THE
ORIGIN OF THE ANIMAL WORLD
IN THE LIGHT OF SPIRITUAL SCIENCE
Dr.
Rudolf Steiner Berlin, 18 January, 1912
If it was
already somewhat difficult from the point of view of the ideas ruling
at present to explain the origin of man spiritual-scientifically
(what should have been done in the last lecture of this cycle) it
will be today still less easy to speak about the origin of the animal
world. For, if on the one hand the difficulty results from the fact
that everything concerning the animal world is still much more remote
for the human observation — at least seemingly — than
everything concerning nature and essence of man, so on the other hand
a quite special difficulty must arise because according to the
present world conception, an influence of spiritual events, spiritual
causes on the development and origin of animal existence will not at
all be admitted. Instead, we find that in the course of the
development of our mental life in the last periods the notion is
formed quite specially that exactly the same causes, powers and
realities partake in the development of animals' life as in the
development of the lifeless, so-called inorganic nature, and we know
that the greatest triumphs of natural science have been realized just
in this sphere of the so-called pure natural development of living
beings.
Now we must certainly say,
on the one side the great longing aims at a pure natural development
— as one usually says — that means such a development
that only considers those powers which also rule in lifeless
existence, and we see on the other side how a research moving in this
direction thinks to hurry from triumph to triumph — nay, if we
interpret it in the right sense, even does so. Nevertheless, on the
other hand we can perceive how deeper thinkers who stand entirely on
the basis of facts of natural science, and who are also fully
acquainted with that which natural science has brought forward in
recent times, are not in a position to share the opinion of those
thinkers who want throughout to derive life from a mere union or a
mere combination — although from a very complicated one —
of those powers and events which are also present in lifeless nature.
A great part of the thinkers of the present and the recent past did
not take much trouble saying: up to a certain time probably the
development of our earth has principally consisted in unfolding out
of itself lifeless processes, and at a certain point of time some
materials have joined in such a complicated way that the simplest
living beings originated ... where after then the development progressed
in such a way that out of these simpler living beings, in the
struggle for life and in adaptation to the surrounding, so to speak,
more and more complicated living beings have developed up to man.
[Hint from the e.Ed: read the last sentence slowly.]
But in contradiction to this idea many philosophers of recent time have
argued that it is impossible to think that at any time, that which
can be called in the real sense an original procreation or an issuing
forth of the living from the lifeless, could arise out of a mere
union of lifeless matter.
To such thinkers mentioned
above Gustav Theodor Fechner, a man of genius in many ways, belongs.
Because really important progress in natural science in various
regions is connected with this personality, we should truly not pass
by so lightly the theories of such a thinker as it is generally done
today. Gustav Theodor Fechner cannot understand that the living ever
could have developed out of the lifeless. It is much more obvious to
Fechner to imagine that the lifeless can go forth out of the living
through processes of isolation, because we see indeed that the inner
life process of the living beings excretes the materials which, after
having served a certain time in the life process, pass over to the
rest of nature and belong then, as it were, to lifeless, to inorganic
processes. So Fechner can well imagine that our earth at its starting
point has been a single whole living being. This huge living being
“earth” has done its breathing — so to say —
from the cosmos and has perhaps also taken its nutrition from the
(space of the) universe. Out of the entirety of this huge, enormous
organism, which has once been our earth, on the one hand, living
beings have developed as through a special constriction of that which
in the huge earth organism has been living organs only, which thus
became independent. And on the other hand — so Fechner imagines
— those substances which today belong to the lifeless nature
processes were excreted in a similar way as today substances are
excreted from an organism after having served the living processes
for a certain time. Thus, on the lines of this thinker, not the
living came forth from the lifeless, but the lifeless came forth from
the living. In a similar way, perhaps in a still more fantastic one,
the natural investigator Wilhelm Preyer forms his own imagination. He
has proved his legitimacy, his qualification for speaking about
natural science not only through his abundant physiological and
biological research, but also through his publications about
Darwinism. Preyer also pictured to himself that the earth, at its
starting point, was a kind of living being; he was always disinclined
to speak of something lifeless in an absolute sense. He says we have
really no right to look upon a flame as a kind of life process on the
lowest level, a life process which is simplified, and has descended
from a higher level; just so such life processes as we observe today
could have developed in ascending. What Preyer means is: when a flame
is burning, then it seems as if something like a life process is
displayed to us in the consuming of the matter, in the entire method
and way in which the burning, as a fact, presents itself to us. And
he therefore supposes that it may not be out of the question that the
earth itself was a huge life process, a life process that took place,
nevertheless, under quite other conditions than the life processes of
today. And so we see the most curious imagination has issued from the
head of an investigator of nature, which Preyer expresses as follows:
The earth could have been at the starting point of its evolution a
huge enormous organism, the breathing of which we have to look for in
the glowing vapors of iron, the blood flow of which we have to
imagine in the glowing liquid metals, and the nourishment of which
must have been brought about through meteorites drawn from the
universe. This is certainly a peculiar life process, but this natural
investigator thinks he couldn't go in another way if he were to
trace back, not the living from the lifeless, but the apparently
lifeless from the original living. And that which appears to us today
as our life, in various realms appeared to him only as a life shaped
especially, whereas the life of a burning candle seemed to him as a
life formed backwards, in a certain way, so that the latter may
appear to us outwardly as lifeless.
