Before we proceed to the study of the other members of the animal,
plant and mineral kingdoms, which are connected with man, we must
first cast a glance at the development of man himself, and call to
mind various descriptions already familiar to us through books or
lectures in a comprehensive survey.
If we go for instruction to present-day science, we are usually told
that it is necessary to investigate how the higher, the so-called
higher beings and human kingdoms have evolved out of what is lifeless,
out of so-called inorganic substances or forces.
A true conception of evolution reveals something essentially
different. It reveals — as you will have been able to gather from
my
“Occult Science”
— that man in his present form is the being who has the longest
evolution behind him, an evolution which reaches back to the time of
ancient Saturn. We must therefore say that man is the oldest creation
within the evolution of our earth. It was only during the Sun-period
that the animal kingdom was added, then during the Moon-period the
plant kingdom; and the mineral kingdom, as we know it today, is in
fact only an Earth-product, something which was only added during the
Earth-period of evolution.
Let us now consider man in his present form, and ask ourselves: What
is the oldest part of man according to his evolutionary history? It is
the human head. This human head received its first rudiments at a time
when the Earth was in the Saturn-metamorphosis. It is true that the
Saturn-condition was composed entirely of warmth-substance, and the
human head was then actually flowing, weaving, surging warmth; it then
acquired gaseous form during the Sun-period, and fluidic form during
the Moon-period, when it became a liquid, flowing entity; and only
during the Earth-period did it receive solid form with its bony
casing. We must therefore say that a being of which it is difficult to
gain a conception through external forms of knowledge existed during
the time of ancient Saturn, and of this being the human head is the
descendant. And simultaneously with the formation of man's head —
this can be gathered from my recent descriptions — simultaneously
with this rudimentary origin of the human head during the
Saturn-period, the first rudiments of the being of the butterflies
also came into existence. Later we shall make a more exact study of
the nature of the other insects, but to begin with let us strictly
focus our attention on the being of the butterfly. When we follow the
course of evolution from the ancient Saturn-period onwards until
today, until Earth-existence, we must say: At that time the rudiments
of the human head came into existence in a form of very delicate
substantiality; and at the same time there arose everything which now
flutters through the air as the world of the butterflies. Both these
evolutions proceeded further. Man developed his inner being, so that
to an ever greater degree he became a being manifesting a soul-nature,
which works from within outwards, a being whose development depends
upon a radiating from within outwards (a diagram was drawn). The
butterfly, on the other hand, is a being upon whose exterior the
cosmos may be said to lavish all its beauties. The butterfly is a
creature upon which everything of beauty and majesty in the cosmos
— as this has been described to you — has, as it were,
alighted, together with the dust, on its wings. We must, therefore,
picture the being of the butter-fly as a mirror which reflects the
beauties of the upper cosmos. The human being takes up into himself,
encloses within himself, what is of the nature of the upper cosmos,
and thus becomes inwardly ensouled. It is like a concentration of the
cosmos which then streams outwards, itself giving form to the human
head, so that in the human head we have something formed from within
outwards. But in the being of the butterfly we have what is formed
from outside inwards. For one whose clairvoyant vision can look
directly at these things, there is something really tremendous to be
learned if he sets to work in the following way. He says: I wish to
fathom the mysteries, the most ancient mysteries, the Saturn-mysteries
of the human head; I wish to know the true nature of the forces which
have held sway inside the skull. He must then let his attention be
directed to what is everywhere to be seen outside, to what everywhere
streams inwards from outside. To learn to know the nature of man
and the marvel of thine own head, study the marvel of how the
butterfly came to be outside in nature. This is the great lesson
imparted by the study of the cosmos through direct spiritual
observation.
