The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Lecture XXX

[ 1 ] Today, following on from the last lecture, I would like to make a few aphoristic remarks about the development of the different races. But first, I would like to draw attention to a few things whose reasons are given in only a few books.

[ 2 ] The so-called dietary laws in different cultures seem at first glance to be very arbitrary. However, they are not; they are born of knowledge and wisdom. We must strictly take into account that our present humanity is not at all capable of following such things as we want to discuss today. However, they will later provide certain foundations for specific laws of social life. So no one should believe that one becomes an adept simply by becoming a vegetarian and so on.

[ 3 ] There is a certain form of medicine practiced among Oriental peoples in which the doctors concerned place the greatest emphasis on the nutrition of their own physical bodies. Where the old spiritual life still exists, there are people who have become healers in the old way by nourishing themselves exclusively on milk. They are aware that by excluding everything else, they gain physical healing powers, especially for the healing of so-called mental illnesses.* They have their special tasks. They know very well that if they consume only milk, they will develop certain powers.

[ 4 ] Let us clarify the intuition on which this is based. We can understand this deep intuition in the following way. We know of a certain process in human development. In the middle of the Lemurian epoch, the original human being split into an ascending human being and an animal. This was linked to the fact that the forces that the Earth had when it was still united with the Moon also split, and part of them separated from the Earth with the Moon.

[ 5 ] Let us imagine the time when the Earth was still united with the Moon. Human beings were at a completely different stage of development then. They already had warm blood, but were not yet divided into two sexes. With the separation of the Moon, the division into two sexes can be observed, so that when you look up at the Moon today, you can say: Your departure from the Earth caused the human reproductive power to split into two parts. There was also a time on Earth when humanity was directly connected to the animal world, immersed in the animal world, and also fed on the animal world. This type of nutrition will be difficult to understand for those who do not have clairvoyant powers. However, we can form an idea of it by looking at the regular diet of mammals, which feed their young with their own milk. With the division of productive forces, this type of nutrition also emerged. In the past, humans were able to absorb nutrients from their immediate surroundings, just as the lungs absorb air today. At that time, humans were connected to the whole of nature surrounding them through suction threads, similar to how the human embryo is nourished in the mother's womb today. That was the ancient form of nutrition on Earth. A remnant of this is the suckling of mammals today, and milk is like the food that humans enjoyed in pre-lemurian times; it is the ancient food of the gods, the first form of food on Earth. At that time, the nature of the Earth was such that this food could be sucked out everywhere. Thus, milk is a product of the first human form of nutrition. When humans were still closer to the divine in the physical realm, they sucked milk from their surroundings. Occultists know how humans are connected to nature.

[ 6 ] The consumption of milk is an ancient, transformed form of nutrition. Milk was always the first food for humans. In the saying, “the milk of pious thinking,” this is deliberately named as such.

[ 7 ] We ask, what originally caused milk to be sucked out of the environment as it was then? The moon forces in the earth made this possible; they were like a general blood for the whole earth. But when the moon came out, the moon forces could only be concentrated on specific organs in living beings.

[ 8 ] The occultist calls milk: the food of the moon. Moon sons are those who feed on milk. The moon ripened the milk. It has been proven that Oriental healers, who live only on milk, take up again the primal forces that were on the earth when milk still flowed in streams on the earth. They said to themselves: These are the forces that brought human beings into existence. These creative forces must also be beneficial to health, so we acquire the power to promote health if we only enjoy milk and exclude everything else.

[ 9 ] Let us transport ourselves back to pre-Lemurian times. At that time, milk was sucked from the environment. Then came a time when milk became a common food for humans, and then a time when breast milk was enjoyed. Before the time when milk was generally sucked from nature, there was a time when the sun was still connected to the earth. There was sun food. Just as milk remained from the moon, products ripened by the sun also remained. Everything that shines through the sun, the blossoms and fruits of plants, belongs to the sun. They used to be inclined toward the center of the earth connected to the sun. They were stuck in the sun with their blossoms. When the earth separated from the sun, the plants retained their old character: they now turned their blossoms back toward the sun. Man is the reverse of the plant. What grows above ground on the plant behaves in relation to the sun as milk does to the moon, i.e., it is sun food. Gradually, a kind of plant food, namely from the upper parts of the plant, replaced the mere milk food. This was the second type of human nutrition.

[ 10 ] Thus, when the Lemurian epoch came to an end, two races stood opposed to each other: one race, the actual sons of the moon, who bred animals and fed on what the animals provided, on the milk of the animals; and a second race, which fed on plants, on what the soil provided.

[ 11 ] This fact is depicted in the story of Cain and Abel. Abel is a shepherd, Cain a farmer; Abel [represents] the moon race and Cain the sun race. This allegory is something quite magnificent. The Secret Doctrine hints at this in a somewhat hidden way. The Jewish people called Jehovah the divine being who gave humans the opportunity to be moon beings, to feed on the transformed moon food. He was the nourishing force of nature: it flows to Abel, who takes it from his flocks. And it was a falling away from Jehovah when people switched to the nourishment of the sun. That is why Jehovah did not like Cain's sacrifice, because it was the sacrifice of the nourishment of the sun.