If we must say that such
developments in recent mental life can show us — so to speak —
how notable thinkers standing firmly upon the grounds of natural
science, not only with regard to their convictions but also their
comprehension, do not refer to the earth at all as the glowing liquid
lifeless gas ball of the Kant-Laplace, but look upon the earth at its
origin as a huge living being, in order to be able to explain that
what is living today, this fact can, in some respects, teach us that
it is, indeed, not so easy to trace back the living to the lifeless.
Yes, we even must say that just the (human?) spirits having struck
out in a new direction who have obtained the greatest results of
research in natural science recently, cannot teach us that
natural-scientific thinking has traced back all living to the
lifeless, and that in this regard, natural science would just
contradict what Spiritual Science has to say: that all substances,
and then in general, all life can be traced back to spiritual causes.
It is indeed true that the great results of natural science performed
by Darwin or Lamarck or other pioneer spirits exclude any regard of
spiritual causes, fundamental for these phenomena.
I have already, several
times, pointed out a notable passage in Darwin's publications,
in which this great pioneer points out the way in which he succeeded
in showing the metamorphosis of one form of life into another, and
how, by this experience, it seemed to him quite well possible to
trace back today's complicated living beings to earlier,
perhaps less complicated living beings and thus explain the variety
of today's life forms, perhaps by means of a few differentiated
original life forms. But then Darwin says, in a very characteristic
manner: (in this way) we succeeded in tracing today's various
forms of life back to an original one and in explaining the life of
today, in its multifariousness, through evolution. But Darwin is
speaking of these original forms of life in such a way that he
assumes that — as he says literally — “the Creator
once has poured life into them.” Yes, we may say outright that
this natural investigator, Darwin, working in the midst of the 19th
Century, was convinced he was authorized in his explanation of the
metamorphosis of the species in living nature, by just simply
assuming that he retraced back the development in nature to issue
from the Creator. As we can know from Darwin's whole manner of
thinking, he must have realized at once the insufficiency of his
explanation if he were not permitted to assume the action of
spiritual realities at any point in earth evolution. He felt himself
firm and strong on the grounds he took a stand upon, just by saying
that if we could assume there was life in its simplest forms created
out of the spiritual, then we also could expect of this life of
simplest forms full of such impulsion power, such impetus that it was
able to transform itself to complicated and manifold forms. —
And in a stronger sense, this can be applied to Jean Lamarck, who was
the first to speak about the natural development of living beings to
more and more complicated forms through adaptation to their
surroundings. We see that Lamarck's idea is the following: We
may assume a development from the outwardly unaccomplished to the
outwardly more and more accomplished, because by so thinking we are
not at all in contradiction to evolution as a whole being interwoven
with, and inspired by, spiritual fundamental forces. How else could
it be possible that there is a passage in one of Lamarck's
fundamental works, which we can take quite literally, and which is
just significant for the way and manner characteristic for earlier
natural-scientific thinkers. Lamarck says in his “Philosophie
Zoologique” (“Volksausgabe's Leipzig”, ed.
Alfred Kroener, p. 21):
“As it had not been taken into consideration that the individuals
of one specie must remain unchanged as long as the conditions mainly
influencing their manner of life don't change, and as the
ruling prejudices are in accordance with the assumption of this
progressive generation of similar individuals, it is assumed that
every specie is unchangeable and as old as nature, and that they are
separately created by the sublime Originator of all things.”
Lamarck is
conscious that he must break with the concept of the one and only
creation of all species at their starting point, and that he must
imagine the species, now around us, as having arisen through
evolution. But then he continues as follows:
“Surely, everything exists only through the will of the sublime
Originator of all things. But can we order His rules in the exercise of
His will? Or could we decide the way and manner in which he has done
this? Could not the Almighty Infinite create an order of matter (things?)
unknown to us which lets all that we see and all that exists enter
into it one after another? Whatsoever His Will may have been, the
immeasurable magnitude of His Might is surely always the same, and
in whatsoever manner He May have accomplished His Will, nothing can
diminish His Magnitude.
“Thus honoring the dispensations of this infinite wisdom, I
restrict myself to the limits of a simple observer of nature.”
Thus
speaks he to whom one appeals today — quite rightly —
when one speaks about the doctrine of evolution. But at the same time
we see that this man has thereby pointed out to himself his program
in the most distinct way. What is this program?
Lamarck argues that by
ascertaining through observation all that is of service to the mere
natural observer, the possibility results of imagining that organisms
have gradually developed in a running(?) succession; however, we must
also imagine that spiritual impulses were originally holding sway in
the entirety of evolution, otherwise we have no firm basis at all. We
recognize this by all means as the conviction of the pioneer Lamarck.
And certainly in this case we must say: Thus this natural
investigator has traced for himself his special program by
restricting himself to the species of the outer world, and by not
ascending farther to that which must be spiritually fundamental for
the whole process of evolution. He consigns the spiritual to a world
into which he is not inclined to penetrate, and which he presumes,
from the outset, to be a region of total, unimpeded Will of the
Creator — but he restricts himself to the presentation of what
has emanated out of this Will of the Creator and what issues forth in
the progress of evolution.
