The Rudolf Steiner Archive

10. The Origin and Destiny of Humanity

[ 1 ] Before Christmas, in the first series of these lectures, I discussed the basic concepts of theosophy to such an extent that I feel confident today in beginning a discussion of the most important question that can exist for human beings—that of their own origin and their purpose. In the last two lectures, I attempted to show how what we call the theosophical worldview forms the foundation of Goethe’s creative work, and in the coming lectures I will attempt to deepen this Goethean worldview from the standpoint of “theosophy.” Today, since it follows on naturally from the two lectures I have given over the past two weeks, I have inserted a lecture on the theosophical conception of the origin of humanity, of human descent, in the modern sense of the word.

[ 2 ] Anyone discussing the origin of humankind today must, of course, take into account the findings of modern science on this subject from the second half of the 19th century. One might think that the findings of science are absolutely certain, that they are something that cannot be challenged. Well, it is precisely this scientific conception of the origin of humankind that has undergone such a fundamental transformation in recent years that hardly any of today’s serious younger researchers still holds the same position as Darwinian research did. Anyone who engages with this field of science knows how profound these changes are. You know that the scientific materialist view, until quite recently, took it more or less for granted that human beings—the whole human being—must be derived from lower animal ancestors, that one must imagine that our Earth was once inhabited by imperfect beings, and that through the gradual, slow perfection of these beings — without the intervention of any other force — humanity gradually evolved from these beings to its present level. This purely materialistic conception has now been overturned by natural science.

[ 3 ] It was once believed that this scientific way of thinking had only one antithesis. Until the founding of the Theosophical Movement, only two possibilities were actually considered: either a natural theory of evolution in the sense of the materialistic worldview, or a supernatural creation story, such as that presented in the Bible. The Bible and scientific research are, after all, still often portrayed as two polar opposites. It was also imagined that the biblical concept of six days of creation had completely dominated ancient times and that only the modern era, which has achieved so much, has come to replace this supernatural account with a different, natural one. In doing so, however, one thing was overlooked. They did not realize that the ideas which the opponents of our so-called supernatural account of creation have recently formed—and from which they have fought against this six-day work—are, even for so-called orthodox Christian doctrine and its adherents, no older than three, four, or five hundred years at most. All those who have ever engaged in the study of these matters in a way that claimed to be scientific certainly did not, prior to this time, take the Bible as it stands before us literally. Taking the Bible literally—the view that what is recounted there should be taken literally—was never shared by serious Christian scholars in earlier centuries.

[ 4 ] We can go back to the times when Christianity first emerged. It grew out of older worldviews. But we cannot go into that today. I would simply like to point out that, in the waning era of Greek philosophy, we have a doctrine of creation associated with the name of Plato, and that this doctrine finds its most beautiful expression in Aristotle. Plato says that God forms the physical world according to his Ideas, which serve as the archetypes. The human body, too, arose from the archetype, the idea of God. And that which lives in this body as human consciousness is a reflection of divine consciousness. The goal of human knowledge is to recognize what God has recognized. In striving toward this goal, man recognizes that his spirit must be eternal, for it is an eternal idea of God; Aristotle, Neoplatonism, Christian Gnosticism—they all live within such ideas of the origin and goal of man. In Christian Gnosticism, we have a doctrine of creation that I must characterize in order to show you how inaccurate the notions were that opponents of the supernatural creation story held until recently.,

[ 5 ] It has been imagined that, over the course of time, since the distant past, human beings have evolved; that they did not have the same form or the same nature as they do today, but that they have gradually developed into this form. Finally, it was imagined that traces of humanity’s earlier forms are present in various lower animal forms. It is somewhat difficult to explain exactly what these ideas were, because they are unfamiliar to people today. What stands before us as the physical human being was not always as it is today. It was more animal-like, and those animals that are most closely related to humans also exhibit roughly the same state that humans had back then, and so on back in time, to increasingly more and more imperfect creatures. That was the view of the Gnostics. They did not assume—as the materialistic view does—that human beings, as it were, emerged of their own accord from the lower animal kingdom; rather, they were clear that a being that was still ape-like could never have developed into a human being unless a higher being had taken hold of that being and raised it up to a higher form. One could explain this quite clearly if one were to speak of it in terms of earlier conceptions. But it suffices to show that the Gnostics’ doctrine of origin differed from what is commonly said.