Evolution then proceeded from the Saturn-period to the Sun-period, and
now a being came into existence possessed of a further development, an
air-development, an air-metamorphosis, of the head; but to this there
was added in very delicate substance what later became the
breast-system, became the breathing-and-heart systems of man. In
Saturn we have as the essential metamorphosis what produced the human
head. When we come to the Sun-period we have the head-breast-man; for
it was now that man's breast-system was added. At the same time,
however, there already came into existence, in the later part of the
Saturn-period and the earlier part of the Sun-period, what must now be
seen as having its representative in the eagle. The bird kingdom arose
in the first part of the Sun-period, and in the second part of the
Sun-period there arose the first rudiments of that kingdom of the
animals which are in fact breast-animals, as, for instance, the lion
— other breast-animals, too, but the lion as their
representative. So that the first rudiments of these animals go back
to the time of old Sun.
From this you can see what a stupendous difference is present between
the evolution of even the higher animals and that of man. In the
future I shall still have to speak about the transitional animals, to
which belongs the world of the apes, but today my intention is just to
gather things together into a general concept. You see what an immense
difference exists between the formation of man and the formation of
the higher animals.
In the case of human evolution it was the head which first took form.
All the other organs are, as it were, appended; they may be said to be
appended to the formation of the head. In cosmic evolution man's
development proceeds from his head downwards. On the other hand the
lion, for example, first came into existence during the old
Sun-period, during the second part of the old Sun-period, as a
breast-animal, as an animal with a powerful breathing-system, but with
a head still very small and poorly developed. And only in later times
when the sun separated from the earth, working from outside, only then
did the head develop out of the breast. Thus the development of the
lion was such that it evolved from the breast upwards, whereas the
human being evolved from the head downwards. This constitutes an
immense difference in evolution as a whole.
And when we now proceed to the Moon-metamorphosis of the earth,
because the Moon represented the water-condition, because the Moon was
fluidic — though it certainly developed a horny substance in its
later period — it was only then that the human being needed a
further extension downwards. The rudiments of the digestive-system
took form. During the old Sun-period, while man possessed only what
was of the nature of air, undulating, scintillating with light, all he
required for the purpose of nourishment was a breathing apparatus shut
off from below; man was head-and-breathing organism. Now, during the
Moon-period, he acquired a digestive system, thereby becoming a being
of head, breast and abdomen. And because everything in the old Moon
was still watery substance, during this old Moon-period the human
being had outgrowths which buoyed him up as he swam through the water.
Arms and legs can first be spoken of only during the Earth-period,
when the force of gravity was working, giving form to what is
primarily adjusted in accordance with the directions of gravity,
namely the limb-system. This therefore, belongs only to the
Earth-period. During the Moon-period, however, the digestive system
was formed, though still quite differently constituted from what it
later became; for man's digestive apparatus did not as yet need to
assimilate all that serves the free, independent mobility of the
limbs. It was still an essentially different digestive system; this
was later metamorphosed into the digestive apparatus appropriate to
the Earth. It was, however, during the Moon-period that man first
acquired his digestive system.
And then it came about further that to the descendants of the
butterflies, of the birds and of such species as are represented by
the lion, those animals were added which are predominantly adapted to
digestion. Thus, during the Moon-period we have the addition of those
animals which are represented by the cow.
How then did the development of the cow proceed in contradistinction
to that of the human being? Here matters were such that in this old
Moon-period it was first and foremost the cow's digestive apparatus
that was formed; then, only after the moon had separated, the
breast-organs developed out of the digestive system, as did also the
peculiarly formed head. Whereas man began his development with the
head, adding to this the breast, and finally the digestive organs;
whereas the lion began with the breast-organs, adding to these the
head, and then, during the old Moon-period, acquiring the digestive
organs together with man; in the case of the animals represented by
the cow, we have first, as primary origin, the digestive organs, and
then, growing out from these as further development, the formation of
the organs of breast and head. So you see, man developed from the head
downwards, the lion from the breast both upwards and downwards; the
cow developed breast and head entirely from the digestive organs,
developed, that is to say — if we compare the cow with the human
being — entirely in an upwards direction, developed towards heart
and head. This is the correct view of human evolution.