Now on the other hand we
must again say, as matters stand today, that it can never result from
the experiences or research of the natural-scientific observer, that
at any time the living could have developed out of the lifeless on
our earth, in the conditions which are available for today's
external observation. The imagination that the living developed out
of the lifeless is by no means a new one — it is, in truth, the
older one. In this regard I have already emphasized that it was a
great progress in natural science, if one goes back only about two
centuries ago, when Francesco Redi spoke the sentence: “Living
can only go forth from living.” It is interesting that
throughout all the earlier centuries before Francesco Redi's
time, it was assumed that not only simple, but also even very
complicated, living beings could come forth out of mere lifeless
matter. Not only was it assumed that out of the mud of the rivers,
something lifeless for the outward consideration — lower
animals such as rainworms, for instance — could develop without
a living germ of the rainworm ancestor put into the mud, but it was
also systematically assumed that animals up to the insects or still
higher ones, could develop out of lifeless matter. It is interesting
that we find in a work of St. Isidor, who died in 636, that it is
quoted quite systematically that out of an ox corpse — that
means something gone over already into the lifeless — that if
it is beaten enough, a species of worms would develop which could
become bees. Indeed, this man at the head of the erudition of his
time not only indicated how bees could come out of an ox corpse, but
he also tells us how in the same way hornets can develop out of horse
corpses, drones out of mules and wasps out of donkey corpses. And as
if this were not enough, it was alleged up to the 17th
Century how mice, eels, and frogs originate out of that which is
already transformed into the lifeless. And the belief that life can
originate out of the lifeless in the simplest way, this belief was so
strong that Francesco Redi narrowly escaped from the fate of Giordano
Bruno, because he was so bold as to proclaim that the living can only
originate from the living; for the supposition that living beings can
originate out of lifeless matter could only depend on inexact
observation, because the living germs of the living beings must have
been already in the river mud if living should originate.
Spiritual Science must add
to the achievements of Francesco Redi the sentence that the spiritual
can only originate from spiritual. And because the entirety of earth
evolution finally culminates in the spiritual, as it presents itself
in a simple way and on an inferior level in the animal world, on a
higher level in normal man, and on the highest one in the human
spirit itself, thus this spiritual likewise originating itself at
last out of the seeming unspiritual, can only be traced back to an
original spiritual. If Spiritual Science is compelled today to state
this fact, as we have heard in the earlier lectures and also in the
past years in these cycles of lectures, and if in order to confirm
further entirely in every region the sentence: “the spiritual
can only originate from spiritual” it says, all that appears to
us as matter is only a transformed spiritual — then it
(Spiritual Science) is today not doomed to the fate of Francesco Redi
or Giordano Bruno (for other things are now in fashion and people are
no longer burned), but suffer other fates. It has today,
anticipating, advocating a truth which will familiarize itself with
the cultural life as likewise the sentence “living can only
originate from living” has done, and therefore man will
consider Spiritual Science as a revere [Printed here
exactly as typed. e.Ed.], as something which is by no
means based on the fundamentals of a real, scientific knowledge.
Now, at first an outline of
what Spiritual Science has to say from its point of view about the
question of the origins of the animal world will be outlined. Then it
will be shown how the comprehension of Spiritual Science about the
origin of the animal world can be entirely reconciled with the
acquisitions of natural-scientific knowledge of the present, for I
have set myself the task in these lectures to harmonize what
Spiritual Science produces out of itself with the acquisitions of
natural science.
Spiritual Science as such
cannot go back to that which Gustav Theodor Fechner or Preyer have
assumed as the original earth organism. On the other hand, however,
we must emphasize again and again that no explanation will succeed in
making it logically plausible, if only to some extent, that the
manifoldness of the living beings could have, in earth evolution,
developed out of a mere nebular organization, as assumed by
Kant-Laplace's theory; unless we had, so to speak, to take up
the expedients of the most recent mental attitude, if we would
reconcile the origin of the organic or animal world with this idea.
Then we would arrive at the method of thinking of the Swedish
investigator Svante Arrhenius, today indeed very much admired, but
not less fantastic: that germs of living beings got planted into the
earth, from the space of the universe, by “compression
(gravitation) of radiation” just — let us say — at
the right time, when the earth was in a state to receive such germs.
Everyone will realize very easily that such an explanation is no
explanation, for we have then to explain where and how these living
beings originated, even if they are only flown as simple germs into
the earth through compression (gravitation) of radiation.
Spiritual Science must go
back to a form of the earth where the earth does not present itself
to us as so occupied and populated by such living beings as we know
today. In a certain regard, Spiritual Science shows us something
similar to what Fechner and Preyer have pictured to themselves by
mere intellectual conclusions (deductions); namely, that the earth at
and since its beginning has been a living being, which contained in
itself gas and vapor, not only in a lifeless manner, as the theory of
Kant-Laplace assumes. This theory can be explained very easily to the
simplest pupil by saying: Look here, by mere rotation something can
split off from a drop of a liquid, if we let it rotate, and as a
little drop is thrown off it rotates around the big drop — thus
in this way we originate a world system on a small scale. But doing
this, we forget that we ourselves have moved this drop by rotation
and that, in case such an event should have indeed happened once on a
large scale — namely, that the planets have split off by means
of the rotation of a gas ball — then a giant professor or a
giant teacher must have ruled in the cosmos, for if we exercise an
experiment we must consider all conditions and not forget our own
part. If it is already impossible to explain from what we know at
present the splitting off of the planets, from a gas ball which at
any time may have existed, it is far less possible to explain life in
a planetarian life without something living, if only lifelessness
existed beforehand.