[ 6 ] You will find this clearly expressed by St. Augustine. He did not teach belief in a literal interpretation of the Bible, but rather conceived of the development of beings in the way I have just described. He envisioned the influence of a spiritual world that brings about a continuous elevation of the being, while the external process is in fact that we were initially physically imperfect beings, that a spiritual influence then took place and we became physically higher beings, that another spiritual influence then came and we became even higher beings—until the highest spiritual influence took place and the human being developed into a human being. That is roughly the view of St. Augustine. He regards the six-day creation in the Bible as a beautiful symbol. He is of the opinion that a view such as the one I have now developed as Gnostic can no longer be conveyed in its purely Gnostic form. He imagines that external symbols must be provided in the terms of the Bible, because the masses cannot understand it if one speaks in such abstract, higher concepts. Therefore, the story of creation is to be revealed in a figurative manner, in a way appropriate to the general popular conception. You can find the same thing in Scotus Erigena, in all the great Church Fathers of the Middle Ages, and also in Thomas Aquinas, right up into the 14th century. And once you realize this, you can explain to yourself the true course of Western scholarship and science.

[ 7 ] Then, in the 14th and 15th centuries, this ancient theory of evolution disappeared. It became increasingly clear that belief in the literal interpretation of the Bible was becoming the dominant force in the Church. We must take note of this fact. In the centuries that followed, people were no longer familiar with it. All memory of such interpretations of the Bible had been lost, so that in the 19th century people believed they were offering something entirely new with a natural history of creation. However, in keeping with the materialistic mindset of modern times, this history of creation became entirely materialized, whereas it had previously been approached with spiritual concepts. The Darwin-Haeckel creation story has nothing to do with actual scientific facts, has nothing to do with what could be researched. A natural creation story existed in the past as well, only it was interpreted in a spiritual sense, so that it deals not only with material processes but also with a spiritual dimension.

[ 8 ] The facts have spoken clearly in recent years, and numerous researchers have returned to a more conceptual view of evolution. But now we have another researcher, Reinke, who has made his arguments regarding evolution particularly significant for us in an anti-Darwinian way by returning—though without having known the old theory of evolution—to the old conception. He speaks of continuous “impacts” of a spiritual nature that evolution has undergone. He called these impacts “dominants.” This is a tentative beginning of a return to earlier concepts. Evolution is no longer supposed to proceed of its own accord through purely material forces from imperfect to more perfect beings; rather, a more perfect being can arise from an imperfect one only through the impact of a new dominant, a new spiritual force that brings about progress, contrary to the materialistic teachings of Darwin, Lamarck, Haeckel, and so on. For those who look at the matter more deeply, the expression is very reminiscent of something Heine said: “Poverty comes from poverty.” It is a rephrasing of the matter in other words. A creation story that relates to the original texts of religious creeds in the same way that researchers did up into the 13th and 14th centuries is what truly reflects the theosophical worldview, and let us now develop this creation story in a few words.

[ 9 ] If one wishes to understand human beings in terms of their origin, one must be clear about what the essence of a human being is. Those who take the view that human beings are merely the sum of their physical organs—hands, feet, lungs, heart, and so on up to the brain—will have no other need than to explain the origin of human beings in terms of material forces. Consequently, the question will be different for him than for the one who regards the human being as a whole. He will view the human being as a being consisting not only of the physical body but also of soul and spirit. We have already seen to what extent the human being is composed of the three members: body, soul, and spirit. Body, soul, and spirit—these are the parts of which the human being is composed. What is called the soul and the spirit has been subsumed by modern psychology into a single concept, the concept of the soul. The confusion in modern psychology of the soul lies in its failure to distinguish between soul and spirit. This is what Theosophy must repeatedly point out. That which, on the one hand, is the soul—which feels, imagines, and reflects on everyday things—is, for us Theosophists, also the soul. The spirit begins only where we become aware of the so-called eternal in the human being, the imperishable, that of which Plato said it feeds on spiritual nourishment. Only the thought that is free from sensory content, that rises to the character of eternity, which is perceived by the spirit when the spirit no longer looks outward through the gates of the senses but gazes into its inner self—only this thought constitutes the content of the spirit. The Western researcher knows this kind of thought only in a single field: the field of mathematics, geometry, and algebra. There are thoughts that do not flow to us from the external world, but which human beings create only from within, intuitively. No one could derive a mathematical theorem merely from observation. We could never recognize from mere observation that the three angles of a triangle add up to 180 degrees.