Here the question naturally arises: Is it only the cow which was, as
it were, the companion thus associated with man's evolution? This is
not entirely so, for whenever one or other planetary metamorphosis
takes place, the earlier creatures develop further, while at the same
time new ones come into existence. The cow already came into being
during the first phase of the Moon-metamorphosis. Then, however, other
animals were added, which acquired their very earliest rudiments in
the last phase of the Moon-metamorphosis. These could not, for
example, take part in the departure of the moon, for it was already
outside. Nor could they participate in what this departure brought
about, namely the drawing forth, as it were, from the cow's belly of
the organs of heart and head. These creatures, which made their
appearance later, remained stationary at the stage which is determined
in man by the digestion, the stage which man carries with him in his
abdomen.
And just as the eagle and the butter-flies are constituted in relation
to the head, the lion in relation to the breast, the cow in relation
to the abdomen (though it is the animal which was also able to develop
all the upper organs at a later period of evolution), so the
amphibians and reptiles, such as toads, frogs, snakes, lizards, are
distributed, if I may put it so, among the lower organs of the human
being, those of the human digestive system. They are simply digestive
organs which came into existence as animals.
BUTTERFLIES | BIRDS, LIONS | COWS, REPTILES, AMPHIBIANS, FISHES |
Saturn | Sun | Moon |
Head | Head-Breast | Head-Breast-Abdomen |
These last creatures appeared during the second Moon-period in an
extremely crude form, and were in fact walking stomachs and entrails,
walking stomachs and intestinal tubes. And only later, during the
earth-period, did they also acquire a still not particularly
distinguished-looking head-system. Only look at the frogs and toads,
or the snakes. They came into existence simply and solely as animals
of digestion, at a late period, at a time when man could still only
append his digestive apparatus to what he had already acquired during
an earlier period.
And in the Earth-period, when man acquired his limb-system under the
influence of gravity and earth-magnetism, the tortoises — we may
take the tortoises as representative animals in this — actually
stretched their head out beyond their armoured shell in a manner more
like an organ of the limb-system than a head. And now we can
understand how it is that in the case of the amphibians and reptiles
the head is formed in such an uncouth way. Its form is such that one
really has the feeling — and rightly so — that here one
passes directly from the mouth into the stomach. There is hardly any
intermediary.
When we study man in this way and apportion his being among his animal
contemporaries, we must assign what is comprised in the reptiles and
amphibians to the human activity of digestion. And one can actually
say: Just as man carries around in his intestines the products of his
digestion, so does the cosmos carry around — indirectly by way of
the earth — the toads, snakes, and frogs in the cosmic intestine
which it formed in the watery-earthly element of the Earth. On the
other hand, all that is more connected with human propagation, which
appeared in its earliest rudiments in the very last phase of the
Moon-period, and only developed fully during the Earth-metamorphosis,
with this the fishes are allied, the fishes and still lower animals.
So that we have to regard the fishes as late arrivals of evolution, as
creatures which only joined the company of the other animals at a time
when man added his generative organs to those of digestion. The snake
is the intermediary between the organs of reproduction and digestion.
Rightly viewed in regard to human nature, what does the snake
represent? It represents the so-called renal canal; it originated in
world-evolution at the same time as the renal canal was developed in
man.
Thus we can follow in a correct way how the human being, beginning
with his head, evolved downwards, how the earth drew forth from him
the limb-system, providing what this limb-system required in order to
establish itself in the earth-equilibrium of gravity and magnetic
forces. And simultaneously with this evolution downwards the different
classes of the animals took form.
