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Rudolf Steiner e.Lib
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Perspectives on Humanity's Development
Rudolf Steiner e.Lib Document
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Perspectives on Humanity's Development
Man, Offspring of the World of Stars
A lecture by
Rudolf Steiner
Dornach, May 5, 1921
GA 204
A lecture, hitherto untranslated given at Dornach on May 5, 1921.
Published in The Golden Blade, 1990.
Also known as: The Influence of the Planets on Man,
The Ego and the Sun, or Atomism.
It is the thirteenth of seventeen lectures in the volume
Perspectives on Humanity's Development.
In the collected edition of Rudolf Steiner's works, the volume
containing the German texts is entitled,
Perspektiven der Menschheitsentwickelung. Der materialistische
Erkenntnisimpuls und die Aufgabe der Anthroposophie.
Der Mensch in seinem Zusammenhang mit der Kosmos,
(Vol. 204 in the Bibliographic Survey, 1961). The translator is
unknown.
Copyright © 1990
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MAN, OFFSPRING OF THE WORLD OF STARS
Lecture given by Rudolf Steiner at Dornach on 5th May 1921.
Published in The Golden Blade 1990
The civilisation of the fourth Post-Atlantean epoch the period
of the development of the Mind Soul in humanity was directed
from the Greek Mysteries. In other words: the indications upon which
the culture of the human mind was based issued from the
Mystery-Sanctuaries which existed here and there in Asia Minor and
Southern Europe. Now the secret of man's connection with the Sun was
an essential part of these Mystery-teachings. From the book
Theosophy
we know that the Ego lights up within the Intellectual or Mind Soul
and enters into possession of its full, inner force during the age of
Consciousness, or Spiritual Soul.
Now because the Ego of man was destined from a certain point of view
to be awakened during the age of the culture of the mind or intellect,
it was quite natural that the Mysteries of that age should have been
concerned with the secrets of the Sun and their connection with the
human Ego. In the book
Riddles of Philosophy
it is said that the Greek's life of thought consisted in an actual
perceiving of the outer world. The Greek's thought was at the same
time a perception, just as we today have a perception of colours or
sounds. The thoughts and conceptions of the Greek were not brought
into being merely by inner activity of the soul, but they were born as
it were from the objects themselves. In this respect Goethe's thinking
undoubtedly possessed qualities in common with Greek thought. This is
quite clear from his famous conversation with Schiller. Schiller
stated that Goethe's conceptions were not perceptions, but
ideas, and to this Goethe retorted that he actually saw
his ideas before him, that he perceived them objectively.
The life of thought in Greece was associated with a very definite
inner experience which arose when men looked at the world around them.
They regarded the substance of the ideas which thus lit up before them
as being the creation of the Sun. With the rising Sun they beheld the
appearance in space of the life of ideas, and this life of ideas
passed away again with the setting Sun. Men have now quite lost the
faculty of perceiving and experiencing spirituality in the world
around them. When the Sun rises they see only the phenomena of light
and colour which there appear. And it is the same when the Sun sets in
the red glow of evening. The Greeks felt that the world of ideas came
to them at sunrise and passed away from them at sunset. They felt that
in the darkness of the night they were bereft of the world of ideas.
And when they looked at the sky, which seems to us to be blue, but for
the colour of which the Greeks used a word which simply meant
darkness, they felt that their world of ideas came to an
end at the boundaries of visible space. Beyond this world of space the
Greek divined the existence of other worlds the worlds of the
thoughts of the Gods, which he connected with light. These worlds
seemed to him to be concentrated in the living Sun, and to withdraw
during the night into the spaces of the dark firmament. Without some
insight into this entirely different world of perception and
experience, we cannot understand the further evolution of man's life
of soul. This faculty of inwardly living perception functioned for a
certain period of time, but then the most advanced representatives of
the human race, those who still received their training in the Greek
Mysteries, began to feel that their power to perceive the spiritual
radiations from the living Sun in cosmic space was waning, and they
saw salvation in the Mystery of Golgotha, inasmuch as the impulse
coming from the Mystery of Golgotha made it possible for them to
rekindle the light within their own being. And they tried now to
experience the light by entering in spirit into the events connected
with the Mystery of Golgotha.
Now the intellect alone can give us no real knowledge of what has
really come to pass in the life of humanity through the ages. A great
and far-reaching metamorphosis took place in man's life of soul and
must never be forgotten when we are studying the course of evolution.
