LECTURE II
Rudolf Steiner: Good morning, gentlemen! Today I
would like to speak further about the creation of the earth and the
origin of man. It has surely become clear from what I have already
said that the earth was originally not what it is today, but was a
kind of living being.
I described the condition that existed before our actual
Earth condition by saying that warmth, air, and water were there but
as yet no really solid mineral structures. Now you must not imagine
that the water existing at that time looked like the present water.
Our present water has become what it is by the separation of certain
substances which were formerly dissolved in it. If you take a glass
of ordinary water and put some salt in it, the salt dissolves in the
water and you get a fluid-a salt solution, as one calls it-which is
denser than the original water. If you put your fingers in it, it
feels much denser than water. Now dissolved salt is relatively thin;
with certain other substances one gets quite a thickish liquid.
The fluid condition, the water condition which existed
in earlier ages of our earth was therefore not that of today's water.
That did not exist, for substances were dissolved in the water
everywhere. All the substances that you have today-the Jura limestone
mountains, for instance-were dissolved; harder rocks that you can't
scratch with a knife (limestone can always be scratched) were also
dissolved in the water. During this Old Moon stage, therefore, one
has to do with a thickish fluid that contained in solution all the
substances which today are solid.
The thin water of today, which consists essentially of
hydrogen and oxygen, was separated off later; it has developed only
during the earth period itself. Thus we have as an original condition
of the earth a densified fluid, and round about it a kind of air. But
this was not the air of today; just as the water was not like our
present water, so the air was not the same as our present air. Our
present air contains essentially oxygen and nitrogen; the other
substances which it still contains are present to a very slight
degree. There are even metals still present in the air, but in
exceedingly small quantities. For instance, there is one metal,
sodium, that is everywhere in the air. Just think what that means —
that sodium is everywhere, that a substance which is in the salt on
your table is present everywhere in tiny quantities.
There are two substances — one is the sodium which
I have just mentioned, which is present in small quantities in the
air; then there is a substance of a gaseous nature which plays a
great role when you bleach your laundry: chlorine. It causes the
bleaching. Now the salt on your table is composed of sodium and
chlorine, a combination of the two. Such things come about in nature.
You can ask how one knows that sodium is everywhere. It
is possible today to tell from a flame what sort of substance is
being burnt in it. For instance, you can get sodium in a metallic
form and pulverize it and hold it in a flame. You can then find with
an instrument called a spectroscope that there is a yellow line in
it. There is another metal, for example, called lithium; if you hold
that in the flame, you get a red line; the yellow is now not there,
but there is a red line. One can prove with the spectroscope what
substance is present.
| Diagram 2 Click image for large view | |
But you get the yellow sodium line
in almost every flame whenever you light one, without having put the
sodium in yourself. Thus sodium is still in the air today. In earlier
times immense quantities of metals and even of sulphur were present
in the air. The air was quite saturated with sulphur. So there was a
thickish water — if one had not been especially heavy one could
have gone for a walk on it; it was like running tar — and there
was a dense air, so dense that one could not have breathed in it with
our present lungs. These were only formed later. The mode of life of
the creatures that existed at that time was utterly different.
Now you must picture to yourselves that the earth once
looked like this. (See drawing.) Had you found yourself there with
your present eyes, you would not have discovered the stars and sun
and moon out there, for you would have looked out into a vague ocean
of air which reached an end eventually. If one could have lived then
with the present sense organs, one would have seemed to be inside a
world-egg beyond which one could see nothing. And you can imagine how
different the earth looked at that time, like a kind of giant egg
yolk, a thick fluid, and a thick air environment corresponding to the
white of the present-day egg.
If you picture concretely what I have described, you
will have to say: Well, beings such as we have today could not have
lived at that time. Naturally, creatures like the elephant, and even
human beings in their present form, would have sunk — nor could
they have breathed. And because they could not have breathed, there
were also no lungs as we know them now. Organs are formed entirely
according to the function they are needed for. It is very interesting
that an organ is simply not there if it is not needed. And so lungs
only developed when the air was no longer so full of sulphur and
metals as it had been in those ancient times.
Now to get an idea of what sort of creatures lived at
that time, we must first look for those that lived in the thickish
water. Creatures lived in that dense water that no longer exist
today. Our present fish have their form because the water is thin.
Even sea-water is comparatively thin; it contains much salt in
solution, yet it is comparatively thin. But in that early time every
possible substance was dissolved in the dense fluid, the dense ocean,
of which, in fact, the whole earth, the Moon-sack consisted.
The creatures that were in it could not swim in our
sense, because the water was too thick; nor could they walk, for one
needs firm ground for walking. You can imagine that these creatures
had a bodily structure somewhere between what one needs for
swimming-fins — and what one needs for walking — feet.