In this way we get a true picture of the evolution of the earth with
its creatures. And in accordance with this evolution these creatures
have developed in such a way that they present themselves to us as
they are today. When you look at the butterflies and the birds you
certainly have earthly forms; but you know from previous descriptions
that the butterfly is really a light-being and the earthly substance
has, as it were, only alighted upon it. If the butterfly itself could
tell you what it is, it would announce to you that it has a body
formed of light, and that, as I have already said, it carries about
what has alighted upon it in the way of earthly matter like luggage,
like something external to itself. Similarly one can say that the bird
is a creature of warm air, for the true bird is the warm air which is
diffused throughout its body; all else is its luggage which it carries
with it through the world. These creatures, which even today have
still preserved their nature of light and warmth, and are really only
clothed with a terrestrial, an earthly, a watery vesture — these
beings were the very earliest to arise in the whole of
earth-evolution. The very forms, too, possessed by these beings can
remind one, who is able to survey the time which man passes through in the
spiritual world before his descent into earthly life, of what is
experienced in the spiritual world. Certainly they are earthly forms,
for earthly matter has alighted upon them. But if we conceive rightly
the fluttering, weaving being of light which is the real butter-fly,
thinking away everything of an earthly nature which has alighted upon
it; if we think away from the bird everything of earth which has
alighted upon it; if we picture the assembly of forces which makes of
the bird a being of warm air, taking account also of the nature of its
plumage — in reality just shining rays; if we imagine all this,
then these creatures (which only look as they do because of their
outer vestment, and of their size appropriate to this outer vestment)
remind us of the beings which man knew before his descent to the
earth, and of the fact that the human being has made this descent to
the earth. Then one who can thus gaze into the spiritual world says to
himself: In the butterflies, in the birds, we have something
reminiscent of those spirit-forms among which man dwelt before he
descended to the earth, of the beings of the higher hierarchies.
Looked at with understanding, butterflies and birds are a memory
— transformed into miniature and metamorphosed — of those
forms which man had around him as spirit-forms before he descended
into Earth-evolution. Because earth-substance is heavy and must be
overcome, the butterflies contract into miniature the gigantic form
which is in reality theirs. If you could separate from a butterfly
everything of the nature of earth-substance, it would be able, as
spirit-being, as a being of light, to expand to archangelic form. In
those creatures which inhabit the air we have the earthly images of
what exists in higher regions in a spiritual way. This is why, in the
time of instinctive clairvoyance, it was the natural thing in artistic
creation to derive from the forms of the winged creatures the symbolic
form, the pictorial form, of the beings of the higher hierarchies.
This has its inner justification. And looked at fundamentally the
physical forms of the butterflies and the birds are really the
physical metamorphoses of spiritual beings. It is not the spiritual
beings themselves which have undergone metamorphosis, but these forms
are their metamorphosed image-picture; naturally, the beings
themselves are different.
You will, therefore, also find it comprehensible if, returning to
something which I have already discussed, I again draw what follows in
a diagram. [* earlier diagram of Cosmic memory & thinking with
butterfly, bird and bat] I told you that the butterfly, which is
essentially a being of light, continually sends spiritualized
earth-matter out into the cosmos during its life-time. I should now
like to call this spiritualized earth-substance, which is sent forth
into the cosmos — borrowing a term customary in solar physics
— the butterfly corona. Thus the butterfly corona continually
streams forth into the cosmos. But into this butterfly corona there
rays what the bird-kingdom yields up to the cosmos every time a bird
dies, so that the spiritualized matter from the bird-kingdom is rayed
into the corona and out into the cosmos. Thus in spiritual perception
one beholds a shimmering corona emanating from the butterfly kingdom
— in accordance with certain laws this is maintained in winter
also — and in a more ray-like form, introduced into it, one
beholds what streams out from the birds.
You see, when the human being has the impulse to descend from the
spiritual world to the physical world, it is the butterfly corona,
this remarkable out-streaming of spiritualized earth-substance, which
first calls him into earthly existence. And the rays of the
bird-corona, these are experienced more as forces which draw him. Now
you perceive an even higher significance in what has its life in the
encircling air. In what lives and weaves in physical reality one must
everywhere seek for the spiritual. And it is only when one seeks for
the spiritual that one first comes upon the significance of the
individual categories of beings. The earth entices man back into
incarnation by sending forth into world-space the shining radiance of
the butterfly-corona and the rays of the bird-corona. It is these
things which once again call man back into a new earthly existence
after he has spent a certain period of time between death and re-birth
in the purely spiritual world. It is, therefore, not to be wondered at
if man finds it difficult to unravel the complicated feelings which he
rightly experiences when beholding the world of the butterflies and
the birds. For the true reality of these feelings dwells deep in the
unconsciousness. What really works in them is the remembrance of a
longing for a new earthly existence.