Spiritual Science leads us
back to an earth which, indeed at its starting point, was not only
full of life, but also spiritualized, impregnated, by spirit, so that
we have to trace back earth evolution to an originally spiritualized
earth being. If we picture this spiritualized earth being to our
senses, as it were, in an image, this being would present itself to
us in its substance in such a way that we have, comparatively around
us today like the last reminders of this original state of the earth,
moving, but not formed, living matter in the most inferior organisms,
which are really not quite exactly easy to define as plant beings or
animal beings. These most inferior organisms could really be defined
as flowing life, for they appear at first as a round drop which
changes its matter, so to say, through no outward cause with regard
to shape and situation — lengthens into tentacles or feet,
creeping over the ground, but has in itself no distinct shape. If we
picture to ourselves these inferior organisms, this original life
substance, then we have before us, in the sense of Spiritual Science,
the whole of the original earth matter, and within this earth matter
nothing at all that we have today as lifeless matter. The whole earth
matter is, so to say, a living but still unformed substance, and
Spiritual Science must imagine, aside from this unshaped substance,
that which we call the formative principle, the transcendental
formative principle, as something purely spiritual at the starting
point of earth evolution.
We can imagine today what
the earth had been at the starting point of its evolution along the
lines of Spiritual Science, by imagining, as we have often done in
previous lectures, the sleeping human being. Then we picture to
ourselves sleeping man — we have the physical body, lying in
bed, and this physical body is permeated with that which in a
spiritual-scientific way we no longer call a material bodily form:
the etheric body — but outwardly, comparatively, in the sphere
of this physical body we have that which is within this physical body
during the waking day life: the living life of the soul, which we
call the connection between the ego and the astral body of man. So we
have before us in man who is awake, the inner mental essence, or
essential part of the soul nature, permeating the external bodily
nature; but in sleeping man we have the external-bodily secluded from
the inmost soul life. The inner soul life is unconscious in sleeping
man of today. It is, as it were, not permeated with a real inner
content, at least not consciously. But for a real thinker it is
impossible to imagine that the sleeping man really still has this in
himself, or that what is living and acting in sleeping man also
brings about the appearance of soul life itself during waking. What
else can we imagine, when we proceed to really logical thinking?
Today we can only sketch it in rough outlines — but anyone who
thinks logically cannot as a result come to any other conclusion —
we can imagine nothing else than that the man, who is awake,
practices, expresses his soul activity through the organs of his
body, so that the man who is awake needs his bodily organs in order
to develop consciousness, and that the bodily organs must be formed
in such a way that when enlivened from the soul principle, they can
be the bearers or mediators of the life of consciousness. But a man
can never imagine that, by means of inner, living, organic action,
that which comes into our consciousness as inner soul processes while
awake can be produced in sleep. We only have to make a simple
comparison, entirely sufficient for this purpose, to discover this
fact.
Instead of the brain let us
place, as the soul organ mediating our waking conscious state, the
lung which breathes and mediates the life processes. Then we must say
the lung breathes only by means of oxygen flowing into it from
outside. But the action of the lung does not consist only in
receiving the oxygen flowing into it, for the organic action cannot
have an influence on the supply of oxygen. We cannot experience
anything about the nature and substance of oxygen from the manner in
which we nourish and enliven our lung, and the lung cannot be
supplied with oxygen from inside, either. But just as we have to
imagine the inner life process as going over into the lung, so we
also have to imagine the inner life process going over into the brain
and other organs during sleeping life. In the evening our organs are
exhausted, because soul activity wears out the organs, and they must
be impregnated again with a pure life activity in order to again be
able to be mediators of soul activity. But just as the mere inner
life activity cannot supply the lung with oxygen, the activity of the
inner life cannot supply sleeping man with that which we can call the
instincts, desires, and passions (emotions) of man. The nature of the
soul life is not a consequence or result of the mere bodily activity
of man, just as the nature of oxygen, which only unites itself with
the lung from outside, is not the result of mere life activity. No
one can escape the quite cogent conclusion that just as soul activity
must flow into the organs for knowledge of man from outside on the
moment of waking, likewise the oxygen flows into the lungs from
outside, just as the oxygen as such exists in the outer world and
imparts itself to the lung, with the only difference being that the
lung is supplied with oxygen not alternately but always, because the
lung does not sleep. Consequently, there must be something which,
combining with the human ego, flows into the bodily function in the
morning, when man wakes, and then works in the human soul organs.
Thus we must conclude that in the life during sleep the spiritual is
separated and we must regard this spiritual essence, as it were, as
something that wakens in the morning apart from our bodily organs, to
act as soul organs.
