about whether it
is really the same material that is in a lamb and in a wolf.
Indeed, one cannot deny that, scientifically considered, it is
the same material. However, one should feed a wolf for longer
time with nothing but lambs, and one should try once whether he
has assumed something of the lamb nature. There it is quite
clear that that which constitutes the “wolf” which
determines his configuration is not a mere “name”
but something that encloses the material in this
configuration.
With which is that associated that develops and configures
these different animal species in its way? I have to confess, I
touch personal relations very reluctantly, but because I can
only outline, it is necessary that I do such a personal
remark.
For
about thirty years, I look at everything that physiological
research produces in relation to these questions and compare it
to that which the spiritual-scientific research has to say. It
would be very attractive to hold a series of talks by which is
proved what I state now. What configures itself in the
different animal forms is intimately connected with the
correlation of forces in the animal structure. Study the
structure of an animal very exactly, but not only in such a way
as it presents itself to the outer eye, but study the structure
of an animal according to its correlation of forces: how
different an animal behaves to gravity and how it overcomes
gravity if the hind legs are formed different from the forelegs
how different an animal appears according to whether it has
hooves or claws and the like.
Study how the animal positions itself with its balance in the
given relations, and then you find the most intimate relation
between the conditions of earthly balance and the kind how the
animal is positioned in these conditions of balance. Just these
conditions of balance are radically different with the human
being and in the animal realm. The human being lifts himself
out of the conditions of balance in which the animal is put, by
the fact that the line that runs through the spinal cord, runs
with the animal in parallel with the earth surface but with the
human being, it runs vertically to the earth. I do not mean the
wholly outer position, because of course the human being also
is in parallel to the earth surface if he sleeps. The human
being is organised in such a way that the gravitational
direction of the earth coincides with the line of his spinal
cord. With the animal, the cerebral line is in parallel to the
earth surface. The gravitational line of the human being that
runs through his head coincides in certain respect with the
main line of the remaining organism. His head rests on the
gravitational line of the body; with the animal, it
overhangs.
The
human being is thereby put in a condition of balance that is
different from that of the animal; thereby he is in that
condition of balance which he gives himself only during the
time of his life, because he is born in a similar condition of
balance as the animal. While the human being lifts himself out
of the conditions of balance that are forced upon the animal,
he lifts himself out of all forces, which form the basis of the
different genera and species; he becomes a “genus,”
a “species.” He gets free from that what is with
the remaining animal beings the reason of the manifold
creation; he himself creates his figure, while he gets free
from this determinative reason by his upright position.
Everything that is expressed in the human language, in the
human thinking is intimately connected with these conditions of
balance. Indeed, just the materialist research in the second
half of the nineteenth century brought this to our attention;
however, it could not completely make use of this fact. Since
someone who thinks his way into the subtle configuration of the
material can realise that one being in another way takes up the
material of the outer nature, it is brought in directions quite
different from all other beings. The human being thereby towers
above the remaining animal realm. With it is connected that the
whole human condition of balance comes about in full measure in
the organism itself, while that of the animal comes about
related to the world.
Take the coarsest only: the animal stands on all fours; the
human being is bound to a certain balance that is not
determined from without but is formed in his own organism. Now
something particular is connected with this other condition of
balance. Since the human being has a vague feeling of this
equilibrium position that is similar to dream. This feeling is
as vague as a dream, sometimes only vague as the sleep. As what
does this sensation of resting on the own body live in the
usual consciousness? This sensation is identical with the
self-consciousness. What we get to know in the next talk as the
human “mind,” which reveals itself in the ego at
first, seizes itself in the human organisation in these
conditions of balance that the animal does not have. I said,
the modern theory of evolution-has something suggestive, so
that one can believe that everything is dilettantish that is
said against it. It has something fascinating if one says that
the human being has as many bones and muscles as an animal has,
how could he be a different being? However, in that which the
human being has as the same with the animal the ego does not at
all live. The ego does not live in the bones and muscles, does
not intervene there, but seizes itself in the feeling at first
that rests in the equilibrium.