[ 10 ] However, there are thoughts that do not merely refer to space, but are pure thoughts, free from sensuality, that refer to everything else in the world: to minerals, plants, animals, and ultimately to human beings as well. In his Morphology, Goethe attempted to present a kind of botany that embodies such thoughts free from the senses. There he sought to fathom how nature lives in its creative process. And whoever immerses themselves with feeling and sensation in what Goethe presents in his theory of metamorphosis experiences something akin to a great ascent into the etheric heights. If you then allow yourself to be lifted higher and higher to grasp such thoughts, which are modeled on the mathematical in space, you will come to the great mystics who enlighten us about the soul and the spirit. The mystic therefore also calls mysticism “mathematics”—Mathesis—not because mysticism is mathematics, but because it is structured according to the pattern of mathematics. Goethe was such a mystic. He wanted to establish a world that lifts us from the merely soulful into the spiritual. There you have what the human being does with his intellect in everyday life—this rational grasping of immediate, temporal, and transitory reality—raised to a higher realm, into the pure world of thought. And there you can experience something within yourself when you rise to pure thought, when you can abstract from the thoughts filled with sensuality that which belongs to the eternal. Theosophy also calls this first element of the spirit Manas. In my book *Theosophy*, I have attempted to translate this term as “spiritual self.” It is the higher self that detaches itself from that which is limited solely to the earthly world.

[ 11 ] Just as thought can be elevated to a higher sphere, so too can the world of emotions be elevated to a higher sphere. That which gives us joy, that which we desire, seems to belong to a lower world than the world of thought, but when it is elevated to the higher regions, it stands even higher than thought. The eternal in emotion is higher than thought. If you elevate emotion to the higher spheres, as you do with thought in mathematics, then you experience the second essence of the spirit. Academic psychology knows only the lower feeling. It acts as if everything were exhausted by the lower feeling. But in our world of feeling, this Eternal lives as a seed, and Theosophy calls it Buddhi. I have given it the name “Spirit of Life,” as the second spiritual essence of the human being. Elevate your thoughts to the grasping of the Eternal, and you will live in Manas. Elevate your feelings and perceptions to the character of the Eternal, and you will live in Buddhi. This life in Buddhi is present in modern humans only as a potential. People can already think in a Manasic way at times, when thinking is orderly and subject to the logical laws of the world. But there is also a kind of thinking that wanders erratically, that is, having one thought and immediately another, thus constantly shifting. This is ordinary thinking. Then there is a higher form of thinking that is logical, coherent, nourished by the Eternal—according to Plato—and partakes of the Eternal. When a feeling has risen to this realm of the world, to such a law of the world, then it lives in Buddhi. This means nothing other than a kind of primal, eternal law of feeling. Those who live in ordinary life can err, can also stray with their feelings. But the one who experiences the primal norms of feeling within themselves, just as the thinker experiences the primal norms of manasic thinking, this feeling human being possesses within themselves just as much certainty and clarity of feeling as the thinker possesses clarity of thought. This is what Theosophy describes as the spiritual human being who experiences the Spirit within. This is also what constituted the deeper essence of Christ. The human being then experiences Christ, lives with Christ, and participates in him. Christ is the same as Buddhi.

[ 12 ] When the mere outer will, which is the most unconscious aspect of the human being, rises to the highest form of universal law, then—for it is difficult to speak of this highest development of the human spirit; one can only hint at it—then one speaks of the true spirit, of the spiritual human being, or, to use a Sanskrit term, of Atma. For even the human will can be purified of the personal. These are the three members of the spiritual: Manas, Buddhi, Atma. Just as a substance is dissolved in water, so are these three members dissolved in the soul. Where everything swirls in confusion, the human being usually cannot distinguish what is flickering up and down like a will-o’-the-wisp. That is why the modern psychologist describes a veritable jumble as the soul.

