The Rudolf Steiner Archive

11. The Formation of the Earth

[ 1 ] The lecture I will give today is a sort of continuation of the one I gave on the origin of humankind. Today we will look back at times that lie in the distant past, and we will discuss concepts that are very far removed from contemporary materialistic thinking. Therefore, please allow me to begin with a few introductory remarks on the relationship between my topic today and contemporary ideas.

[ 2 ] It must surely be clear to anyone who has thoroughly grasped and understands current scientific knowledge that theosophical ideas about the origin of the Earth can be regarded today as highly speculative, perhaps even fantastical. But do not believe that, upon closer examination, a real contradiction emerges between scientific concepts and those espoused by Theosophy, the spiritual science. We must be perfectly clear that the natural scientist is merely able to verify and describe what takes place in the external sensory world and can be grasped by the scientific mind. I am entirely of the opinion that regarding such difficult questions as today’s, even from a theosophical standpoint, only those should speak who are simultaneously familiar with the full scope of modern scientific knowledge, so that they have an idea of how much they are going against conventional notions. However, for all those who, from the standpoint of materialism or, let us say, a materialistically colored way of thinking, believe they can rebel against the more far-reaching views presented today, I would like to place at the beginning of my lecture an example of mutual understanding among those who engage with worldviews.

[ 3 ] It was in the late 1960s that, as you know, a philosophy—pessimistic though it may have been, yet decidedly idealistic in tone—emerged for the last time, one that made a profound impression on a wider audience. It was Eduard von Hartmann’s Philosophy of the Unconscious. I just want to explain what happened historically. Hartmann vigorously attacked the worldviews that had emerged from Darwinism. When the men of that era saw what a great impression the “Philosophy of the Unconscious” made, many works of opposition appeared. Among these was one that had been published anonymously, titled: “The Unconscious from the Standpoint of Physiology and the Theory of Descent.” The most prominent philosophers said that it was the best work against Eduard von Hartmann and his philosophy. The treatise caused a great stir. Natural scientists were certain that it had been written by a natural scientist and that Eduard von Hartmann had been thoroughly refuted. Soon afterward, a second edition of the same anonymous treatise appeared, but this time with the author’s name—namely, the name of Eduard von Hartmann! It was a clever hoax! I am certainly no Hartmannian or adherent of the philosophy of the unconscious, but this philosophy stands on a higher plane and contains more than what is usually put forward by the pessimistic camp. Hartmann showed that one need only lower one’s perspective to see through the matters in question much more deeply than one’s opponents. In this way, spiritual science or theosophy could also express itself in the same manner as those who believe themselves to be the finest natural scientists. — I have said this to show that theosophy could be refuted in a similar manner. But this refutation could probably be provided better by theosophy itself than by anyone else.

[ 4 ] We must now bear in mind that we are dealing today with very difficult chapters and that it is extremely arduous to penetrate these realms. It is even more difficult, however, to find the appropriate means of expression within our language, which is shaped solely for the external sensory world. One must make use of every possible means to clothe the fine, subtle concepts and insights drawn from purely spiritual worlds in vivid language. Nevertheless, I would like to attempt to express what I know from experience in these higher realms in language that is as pictorial and vivid as possible. You will also find the relevant sections of the great evolution of the world described in theosophical literature. There, however, you will find them presented in a more schematic manner than I will do today. I have no objection to this schematic presentation, which also has its uses and provides the intellect with clear concepts of this evolution. This can be learned from theosophical handbooks. I would, however, like to describe things in a somewhat more vivid manner.