You know, of course, what a fin looks like — it has quite fine,
spiky bones and the flesh in between is dried-up. So that we have a
fin with practically no flesh on it and prickly bones transformed to
spikes: that is a fin. Limbs that are suitable for moving forward on
firm ground, that is, for walking or crawling, have their bones set
into the interior and the outer bulk of flesh covers them. We can
conceive of such limbs that have the flesh outside and the bones
inside; there the bulk of flesh is the main thing. That belongs to
walking, or swimming.
But at that time there was neither walking nor swimming,
but something in between. These creatures therefore had limbs in
which there was something of a thorn-like, nature, but also something
like joints. They were really quite ingenious joints, and in between,
the flesh mass was stretched out like an umbrella. You still see many
swimming creatures today with a “swim skin” — a web
— between the bones, and they are the last relics of what once
existed in vast numbers. Creatures existed which stretched out their
limbs so that the spreading flesh mass was supported by the dense
fluid. And they had joints in their limbs — the fishes today
have none — and with these they could direct their
half-swimming, half-walking.
So we are made aware of animals which particularly
needed such limbs. Today the limbs would look immensely coarse and
clumsy; they were not fins, not feet, not hands, but clumsy
appendages on the body, thoroughly appropriate for living in that
thick fluid. This was one kind of animal. If we want to describe them
further, we must say: They were especially organized in the parts of
the body where these immense limbs could arise. All the rest of them
was poorly developed. If you look at the toads and similar creatures
existing today which sort of swim in the thick fluid of boggy
marshes, then you have a feeble, shrunken reminder of the gigantic
animals which lived once upon a time, which were heavy and clumsy but
had diminutive heads like turtles.
Other creatures lived in the dense air. Our present
birds have had to acquire what they need to live in our thin air;
they have had to develop something of a lung nature. But the
creatures that lived at that time in the air had no lungs; in that
dense sulphurous air it would not have been possible to breathe with
lungs. They absorbed the air as a kind of food. They could not have
eaten in the present way, for it would all have remained lying in the
stomach. Nor was there anything solid there to eat. All that they
took in as food they took in out of the densified air. Into what did
they take it? Well, they took it into what developed in them
especially.
Now the flesh masses that existed in those so to say,
gliding creatures (for they were not really walking and not really
swimming), could not be used by the air-creatures, for these had to
support themselves in the air, not swim in the dense fluid. It came
about then that the flesh masses which had developed in the gliding,
half-swimming creatures became adapted to the sulphurous condition of
the air. The sulphur dried up these flesh masses and made them into
what you see today as the birds' feathers. With this flesh mass or
dried-up tissue the creatures could form the limbs they needed. They
were not wings in the present sense, but they supported them in the
air, and were something similar to the wings of today. They were
very, very different in one respect: there is only one thing
remaining from these wing-like structures, and that is moulting, when
our present birds lose their feathers. These former creatures
supported themselves in the dense air with the structures that were
not yet feathers but rather dried-up tissue.
Moreover, these structures were actually half for
breathing and half for taking in nourishment. What existed in the air
environment was absorbed. These organs were not used for flying;
these rudimentary “wings” were for absorbing the air and
pushing it away. Today only moulting is left of this process. At that
time, these structures served for taking in nourishment, that is, the
bird puffed up its tissue with what it absorbed from the air and then
gave out again what it did not need. So such a bird had a very
remarkable structure indeed!
And so at that time there lived those terribly clumsy
creatures below in the water-element — our present turtles are
indeed fine princes by comparison! And above were these remarkable
creatures. And whereas our present birds sometimes behave in the air
unmannerly (which we take very much amiss), these bird-like creatures
in the air of that time excreted continuously. What came from them
rained down, and rained down especially at certain times. The
creatures below did not yet have the attitude which we have. We are
indignant if sometimes a bird behaves in an unseemly way. But those
creatures below in the fluid element were not displeased; they sucked
up into their own bodies what fell down from above. That was the
fructifying process at that time. That was the only way in which
these creatures which had originated there could continue to live. In
those ages there was no definite coming forth of one animal from
another, as we have now. One might say that actually these creatures
lived a long time; they kept renewing themselves. One could call it a
sort of world-moulting; the animals down below kept rejuvenating
themselves again and again.
On the other hand, to the creatures above came what was
developed by those below and this again was a fructification.
Reproduction was at that time of a very different nature; it went on
in the whole earth-body. The upper world fructified the lower, the
lower world fructified the upper. The whole earth-body was alive. One
could say that the creatures below and the creatures above were like
maggots in a body-where the whole body is alive and the maggots in it
are alive too. It was one life, and the various beings lived in a
completely living body.
But later something occurred of very special importance.
The condition I have described could have gone on for a long time;
all could have remained as it was without becoming our present earth.