However, there is something else. The animal realm has manifold
shapes. Is this manifold configuration not significant for the
human being? Because the human being separates by his other
equilibrium from all conditions of balance in which the animal
is forced, he has his own figure that appears like a summary of
the animal figures. However, everything that works in the
animal figures enjoys life in him. It is in him, but it is
spirit. What is spread out as phenomena manifest to the senses
about the most different animal figures is spiritual in the
human being. What is it in him?
To
the Imaginative observation arises that completely the same
lives in the human being that gives the sensory figure to the
animal, but as a supersensible nimble element. It lives in his
thinking. What causes that we can think about the things is
— in supersensible way — the same as that what the
manifold genera and species of the animals are. Because the
human being breaks away from the diversity of the animals and
gives himself his independent figure that is the dwelling place
of the ego, he appropriates invisibly what is visible in the
animal world. This lives in his thinking. In the animal realm
is poured out in the most manifold forms what is poured out in
us, while we survey the world with thinking. We pursue what we
can observe; we form thoughts about that. Of course, I know
everything that can be argued against it. I also know the
objection: are you able to behold into the animals? May the
animal not have a kind of thinking as the human being has?
However, someone who can adopt the Goethean principle that the
phenomena are the right teaching if one observes them properly
knows that that which becomes obvious in the phenomena is also
decisive for the observation. One of the most essential signs
is that that which is poured out sensorily about the manifold
animal forms lives in the human being in extrasensory way.
While he freed his figure from the formative forces of the
animals, he can take this in his supersensible. The animals are
more advanced in relation to the sensory configuration than the
human being is. The human being has an unstable figure. The
animal is built according to the whole earth. With the human
being, it is different; he has taken it in his figure. That is
why he can grasp that spiritually what is expressed in the
sensory form of the animal.
Already in this point, one sees what, actually, the modern
theory of evolution suffers from. I am allowed to say, just
because I have become a follower of the modern theory of
evolution but have tried to lead it really to an end, I have
found what it suffers from. It represents everything straight:
the imperfect animals, then the more perfect ones, the even
more perfect ones, up to the human being. However, the matter
is not that way. Someone who considers the phenomena
independently, gets on that this only ascending development is
actually one-sided; since it lacks an essential element, which
is considered here and there, indeed, in our time, but is not
really investigated to an end and applied to the single one.
One has to deal with a perpetually ascending development and
with a perpetually descending development. The descending
development would signify what is just so important for the
understanding of the human being, and also there I advise you
again to consider physiological matters, but without
prejudice.
If
one stops at the general trivial ideas of evolution, one
imagines that the human being is the most perfect one of the
animals that even his single organs, even if really here and
there descending developments are admitted, are basically in
ascending development. This is not the case. I could bring in
many examples.
I
want to mention one thing only. Study the human eye and compare
it to the eyes of the vertebrates: if you go down in the animal
realm, you find a more complex construction than with the human
being. With him, the eye has become simpler again. I only want
to mention that the xiphoid process and the pecten that exist
with the eyes of lower animals are not to be found with the
human being. The development has forced back them again. The
human eye is a more imperfect organ than that of lower animals.
The complete human organism has not only become more perfect if
one studies it really compared with the animal organisms, but
it has also receded. What has happened?
Because certain forces have been disabled, the human being
could become a bearer of the spiritual-mental, could take up
this spiritual-mental. What I have called up to now is nothing
but a degeneration, “devolution,” in contrast to
“evolution.” Take that which gives the single
animal the form, which it has, and another animal another form:
this thought completely determines the whole organisation of
the animal. The human being, however, forms back his
organisation. It does not advance so far to be determined
completely, it goes back to a former level. Thereby he can give
himself the equilibrium position which nature does not give
him; thereby he gets free from that which nature forces upon
the other beings. The whole formation of the human being has
stayed behind; from it that originated which became an organ of
thinking in the human being. What forms the basis of thinking
is the organ of thinking because it is formed back because it
has not advanced as far as the animal form has advanced, which
expresses the figure externally. The human being lives the form
back and can live out the form in thinking in supersensible way
as the animal lives out it in the sensory realm.