This again is connected with something I have often explained to you,
namely that the human being, when he has departed from the earth
through the portal of death, actually disperses his head, and that
then the remainder of his organism — naturally in regard to its
forces, not in regard to its matter — becomes metamorphosed into
the head of the next earthly existence. Thus man is striving towards
his head when he is striving towards his descent. And it is the head
which is the first part of the human embryo to develop in a form which
already resembles the later human form. That all this is so is due to
the fact that this directing of the formative element towards the head
is intimately connected with what works and weaves in the world of the
flying creatures, by means of which man is drawn out of super-sensible
into sensible existence.
When the human being, during the embryonic period, has first acquired
his head organization, he then forms out of earthly existence,
moulding it within the mother's body, what is connected with the
digestive organization, and so on. Just as the upper part, the
head-formation, is connected with what is of the nature of warmth and
air, with the warmth-light element, so what is now added during the
embryonic period is connected with the earthly-fluid element and is a
reflection of what man acquired later in evolution. This earthly-fluid
element must, however, be prepared in a quite special way, within the
mother's body. If it took its form only from what is distributed
outside in the tellurian, in the earthly world, it would develop only
the lower animal-forms of the amphibians and reptiles, or of the
fishes and even lower creatures.
The butterfly rightly regards itself as a being of light, the bird as
a being of warm air, but this is impossible for the lower animals
— amphibians, reptiles, fishes. Let us first consider the fishes
as they are today, as they come into existence subject to external
formative forces which work upon them from without, whereas they work
from within upon man. A fish lives primarily in the element of water.
But water is certainly not just the combination of hydrogen and oxygen
which it is for the chemist. Water is permeated by all possible kinds
of cosmic forces. Stellar forces enter into water. No fish would be
able to live in water if it were merely a homogeneous combination of
hydrogen and oxygen. Just as the butterfly feels itself to be a
light-being, and the bird a being of warm air, so the fish feels
itself as an earthly-watery being. But the fish does not feel the
actual water which it sucks in as its own being. A bird does feel the
air which it inhales as its own being. Thus the bird actually feels
what enters into it as air, and is everywhere diffused through it, as
its own being; this air which is diffused through the bird and warmed
by it, this is its being. The fish has water within it, yet the fish
does not feel itself as the water; the fish feels itself to be what
encloses the water, what surrounds the water. It feels itself to be
the glittering sheath or vessel enclosing the water. But the water
itself is felt by the fish as an element foreign to it, which passes
out and in, and, in doing so, brings the air which the fish needs. Yet
air and water are felt by the fish as something foreign. In its
physical nature, the fish feels the water as something foreign to it.
But the fish has also its etheric and astral body. And it is just this
which is the remarkable thing about the fish; because it really feels
itself to be the vessel, and the water this vessel encloses remains
connected with all the rest of the watery element, the fish
experiences the etheric as that in which it actually lives. It does
not feel the astral as something belonging to itself.
Thus, the fish has the peculiar characteristic that it is so entirely
an etheric creature. It feels itself as the physical vessel for the
water. It feels the water within itself as part and parcel with all
the waters of the world. Moisture is everywhere, and in this moisture
the fish at the same time experiences the etheric. For earthly life
fishes are certainly dumb, but if they could speak and could tell you
what they feel, then they would say: “I am a vessel, but the
vessel contains the all-pervading element of water, which is the
bearer of the etheric element. It is in the etheric that I am really
swimming.” The fish would say: “Water is only Maya; the
reality is the etheric, and it is in this that I really swim.”
Thus the fish feels its life as one with the life of the earth. This
is the peculiar thing about the fish: it feels its life as the life of
the earth, and therefore it takes an intimate part in everything which
the earth experiences during the course of the year, experiencing the
outgoing of the etheric forces in summer, the drawing-back of the
etheric forces in winter. The fish experiences something which
breathes in the whole earth. The fish perceives the etheric element as
the breathing process of the earth.