Consequently we have,
comparatively speaking, in sleeping man a living organism, and
floating over him a self-dependent, spiritual one. We must picture to
ourselves the following: While we are awake, the soul processes,
going on in us — that means the spiritual soul life — can
really only effectuate certain processes, doubtlessly parallel with
the soul processes in the organism. They are effects of the soul
processes and cause fatigue, as it were — processes of
dissolution of matter, whereas during sleep the body annuls these
processes of fatigue.
In a similar way Spiritual
Science reveals that the earth, at its starting point, had really
consisted of a duality, of something not quite like sleeping and
waking man, but that could be compared with what has been, so to say,
moving life substance, as the last remainder of the simplest
organisms are still today, but that which, in no way, have been
organisms transformed into animal or human forms, not even into
vegetable, plant forms. And so, if we have to imagine in connection
with man's body that which is man's soul content hovering
over him in sleep, so we have to picture to ourselves the earth, at
its beginning, hovering over what we can call the spirit of the
earth, the common, united earth spirit. And within this earth spirit
we have to seek that which later becomes form in earth evolution —
in this earth spirit we also, above all, have to seek that which
affects stimulation of the flowing material substance, so to say the
sleeping earth, so that the entire life substance comes into movement
in various ways. Thus we have to imagine the stimulating causes as, I
might say, spiritual streams from the surrounding of the earth,
working into flowing, living matter (substance). At first these
causes created in the flowing substance only such forms that did not
solidify, but after having formed themselves for the time being,
adopted their formless shape again, as the storm whips the ocean and
forms it in various wave structures. Formed life must be derived out
of formless living. The formative principle itself is to be imagined
as a super-sensible, spiritual principle that was connected with the
original earth substance. If today we would imagine something similar
to this way of working in regard to the earth at its starting point —
this reciprocal effect between spirit and matter — so could we
imagine a more narrow region, where what happened was similar to what
happened at the starting point of earth evolution. (Natural science
of the future will prove this). We can still show something that
affects unformed life substance. All those processes bringing forth
our own spiritual life in brain substance or in blood substance can
be compared to the processes which took place, at the earth's
beginning, between the spiritual, formative principle and the living
substance fundamental to the evolution of earth.
Such a thing is not able to
be proved along the lines of our thinking today — it is to be
proved only by Spiritual Science, that by means already described,
for the whole of earth evolution something is produced, similar to
what is produced in the single life of man in memory. By the training
of certain forces, here also mentioned, which are resting in the
depths of the soul, human memory expands, and man's spiritual
outlook — and these powers are the same — the development
of which enables the spiritual investigator to look immediately into
the spiritual earth being. Thus matter and material life can be
penetrated entirely by the spiritual view, and material processes in
their existence can display themselves in such a way that not only
present conditions, but also previous ones out of which they have
developed, can confront the spiritual eye as living memory. Just as
man in the present carries in himself that which has formed in the
life of his soul since his childhood and can therewith follow the
line of remembrance, so also he follows his soul life into earlier
conditions; he can thus trace it back, how it has been not only now,
but decades ago. If the spiritual outlook does not adhere only to
external matter, but penetrates the surface of things and into a
spiritual basis, then something works within the spiritual that puts
man into a kind of world memory, which is also called reading in the
Akasha Chronicle (see Rudolf Steiner,
“From the Akasha Chronicle,”
Ed. Phil. Anthropos., Dornach). Man is placed into a world
memory, and through this he looks back into earlier original
conditions of the earth.
Proofs are therefore only
to be given in such a spiritual way and manner and if these things
are then so investigated we have the means at our disposal to confirm
what is brought to light through spiritual investigators and which
reveal that a full harmony exists between that which things present
to us still today, and that which the spiritual investigator must
proclaim. For this reason, in a popular lecture one can take no other
direction but to reveal what presents itself to the spiritual
investigator, and what flows out of immediate spiritual observation,
while placed by this spiritual-scientific observation, as it were at
the starting point of earth evolution. At the same time, however, we
must emphasize that in such conditions which we have to recognize as
spiritual, the spiritual is much nearer to material production than
the spiritual is today to material production. Today the spiritual
uses the counter position, the resistance of the material body, so
that it forms the spiritual soul-like in man only to those pictures
of the material which we can put before our eyes in our imaginations.
We don't accomplish a densification stronger than these
pictures.
But Spiritual Science is
based on the following idea. (The following lectures will draw your
attention yet on the origin of matter.) All material being has been
originally a spiritual one; once the spiritual was, when it itself
had been creating matter, in a more original state, full of will and
force, than it is today in man's spirituality. Therefore we
have to imagine that what hovered over the earth as spiritual
formative principle was more closely connected in a certain way to
the original life substance than the soul hovering over sleeping man
is connected today to his physical body. Progressing further, we have
to imagine that through the interference of the super-sensible
formative principle on substance, all that which is today called
lifeless nature is originated. We have really to imagine that through
the action of the formative principle such matter, which then becomes
lifeless, has isolated itself out of a moving and stirred substance.
Once again Spiritual Science is, in this way, closely connected with
the investigations of Fechner and Preyer. But such unliving matter is
again seized in a certain way by the formative principle, now
proceeding in this lifeless matter as a crystallizing principle, so
that we have to imagine all minerals issuing, going forth, from an
originally spiritual, living matter, becoming lifeless and then
seized by the formative principle. Therefore, when we speak about
crystals, we can speak today not yet about life, but only recognize a
transcendental formative principle. In another way, the formative
principle was in force in the matter which remained as a living one.
