The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Anthroposophy IV

[ 1 ] Yesterday we spoke about the various currents of force that shape the human organism and give it its form in such a way that this form must appear to us to be explainable. We have seen how it becomes strikingly clear that the heart and the eye must look exactly as they do when we come to know the formative forces. As you have seen, we have traced and composed what takes place supersensibly in the human organism to bring the sensory image into being, consisting of currents from left to right, from right to left, from top to bottom and from bottom to top, from front to back and vice versa.

[ 2 ] Now someone might say: We’re going to trap you in your own words! When you speak of these currents—from right to left, top to bottom, front to back—you are not explaining a very significant phenomenon in the human organism; you are not explaining the phenomenon that lies in the following: In humans, there are organs that are precisely symmetrical, identical on the left and right, and other organs that are asymmetrical—the heart, liver, stomach, and so on. One might object that we could, if necessary, understand the human organism from your currents if it were constructed entirely asymmetrically—if, just as it looks different from bottom to top and from front to back, it also looked different from left to right.

[ 3 ] One might object to this. But it would be a short-sighted objection. For, as we have already indicated, that which flows from left to right and from right to left is precisely what gives rise to the physical body and the etheric body. Thus, the physical body and the etheric body flow in the direction in which the human being is symmetrically constructed; it is precisely in this direction, where the physical body and the etheric body flow, that the human being is symmetrically constructed. Now, however, let us recall what spiritual scientific research says about this anthroposophical fact and the anthroposophical explanation that these currents exist, and let us ask ourselves whether we have any way of making it understandable that everything must be as it is.

[ 4 ] Spiritual scientific research shows us that the human physical body is a very ancient entity originating from ancient Saturn, that the etheric body was added on the Sun, that the astral body was added on the Moon, and that the ego was added only on Earth. Now we may ask ourselves: What was the original structure of the human physical body when it was first formed on ancient Saturn? Asymmetrical, of course, for it had to function in a direction corresponding to the left-to-right orientation of the body today. What was the structure of the etheric body when it was first formed on the Sun? It was asymmetrical, for it had to be formed in the direction that today corresponds to the right-to-left orientation in humans. But now the development continues. It does not stop at the old solar influence, but the lunar influence is now added. There the physical body develops further; there its form is further shaped. If this lunar influence had not come, then the human being would indeed have remained a one-sided, asymmetrical being in regard to his physical body. Now, however, the formation of this physical body continued on the Moon, and everything else continued on Earth. Something therefore had to occur that would alter the entire earlier formation, making it something entirely different. A reversal, so to speak, a change in direction, had to take place. What was to happen to avoid this one-sidedness had to be brought about from the other side. That is to say, while the direction imprinted on the formation of the physical body from Saturn runs from left to right, this now had to be balanced out again by a formation from right to left. How did this come about?

[ 5 ] In earlier lectures, I told you that even during the ancient Lunar Age, the Sun had separated from the Moon, and that the forces were now acting from the outside, no longer from the same side, from the body of the Moon. And so it was also with the etheric body as its formation progressed. What had become of the physical body by the time of the ancient Moon era was received by the side that now came from the external Sun. Yes, but then we cannot understand again, one might say, why—since this other side was formed so much later—it is not much smaller than the other side, why the two sides are exactly symmetrical.

[ 6 ] In this regard, recall something else I have told you. Certain beings who were more highly developed had to separate themselves from the old Moon and from the Earth in order to exert a stronger influence. Precisely in order to exert stronger effects in the formation from right to left than those exerted on Saturn, these beings had to find another, higher arena. For they did not have it as easy as the Saturn beings when the latter had unilaterally created the physical human body. They already had to overcome what had existed up to that point in evolution. The entire formative process was already at a standstill. Therefore, they had to be stronger; they had to choose a stage outside the Earth, on the Sun. This strengthened the power, and the other side was made equal to the first side. The physical body became a symmetrical structure.

[ 7 ] Thus, if you are patient, you will find that everything said in the course of the theosophical lectures is confirmed down to the smallest detail. The formative forces could be traced right down to the individual human organs. Of course, it would be going too far if I were to explain, for example, the earlobe to you in these sketchy lectures, but it would be possible.