Dr. Wachsmuth [* See The Etheric Formative Forces in Cosmos, Earth
and Man by Gunter Wachsmuth.] once spoke here about the breathing
of the earth. This was a very beautiful exposition. If a fish had
learned the art of lecturing, it could have given the very same
lecture here out of its own experience, for it perceives all that was
described in lecture from having itself followed all the phenomena in
question! The fish is the creature which takes part in a quite
extraordinary way in the breathing-life of the earth during the cycle
of the year, because what is important for the fish is the etheric
life-element, which surges out and in, drawing all other
breathing-processes with it.
It is otherwise with the reptiles and with the amphibians; with the
frogs, for instance, which are remarkably characteristic in this
respect. These creatures are less connected with the etheric element
of the cosmos; they are connected to a greater degree with its astral
element. If one were to ask a fish: “How are things with
you?” it would answer: “Well, yes, here on earth I have
become an earthly creature, formed out of the earthly-moist elements;
but my real life is the life of the whole earth with its cosmic
breathing.” This is not so with the frog; here matters are
essentially different. The frog shares in the general astrality
diffused everywhere.
In regard to the plants I told you — and I shall speak further of
this — how the astrality of the cosmos above comes into contact
with the blossoms. The frog is connected with this astrality, with
what may be called the astral body of the earth, just as the fish is
connected with the earth's etheric body. The fish possesses its
astrality more for itself. The frog possesses its etheric body very
strongly for itself, much more strongly than does the fish; but the
frog lives in the general astrality; so that it actually shares in
those astral processes which play their part in the year's course,
where the earth lets its astrality play into the evaporation of water
and its re-descent. Here the materialistically minded person naturally
says that the evaporation of water is caused by aerodynamic, or, if
you will, aero-mechanical forces of one kind or another; these cause
the ascent. Drops are formed, and when they become heavy enough they
fall downwards. But this is almost as though one were to put forward a
similar theory about the circulation of the human blood, without
taking into consideration the fact that in the blood-circulation life
is everywhere. In the same way there lives in the circulation of
water, with its upwards and downwards urge, the astral atmosphere of
the earth, the earth's astrality. And I am telling you no fairy-tale
when I say that it is just the frogs — this is also the case with
the other amphibians, but to a less pronounced degree — which
live together with this play of the astrality which manifests in
weather-conditions, in meteorology. It is not only that frogs are
accepted — as you know — in a naive way as weather-prophets,
but they experience this astral play so wonderfully because they are
placed with their own astrality right into the astrality of the earth.
Certainly the frog does not say “I have a feeling” but it is
the bearer of the feelings which the earth has in wet spells, in dry
spells, and so on. And this is why in certain weather-conditions you
have the more or less beautiful (or ugly) frogs' concert. For this is
the frogs' way of expressing what they experience together with the
astral body of the earth. It is really true that they do not croak
unless they are moved to do so by what comes from the whole cosmos;
they live with the astrality of the earth.
So we can say that the fish, living in the earthly-watery element
naturally participates to a great degree in the life of the earth:
thus we have in the fish earthly life-conditions, in the frogs,
earthly feeling-conditions — as also in the various species of
reptiles and amphibians. Further, if we wish to study the human
digestive organism, we must say that it has developed from within
outwards. But if we wish to study how it functions, we must turn to
the world of amphibians and reptiles, for to them there comes from
outside what permeates the human being as inner forces through his
digestive apparatus. It is with the same forces by means of which man
digests, that the outer cosmos, outer nature, forms snakes, toads,
lizards and frogs. And whoever wishes to make a correct study —
excuse me, but there is nothing ugly in nature, everything must be
spoken about objectively — whoever wishes to study the inner
nature of, let us say, the human large intestine with its power of
excretion, must study the toads outwardly; for there comes to the
toads from outside what works from within outwards in the human large
intestine. Certainly this does not lend itself to such beautiful
descriptions as what I had to say about the butterflies; but in nature
everything must be taken with objective impartiality.
In this way, you see, you also gain a picture of how the earth, from
its side, shares in the life of the cosmos. Turn your attention to
what may be called the earth's excretory organs; the earth excretes
not only the nearly lifeless products of human excretion, but it
excretes what is living, and among its actual excretions are the
toads. In them the earth rids itself of what it is unable to use.