[ 5 ] We have seen that human beings appeared to us as entirely different beings in ancient times, that they only gradually took on their physical form, and that their origin lies not in the physical but in the spiritual. We have seen that the soul precedes the physical, that the soul develops within itself the forces through which it can gradually clothe itself in this physical form. All of this has been described. At the same time, we have pointed out that we can trace human beings, as they stand before us today, back only a certain number of epochs. We are now in the fifth epoch of our physical Earth’s development. It was preceded by another epoch that took place on a continent which today forms the bed of the Atlantic Ocean. And this epoch, the Atlantean one, was in turn preceded by another, which we call the Lemurian. And back then, in the middle of the Lemurian racial evolution, we find that what we today call our immortal spirit is actually what first became connected with the human being as he had developed up to that point. This higher element, this higher being within the human being, which outlives all physical corporeality and also outlives all soul development—in other words, the eternal in the human being—had, to put it figuratively, established itself as a spiritual spark within human nature at that time, so that up to that point, the human being appears to us as the union of soul and body. Until the middle of this Lemurian population that dwelt on Earth in times long past, our human ancestors were physical-soul beings.

[ 6 ] If we want to form a clear picture of what these human ancestors were actually like, we must remember that what we call the spirit is inseparably linked to all truly higher thought. Without spirit, human beings could not count; without spirit, human beings could not speak; without spirit, no higher intellectual activity, let alone higher activities, would be possible. So that up to that point we are dealing with a human being who was waiting to become endowed with spirit, who did not yet possess the immortal part, but who had a soul life that was quite different from our present-day soul life. Our present-day soul life is permeated by spirit. If we wish to call the human being who was not yet endowed with spirit a human being—and for the sake of brevity let us do so—then we must say that his soul life was dull, that it was a more dreamlike, pictorial soul life. The soul life of the human being of that time can only be understood if one traces it back a further period of time. In the period I have just described, human beings were capable of taking in external physical impressions and perceiving their surroundings. This perception developed only slowly and gradually.

[ 7 ] If we trace the Lemurians back even further, we find that although the ancestors of humankind were already capable of sensation—that is, of perceiving that external objects made an impression on them—they were unable to associate any mental images with these external perceptions. If you imagine a soul life similar to that which takes place during a dream, then you have something similar. But it is not quite the same. For the mental images that surged up and down in the soul at that time were much clearer, much more primal and elemental, much more vivid than the confused dream images of the average person today. Above all, these images in the human soul were, in a certain sense, still dependent on what was happening around the person. Back then, people were not yet able to associate a color with an external object; they could not yet see things in color. They could not see that an object was green or red; the concept of color was not yet linked to the object. And yet colors surged within the human soul. These colors bore some resemblance to what the clairvoyant perceives when they develop certain abilities within themselves. The clairvoyant sees not only the outer physical body, but also the feelings and instincts in the form of an aura. The physical human being is only a part of the human being. The physical human being is embedded, as it were, in a cloud in which all manner of form-images surge up and down. These can be seen only by one who possesses the gift of clairvoyance in our theosophical sense—not in the sense of spiritualism. The next time I speak about the great Initiates of the world, I will also make some remarks regarding the acquisition of such abilities. All true Initiation can only be linked to the gift of clairvoyance. The abilities of the great Initiates have flowed from the gift of clairvoyance.

[ 8 ] Today, before one becomes a clairvoyant, one must certainly be a rational person. One must be capable of thinking logically and clearly. Anyone who were to acquire the gift of clairvoyance without having first developed the gift of rational, clear thinking would receive a terrible gift. Instead of being led into a higher, spiritual world, they would be led into a world of fantasies where they lack any control—a world that would stand before them like the dream world that stands chaotically before the dreamer. Only when one has become accustomed to logical, clear, and rational thinking—so that one moves among spiritual things as a rational person moves among tables and chairs, seeing nothing special in them—can one recognize the gift of clairvoyance, in the modern sense, as something that truly leads one deeper into the mysteries of the world. It is therefore the case that all secret schools require that the individual be a thoroughly rational, perhaps even somewhat sober person, so that he is the opposite of what is called a fantasist. Hence we say that clairvoyance, the perception of the soul world and the auric world, is linked to the development of our spiritual faculties.