[ 13 ] When that which manifests as the highest spiritual aspect of the soul becomes mingled with the lower qualities of the soul, when it appears as a base emotion, when instead of manifesting as love it manifests as desire or lust, we call it Kama. Kama is the same as Buddhi, only Buddhi is the selflessness of Kama, and Kama is the self-centeredness, the egoism of Buddhi. Then we have within us our ordinary mind, which is directed toward the satisfaction of our personal needs. This mind, insofar as it expresses itself in the soul as Manas, we call Ahamkara, the sense of self, the ego-feeling. So that when we speak of what is commonly called the human soul, we can also speak of Buddhi, which expresses itself in Kama, and when we speak of Manas or the actual spiritual aspect of thought, we speak of the mind that expresses itself in the sense of self, in Ahamkara.

[ 14 ] I have now attempted to describe the gradual ascent of the human being—the purification of the human being from the soul to the spirit—in a book I wrote several years ago, *The Philosophy of Freedom*. What I have just described can be found there expressed in the terms of Western philosophy. There you will find the development of the soul from the Kama to the Manas life. There I have called Ahamkara the “I,” Manas the “higher thinking,” pure thinking, and the Buddhi—without yet pointing to its origin—the “moral imagination.” These are merely different expressions for one and the same thing. With this, we have recognized what the human spiritual-soul being is. This spiritual-soul being is embodied, made physical in that which external natural science describes to us. This spiritual-soul being is actually the human being. It has something like a shell around it: the outer physical body.

[ 15 ] Now, the theosophical view is that what I have just described as the spiritual-soul aspect of the human being existed before the present form, before the physical body of the human being. Humanity did not originate from the physical; it originated from the spiritual-psychic. And this spiritual-psychic aspect—Atma, Buddhi, and Manas—which I have just described, underlies all physical form. Plato also speaks of this when he says that the human spirit must be eternal, for it is an idea of God. This eternal spiritual aspect of the human being is met by that which has developed as forms on Earth.

[ 16 ] Now we can imagine that we are at a very distant point in the distant past. There, on one side of the human being, we have the spiritual-soul entity. I believe that contemporary materialistic thinking will find it difficult to conceive of this spiritual-soul aspect. This is simply because, for centuries, modern thinking has weaned itself away from imagining the spiritual-soul realm. On the other side, we have sensory life in the distant past. How are we to imagine this sensory life? Natural science teaches us that when we examine the beings in the remains of the Earth’s strata, we arrive at a human being of imperfect form. And going further back, we find times when the human being in its present form was not on Earth. Only apes and closely related animals existed. Going further back, we find that even the apes were absent and that only lower mammals existed. Even earlier, there were reptiles and birds, and still earlier we find animal species of immense size and power: the dinosaurs and ichthyosaurs. They lived in a different way than we do today. Then, going further back, we find even more primitive animals, until we reach an era where we can no longer prove that any living animal life existed. There, physical life must have existed in a form that was still animal-plant in nature.

[ 17 ] Theosophy points to stages in the Earth’s development that are also discussed in science: the Earth was not always the solid, mineral ground on which we walk today. It once existed in a liquid, soft state. If one looks at certain earth formations, mountain formations, one can still see how they hardened from a bubbling, liquid state. Even earlier, the entire Earth was in a fiery-hot state, like a massive mass of fire. Theosophy now points out that even earlier there was a gaseous, an ethereal state of the Earth. Everything that now exists on Earth in a solid, liquid, or gaseous state was also present back then, but in a very fine, ethereal state. You can get a rough idea of this if you take a piece of ice; that is a solid substance. You melt it, and then you have transformed what was previously solid into a liquid, watery state. You vaporize the water by heating it. Then you again have before you what was solid and what was liquid in a gaseous, vaporous state. - The entire Earth once existed in a much finer, more ethereal state. Akasha is the finest form in which, in ancient times, everything that now appears to us on Earth as solid, liquid, and so on was in an ethereal state. The solid granite of our primeval mountains, all metals, all salts, all types of limestone, everything that exists on our Earth today—including all plant and animal forms—were present in this fine Akasha at that time. Akasha is the finest form of matter.