The heavy, clumsy creatures could have continued to inhabit the
living earth together with the creatures able to live in the air. But
one day something happened. It happened that one day from this living
earth, let me say, a young one, an offspring, was formed and went out
into cosmic space. It came about in this way: a small protuberance
developed, which wore away (see drawing) and at last split off. And a
body was now out in the universe which had, instead of the earlier
conditions, the surrounding air inside and the thick fluid outside.
Thus an inverted body was separated off. Whereas the Moon-earth
remained with thick fluid for its inner nucleus and thickish air
outside, a body split off which now had the thicker substance outside
and the thinner inside. And if one investigates the matter without
prejudice, in honest research, one can recognize in this body the
present moon. Today just as one can find sodium in the air, one can
also learn the exact constituents of the moon, and so one can know
that the moon was once in the earth. What circles round us out there
was formerly within the earth, then separated off and went out into
the cosmos.
| Diagram 3 Click image for large view | |
With this a complete change took place, not only in what
separated itself off but also in the earth itself. Above all, the
earth lost certain substances, and for the first time the mineral
element could be formed in the earth. If the moon-substances had
remained in the earth, minerals could never have been formed, and
there would always have been a state of moving fluid. The departure
of the moon brought death for the first time to the earth and with it
the dead mineral kingdom. But with this came also the possibility for
the present plants, present animals and man in his present form to
develop.
We can say, therefore, that out of the Old Moon arose
the present earth together with the mineral kingdom. And now all
forms had to alter. For with the departure of the moon the air became
less sulphurous, approaching nearer to the present condition, and
what had been dissolved in the fluid was now thrown out, forming
mountain-like masses. The water grew more and more like our present
water. On the other hand the moon, which has around it what we have
in the interior of the earth, produced a thickish, horny mass on the
outside. This is what we see when we look up. It is not like our
mineral kingdom, but it is as if our mineral kingdom had become
horn-like and turned into glass. It is extraordinarily hard, harder
than anything horn-like that we have on earth, but it is not quite
mineral. Hence the peculiar shape of the moon mountains; they
actually all look like horns that have been fastened on. They are
formed in such a way that one can even perceive what had been organic
in them, what had once been a part of life.
Beginning with the separation of the moon, our present
minerals were gradually deposited from the former dense fluid.
Particularly active was a substance that in those ancient times
existed in great amounts and consisted of silica and oxygen —
we call it silicic acid. One has the idea that an acid must be fluid,
because that is the form in which it is used today. But the acid
which I mean here and which is a genuine acid is extremely hard and
firm. It is, in fact, quartz! The quartz which you find in the high
mountains is silicic acid. And when it is whitish and like glass it
is pure silicic acid. If it contains other substances you get the
quartz — or flint — that looks violet, and so on. That
comes from the substances contained in it.
But the quartz which is so hard today that you can't
scratch it with a knife, and if you hit your head on it, it would
make a real hole in your head — this same quartz was dissolved
in those ancient times, either in the thick fluid or in the finer
surroundings of dense air. In addition to the sulphur there was an
immense amount of dissolved quartz in the thick air around the earth.
You can get an idea of the strong influence this dissolved silicic
acid had at that time if you reflect on the composition of the earth
today just here where we live. Of course you can say: There must be a
great deal of oxygen, because we need it for breathing. Yes, there is
a good deal of oxygen: 28 to 29% of the whole mass of the earth. But
you must count everything. Oxygen is in the air and in many solid
substances on the earth too; it is in the plants and animals. And if
you put all this together it is 28% of the whole.
But silica, which when united with oxygen in the quartz
gives silicic acid, is 48 to 49%! Think what that means: half of all
that surrounds us and that we need, almost half of that is silica!
When everything was fluid, when the air was almost fluid before it
thickened — yes, then this silica played an enormous role, it
was very important in that original condition. Nowadays these things
are not understood rightly because concerning man's finer
organization, people no longer have the right idea. They think today
in a casual, crude way: Well, we're humans and we have to breathe. We
breathe oxygen in and we breathe carbon dioxide out. We can't live if
we don't breathe like this. But silica is still always contained in
the air we inhale, genuine silica, tiny quantities of silica. Plenty
is available, for 48 to 49% of our surroundings are made up of
silica.
When we breathe, the oxygen goes down to the metabolism
and unites with carbon, but at the same time it also goes up to the
senses and the brain, to the nervous system: it goes everywhere.
There it unites with the silica and forms silicic acid in us. If we
look at a human being we see he has lungs and is inhaling air, that
means, he is taking in oxygen. Below, the oxygen unites with carbon
and forms carbon dioxide which he then exhales. But above, the silica
is united in us with the oxygen and goes up into our head, as silicic
acid — however, it does not become as solid up there as quartz.