[ 9 ] Human perception, as I have described it to you, was similar in the pre-Lemurian era. But it lacked a deep-seated sense of consciousness. There was only a dim consciousness present in human beings. Even at that stage, they could already sense what warmth and cold were; they had a sense of touch and could perceive certain differences in density and porosity. They also possessed the gift of hearing. The sense of hearing is one of the oldest senses that humanity has developed. But he did not yet have the sense of sight. This was still, so to speak, an inner sense. The concept of color lived in the human soul. When, for example, he entered a region that was colder than the one he had left, an image of darker shades of color arose in his soul. If he did the opposite—moving from a colder layer of air into a warmer one—then a yellowish or yellowish-reddish color image would arise. Thus, those people had color images, but these were not connected to the surface of bodies; rather, they lived as indefinite color images within the soul. This then connected with what surrounded the person.

[ 10 ] But people back then had something else as well. They possessed a keen sensitivity to the spiritual processes taking place in their surroundings. When we are here in a room, you are not merely sitting here as physical bodies, but also as souls. Feelings and sensations live within each of you. And these are just as real as the physical body is real. The capacity for feeling that the human soul possesses today can no longer penetrate these forces of feeling and sensation, because precisely through the further development of humanity, human beings have become more lucid in their consciousness, having developed their intellect and their everyday perspective. But for the time being, what was present in him as a soul has been lost to him. He will regain this ability while retaining his present rationality and his clear waking consciousness. All of humanity will one day attain a state that today only the practical mystic, the clairvoyant, possesses. To attain this state, human beings had to pass through mere physical perception, through mere bodily sensation. In one respect, humanity reaches a higher level, and in another respect, it descends to a point of view that is, in a certain sense, deeper.

[ 11 ] At that time, human beings operated on the basis of a dull, dim perception. But at the same time, this was a psychic, clairvoyant perception. If, then, some sympathetic feeling, some soul-state, existed in a person’s vicinity that—if I may use the expression—radiated sympathy, the person would receive within themselves those bright color images. Evil feelings, through a psychic effect, caused darker images—tending toward blue, brownish, and reddish hues—to rise up. This was the connection between inner spiritual life and the outer spiritual reality of that time. But back then, this outer spiritual reality could indeed be perceived. Only gradually did the senses develop into what they are today. And with this, the intellect—the concrete grasping of things—came into being. The original, dim clairvoyant gift, on the other hand, receded. At the same time, we enter a period where, hand in hand with this development, another takes place: the development of so-called sexual dimorphism. Human beings were not always as they are today with regard to their reproductive capacity. The greater power that the soul had over the physical body meant that human beings, without having to resort to another physical human being—because they united both sexes within themselves—could bring forth a being of the same kind from within themselves. Therefore, the transition in that era was simultaneously one of mutual perception and one from dual-sexedness to single-sexedness. At that time, the human brain was not yet developed in the same way as it is today. Human beings were not yet the kind of cerebral beings they are today; nor did they possess the same powers of perception then as they do today. This is the period we have already spoken of, which is also the time of the creation of the human brain.

[ 12 ] Last time, I suggested that we do not fully subscribe to Darwinism. We subscribe to it insofar as it depicts the kinship of the physical human being with all other physical living beings on Earth. But I also indicated that we do not see in the imperfect animal beings that live alongside us on Earth ancestors of present-day humans, nor of the physical-soul human, let alone the spiritual one; rather, we must see in these animal beings branches of a common ancestor who resembles neither modern humans nor the imperfect living beings—the animals—living around us today. In the period I have just spoken of, higher mammals did not yet exist on Earth. Higher mammals, just like human beings—albeit in a more imperfect form—possess a brain and a faculty of perception similar to that of humans. The beings that had developed such a faculty of perception did not yet exist at that time. There were only beings on Earth with pictorial conceptions, with a pictorial mode of soul formation, and essentially, as in a common nexus, everything that today constitutes humanity and the higher animal kingdom was united in a single species. Insofar as he is a soul-physical being, man was, in a certain sense, at the level of animality. But no present-day animal, nor even present-day man, resembles the human of that time. Now, however, the human being has developed to such an extent that one part, one branch of that former species, has evolved into today’s human beings. Due to certain circumstances, which I will describe in detail at another time, other members of the species of that time have remained behind. They have regressed in their development and have become decadent. These decadent beings are those we recognize as the higher animals.