[ 18 ] The human body that people have today is, after all, composed of all the substances found on Earth. All forms of matter are found in some chemical composition within the human body. At that time, all these substances were in the Akashic state, and it was into this Akashic matter that the spiritual-soul entity of the human being now incarnated. This was a completely different form than that of the human being today. In this Akashic matter, everything that later became differentiated was still undifferentiated. Everything that later became mineral, plant, and animal forms was contained within it. In that into which the pure divine human being incarnated—in this Akashic matter—all animal forms were still included, just as everything that later became human form was included.

[ 19 ] If one wishes to form a picture of the processes within the Earth’s evolution that took place in these primeval times of the Earth, one must strictly distinguish the duality. Human beings are a duality; they are composed of two beings. Above is the divine-spiritual core of the human being: Atma, Buddhi, Manas. Within this divine-spiritual human being lives the desire to become human. This drives him downward. And as he descends, he forms a shell out of this desire, an astral body. Down on Earth, beings have formed, animal-like, arising from the still undifferentiated Earth mass. These beings came from an even earlier state of the Earth, the ancient lunar state, an earlier incarnation of the Earth. When this ancient Moon had completed its cosmic existence, something remained of it like a seed of beings who had lived on the ancient Moon; these were beings that were neither animal nor human, standing between animal and human. They were a kind of animal-human. They emerged again when the Earth began to form. The wildest drives, instincts, and desires lived within these animal-men. At first, they were not yet able to absorb the higher spirituality within themselves; they first had to undergo a purification of their astral nature in order to be able to absorb the higher principles within themselves. These are the physical ancestors of humanity, of whom Gnosticism, Augustine, and the Scholastics speak. They were animal-like beings living in bodily matter much softer than today’s physical matter, much softer than that of the lowest animals, such as jellyfish and mollusks. These were beings living in a translucent physical form, some very beautifully shaped, others in quite grotesque forms. They did not stand upright; they lived in a floating, suspended posture; they had no spinal cord—that developed only later—nor warm blood, and were not yet dioecious. They lived alongside everything that later became plants, minerals, and animals, as if in a shared astral state of the Earth. The Earth’s astral body at that time contained within itself all the beings distributed across this Earth. This astral Earth was composed of these astral bodies of the human-animals. This astral Earth, consisting of the astral bodies of the human-animals, was surrounded by a spiritual atmosphere in which the monads, the spiritual human, lived. These spiritual humans waited above until they could unite with the astral bodies below. But at first, these astral bodies were still too impure; all the animalistic drives, the instincts and passions, had to be separated out in their grossest form. They were separated out as distinct astral formations. These separations took place again and again. These separations solidified, and from them emerged the other realms of our Earth.

[ 20 ] We must imagine that there were two astral realms: an upper, purer one and a lower, denser one. The upper one, as it descends ever deeper, acts upon the lower one. As a result, the lower one increasingly separates the coarser elements from itself. The separated elements condense. Thus arise the other kingdoms of nature that now surround us. Human beings themselves retain the finest elements for themselves. Thus the entire environment was once connected with human beings; they have separated it from their own being.

[ 21 ] Below, astral matter condensed into reptilian-like animal forms; these were still cold-blooded. They were not structured like, for example, an ichthyosaur, of which we still find remains today. There are no remains of these forms at all, for these bodies were fine and soft—bones did not appear until much later. The spiritual-soul being from above first united with these forms; the two fertilized one another. A condensation of matter took place more and more. It transitioned into a fiery-liquid state. This was around the middle of the period we call the Lemurian. This period preceded the Atlantean one. This fiery-liquid mass is permeated by currents that gradually condense more and more into the later bones; from these currents emerge the respiratory and cardiac organs with the blood circulation, and the various organs of the human body. Everything that is too coarse for the human being is repeatedly set aside. For example, the ferocity of the lion is cast out. Outside, an animal form emerges from coarser matter: this becomes what later became the lion. What remains within the human being are his courageous and aggressive qualities. Cunning and craftiness are cast out; the entity of the fox takes shape outside, and the human being retains for himself whatever cunning he can use.