If today we put aside plants, we must imagine that under the
influence of those substances which separated gradually as lifeless
ones from the living one (and which grouped themselves in various
ways) — earth differentiated, grouped itself so that we
designate firm earth, liquid water, air, and so on. Further we must
imagine that during this time the formative principle worked upon the
entire living and lifeless substance, and that thereby the
living-formed matter is exposed to the external lifeless. And while
previously it was throughout only living, in itself, it now had to
permeate itself with lifeless matter, because in the course of earth
development the principle of nutrition — the taking in of
non-living matter into living matter, became important.
Thus we see the living, so
to speak, taking up the nonliving, which it had previously separated
from itself in a certain way. Thereby the living on earth comes more
and more into those conditions which signify themselves through the
lifeless as the elements — earth, water, air, etc. and the
formative principle can act in the necessary way only by forming the
living, so that the shapes (forms) are adapted to the external
elements.
Now we must imagine life on
earth in such a way that in the course of time, by means of the
formative principle, the living and the lifeless are kept separated
in various ways. We must imagine that materials which today are
fallen from the heights and are connected with the firm body of the
earth, were in a medium earth period still dissolved (diluted), were
present in the earth atmosphere as mist. We can absolutely speak
about such an earth's age in which such an air veil, as it is
today, was non-existent — and we must speak about mists and
gasses, which nowadays have been consolidated and united with the
earth for a long time. We must imagine the entire distribution of
water and air in a middle earth period, in an entirely different way.
We must imagine that the formative principle — which we should
think of as purely spiritual — by working living substance into
the lifeless, formed, matter, had to take from that latter the
conditions for breathing, etc. Thus the formative principle had to
create in this way the most varied forms adapted to the old earth
conditions, which now do not exist at all. However, Spiritual Science
now shows that the development progressed in such a way that, in
those times, only a part of the living substance, as it were, was
really formed and that, when the unformed matter was seized upon
immediately by the spiritual principle, a part of the old, moving
unformed, living substance was held back. In older times, when the
earth was surrounded in quite a different way by layers of matter,
which today as it is fall down because of compression, or are present
in the inside of the earth in liquid form and literally lead a liquid
life — that the formative principle was working, as it were, by
crystallizing, into the living, forms which in today's
conditions cannot exist any longer. Let us look at such a state, in
which our earth did not have at all the planetary shape that it has
today. At this time quite obviously other, different forms of living
beings must originate, living beings which were adapted to the old
conditions, and which nowadays could no longer exist. Now that may
easily be accounted for, explained by the fact that many of these
life forms had to die out entirely when the earth changed its
formation. We find (which is geologically demonstrable and shown by
paleontology) that animals have lived which, we have to imagine, were
only adjusted, let us say to water, only coming to its present form,
but still permeated with quite different substances, and we find
other animals, as the saurian species, etc. To be brief: we can meet
manifold animal species (forms) which were adapted to the conditions
then. Aside from these, other forms originated which were adjusted to
the conditions, so to speak, in such a way that they really could no
longer be shaped out of the unformed, moving matter by the original
formative principle, but which were able to transform themselves
through successive generations, and to themselves improve by means of
heredity in such a way that they developed the later forms out of the
older ones. The new ones were then adapted to the new earth
conditions. While those forms which in olden times were so strongly
penetrated by the formative principle that they could not be reshaped
had to die out, those organizations which had remained more movable
in themselves, in which the living was not yet fashioned so strongly,
could remodel themselves and thus develop themselves further on in
successive generations.
With regard to man,
development shows itself as follows: In olden times we cannot see him
in such forms which can be seen with outer external eyes, but we find
him in matter of such a fine, unfashioned moving kind, that in times
where animals were already present, he could have become everything.
Man was the last to descend out of the unformed into shape, into
form. Whereas the animals, which are today on earth, had already
earlier taken up the formative principle so that they had to reshape
their earlier figure in adapting to the transformation of the earth,
man did not prevail himself to descend in solid form, during old
conditions, but waited until earth had approximately the distribution
of air and water as it now has. As late as then a condensation of the
scarcely-shaped matter into the human figure took place for man.
Because man entered out of the unformed and into shaped form so late,
he appeared so that he is therefore adapted not only to certain
specific earth conditions, but to the whole earth. Going back to the
animals, however, we must imagine their origin in such a way that
determined forms had adapted themselves to quite determined
territories of the earth. These animals then got the form, which by
no means is still similar to today's offspring, but which was
adapted to conditions then. But because they were adapted only to
territorial conditions which in certain regions changed quickly, they
could develop only in determined limits. But at the time when earth
was liable to quick changes, man had not entered into a form, but
only later, when it was possible to put formation into his bodily
nature over the whole surface of the earth in such a way that he, as
man, was adapted to the earth as a whole. Thus man could populate
earth as a being which is adapted least of all to external
conditions, and most of all to internal motive powers. Man was, from
the outset, thus adapted to the formative powers in such a manner
that his inner being corresponded with the spiritual, that the
formative powers could work immediately in the soul, making his outer
physical form an upright one, making his hands as living tools for
the spirit, and his larynx a living instrument for the spirit. But
all this could only happen when earth had passed through certain
principles of formation (Gestaltungsprinzipien). Thus man had to be
adapted no longer immediately to external life, but to that which
determined out of his inner being, what was his figure and
presentation in life (Sich-Darleben) — so that with man, the
formative principle determines his figure indirectly through the
spiritual, while with the animal the formative principle had to work
much more into the lifeless and inorganic. We can today still
perceive in animals how they have connected their entire soul life
more closely with their bodily nature, whereas man is able to develop
a soul life which can lift itself up beyond the life of the body.