[ 13 ] I would like to clarify this point and cite the following: You know that there are regions where Catholicism has degenerated into a kind of fetish worship, where it takes the form of worshipping lifeless objects or images of saints. Now, no one can claim that this state of affairs is the same as the more perfect one to which humanity has evolved. This fetishistic Christianity is a degenerate form of Christianity. From a theosophical perspective, the same is true when we consider various “primitive” tribes. Materialist cultural history sees in them the backward ancestors of civilized people. We see in them the degenerate, decadent descendants of peoples who once stood higher. The same applies to us when we ascend even further in time, with the higher animals. They were once more perfect; they have regressed. We arrive at a conception of the human realm that is different, one that shows humans as still undifferentiated from the other higher animal species, albeit at a point in time that lies millions of years behind us.

[ 14 ] How is it, then, that humanity came to a standstill on the path of its development at that time? In terms of its spiritual development, humanity is entirely the result of what is happening around it. Now imagine the room we are in with a temperature a hundred degrees higher, and imagine how everything would be different! If you extend this thought to all other natural conditions, it will show you that human beings are in truth entirely dependent on the constellation and configuration of the forces within which they live. They become different beings when placed in a different context. - In recent times, scientific experiments have been conducted in which butterflies were allowed to emerge at temperatures at which they would not normally live. It was found that they change their colors and color shades. And at higher temperatures, even greater changes can be observed. Science today is already a kind of elementary theosophy. For theosophy, there is no contradiction between science and theosophy!

[ 15 ] Thus, the stages of human development at that time also depended on the entirely different stages of development on our Earth. Even physicists tell you—albeit as a hypothesis—that the further back we go in the Earth’s development, the higher and higher the temperatures become. The theosophist or the practical mystic truly looks back into these primeval times, and in what we call the Akashic Records, he sees these conditions as a reality, just as the average person sees tables and chairs as a reality before him. We arrive at a state in which all substances on our Earth are in entirely different relationships to one another than they are today.

[ 16 ] You know that when substances are heated, they change their state. Solids become liquids, liquids become vapors, and so on. Now we are returning to temperatures immeasurably higher than those we know today on Earth. Back then, the entire material world of our Earth was different. Only those who are bound by a materialistic view and confined to the immediate perception of our Earth can come to the conclusion that this is impossible. Those who free themselves from what is our reality today will also realize that life was possible on this Earth under these higher temperature conditions. Human beings truly lived under these higher temperature conditions, albeit in a completely different way. They lived in a state of “fire mist”; their bodies were a vaporous, soft mass—a mass that cannot really be compared to what we know today. Thus we return to entirely different conditions. These must be further explored if one wishes to understand the origin of the Earth. This origin is intimately connected with the entire development of humanity. If we go back, we find humanity in the company of much lower animals—animals belonging to the lower classes of our present-day animal world, but which at that time had different forms and were of a different nature than their present-day descendants. As the Earth became firmer and firmer, denser and denser, they took on different forms and a different nature. Today, when we observe what is happening within us with the mere eye of the intellect, we have no conception of what it looked like back then. Nevertheless, a world of animals lived around human beings. And just as human beings today take in nourishment from the physical world, so too did they take it in in a similar way back then.

[ 17 ] Now we must realize that for those who are completely unaccustomed to thinking in such terms, what I am about to say has something quite fantastical, something rather alienating about it. Today the time has come to speak it once again. We stand at a turning point in development where an idealistic worldview will once again replace the purely materialistic one. As we go back to those times, the entire materiality of our Earth changes. For back then—please do not be too surprised by what I am about to say—the Earth’s mass was still connected to other celestial bodies in a way that is not the case today. Even someone without clairvoyant gifts who thinks through the physical concepts of our present to their logical conclusion will see that what I am about to say is not entirely contradictory. You need only go back, in the spirit of the Kant-Laplacean theory, to the point where the individual planets were not yet orbiting the Sun, had not yet formed from the primordial nebula; then you have a bold but correct hypothesis. We can also, from the physicist’s standpoint, go back to a time when earthly matter was still in contact with the matter of the entire solar system. Humanity was much more closely connected to everything back then than it is today. In the Akashic Records, we find that during this period, the Earth was in a much more intimate material connection with another celestial body that now orbits the Earth—the Moon. There was a certain material connection between the Earth and the Moon.