[ 22 ] This was followed by another stage in the Earth’s development. It became more compact and solid. As a result, human beings were compelled to adapt to this more solid form of physical life on Earth. Human beings could only do this by surrendering a part of their being to the coarser material world. And from this part of the human being that was surrendered to the coarser material world, the first, most imperfect animal kingdom arose. Thus, this is, as it were, a shell that human beings once shed. It arose from human nature. But human nature itself thereby ascended to a higher level. Through this, humanity has been freed from the influence it had received from the lower animal world. We see these last creatures, which humanity has cast off, deposited in the earliest layers of the Earth. They are crustaceans, shellfish, which humanity has expelled from itself. Through this, humanity has become a somewhat purer being. It is like a solution in which a coarser part has settled out. And so further development occurs as humanity once again relinquishes a part of its being to the material realm. This gave rise to what we call the worm-like creatures and the fish-like creatures. This is yet another shell that humanity has shed.

[ 23 ] In the second state, human beings had taken on a form of matter similar to the air we know today. Human beings were incarnated there as air beings. It may seem strange to the materialistic thinker, but those who familiarize themselves with Theosophy will find that all other accounts of creation are fanciful and that this Theosophical account of creation is already comprehensible to the ordinary mind. Because man, with his soul, incarnated in a finer matter—in air matter—it was possible for him to shed a new shell, to give rise to animals from within himself. The Earth had already developed a somewhat firmer skeletal structure by then, and man took form within what is called the fire-mist. One speaks here of the Sons of the Fire Nebula. This came about because humanity shed its shells, which then evolved further on the other side as birds and reptiles. But then, when humanity had progressed this far in this way, having advanced to this fiery matter, it was able to receive a new influence from outside. Just as we saw at the beginning of our Earth’s formation how that which the soul-spiritual human being had shed as the coarser being united with physical matter, so in the period of which we are now speaking—and which already runs parallel to strong states of condensation on our Earth—it united with what we call the higher spirit. Initially, this occurred through the descent of what I have called the Buddhi, which became Kama. What distinguishes human beings from the lower, cold-blooded beings came into being, and with it arose all other warm-blooded life on Earth. Up to a certain point in evolution, there were only cold-blooded and passionless beings; the others arose in the middle of the Lemurian epoch. Through this, the two sexes also emerged from the one. By repelling from himself the lower beings that still live on as reptiles, and then, once he had already advanced to warm-bloodedness, the bird species—through this separation he became ready to receive the spirit within himself in its first form. This is the species that first appears as a spiritual being. During the Lemurian era, humanity attained a condensed materiality; it was then that humanity attained physicality. This is the Lemurian human. And this human lived on our Earth at a time when much of the old fire-matter was still present. In this Lemurian age, the entire race then perished on a vast scale through catastrophes wrought by fire in the form of great volcanic activity. Only a few remained and lived on.

[ 24 ] The Atlantean period took place in the regions of the Earth that are now covered by the waters of the Atlantic Ocean. Here, something is once again shed by humanity: the higher mammals are separated out. At first, human beings still possessed the nature of higher mammals within them. They still had within them what is referred to as human-like apes. These are all eliminations of lower components of their being. Human beings have now evolved to a higher level solely by shedding the lower aspects. What I previously called Ahamkara, the “I,” came to the fore in human beings. In the early Atlantean period, Ahamkara emerged in the human race alongside the corresponding development of memory and language. Self-consciousness became a consciousness of egoism. The early Atlantean period is therefore also a time in which brutal egoism developed more and more. We will yet hear and read of the excesses to which the developed Ahamkara has led. Thus the higher mammalian nature has been cast off, so that we need not regard the ape as an ancestor; rather, we must regard the human being as the firstborn on our Earth. The human being exists incarnated in the Akashic ether, and everything that exists apart from him has gradually been shed by him. Humans and animals have adapted to conditions and circumstances and have become what we can recognize today. Paracelsus knew this and said that man himself wrote down the letters from which his entire being consists. Thus, in the ape we are not to see an ancestor, but a descendant of the original human. It is remarkable that this theosophical perspective echoes, quite fundamentally, a statement by the naturalist and botanist Reinke. He says in his book *The World as Deed* that the ape does not appear as an ancestor of man, but as a degenerate human, as a human who has fallen away from humanity and degenerated. — This view corresponds remarkably well with what natural science teaches us in this field. It teaches us that in its very earliest stage, the human brain—namely the infant human brain—is very similar—to a certain degree—to an ape’s brain, but that the developed human brain nevertheless differs from the ape’s brain. So that the ape brain appears to follow an entirely different course of development. The Darwinian view, however, seeks to support its theory of the kinship between apes and humans through this initial observation. — At that time, in order to develop more freely and ascend to nobler qualities, humans cast off the nature that today constitutes the form of the ape. As a result, the ape species degenerated and developed in a different direction. The ape cannot in the least be regarded as an ancestor of humans. But this advances the development of humans.