Let us
look at the animal, how its soul life is plunged entirely into the
bodily life, as it is formed, how the delight of digestion
impregnates the body, how the soul life immediately penetrates the
body and shows itself connected with its bodily functions. If we
compare the way in which man's soul life lifts itself up beyond
the bodily nature as something independent, we will see then that man
is fashioned as he is because the animal world, adapted to other
conditions of our earthly being, is fashioned out of the unformed
earlier than man is. In man, such a soul being independent of the
bodily life could become active only because man is able, within his
being of soul, to keep the formative principle when he passes through
the gate of death, and discards, to begin with, his bodily life.
Because the formative principle has seized the animal's soul so
much earlier that an intense connection with the bodily life was
produced and because the animal thereby had to be entirely absorbed
by its bodily life — for this reason that which is experienced
in the single animal does not get detached (free) from the bodily
life. With man, it gets free; it also keeps a formative principle,
aside from the organic, physical substance; it can form a new bodily
life again after the time between death and a new birth. Only because
being seized immediately by the formative principle, can man's
spiritual-soul being have that independence which enables him to go
from life to life, which enables him to pass his being in repeated
lives. On the other hand, we see that the intense connection with the
form of being which had to be produced in animal between alternative
principles and living matter, brought it about that the formative
principle, when the animal dies, is exhausted in the organic, and
that animal's soul falls back again into a general, animal
soul-life and continues, not individually, but in a general,
animal-like way, in a living on of the animal's group soul, not
of a single animal soul.
Thus we see that we have to
seek the origin of the animal (like) in the fact that that which
penetrates into man later and permeates him in a later state,
penetrates into the animal earlier. The animal is, as it were, left
behind by the continuous principle of development; it is a backward
being compared with man, who is an advanced being. We can easily
imagine how this formation came to pass through a simple comparison,
if we picture to ourselves a liquid in a glass, in which a substance
is dissolved in such a manner that we cannot distinguish it from the
liquid. If we let this solution stand, then a sediment deposits
itself and the finer liquid remains. In this way we have then to
imagine the whole progress of earth evolution as the duality of the
spiritual forming principle and the living substance below. And in
the spiritual principle the formative principle for man is contained
likewise. But for man the formlessness in this living substance
remains the longest. For the animal, the shaping happens earlier so
that in a time when man has, as it were, preserved himself still
above in an unformed, thinner, finer substance, the animal being
below is already consolidated and lives on in such a way that below
it can only get at more and more rigid forms, which change in the
course of time. Over against this man, relating to the form, can be
traced back only to that which is originally in a formless living,
but into which the spirit works as a motive principle and brings it
gradually to the present figure. Progressing further on, we also have
to imagine the animal forms such that they are not produced from a
single animal form; but while here and there certain animals formed
themselves, others remained behind that formed themselves later;
others again descended still later, etc. And then man descended
latest.
It is remarkable (peculiar)
that that which now has been said is entirely explained in such books
as for instance those by Haeckel if we read them in the correct way.
Indeed, it is stated that in his external appearance man is to be
traced back to the animal. But if we continue the scale (trace back
the scale to its source) we see that man at last is to be traced back
to something which cannot refer to the present earthly conditions,
but to imaginary living beings. And just so with animals — we
find those beings to which Spiritual Science points out as
hypothetical beings — also in Haeckel's pedigree —
only these trace back not to something formed, but to something
formless. It is now not possible to argue this further, but it
results from my Occult Science that that which presents itself
now as earth has developed downward from earlier spiritual stages.
That results in one not being able to say at all that Spiritual
Science invents again, after all, only something unknown. No! At last
the earth is traced back to earlier planetary stages of being, just
as man, relating to his present life is traced back to earlier lives.
And going back to earlier stages we find as the starting point of all
life and of all matter, not only a living entity, but also a
spiritual one. We recognize as the starting point of all life the
spirit, which we experience in us ourselves. Thus we trace back
foundations to the spirit, which is something we have in ourselves,
that means to something known, that is in ourselves, while external
science traces itself back to something unknown. Spiritual Science is
in another, different position as is the present hypothetical
doctrine of evolution. Spiritual Science traces evolution back not to
something unknown, but to something which has been there, been
present, as spiritual, and that also today can be experienced as
spiritual. Only the spiritual living in us discloses itself in the
same manner as it does in our glass; the thinner liquid is segregated
from the more solid substance. The finer spiritual in man even
disclosed itself as separated, secluded, just like the finer
substance in the glass is segregated from the more solid one, which
has been deposited.