One
more point: we deal with the human being not only with
evolution, but also with devolution, with involution. Just
because the human being is more formed back than the animal, he
can become the bearer of something spiritual-mental generally.
With everything that I have explained up to now, something else
is connected. Someone who can really observe how in the animal
is expressed what must be an organ of imagination, of
percipience, of feeling, so the anterior parts of the animal
organisation, finds out that that which expresses itself in the
form expresses itself objectively. He finds that this part has
to deal with imagining, perceiving and feeling, and that the
posterior part deals with the will element. Of course, both
sides are connected. Because the animal is put in its
equilibrium, it has that side by side which the human being has
on top of each other: the will organisation on the one hand and
the intellectual and instinctive organisation, on the other
hand. There is another connection in the animal between the
intellectual, imaginative and will element. With the human
being, the organs of imagination are above the organs of will.
An inner contact is thereby created between the organs of will
and those of imagination. Someone who knows to observe the soul
life realises that this human life of imagining is
characterised by the fact that the will extends into it. Study
the problems of attention, you will realise that the will works
into it. Thereby the ability of abstract thinking originates
which the animal cannot have because its imagination originates
beside the will and not above it. And vice versa: the will and
the imagining life work together, so that also the will is
influenced by imagination.
Only because the organs of will belong to the subconscious
ones, the will itself is expressed only like in the sleeping
consciousness. The human being has the real will process in the
sleeping consciousness as the other processes of the sleeping
consciousness. The whole connection of imagining and willing
which is typical for the human being is thereby emphasised:
imagining is lightened by the will which is with the animal
always in a vague, dream-like state. Likewise, the will is more
intimately connected with imagining with the animal, it feels
much more connected with its will. This causes again that with
the human being the free emotional life relates different to
imagining and will, enjoys life much more intensely than with
the animal. With the animal the emotional life rests in the
organisation; it is as it were only a formal arrangement of the
life of thought. On the other side, the emotional life of the
animal is only an inhibited or uninhibited will life, depending
on whether it can reach or not reach something. This is
expressed in its whole life. Just thereby, it is much more
connected with the whole outer world.
If
we envisage this, we can understand something else that,
however, only a careful observation of the human soul life can
give. Spiritual science has to proceed in many a respect
different from the other science that takes up the things often
from the trivial imagination and rejects them then because it
cannot get on how the things are to be explained. The spiritual
researcher will aim more at the positive, will not be content
to take up, for example, the idea of immortality, of the
continuance of the soul being, but will primarily ask, how does
the human being generally get around to having the
“immortal” as a thought or as a feeling in himself?
How does he get around to assuming that the immortal can play a
role in his soul life?
One
can understand this only if one can expand the Goethean
teaching of metamorphosis so far that one can approach the
question, to what extent is the human being dependent on his
lower nature in relation to his higher nature that is expressed
by his head? While we have tried up to now to understand the
special connection of thinking and willing with the human being
and animal, now one has to go into that what connects the human
being with the animal concerning something that is intimately
connected with the problem of evolution. This enters in the
animal and human life by the two phenomena of conception
— I do not say of birth — what one considers as the
first origin of the human, the combination of the male and the
female elements, and death on the other side. Conception and
death are bound to certain parts of the human and animal
organism; in case of conception, this is evident from the
start.
Now
one has to realise that that which appears at one place in any
animal form — it is similar with the plants — is
also expressed in other organ systems but transformed. I would
like to call attention to the following from the start: how
does that behave with the human being and with the animal what
is connected with conception and death, because one has already
found out, nevertheless, one difference that is directly bound
to the organisation? There it becomes apparent that the human
and animal head is, actually, only a higher organised,
transformed abdomen, as strange as it sounds, just as after the
worldview of Goethe the bones of the skull are transformed
dorsal vertebrae.