We who have been living in the era of the development of the
Consciousness Soul since the beginning of the fifteenth century have
in our inner, intellectual activity, only a shadowy reflection of the
spirituality which pervaded the life of the mind in the fourth
Post-Atlantean period of civilisation. And the task before us is to
awaken a faculty of the soul which will quicken in this shadowy
intellect of ours a living understanding of the universe. The
shadow-intellect that is characteristic of all modern culture has
fettered man to the Earth. He has eyes only for earthly things,
particularly when he allows himself to be influenced by the claims of
modern science. In our age it never occurs to man that his being
belongs, not to the Earth alone, but to the Cosmos beyond the Earth.
Knowledge of our connection with the Cosmos beyond the Earth
that is what we need above all to make our own.
We take earthly life today as the basis of our ideas and concepts and
build up a conception of the Universe in line with the conditions of
this earthly life. But the picture of the Universe thus arising has
been evolved by simply transferring earthly conditions to the world
beyond the Earth. By means of spectro-analysis and other methods
admirable as they are in their way a conception of the
Sun has grown up which is really modelled wholly upon earthly
conditions. Everyone is familiar with the appearance of luminous,
incandescent gas, and this picture is then transferred to the Sun in
the heavens. But we must learn to think of the Sun in the light of
Spiritual Science. The Sun which the physicist believes to be a
luminous body of gas out in cosmic space is spiritual through and
through. The Sun receives the cosmic light and radiates it to the
Earth, but the Sun is not physical at all. It is spiritual in its
whole nature and being. The Greek was right when he felt that the Sun
was connected with the development of his Ego, for the development of
the Ego is associated with the intelligence and the faculty of forming
ideas. The Greek conceived the rays of the Sun to be the power which
kindled and quickened his Ego. His was still aware of the spirituality
of the Cosmos, and to him the Sun was a living being, related to the
human Ego in an absolutely concrete way. When a man says I
to himself, he experiences a force that is working within him,
and the Greek, as he felt the working of this inner force, related it
to the Sun. The Greek said to himself: Sun and Ego are the outer and
inner aspects of one and the same being. The Sun out there in space is
the Cosmic Ego. What lives within me is the human Ego.
As a matter of fact, this experience still comes to those who have a
deeper feeling for Nature. The experience is not nearly as vivid as it
was in the days of Greece, but for all that it is still possible to
become aware of the spiritual forces indwelling the rays of the Sun in
springtime. There are people here and there who feel that the Ego is
imbued with a new vigour when the rays of the Sun begin to shine down
upon the Earth with greater strength. But this is a last faint echo,
an outward shell of an experience that is dying out altogether in the
abstract, shadowy intellectualism prevalent in every branch of
civilised life today. The task before us is to begin once again to
realise and understand the connection of the being of man with
super-earthly existence.
If we study and compare many things that are to be found in
anthroposophical literature, we shall be able to understand the way in
which the Sun is related to the Ego, and we shall also realise that
the forces which stream down to the Earth from the Sun and from the
Moon are entirely different in character and function. In a certain
respect, Sun and Moon stand in polar antithesis. The forces streaming
from the Sun enable the human being to become the bearer of an Ego. We
owe to the rays of the Sun the power which moulds the human form into
an image of the Ego. The forces which determine the human form from
outside, even during the period of embryonic life, are the active
forces of the Sun. While the embryo is developing in the mother's
body, a great deal more is happening than modern science dreams of.
Modern science is of the opinion that the forces all originate from
the fertilised germ, but the truth is that the human embryo merely
rests there in the body of the mother and is given form by the Sun
forces. These Sun forces are, of course, associated with the Moon
forces which are also working but in a different way. The Moon forces
work above all in the inner, metabolic processes. We may therefore
say: the Sun forces give form to the human being from outside. The
Moon forces radiate outwards from within the metabolic process; they
are centrifugal forces. This does not contradict the fact that these
Moon forces are working, for instance, in the shaping and moulding of
the human countenance. The Moon forces stream out from a centre in the
metabolic system and work as it were by attraction upon the forming of
the human face, differentiating the features, but there is an
interplay between these Moon forces and the Sun forces. The organism
that is connected with procreation is subject to the Sun forces. The
whole being of man is involved in this way in the interplay between
the forces of the Sun and the forces of the Moon.
A distinction must be made, however, between the Moon forces that work
in the inner processes of metabolism in man, and the forces that
originate in the metabolic processes itself. The Moon forces stream
into the metabolic process, but this metabolic process has forces of
its own as well. And these are earthly forces. The substances and
forces in the vegetable and other foodstuffs work in the human being
by virtue of their own inherent nature. They work here as Earth
forces. Metabolism is primarily an outcome of the working of Earth
forces. If the substances of the foodstuffs were merely to unfold
their own forces within the human organism, there would be nothing but
a chaotic play of forces in man. The fact that these forces work
without intermission to renew and upbuild the being of man, is due not
to the Earth at all, but to the Moon. The human being is shaped from
within outwards by the Moon, and from without inwards by the Sun.