[ 12 ] If we go back to the most ancient times, we have no other nourishment at all than milk, the nourishment that humans obtain from living animals. This is the original food, as it still is in the first weeks, and the Eastern healer refers to this diet in the saying, “Unless you become like little children, you cannot enter the kingdom of heaven.” All these things have their meaning.

[ 13 ] Now we come from the Lemurian epoch to the Atlantean epoch, to the peoples who lived in the area of today's Atlantic Ocean. Something arises among the Atlanteans that did not exist before: they begin to feed themselves first of all on what is not taken from life, they feed on the dead. They take in what life has given up. This is a very important transition in human development. Because humans now fed on the dead, it became possible to make the transition to egoism. This feeding on the dead signifies the true connection with selfishness. Humans become independent by taking in the dead. Humans now absorb the dead in its various forms: first in the emerging hunter-gatherer peoples who kill animals. Then come peoples who consume not only what has ripened in the sun, but also what has ripened underground. This is just as dead as the dead animal. Everything that lives in the lowest nature of the animal, everything that is soaked in blood, has turned away from the power of the moon. The power of the moon is still present in milk, which is connected with the life process. When humans consume dead matter, they absorb the dying parts. Everything that grows underground from plants, everything that is not warmed and infused with the life principle of the sun, is equally dead. The root therefore corresponds to what in animals is the blood-soaked body.

[ 14 ] Later, a food was added that had not existed before. Humans added the purely mineral elements to their food, what they took from the earth, salt and so on. Thus, humans went through the three realms in their diet. This is roughly the path that Atlantean development took in terms of nutrition: first came the hunter-gatherers, then the farmers, the lineage of Cain, and thirdly, the art of mining developed, bringing to light what is underground.

[ 15 ] All these things represent what has been turned away from the actual life or productive force. What is dead in the animal is turned away from life. What is in the soil from the plant is also turned away from life. All salt is the dead of the mineral kingdom, what remains as residue.

[ 16 ] Now we come to the fifth human race. The milk drinker continues to exist alongside the fruit eater; the other things are added as something new. What comes to the fore in the fifth root race is what is first obtained from minerals, that is, through a chemical process. This is hinted at in Genesis. What is it that is obtained through the chemical process? One ascends in development, one applies chemistry to plants, to fruit. This produces wine. This did not exist in Atlantis. That is why the Bible says that Noah, the forefather of the new post-Flood race, is first intoxicated by wine. Through a mineral-chemical process, something is produced from the plant kingdom. Wine then plays a certain role throughout the fifth root race. All initiates from the beginning of the fifth root race still carried over their traditions from the time of the Atlantean race, when there was no wine yet: the Indian, Persian, and Egyptian initiates did not need wine. The only thing that played a role in sacred rituals was water.

[ 17 ] With the fifth root race, wine came into being, which requires the mineral treatment of the plant. The first three sub-races were repetitions of earlier ones. The fourth sub-race first developed the new, which had come with the fifth root race. It claimed a certain sanctity for wine. Hence, cult rituals in which wine plays a role (Dionysian culture) appear. A wine god even emerges.

[ 18 ] Gradually, this developed in humanity. Wine culture first appeared among the Persians. But there, wine was still something entirely worldly. Only gradually did it find its way into cultic practices, into the cult of Dionysus. The fourth sub-race was the first to produce Christianity and also the one that announced its mission seven hundred years earlier through the Dionysian games. They first incorporated wine into their cult. This fact was wonderfully portrayed by the evangelist who knew most about Christianity: John. Right at the beginning, he discusses the transformation of water into wine, because Christianity first came to the fourth sub-race of the fifth root race. A teaching was needed that sanctified what had to come out on the physical plane. Wine cuts people off from everything spiritual. Those who enjoy wine cannot come to the spiritual. They can know nothing of Atma, Buddhi, Manas, of what remains, of what reincarnates. That had to be so. The whole course of human development is a descending and an ascending one. Humanity had to descend to the lowest point. And in order for it to descend completely to the physical plane, the cult of Dionysus came into being. The human body had to be prepared for materialism through the culture of Dionysus, which is why a religion had to arise that turned water into wine. In earlier times, priests were strictly forbidden to drink wine; they were able to experience Atma, Buddhi, Manas. Now there had to be a religion that led all the way down to the physical plane, otherwise people would not have descended completely. This religion that led them down had to have an outer revelation, a revelation that disregarded Atma, Buddhi, and Manas, reincarnation, and only pointed to the universal. The next thing is that the wine is turned back into water.