With the physical creation one deals with the fact that the
single organ systems are real transformations of each other,
and the functions of the organ systems are transformations of
each other. What is “percipience”? Percipience
relating to the outside world with the senses is a higher
developed conception, specified by the different senses.
Because the head organism stunts certain other organs, forces
them into the limbs, the organism of conception develops to the
higher sensory organism of the head on the one side, and thus
the progressive conception corresponds to the advanced sense
perception of the head. Every organic system develops the whole
organism in a way; the head everything that the abdomen
contains, the abdomen everything that the head contains.
Because the formative forces of the limbs have atrophied that
is expressed spiritually what belongs to their life in the
head. The ability of production changes into the developing of
thoughts. In the head, the organ of thinking is developed
simply because the conceptual is developed unilaterally and the
productive is formed back, but the productive thereby gives
again the basis of the thoughts. Since as animal and human
being produce their equals by the other organism, the human
being produces himself spiritually: just the world of thought.
The world of thought is the spiritualised human being.
This thought has a big scope, and only with deep regret, I
exhaust such things in one single talk. Since such things are
the result of decades of spiritual research. However, they must
be pronounced once, because these things have to be
popularised, so that someone who can investigate it in the
medical centres and laboratories can also investigate the
details, as they must be investigated.
In
the animal life, conception and death are apart like beginning
and end of the animal life. Conception and everything that is
connected with it leads to the knowledge of the progressive
development. Everything, however, that determines the death of
the animal out of the relations of the earthly life is
connected with the retrograde development. One gets on only
spiritual-scientifically what conception and death are real for
the animal, for the whole evolution of the animal. The animal
is seized by everything that is associated with conception and
production. This evolution is the highest development of the
organic life. It is just like with an increase of the organic
life, with fever if you like, that the usual state of
consciousness, which is right for its being, is forced back.
Thus, a reduction of consciousness is connected with the
excitement of the organic life, and the consciousness is
increased with everything that is connected with a retrograde.
The moment of highest clarification, of most intensive
consciousness is the moment of death — and as a spiritual
researcher, I am allowed to say, a moment where the animal
element approaches the human one; try only once to observe
animals at death. These two moments of the highest reduction
and the greatest increase of consciousness, conception and
death, are with the animal like two widely separated points,
like beginning and end.
With the human being, it is different. Because the head lifts
out itself in the described way from the remaining
organisation, the human being is so organised that he
experiences the interplay of conception and death perpetually.
This happens during the whole life. We are so organised that we
experience in the brain which forms the basis of our thinking
in its connection between percipience and will perpetually,
transferred to the spiritual, with every production of a
thought — but like sleeping or even subconsciously
— what the animal experiences, otherwise, only once
during conception. On the other hand, death is perpetually
involved in our consciousness because the organism changed into
the head has the head as its spiritual organism. We are dying
at every moment. Precisely expressed: whenever we grasp a
thought, the human will is born in the thought; whenever we
will, the thought dies into the will. Will and thought belong
together in such a way, as, for example, the young man and the
old man, while the will thereby becomes will that the thought
has died down in it, and on the other hand the will goes
through its youth while the thought is born in it.
The
human being is perpetually experiencing birth and death. I have
described the human spatial configuration with the help of the
balance relationships. Concerning time, it is in such a way
that with the human being that runs through the whole life
which the animal can experience only at the beginning and end;
in a dreamish way he experiences conception and death
perpetually in his subconsciousness. Because this lives below
in the depths of the human souls, emerges from there and the
human being becomes vaguely aware of that which he carries as
conception and death in himself and not beside himself and
thereby has the feeling: his being lives after death and birth,
it encloses more than that which starts with conception and
ends at death. The human being carries conception and death in
himself. I pronounce it in short words. However, if you
investigate everything that physiology and psychology can give
presently, you will find it confirmed. This generates the idea
of immortality in the human being. Thereby he carries the
sensation, the thought of immortality really in himself. Only
then, you can consider the connection of animal and human being
if you regard this.