[ 18 ] If I may put it bluntly, what we now have as the Earth’s mass was formed only because the coarse material substance found in the Moon, so to speak, took shape on its own. The two bodies differentiated from one another. You can imagine what tremendous upheavals must have taken place throughout all of matter! This cosmic upheaval is the antithesis, the counterpart to what I have described, the counterpart to the great living being whose separation and the associated transformation led humanity to transition from unisexuality to bisexuality. The entire separation did not occur all at once. Reading theosophical literature unfortunately gives so much cause to assume that this happened all at once, as if one celestial body simply shot out of the other. But it is not a violent development. Everything took place slowly and gradually, over millions and millions of years. But speaking of numbers is difficult, because one must become familiar with the methods employed by the Esoteric Doctrine. If we go back even further, we find yet another connection, even more difficult to imagine; more intimate than the connection that exists today between the Sun and the Earth. But it existed in an earlier time. Let us take an idea that will make it somewhat easier for us to illustrate this connection a little figuratively. When you see the Sun, when, as a result of your sensory perception, you imagine the Sun as limited within space—is it really so limited? Even a very ordinary reflection can teach us that, fundamentally speaking, a real delimitation of the Sun is not possible. Does the Sun really cease to be a being, to be essential, where one sees its boundary? It does not stop there; its effect extends throughout the entire planetary system. The sun acts upon our Earth. Does what the sun does on our Earth—do the etheric forces that propagate and make life possible on Earth—not belong to the solar body? Are these etheric forces not merely the continuation of the sun’s etheric forces? Or its gravitational pull? Does it not belong to the sun? Here we see that when we view existence in a more far-reaching way, we can then realize that such an arbitrary limitation does not apply when we speak of a celestial body like the Sun. The effects emanating from the Sun were quite different on Earth in earlier times than they were later, and different from what they are today. They were such that, if someone could have sat down on a chair and looked out over the entire structure of the world—which is essentially how the physicist imagines it when explaining it to children—he would not have perceived the Sun and the Earth as separate bodies, but would have surveyed the whole, filled with perceptible content; he would have seen that, in later times, the Earth crystallized out of the entire solar sphere.

[ 19 ] If we go back to the times of Earth’s distant past, we arrive at a point where what has now been deposited in the matter of the Moon was still connected to Earth’s matter, and where the forces that have now been drawn out were still active within that matter. These forces also acted upon our physical bodies. They were such that they shaped the body in a way that caused it to react to the forces in a completely different manner, and that the effects on the physical body manifested themselves in a completely different way. And in even earlier times, the influence of the Sun on Earth was present in a completely different way than it is today, including with regard to growth. When the Moon and the Earth were still connected, all earthly beings were still in a state that we find only in animals, which have roughly the same temperature as their surroundings. Warm-bloodedness begins to develop to the same extent as the lunar matter withdraws from the Earth.