That, of course, would be a bad business if pure quartz crystals
showed up inside your head — then instead of hair you would
have quartz crystals, which perhaps would be quite beautiful and
amusing! Still, that is not entirely fantasy — for there is a
good deal of silicic acid in our hair, only it is still fluid, not
crystallized. In fact, not only hair but practically everything in
the nerves and senses contains silicic acid.
One discovers this when one first gets to know the
beneficial, healing effects of silicic acid; it is tremendously
helpful as a remedy. You must realize that the food received through
the mouth into the stomach must pass through all manner of
intermediate things before it comes up into the head, the eye, the
ear, and so forth. That is a long way for the nourishment to go, and
it needs helping forces to enable it to come up at all. It might be —
in fact, it happens often — that a person has not enough
helping forces and the foods do not work up properly into the head;
then one must prescribe silicic acid which assists the nourishment to
rise to the head and the senses. As soon as one sees that a patient
is normal as regards stomach and intestines, but that the digestion
does not go all the way to the sense organs, the head, or the skin,
one must administer a silicic acid preparation as remedy. There one
sees, in fact, what a very great role silicic acid still plays today
in the human organism.
In that ancient condition of the earth, the silicic acid
was not yet inhaled but was absorbed. The bird-like creatures in
particular took it in. They absorbed it as they absorbed the sulphur,
with the consequence that they became almost entirely sense organs.
Just as we have silicic acid to thank for our sense organs, so at
that time the earth as a whole owed its bird-like species to the
working of the silicic acid that was present everywhere. Since,
however, this did not come in the same way to those other creatures
with the clumsy limbs, since the silicic acid reached those creatures
less as they glided along in the dense fluid, they became in the main
stomach- and digestion-creatures. There above in those days were
terribly nervous creatures, aware of everything with a fine nervous
sensitivity. On the other hand, those below in the thick fluid were
of immense sagacity, but also of immense phlegmatism. They felt
nothing of it; they were mere feeding-creatures, were really only an
abdomen with clumsy limbs. The birds above were finely organized,
were almost entirely sense organs. And indeed they were sense organs
for the earth itself, so that it was not only filled with life but it
perceived everything through these sense organs that were in the air,
the fore-runners of our birds.
I tell you all this so that you may see how different
everything once looked on the earth. All that was dissolved at that
time became deposits later in the solid mineral mountains, the rock
masses, and formed a kind of bony scaffolding. Only then was it
possible for man and animal to form solid bones. For when externally
the bony framework of the earth was formed, then bones began to form
also inside the higher animals and man. What I have spoken of before
was not yet firm, hard bone as we have today, but flexible, horn-like
cartilage as it has still remained in the fish. All these things have
in a certain way remained behind and atrophied, for in the earlier
ages which I have described the life-conditions for them were there,
but today the necessary life-conditions are no longer present.
We can say, therefore: In our modern birds we have the
successors of the bird-like species which existed above in the dense
air full of sulphur and silicic acid but now transformed and adapted
to the present air. And in the amphibians of today, the crawling
creatures, in the frogs and toads, but also in the chameleon, the
snake, and so forth, we have the successors of the creatures that
were swimming at that time in the dense fluid. The higher mammals and
man in his present form came later.
Now this makes an apparent contradiction: I said to you
last time that man was there first. But he lived in the warmth purely
as soul and spirit; he was indeed already present in all that I have
described, but not as a physical being. He was there in a very fine
body in which he could support himself equally in the air and in the
dense fluid. And neither he nor the higher mammals were visible as
yet; only the heavy creatures and the bird-like air-creatures were
visible. That is what must be distinguished when one says that man
was already there. He was first of all, before even the air was
there, but he was invisible, and he was still in an invisible state
when the earth looked as I have now described. The moon had first to
separate from the earth, then man could deposit mineral elements in
himself, could form a mineral bony system, could develop such
substances as protein, and so forth, in his muscles. At that time
such substances did not as yet exist. Nevertheless, man has
completely preserved in his present corporeal nature the legacy of
those earlier times.
For the human being cannot now come into existence
without the moon influence, coming now only from outside.
Reproduction is connected with the moon, though no longer directly.
It can therefore be seen that what is connected with reproduction —
the woman's monthly periods — take their course in the same
rhythmical periods as the phases of the moon, only they no longer
coincide; they have freed themselves. But the moon influence has
remained active in human reproduction.
We have found reproduction accomplished between the
beings of the dense air and those of the dense fluid, between the
bird-like race and the ancient giant amphibians. They mutually
fructified one another because the moon was still within the earth.
As soon as the moon was outside, fructification had to come from
outside, because the fructifying principle lies in the moon.
We will continue from this point on Saturday
(see Note 3 ) at nine
o'clock — if we can have that hour. The question put by Herr
Dollinger is one that must be answered in detail, and if you have
patience you will see how present-day life emerges from all the
gradual preparatory conditions. The whole subject is indeed difficult
to understand. But I believe one can understand if one looks at
things in the way we have been looking.
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