Because the rays of the Sun are received through the eye into the
head-organisation. The Sun forces work within the organism as well,
but for all that they are still working from outside.
And so on the one hand the development and evolution of the Ego of man
is dependent upon the forces of the Sun. Without the Sun, man could
not be an Ego being living on the Earth; on the other hand there could
be no such thing as propagation, there could be no human race without
the Moon. It is the Sun which places man as an individual on the
Earth, and it is the Moon that charms down the human race to Earth
the human race conceived here as one whole. The human race as
the physical product of the generations is a product of the Moon
forces which have worked in the generative process. As an
individuality, however, man is the product of the Sun forces.
If, therefore, we want to understand the human being and the human
race as a whole, we cannot do so by studying merely those conditions
which obtain on the Earth alone. The efforts of geologists to
understand the being of man by investigating the nature of the Earth
are all in vain. Man is not primarily a creation of the Earth. He
receives his shape and form from the Cosmos; he is an offspring of the
world of the stars, above all of Sun and Moon. From the Earth are
derived only those forces which are contained in the substances of the
Earth. These forces work outside the human being and also within him
when they are introduced into his organism either through eating or
drinking. But within the organism they are received into the realm of
forces of a super-earthly nature.
The processes that take place within the human being are by no means
an affair of the Earth alone. They are through and through an affair
of the world of stars. This is the kind of knowledge that we must
struggle to reach once more.
Think of the human being as he stands there before us in his physical
body. This physical body takes in the foodstuffs from the outer world
and the forces of the foodstuffs continue to work within the body. But
the physical body is permeated by the astral body and in the astral
body the Moon forces are actively at work. The Sun forces too play
into the astral body. The etheric body is there in the middle, between
physical and astral body.
When we study the forces of foodstuffs, we find that, to begin with,
they are active in the physical body and are then taken hold of by the
astral body in which the influence of Sun and Moon are working. But
between the physical body and astral body the etheric body is
fulfilling its functions. The forces in the etheric body come, not
from the Earth but from all directions of cosmic space. The products
of the Earth, the substances which exist in the solid liquid or
aeriform condition, are taken in by the human being and worked upon by
the forces of Sun and Moon. But forces streaming in from all
directions of cosmic space are also working in the human organism. The
forces contained in the foodstuffs themselves come from the Earth, but
from cosmic space the etheric forces stream in. These etheric forces
also take hold of the foodstuffs and work upon them in such a way that
they become inwardly responsive to light and also to warmth. We say,
therefore: the human being is part of the Earth because he has a
physical body. His etheric body relates him to the whole environment
of the Earth. Through his astral body he is involved in the weaving
forces of Sun and Moon.
Now these influences of the Sun and Moon in the astral body are
modified and differentiated in a high degree as they work upon the
upper man. By upper man I mean, in this case,
the part of the organism that is encircled and permeated by the
bloodstream which passed upwards from the heart in the direction of
the head. The lower man, then, comprises the other part of
the organism that part which lies below the heart.
Thus we have the upper part of man, including the head and everything
that is organically connected with the head. The formation of this
part of the organism is dependent, mainly, upon the Sun's influences.
Its most important period of development is during embryonic life. The
Sun's influences work upon the embryo in a very special way, but these
influences continue to be active when the human being is born and is
living in the physical world between birth and death. The astral
influences working upon that part of the human organism which lies
above the heart speaking very roughly, for it would be
necessary to go into more precise detail if we were describing the
blood circulation these astral influences are then modified by
the influences of Saturn, Jupiter and Mars.
The planet Saturn circles round the Sun and sends forces to the Earth.
These forces of Saturn work in the whole astral body of man, but above
all in the part of the astral body which corresponds to the
upper man. They stream into the astral body, pervade it,
and are the essential factor in bringing about a proper connection
between the astral body and the physical body. When, for instance, a
man cannot sleep properly, that is to say, when his astral body will
not leave or come down again properly into his etheric and physical
bodies or in some other way is not rightly connected with the physical
body this is due to an irregularity in the working of the
Saturn forces. In other words, Saturn is the heavenly body which, by
way of the human head, promotes and is responsible for setting up the
proper relation of man's astral body to his etheric body and his
physical body. And it is the Saturn forces too which mediate the
connection of the astral body to the Ego, because of Saturn's relation
to the Sun. Saturn's relation to the Sun is expressed in space and
time inasmuch as Saturn accomplishes its orbit around the Sun in a
period of thirty years.