How
does the human being stand there finally? He is more retrograde
than the animal is, and this just gives him the basis of his
spiritual being. If you check him completely, you find the
strange: as the eye is retrograde, everything of his appearance
is retrograde, is formed back into the spiritual compared with
the animal. He unfolds this on the same conditions on which the
animal unfolds its being. The same relations work on the animal
and the human being. They work on the human being, while they
provide him as it were with a “shell.” What I have
described now is, actually, the inside of the human being. This
is transformed in such a way that he can produce his own
equilibrium that he has that, which takes shape with the
animal, in the versatile forms of his thoughts. Thereby he
faces the outside world like concluded by a shell.
Spiritual science actually is able to discover only what you
can discover in the human being. It can penetrate through this
shell. However, what turns out then? Something similar as with
the memory. We perceive the outside world as it is, and process
it. However, we remember in the later life what we have taken
up from the outside world. Today I cannot explain what the
organism of memory is based on; but it is based of course not
on the organisation of the body periphery, but on that of the
body inside. If you go with the beholding consciousness into
that what the shell conceals, then you bring up what causes
everything in the depth of the human nature that I described
today.
The
shell is evoked by that which determines the today's animal
realm. How does that differ from it, which lives in the human
inside? This becomes to the seer like an increased, beheld
memory; there he gets up something from the human being that
becomes vivid. As well that appears to the usual consciousness
which the senses have experienced, something presents itself to
the beholding consciousness, if one delves into that what is
down there. Then one finds that that time of development which
the human being spent together with the animals — the
time of the earthly evolution — followed another time for
the human being in which the today's animals could not yet
develop. The human being developed before the animal realm, but
in another figure of course; since he assumed the today's
figure because he was put in relations that formed the animals.
However, what rests in the “shell” leads back to a
former creation of the earth, to a state that we do not get to
know by geologic conclusions. We recognise that the human being
is older than the animals that the animals originated later.
They are related with the human beings but they originated
later. Since we come back to a form of the planet when the
animals did not yet exist. The planet looked in such a way that
on the effect of its conditions that could form which must be
protected today with the outer shell, which faces the animal
world today.
The
seer experiences that as vision first which I have explained as
a thought today: he looks back at former states of the earth.
However, this gives just the impulse to look at the
developmental states in such a way as they are as they must be,
so that one can see what one finds if one only looks.
However, there are still other relations. Today one agrees in
the trivial scientific life completely to consider the
phenomena of the earth like the astronomical phenomena; but it
has taken some time until this thought asserted within the
modern humanity. One can have an experience. If you come to
Mülhausen
(now: Mulhouse) in Alsace, you find a monument: On top
is a celestial sphere, before it a statue of Johann
Heinrich Lambert (1728-1777, Swiss-Alsatian physicist,
philosopher), a contemporary of Kant who invented something
similar, but much more brilliant than the so-called
Kant-Laplace theory. If one still added something that Lambert
thought, one would not be far away from that which spiritual
science is today.
However, today one is ready that the monument of that man is
erected by the decisions of the city council who has a share of
modern astronomy. However, if one goes back hundred years from
the erection of the monument, one meets something different. At
that time, Lambert was a young son of a poor dressmaker. Few
people anticipated what was in him, Kant, for example, called
him the “greatest genius of the century,” and his
father submitted request about request to the city council that
the son could get further. Then there one gave him forty
francs, but only on the condition that he should leave the city
and not return. This was hundred years ago. After hundred years
— the monument was erected! Thus, the human development
takes place, one example of many.