[ 20 ] If we go further back in time, to the era when the solar body was still connected to the Earth, we find within the human ancestors of that time effects that have survived to this day only in very degenerate forms among the lowest of animals. At that time, human beings reproduced through a kind of division process. Human beings existed in very fine matter, in a very fine physical form, even finer than the fire mist. Back then, reproduction took place through a kind of constriction. The offspring was also roughly the same size as the mother. The solar forces were, at that time, life forces. They overwhelmed the material. They imprinted forms upon the material. Thus, when we look back to the origin of our Earth, we see a time when human beings were surrounded by ever finer and finer material states. Finally, we arrive at a state that only the clairvoyant can visualize, where the finest etheric physicality merges into what we call astral being; as a pure soul being, the human was placed into the earthly arena. Human beings, formed in the same way as the physical aura is formed, were placed into the earthly arena. Forces were at work in the soul that imprinted forms upon matter by absorbing it into themselves and shaping it so that it became an external imprint, a kind of shadow of what the souls were in the realm of pure soul. And now we have returned to the stage of our Earth where human beings did not yet possess physical materiality, where human beings, as astral beings, were just entering this physical world, which at that time was of an extremely fine nature. Now we could go back to even much older states in which human beings did not yet have this astral mode of existence. We could go back to purely spiritual states. But that is not what concerns us now; for we do not wish to trace humanity, but rather the origin of the Earth.

[ 21 ] A few more words about moving backward in time. There, we encounter the human being, so to speak, without any material earth. He has not yet been embodied in a physical body. We would have to go back a long way in time if we wanted to encounter the human being at earlier stages of development. The human being, who is placed on Earth as a soul being, has the ability to attract matter in a very specific way. If one could examine the etheric human being, one would perceive that his soul was already organized. It was already capable of forming shapes. To do so, it had to develop over long periods of time. It had, after all, already undergone long stages of development earlier. These were, of course, completed on other celestial bodies. But now—how are we to imagine such a development on other celestial bodies? All the abilities the soul had acquired were such that they could act in the physical realm. It was guided by earlier stages of development. The soul must have passed through physical states several times already, for certain abilities can only be developed within the physical world. Human beings today could not speak or think if they had not come into contact with physical nature. What we acquire today will later become an ability of ours. I have often pointed this out through a comparison: that of the child who learns to read and write. When the child has grown up, it can write and read. What was previously work, interaction with the outside world, has disappeared, but the fruit, the result, has remained. And that is the ability to write, the ability to read. What we have in our soul has come into being through interaction with the outside world.

[ 22 ] Theosophy refers to this as involution. And when human beings work out from within what they have acquired, we call this evolution. All life unfolds between involution and evolution. What the soul has accomplished in evolution is based on the fact that its faculties have emerged from the soul. These faculties were once acquired through involution. This involution took place again in a different physical body. We have an important moment here that occurred on our Earth; this is the moment when, through the emergence of lunar matter, humanity was able to evolve from a cold-blooded being into a warm-blooded being. This is the crucial point in Earth’s evolution. All mystical schools emphasize this. Humanity absorbs heat and transforms it internally. Myth, which always depicts great truths figuratively, has preserved this for us in the Prometheus legend. Prometheus brought fire down from heaven. What he brought down was the warmth of the human being, not the external fire. Thus, all of humanity’s other abilities also had to be brought down from heaven.

[ 23 ] I would like to guide you to another point that is also very important for the development of the Earth. This is the moment when human beings take into themselves what we previously came to know as the inner soul. We have seen that images arose within the human being, which he subsequently associated with objects. This ability to develop light within himself was inherent in the human being in the earliest times. He acquired it in the past, just as he later acquired the ability to generate heat. To perceive light around oneself as existence in the first place, or better yet, to perceive the objects around oneself in the existence of light—this ability was developed by human beings on a planet that the theosophical worldview calls the “Moon.” But this was not our physical Moon. Once the soul had acquired the ability of inner light, the connection was established, and anyone familiar with the conditions of that time knows that it gave rise to the soul’s capacity for color perception and inner radiance. We must first understand how these capacities are related. The development of warmth is connected with all life on our Earth; the development of warmth is connected with the present mode of reproduction, with the way in which human beings can bring something into real existence. Everything else is a combination; only reproduction is true creation, and that is connected with warmth. Similarly, we have a comparable stage of development with the emergence of inner radiance. Human beings developed this radiance on an earlier planet. It was a radiance emanating from within, just as warmth emanates from within today. It was a radiance. And with this we have arrived at the most outstanding characteristic of the human being in its pre-physical state on another celestial body. Everything that emanated from the human being was itself a radiance, just as their aura shines today. The human being was a radiant being, and the human being’s perception consisted in the perception of their own radiance. At that time, the radiance had developed down to the physical level. It was a physical radiance of the human being.