In the human being, the relationship of Saturn to the Sun is expressed
in the connection of the Ego with the astral body and in the way in
which the astral body is membered into the whole human organism. The
connection of Saturn with the upper part of the astral body was
regarded as a factor of great importance in ancient times. In the
Egypto-Chaldean period, three or four thousand years before the
Mystery of Golgotha, the Teachers and Sages of the Mysteries judged a
human being according to his relation to Saturn which was
revealed by the date and time of his birth. For these Sages knew quite
well that the position of Saturn in the heavens at the time of man's
birth enabled his astral body either to function regularly or
irregularly in his physical body. Knowledge of these influences played
a very important part in olden days. But the onward progress of
evolution is denoted precisely by the fact that in our age, which, as
you know, began in the fifteenth century, we have to become free of
these forces and influences.
Please do not misunderstand me This does not mean that Saturn is not
working in us nowadays. Naturally the Saturn forces work in us, just
as they worked in the Ancients, but we must now learn to make
ourselves free and independent of them. And do you know how we can
make ourselves free? Nothing is worse than to give oneself over to the
shadowy intellectualism of our age. If we do that, the Saturn forces
run riot within us and give rise to the so-called nervous troubles
that are so very prevalent in our time. When a man suffers from
nerves as we say, it is because his astral body is not
properly connected with his physical organisation. This lies at the
basis of the morbid nervous symptoms which are so common nowadays. Our
striving should be to unfold real vision, to attain Imagination. If
man can achieve nothing better than the forming of abstract concepts
and ideas, nervous symptoms are bound to increase in severity, because
this intellectual activity tends to alienate him from the influences
of Saturn, which are still at work within his being. His astral body
will be torn away from his nerves, and he will be driven more and more
into a state of nervous tension and excitability. The nervous
complaints of our age must be recognised in their cosmic aspect, for
they are caused by an irregular working of the Saturn forces.
Just as Saturn works chiefly in the upper part of the astral body and
in the whole astral body inasmuch as the astral body is connected with
the organism as a whole through the nervous system, so is Jupiter
active in thinking.
When a man thinks, one part of his astral body is active. It is
pre-eminently the Jupiter forces in the astral body which strengthen
the thinking faculty, and Jupiter is responsible for permeating the
human brain with astral forces.
Now the influences of Saturn continue throughout the whole of man's
life. The beginning of a human life may really be said to consist of
the first three periods of ten years. This is the period of growth,
for as a matter of fact the activity of the growth forces does not
wholly cease until after the thirtieth year. And our whole life and
our health depend on how our astral body has developed during the
thirty years. Saturn needs thirty years to complete its orbit around
the Sun and this has its exact parallel in the life of man.
The development of the faculty of thinking takes place essentially
during the first twelve years of life. Again we find the parallelism
in the orbit of the planet Jupiter.
Just as Jupiter has to do with thinking, so has Mars to do with speech.
Saturn: | upper part of the astral body as a whole. |
Jupiter: | thinking. |
Mars: | speech |
Mars works upon a still smaller part of the astral body than that with
which Jupiter is concerned in connection with the thinking of man. And
the development of the forces which finally express themselves in
speech, is dependent upon the working of Mars within our being. Man
learns to utter the first sounds of speech in a period which
corresponds approximately to half the time required by Mars to
complete its orbit around the Sun.
We see, then, that the development of faculties situated primarily in
the region of the human head is connected with the Saturn forces, the
Jupiter forces, and the Mars forces. The forces of the three outer
planets, therefore, work on within the astral body through the life of
man. The Sun is connected more directly with the Ego, Saturn, Jupiter
and Mars are concerned respectively with the behaviour and functioning
of the astral body in the human organism, with the faculty of thinking
and with the faculty of speaking.
The Sun is connected with the Ego. And then we come to the inner
planets, as they are sometimes called, the planets which are nearer
the Earth and lie between the Earth and the Sun, whereas Saturn,
Jupiter and Mars lie on the other side of the Sun. The forces of these
inner planets are likewise connected with the being of man. We will
take Mercury to begin with.
Like the Moon, the centre, from which the Mercury forces work, lies in
the inner being of man, and it is only in connection with the forming
of the human countenance that Mercury works from outside. The Mercury
forces work in the part of the human organism that lies below the
region of the heart. From there these Mercury forces stream into the
human organism. The working of the astral body in the breathing and
circulatory functions of the human organism is regulated by Mercury.
Mercury acts as the intermediary between the astral body and the
rhythmic processes in the being of man. The Mercury forces act as the
intermediary between the astral body and the rhythmic functions in the
human organism. Because this is so, the Mercury forces intervene, as
do the Moon forces, in the metabolic processes as a whole, but only in
so far as the metabolic process is subject to rhythm and reacts in
turn upon the rhythmic functions.