Thus we must trace back the
animal world to the fact that man, in order to cultivate his
spiritual nature as he has it today, had to begin with to separate
from the whole animal world, so that he could develop himself as a
finer spiritual being, above the basis of the animal world, just as
in our comparison, the finer substance reveals itself when it has
separated out the more solid substance below, on the bottom. Today
these events can be pointed out only inasmuch as they demonstrate the
origin of the animal world. It must be left for another lecture to
explain in detail how the spiritual and soul nature (Seelische)
developed later. Still it must be mentioned that the facts of
immediate sense perception do not at all contradict this principle,
and that it will arrive at the knowledge that progress really could
not be otherwise than that set forth today — because do animals
present themselves to us so that we need to speak about a special
spirituality, only present in man? On the contrary! It will reveal
itself to closer observation that there is sometimes much more
intelligence among the animal world, and that man must first gain his
intelligence, and that perhaps man's priority to an animal
exists in the fact that he can achieve his little intelligence.
Everywhere we look into the animal world — with the structure
of the beaver's dam, of the insects, with the wasps, etc., we
see intelligence at work, spirit holding sway, which makes use of the
animals. We cannot say that this intelligence is in the single
animal. We only need to refer to how certain insects take care of
their offspring — there we see that we have a super-sensible
intelligence, ruling the species of animals, objective for the animal
world, like matter itself is objective for the animal world. This we
can perceive when the insect deposits its eggs so that the larva must
live in quite different circumstances of life; perhaps the insect
itself has lived in the air — the larva must live at first in
the water. The insect doesn't know at all the conditions in
which the larva must live; thus only an instinct, ruling it, can
guide it to deposit the eggs there where the larva can live. Or let
us observe animals such as the beaver, etc., which form with their
organization, form what we can call outer architecture, grown from
within themselves — then we are not far from admitting
according to the laws of external observation that intelligence works
into animal substance itself. When we look at man, we see that after
he is present he has to appropriate, at first, those faculties which
are already formed into animals. He is not so far advanced that he
has within himself that which the animals have already formed in
themselves. That is a measure by which we can see that the animals
are formed earlier and that the forming of man is still going on
after he is already born. Thus it is no proof that man originated
from the apes when the natural scientist Emil Selenka found that the
ape nature, in its embryo stage, is much nearer to man's
figure, than the later ape's figure. On the contrary, we can
assume from this fact that the plan for man's figure was a more
original one than that for the ape's figure; only that man
realizes his figure as late as he enters into earth evolution.
Everywhere natural science
shows in its facts that that which Spiritual Science has to say is
proved, confirmed, just through the most advanced science. Yes, we
could go even farther — I don't shy away from doing so! —
and show how natural science today brings to light, as it were,
something against their theories, which furnishes full evidence for
Spiritual Science. Just if we yield to such results of research as
those about propagation of lower animals through the brothers Oscar
and Richard Hertwig in 1875 (what later on is confirmed many times)
that the principle of fertilization; for instance with the eggs of
the sea-hedgehog (echinus) — can be replaced through the
influence of acids, that consequently a fertilization can come about
out of a seemingly purely inorganic process — it must be said
that processes which today are bound to the principle of heredity can
only be imagined, and can happen in such a way that they present
themselves outwardly, while they have presented themselves quite
differently in olden times. Thus we can speak very well about the
fertilization of the living nucleus of the earth (which was unformed
living matter) by the spiritual formative principle flowing around
it, by agreeing with the facts of natural science, so that the living
had fashioned (formed) itself out of the formative principle, and
that then the lifeless separated from the living which was the
uniform substance of the entire earth.
Contemplating the origins
of the animal world it becomes clear to us that in truth the entire
earthly existence reveals itself in such a way that we can understand
it only along the lines of Goethe, who has said, but only by way of a
hint, in such a way that results concerning the origin of man and
animal, have reality for the spiritual researcher. For if we turn our
gaze to the whole world, by what means, in truth, does all that which
surrounds us gain its real worth, its value? Only, as Goethe says,
through mirroring at last in a human soul. For Spiritual Science the
natural earth process shows itself really progressing from the oldest
forms to the youngest ones, in such a way that everything is composed
towards presenting man as the flower of the earth form — as
that which finally must be brought forth out of the earth process, as
likewise blossom or fruit is brought forth, finally, out of the
plant. Thus from the contemplation of the origin of the animal world
as a fundamental conviction of spiritual-scientific knowledge,
results what we can consider in the following words, enlightening the
human being, awakening the consciousness of the dignity of man, which
is built up on the basis of every other being (alles uebrigen
Daseins), and at the same time really imposing on us a
responsibility: because we could become man only because the whole
rest of earth evolution was aimed at us, we must prove ourselves
worthy of this earth by endeavoring to progress from one stage of
perfection to another: for evolution shows us that it is aiming at
the shape of perfection of man. And that imposes on us the obligation
that binds us not to stand still, but to move upwards to more and
more sublime forming of spiritual life. This spiritual life which man
carries in him today could be built up only on the basis of what is
lower by pushing off what is material. So we must likewise assume
that we must push off and leave to lower elements that which we carry
in us today in order to develop a still higher spiritual life in us.
Considering this, we can say that it is true for man, but also
establishes what follows as his highest duty:
The elements let permeate themselves
By forming spirit,
They must receive
The last impulse of power of the spirit;
To clothe the human being
Into spirit form and soul life!
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