[ 25 ] After humans had developed buddhi, kama, and ahamkara, they were able to reabsorb the first principle of the mind: manas. Manas, logical thinking, and combinatory thinking have developed from this refined human nature since the late Atlantean epoch and throughout our entire fifth epoch of humanity. Thus, after first developing Buddhi up to Kama, human beings had to live out wisdom in egoism, in Ahamkara; thus, they had to lead an egoistic life. But then wisdom developed again in a purer form, so that human beings today are able to think logically. They will one day ascend to a higher form of spirituality by working out the Buddhi nature even from the Kama nature and from everyday feeling, in order to then ascend to even higher levels of spirituality. We will speak of this later, when we come to know the stages of development in greater detail.

[ 26 ] Only a general outline of the Theosophical view could be provided. This is the doctrine of evolution, the doctrine of human descent in the theosophical sense. This is the doctrine of descent that is destined to take the place of the one that has, in any case, suffered a significant loss of credibility in recent times due to actual scientific facts.

[ 27 ] To demonstrate that what I have said does not entirely contradict scientific concepts, I would now like to read a few words by the botanist Reinke, in order to show that it is necessary today to conceive of a new kind of “creation story.” He states the following: “It is clear from the outset what a profound contrast exists between the view just expressed and the view and method of research generally prevailing in our science. We generally do not seek theories, but rely on facts. Therefore, natural science would have to resign itself to limiting itself to facts alone. But the facts are by no means available as of yet. I must protest against the way the matter is presented, as if the facts had been provided by zoology, anatomy, etc. If a picture is to be derived from this, it is a fantasy.” — Yet this natural scientist does not yet realize that it is impossible to ever gain a conception of the origin of humanity from external facts. This can never be done, for the origin of humanity does not lie in the physical realm, but in the soul-spiritual realm. Only when we ascend from the physical to the soul-spiritual, when we ascend to a conception that is not of a fanciful but of a spiritual nature, can we once again arrive at a theory of human descent that truly satisfies humanity. It is the task of Theosophy to lead humanity to a theory of human descent that once again satisfies them. The “natural” creation story can no longer satisfy us today. On the one hand, the need for spiritual knowledge is making itself felt, and on the other hand, the facts have refuted the theory of evolution. Natural science will never be able to say anything about the origin of humanity. If the origin of humanity is to be understood, this can only happen through knowledge held in a spiritual sense. To lead the present back to such spiritual knowledge: this is the task of the theosophical worldview.

Questions and Answers

Question: Were crustaceans the first organisms to be isolated?

[ 28 ] Crustaceans were not the first organisms to evolve. Of course, single-celled organisms came first. However, these were not like today’s single-celled organisms; they existed under completely different conditions.

Question: How should we imagine the molten surface of the Earth during the Lemurian era, and the presence of beings on it?

[ 29 ] Not the entire surface of the Earth was in a molten state at that time; only the dwelling place of the beings was molten. When the mineral entities separated, something like a residue remained—almost a semblance of a skeletal framework—that could house entities which had already taken on a solid form in some way. Only what had taken on a solid form can be proven through paleontology,

Question: Does vegetarianism contribute to the rejection that the future will inevitably bring?