We come next to Venus. Venus works pre-eminently in the etheric body
of man. The cosmic forces chiefly active in the etheric body,
therefore, are those of Venus.
Then we come again to the Moon. The Moon forces in the human organism
work in polar antithesis to the Sun forces. From within outwards the
Moon forces lead substance over into the realm of the living and are
therefore connected with procreation. The Moon stimulates not only the
inner, reproductive processes of the organism, but the procreative
process as well. Thus we have:
Saturn: |
upper part of the astral body as a whole. |
Jupiter: |
thinking. |
Mars: |
speech. |
Sun: |
Ego. |
Mercury: |
intermediary between the astral body and the rhythmic functions in the organism. |
Venus: |
activity of the etheric body. |
Moon: |
stimulates reproduction. |
You see now in what way processes in the human organism are dependent
upon the Cosmos. On the one side man is bound up with the earthly
forces through his physical body. And on the other side he is bound up
with his whole cosmic environment through the etheric body. The cosmic
forces, however, work in different ways in his being as we have heard.
This differentiation originates in the astral body in which the forces
of Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Venus, Mercury, Moon are contained. By way
of the Ego, the Sun works in man. Suppose that as the result of his
earlier incarnations a man has within his being forces which
predestine him to be a thinker in the earthly life upon which he is
entering. He prepares for his descent to the Earth and since
Jupiter takes a definite time to complete his orbit he will
choose a moment for his birth when the rays of Jupiter pour directly
down upon him.
In this way the heavenly constellations provide conditions into which
a human being may be born conditions which are determined by
his previous earthly lives.
In the age of the Consciousness Soul, of course, it is the task of man
gradually to make himself free of these conditions. But he must free
himself from them in the right way.
In speaking of the Saturn influences, I said that it is a question of
trying to replace shadowy intellectualism by real Imagination. In the
book
Knowledge of the Higher Worlds
indications are given which, if they are followed, can make us
independent of the cosmic forces, although none the less these cosmic
forces continue to work in our being.
Man is born on Earth into conditions determined by a constellation in
the heavens, but he must equip himself with forces which make him
independent of this constellation. It is to this kind of knowledge
a knowledge of man's connection with the Cosmos beyond the
Earth that our civilisation must attain. Man must learn to
realise that the forces of heredity described by modern science are
not the only forces at work in his organism. To imagine such a thing,
my dear friends, is the purest nonsense. It is pure nonsense to think
that the maternal organism contains those forces which are then
transmitted by heredity and so build up a heart, a liver and the other
organs. There would be no heart in the human organism if the Sun did
not build it into the organism of man, neither would there be a liver
if Venus did not place it into the organism. And so it is with each
single organ. Their presence in the human organism is due to the
working of cosmic forces.
These are the things that humanity must once again learn to
understand. Man must realise that the mysteries of his being cannot be
explained by a science which deals merely with earthly phenomena.
Around man live other creatures and they too are not merely
creatures of the Earth. It appears, to begin with, as if the minerals
were entirely earthly in their nature. But in the minerals, too,
changes have taken place which were due to the forces working in the
cosmic environment of the Earth. The crystallised forms of the metals
are all due to the play of forces from beyond the Earth. The metals
were given shape and form at a time when the Earth's forces were not
yet working in their full strength, but when cosmic forces were
working in the Earth. The healing forces contained in the minerals,
above all in the metals, are connected with the way in which these
metals were formed within the Earth by the working of cosmic forces.
In the first epoch of Post-Atlantean times, when the ancient Indian
civilisation was at its prime, man felt and knew himself to be a
citizen of the whole wide universe. Although he had not yet developed
the forces which modern humanity is so proud to possess, he was in the
true sense of the word, MAN. By the time of the Chaldean epoch,
however, man's attention had already begun to be diverted from the
Sun. He had become a kind of amphibium a creature who is
thankful when the rays of the Sun pour down upon it, and when it need
not always be confined to its dark burrows in the pound. But in our
time one cannot say that man even resembles a creature like the mole,
for he is really much more like an earthworm who has eyes at most for
what has first been sent out into space from the Earth and comes back
again as rain. This is really all that men see in the way of forces
from beyond the Earth. But this the earthworms also see! In his
materialism today man has become an earthworm. He must rise above this
earth state, but he can only do so by realising and knowing his
connection with the Cosmos beyond the Earth.
Our task therefore, is to raise ourselves above the earthworm state
into which our civilisation has fallen, and bring a new spiritual life
into being.
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