[ 19 ] If the water had not been turned into wine earlier, man would not have taken in everything that is down in the earthly valley. At the beginning of the Gospel of John, we find [in the description of the transformation of water into wine at the wedding at Cana] how Christ reckoned with what was there. But he also reckoned with the future by instituting the Lord's Supper. This Lord's Supper is the greatest symbol of the One who began his cultural stream with this fourth subrace. So if he was the true “Son of Man” who descended to the lowest depths in order to rise again with the greatest power, then he had to hold on to what was there and show people how the physical content of the race was connected with his actual mission. If humanity was to rise again, it had to have a symbol that would lead from the dead to the living: bread and wine. In the occult sense, bread is what is created when the plant is first killed. Wine, in turn, is created by killing the plant and treating it with minerals. When you bake the plant, you do the same thing as when you kill the animal. When we extract wine from the plant kingdom, we are in a sense doing the same thing as when we draw blood from an animal. Bread and wine are symbols of the fourth sub-race. What is to develop in the future is a further ascent from plant to mineral food. Bread and wine must again be sacrificed, given up. In this respect, when Christ appears in the fourth sub-race, he points to bread and wine: “This is my body—this is my blood.” In this way, he wanted to create a transition from animal food to plant food, a transition to something higher.

[ 20 ] At that time, there were two classes of people: first, those who fed on flesh and blood; these were the pre-Christian people, whom Christ did not count on at all. Secondly, those who only kill plants, who draw blood from plants: those who drink wine and eat bread. He still counts on these people; they are the harbingers of the humanity that will be in the future.

[ 21 ] The meaning of the Last Supper is to transition from eating dead animals to eating dead plants. When our fifth subrace has come to an end, in the sixth subrace, the Lord's Supper will be understood. No more animal products will be consumed. By then, it will be possible for the third form of nutrition to emerge, the purely mineral one. Humans will then be able to create their own food. They now consume what the gods have created for them. Later, they will ascend and prepare what they need in terms of nutrients in chemical laboratories.

[ 22 ] So you see that everything arises from deep intuitions. When we find all kinds of rules among the ancient Orientals about what should be eaten, these are not actually commandments, but stories: You should not demand that substances act differently than they do.

[ 23 ] What Christ subsequently kills, what is truly sacrificed after he has taken the Last Supper, is the physical body. This dies. It will die in the entire human race. Towards the middle of the sixth subrace, in the last third, there will be no more physical bodies. Then the whole human being will be ethereal again. It will pass into a finer materiality. However, this will not happen unless humans bring it about themselves. To do this, they must first switch to food that they prepare themselves in the laboratory. In this way, to the same extent that humans no longer take their food from nature, but from their own wisdom, from the God within, they also hasten toward their own deification.

[ 24 ] When humans begin to feed themselves, the foundation is also laid for something higher, namely, that they can reproduce themselves. They gradually create a life for themselves from the mineral world.

[ 25 ] This is the great course of human development. What natural scientists know today is only a small part of the great cycle.

[ 26 ] With Saturn, we enter the mineral age. In the Atlantean age, the consumption of the dead prepares the way for the emergence of egoism. Up to the fifth subrace, the Proto-Semites, the human ego is slowly formed. In the sixth sub-race of the fifth root race, this ego will again reach a higher stage of development. This means that we are facing a new so-called vortex of existence. The current vortex began at the time when the Ur-Semites laid the foundation for the current root race.

[ 27 ] We owe everything that has been until now to the Ursemitic culture. But now a new impact is beginning with the Slavic peoples, which will continue into the future. A new impact on the world is being brought about by a people, accompanied by a certain break with the past. This is emerging as a hidden spirituality from the Russian peasantry. This forms the second part of the coming vortex. At present, a certain culture is in a state of decay and something new is preparing itself. It is preparing itself in the West and will play itself out in the East. But the old must stimulate the new. Wherever we have new beginnings in our time, everything is embryonic, clumsy, awkward. The old, on the other hand, is chiseled out, but has the character of criticism, of decay. From the Semitic branch are born the bearers of the old culture, who are the bearers of what whirls into the vortex.

[ 28 ] They all have something Semitic about them. Examples: Lassalle, Marx. This is now whirling in. A continuation from there is not possible. A leap must now be made, as from one shore to the other, to the spirituality of the future culture of the East. This is a completely new approach.

[ 29 ] The future is initially clumsy and naturally infected by the old. Haeckel is a person who swims in the middle of the stream and is carried away by both whirlpools. The first part of Haeckel's “World Enigma” is positive, elementary theosophy; the second part is negative, destroying everything; that is a whirlpool.

[ 30 ] The contrasts can also be observed in the socialism of the East and the West. The socialism of the West is a socialism of production, the socialism of the East is a socialism of consumption. Those who regulate what is produced socially reckon with greed and selfishness. Those who regulate consumption look at what others want from them; they look at their fellow human beings and reckon with brotherhood. The socialism of production—Marx, Lassalle—looks at the worker only insofar as he is a producer. In the East, consumption is placed in the foreground, for example in Kropotkin, Bakunin, Herzen. You can see things coming to a head when you follow Kropotkin. He immediately understood the principle of mutual aid among animals. Western socialism is built entirely on struggle. Thus, the currents of world development intertwine.