From all this you can see how the outer in nature always corresponds
with the inner. Whoever says: “No Creative Spirit penetrates the
inner being of nature”, simply does not know that everywhere in
the external world this inner quality is present. We can study the
entire human being in regard to his inner nature, if we understand
what weaves and lives outside in the cosmos. We can study him, this
human being, from head to limb-system, if we study what is present in
the outer world. World and man belong together in every respect. And
one can even say that this could be represented in a diagram, showing
the circumference of a large circle concentrating its force in a
point. The large circle forms a smaller circle within, produced by a
raying outwards from the point. The smaller circle again forms an even
smaller small circle; this is again produced by a raying-outwards of
what is within. This circle again forms another such circle. What is
comprised in the human being streams still further outwards. Thus the
outer of the human being comes into contact with the inner of the
cosmos. The point where our senses come in contact with the world is
where the part of man which reaches from within outwards comes into
contact with what reaches in the cosmos from outside inwards. In this
sense man is a little world, a microcosm over against the macrocosm.
But he contains all the wonders and secrets of this macrocosm, only in
the reversed direction of development.
It would be something very adverse to the further evolution of the
earth if things were only as I have so far described them; then the
earth would excrete the beings of the toads, and would one day perish
just as physical man must perish, without any continuation. So far,
however, we have only considered man's connection with the animals,
and have built only a slight bridge over to the being of the plants.
We shall now have to penetrate further into the plant-kingdom, and
then into the kingdom of mineral-being, and we shall see how the
mineral-being arose during the Earth-period-how, for instance, the
rock-formations of our primeval mountains were laid down, bit by bit,
by the plants, and how, bit by bit, the limestone mountains were laid
down by the subsequent animals. The mineral kingdom is the deposit of
the plant and animal-kingdom, and it is actually the deposit of the
lowest animals. The toads do not contribute very much to the mineral
element of the earth; the fishes, too, comparatively little; but the
lower animals and the plants contribute a very great deal. The lower
creatures, those plated with flinty and chalky armour, or having
merely chalky shells, deposit what they have first formed from their
own animal — or their plant — natures, and the mineral then
disintegrates. And when this mineral substance disintegrates, a power
of the highest order takes hold of just these products of mineral
disintegration and from them builds up new worlds. The mineral element
in any particular place can become of all things the most important.
When we follow the course of Earth-evolution — warmth-condition,
air-condition, water-condition, mineral-earthly condition — the
human head has participated in all these metamorphoses, the mineral
metamorphosis being the first to work outwards in the disintegrating
skeleton of the head — though it still retains a certain vitality. But
this human head has participated in the earthly-mineral metamorphosis
in a way which is even more apparent. In the centre of the human head
within the structure of the brain there is an organ shaped like a
pyramid, the pineal gland. This pineal gland, situated in the vicinity
of the corpus quadrigemina and the optic thalamus secretes out of
itself the so-called brain sand, minute lemon-yellow stones which lie
in little heaps at one end of the pineal gland, and which are in fact
the mineral element in the human head. If they do not lie there, if
man does not bear this brain-sand, this mineral element, within him,
he becomes an idiot or a cretin. In the case of normal people the
pineal gland is comparatively large. In cretins pineal glands have
been found which are actually no larger than hemp seeds; these cannot
secrete the brain-sand.
It is actually in this mineral deposit that the spirit-man is
situated; and this already indicates that what is living cannot
harbour the spirit, but that the human spirit needs the nonliving as
its centre-point, that this is above all things necessary to it as
independent living spirit.
It was a beautiful progression which led us from the
butterfly-head-formation, the bird-head-formation, downwards to the
reptiles and fishes. We will now re-ascend and study what will give us
as much satisfaction as the kingdom of the animals — the kingdoms
of the plants and the minerals. And just as we have been able to
gather teachings about the past from the animal kingdom, so shall we
be able to derive from the mineral kingdom hope for the future of the
earth. At the same time it will naturally still be necessary in the
following lectures to enter into the nature of transitional animals
from the most varied aspects, for in this survey I have only been able
to touch upon the animals of principal significance, which, so to say,
appear at the key-points of evolution.
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