I
come back to my starting point: The modern scientific way of
thinking has the same thought with the Mosaic history of
creation in common that the human being appears after the
animals. Against it, modern spiritual science has to say that
the human being precedes the animals, and that one has to go
back to such a state in which the human being could only
develop that which he was at that time while he had to expose
himself to the outer conditions. There one comes back to
developmental states of our life on earth, which look different
from what one calls Kant-Laplace theory. Externally a primeval
nebula may have developed and conglomerated. Some time ago, I
have quoted significant words of Herman Grimm: the fact that
once later generations will have a lot of trouble to think
about the eccentricity of the present, which believed that from
such a primeval nebula everything developed that is there now.
However, it will take long time, until humanity will be so ripe
for a spiritual understanding of the things that one can
consider the riddle of the human being as I have done it
today.
Then, however, another idea of development arises, and I do not
shy away from repeating something that I have already brought
to your attention, because I have to show repeatedly from which
side life and movement have to be brought in the scientific
thinking of our time.
One
can have scientific correct thoughts, but these can be very far
away from reality. There I have pointed over and over again to
that lecture of Professor James
Dewar (1842-1923) in London at the Royal Institution in
which he explained how the earth would be after 200,000 years.
It is calculated quite correctly and one cannot doubt it, just
as one can calculate the Kant-Laplace theory quite correctly.
One can also calculate this final state of the earth, cooled
down below 200 degrees centigrade. There is no mistake: then
our atmosphere is condensed into water. Dewar explains it in
all details that then the things on earth have assumed other
aggregate states. Milk will be solid of course. Indeed, I do
not know how it should be produced then; but it will be solid
of course. Certain objects will fluoresce; one will be able to
coat the walls with protein so that one can read newspapers at
night. There is no mistake. However, the question is whether it
is not only “right,” but whether it is also
“real” whether the thinking knows where it has to
stop because it is no longer in reality. Which methods are used
to calculate these things? Methods, as for example the
following: anybody studies the stomach of a 30-year-old person;
he pursues it for more than 300 years and calculates how after
300 years the stomach of this person would be. He can calculate
this as well as Professor Dewar calculates the final state of
the earth.
Only that is the mistake that then the human being does no
longer live, just as the earth does no longer exist after
200,000 years. Likewise, one could calculate how the earth
looked 300,000 years ago, because in the same way one can also
calculate the Kant-Laplace theory; but at that time the earth
did not yet exist. It concerns that one learns to distinguish
realistic thinking and only “correct” thinking.
With it, I have said a lot. Since the thought that one gets by
the study of the human being to relations where the earth
looked completely different is only to be gained if one applies
realistic thinking. Then one can also have a thought about how
the human being who is protected with the characterised outer
shell from the present earthly conditions — which will be
quite different from those which Professor Dewar describes
—, so that the human being develops into times when the
earth will be very different when the today's animals will no
longer exist.
This was a spiritual-scientific discussion about the origin and
the development of the human realm and the animal realm. Next
time I want to show how the human being returns in repeated
lives on earth, so that one can again accept Lessing's view of
repeated lives on earth. Today I wanted to create a basis to
show that spiritual science gets to quite different initial and
final states of our earth, and that, indeed, one has to break
with the opinion that the animal realm was there first and the
human being could then develop on its basis. The human being
precedes with his development. Spiritual science will assert
these things. A very spirited and vigorous researcher of the
nineteenth century, Wilhelm Heinrich Preuss (1853-1909) had an
anticipation of it.
There you find the first beginning of these things, but there
everything remains more or less assertion. These things can be
investigated first if one penetrates with the beholding
consciousness into the spiritual-mental of the human being,
about which natural sciences cannot speak at all. Since they
can only ask, how is the human being related as a
spiritual-mental being to the animal organisation? However, the
highest of the spiritual-mental does not relate at all to the
animal organisation, but it lifts out the organisation,
produces quite different equilibrium relationships, so that the
experience of conception and death coincides at one moment, so
that in the human being by the continuous perception of
conception and death the experience of immortality vaguely
lights up.
(At the end, Steiner briefly summarises the contents of this
talk.)
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