[ 30 ] It is difficult to talk about this because, even more so than other issues, this question touches on people’s emotions. Nevertheless, I would like to discuss the matter objectively. That said, vegetarianism plays a crucial role in furthering human development. This is not to say, however, that it is possible for everyone to live a vegetarian lifestyle, nor that it is beneficial for everyone. The question is different when one asks whether one should become a vegetarian than when one asks: What does the vegetarian lifestyle achieve? — Vegetarianism promotes spiritual intuition and is also beneficial for action. At the same time, it is also a matter of heredity. However, I would like to address a common prejudice. The materialistic thinker may have some experience in this area, but it is limited and insufficient. It is said that certain individuals have become weak through vegetarianism, and thus cannot sustain a vegetarian lifestyle. This is both true and false. It is true that many people who occupy their thinking solely with kamamanas—whose thoughts thus consist solely of the sensory—and this includes conventional scholarship, jurisprudence, physiology, or even medicine, where the content of ideas is derived solely from the sensory world—do not find everything they need in vegetarianism. For all those who live their spiritual life in the realm of the intellect—which is directed toward the sensory world and thinks, imagines, and feels in a sensory way—there will come a point where they may break down as a result of vegetarianism. There are very many of this sort. But it need not be so. I have met people in this field who were themselves learned thinkers, who were physiological and historical thinkers, for whom it was not possible for the brain to be properly nourished in the appropriate way if they lived solely on a vegetarian diet. But the situation changes immediately when a person develops spirituality. As soon as a person attains spiritual insight, as soon as they begin to live in the spiritual realm, then it becomes possible for them to sustain themselves through vegetarianism. Then vegetarianism promotes spiritual life, and the person will reach a point where an even higher future lies in prospect. I will speak of this higher future in the next lectures, on February 16, February 23, and March 2, where I will discuss Goethe’s “Secret Revelation.” .

Question: What is meant by a spiritual-soul entity?

[ 31 ] We shall yet see where the spirit has its origin. We must conceive of this spiritual influence within human development as an external force. This does not, however, justify a modern view of nature or the opinion that this constitutes dualism. After all, hydrogen and oxygen also produce water. However, this does not mean that anyone who knows this must be a dualist.

Question: What exactly was it that existed as a human being before the spiritual awakening took place?

[ 32 ] To a certain extent, the human being is a triad: spirit, soul, and body. As we ascend further, we find on Earth, connected to the physical realm of the Earth, the physical-soul human being. This physical-soul human being is initially incarnated in a much finer and lighter substance than the later human being. A process of densification is constantly taking place there. That is why we also speak of the so-called “sons of the fire mist.” We are dealing here with a form of the human being. However, I do not wish to describe this form in a public lecture, because if one simply presents it, it does not look good. The prerequisites for understanding this form are not present. In the “Fire Nebula,” the last incarnation took place in Akasha. Modern physics has no knowledge of this Akasha. What we now have as an imprint is the predisposition toward eternity—the spirit. When we speak of spirit in relation to modern humans, we are speaking of eternity. The consciousness in question at that time was by no means the same as the consciousness in hypnosis or in a trance state. It is present, approximately, during a particularly vivid dream. That was the state of consciousness before the impact of the spirit.

Question: Why is progress supposed to occur through the densification of matter, when we consider finer matter to be progress?

[ 33 ] The general form of consciousness was illuminated, but also limited, by the condensation that led to the material formation of the sense organs.

Question: Is the Akashic substance an ethereal or astral substance?

[ 34 ] Astral matter is the higher form of matter. Akashic matter lies between physical and astral matter. It is the finest physical matter, the very finest matter, in which thought can manifest itself directly.

Question: How could a person be perceived in these subtle states?

[ 35 ] In the time when human beings were still ethereal, it was possible to perceive them through hearing, as vibrations, but not through sight.

[ 36 ] Question: What impact did the influence of the Spirit have on sexuality?

[ 37 ] With the emergence of the spirit, the unisexual nature of the individual being also came into being. Previously, both sexes had existed within a single being. Reproduction at that time was similar to that of our single-celled organisms.

Question: What is the origin of the theosophical worldview?

[ 38 ] In the past, teaching was done through images. Today, that is no longer possible. Therefore, ideas must be expressed in language that the mind can understand, especially for our scientists. One should view these things as a physicist views his own work: as a useful working hypothesis. This will gradually lead to conviction.

When Dr. Steiner was asked to elaborate on the process of releasing the monkey, he replied something like this:

[ 39 ] Imagine an ancestor who has two descendants. One of these descendants is able to absorb the divine spark into his form. He evolves upward and becomes a human being. The other descendant has a form created from coarser substances; he cannot absorb the spark. He evolves downward and becomes an ape.