[ 24 ] How do we obtain our most vivid perceptions of the world around us? Precisely through visual perception. You would lose about nine-tenths of what you know if you were to eliminate visual perception. It is because we have visual perceptions today that wisdom can flow into us. It was different for our lunar ancestors. Light streamed out from them. What radiated from them was the same as what flows into us today through the effect of light. In mystical mythology, our Earth is called the Cosmos of Love because it is connected to the forces of love. And this Cosmos of Love was preceded by the Cosmos of Wisdom, in which light played the same role as warmth does today. The Earth followed the Cosmos of Wisdom as the Cosmos of Love. What inner light is depends on the will of the human being. The human being, who possesses certain drives, passions, sensations, and feelings within, endows his aura, his astral body, with specific color formations. These are subject to what is called, in the broader sense, the will. Back then, in the lunar period, the whole human being was an expression of the will. The will flowed outward and appeared as that which shines. Therefore, our ancestors—if we call these people of the cosmos of wisdom “people”—are the sons of the will. Thus, the children of love descend from the sons of the will. Light played a role back then similar to that of warmth on Earth today.

[ 25 ] These luminous human beings within the luminous environment are also called the Sons of Twilight. A particularly luminous human being within the surrounding light—a shared radiance, an exchange—was akin to the heat exchange we experience today. Just as we today feel a sense of cold when it is cold, people had a similar feeling when it was darker all around them than within themselves. Will was the underlying factor, because will was what, in essence, found its expression in the entire environment. Just as human beings today create through love, so in those days human beings still created through their will. Their will had a direct influence on the entire environment. Just as powerless as humans are today in their creative activity with regard to the physical things of the external world—because they have attained clarity in their consciousness and thereby the other soul forces have become less developed—so powerful was the will back then. The human will had an influence on the entire physical environment. And because he strives, and the tendency in evolution is upward, this will strove upward toward the higher. This brought about, directly from living nature, that which divided the center of the world body of that time into two, so that even then a kind of intussusception had taken place. In a more spiritual sense, the single center became two centers. And we see this separation of the centers realized in later development in the separation of the Earth and the Moon.

[ 26 ] These are just rough outlines that I have been able to provide you with. However, you will see that the ideas are internally consistent. Anyone who strives to think consistently and rigorously will be able to admit this from the outset. I could indeed provide a refutation myself, as I indicated at the beginning with regard to Eduard von Hartmann. Ways of thinking are transient. Anyone who studies history—and not merely its external aspects, for the picture presented to us of the Middle Ages, for example, is a false one—will find my remarks confirmed. Goethe also says that, fundamentally, it is only in the minds of men themselves that the ages are reflected. To show the development of the past in order to gain a conception of the great future of humanity—that is the task of theosophy. I have quoted Goethe because he looked deeply into these mystical, mysterious connections of world development. He used a remarkable figure, the “Old Man with the Lamp” in the “Fairy Tale of the Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily.” The lamp can only shine where there is already other light. I have presented this to you as the embodiment of ancient wisdom. Now we come to an even deeper meaning. Now it becomes clear to us what Goethe means by the light that spreads its radiance only where there is light. Where the gift of clairvoyance is developed once more, there this lamp develops its full magical power. There we enter that time when the human being becomes a flame, looking back on that epoch in which the human being was a luminous being, where the ability to bring light into existence developed within them. Goethe knew that this inner light once existed within the human being, and that today’s perception of light is a later stage of development.

[ 27 ] Before a person could see the sun, they first had to become a being that glowed from within; they had to develop light within themselves in order to meet light with light. Goethe was a mystic; it’s just that people don’t realize it. At the beginning of his preface to Theory of Colors, he expresses this by quoting the words of an ancient mystic:

If the eye were not like the sun,
How could we see the light?
If God’s own power did not dwell within us,
How could the divine delight us?