[ 8 ] If you recall what was said yesterday: that currents flow from front to back, and that these are the effects of the sensory body—the outflow of the sensory body into the human organism—whereas the currents of the sensory soul flow from back to front, we thus have two currents acting against each other in one direction: from front to back and from back to front. How, then, should we imagine that the currents of the sensory body flowing from front to back and the currents of the sensory soul flowing from back to front act upon the human organism? We could illustrate this with a brief sketch:

[ 9 ] As I said, the physical body, the etheric body, and the main part of the astral body were already there, and now those currents come—originating from the sensory body—and penetrate the human organism from front to back. And they work in such a way that they form all kinds of organs within the human organism, within what is already there. Now, let us assume that the feeling soul, in turn, works its way into the organism from back to front. This work is an inner one, precisely because it is the feeling soul. At the front, the currents will accumulate. They will accumulate in such a way that, when they penetrate into the physical organism, they will lay themselves over what they form there. There the currents of the soul of sensation flow forward, and where the physical body is bounded, they penetrate. While the currents of the sensory body penetrate from the outside to the inside—for the sensory body is, after all, on the outside—the currents of the sensory soul go from the inside to the outside. So there must be some openings at that point; some holes must be drilled. You have certain currents going from back to front, and you have certain currents going from front to back. The currents flowing from back to front originate from the soul of sensation, from something inner; [the currents flowing from front to back] penetrate into the physical organism.

[ 10 ] If you look at this sketch, you will see a schematic side view of a human face: at the front are the currents that penetrate the sensory organs—the organs of sight, smell, and taste—and, moving from back to front, the formative forces that overlay the brain. You have viewed the schematic structure of the human head from the side.

[ 11 ] So we can say: If what spiritual science says is true, then this human head cannot actually look any different from the way it really does. Where, then, is the proof for what spiritual science claims? Spiritual science shows: If a human head was ever to come into being, it would have to look like this. — Ask the human head once, does it look like this? Yes, it does! There you have the confirmation, the proof for this, which is presented to us by the world of appearances itself.

[ 12 ] Or consider another fact. The work of the sensory body is directed inward, while the work of the sensory soul moves from the inside out, but first becomes blocked. It does not reach the outside; it remains, so to speak, blocked within the physical brain body. It cannot escape; it emerges only at the points where something meets it through the holes drilled into it from the front. There the activity of the soul of feeling emerges; there it steps out. So we have a part of our inner life that pours outwards as the soul of feeling. The soul of feeling is capable of this.

[ 13 ] The intellectual soul is incapable of this. It, too, rests within; it must behave in the same way in its effects. It remains entirely within. It cannot go outward at all, for no currents from the outside meet it. Therefore, human thinking takes place within; it cannot escape. Human beings must think within themselves. Things do not think for them, nor do they present thoughts to them from the outside; rather, they must bring their thoughts to the things. This is the great mystery, one might say, of the relationship between human thought and the external world. No thoughts come to a person through the sense organs; so that, if the sense organs themselves have an irregularity, sensory illusions easily occur. But while in normal life the senses cannot err, the mind, which cannot establish a relationship with things, can err. It is the first part of the human being that can err, because its activity is confined within the brain, because its activity does not manifest outwardly. What follows from this? It follows that it is entirely impossible for a person to have thoughts about the external world and to form correct ideas about it unless they possess within themselves the capacity to allow correct thoughts to arise. Never—as you can see from this—could the external world give a person correct thoughts if correct thoughts did not arise within him. It can give him correct sensory perceptions. But sensory perceptions cannot think. Thought, however, is subject to error, and a person must have the power within himself to ensure the correctness of thought.

[ 14 ] For those who wish to reflect, this fact alone shows that if true thoughts are to arise in human beings about the things of the external world, yet cannot come into contact with these things in this present life, this points to a pre-earthly existence of the human being. Just think: Human beings are meant to form true thoughts about the wisdom of the world, yet they cannot reach it with their thoughts. What flows through things in the outside world as wisdom must also arise within them. And there is a boundary between the two; the two cannot come together at all. They must therefore have once been together! That was in those ancient times when the human ego had not yet held back these currents flowing from above to below, but allowed them to pass freely. You must therefore necessarily conclude that human beings must once have been organized differently, that what is now thought in the brain was once, like the sensory perception of the eye, connected to the external world, so that human beings could look at their thoughts.

[ 15 ] What does that mean: that people used to see what we can now only imagine? It means they possessed clairvoyance. But since it is precisely the ego that has separated human beings from that ancient form of clairvoyance, the ego did not yet exist back then. So we must call it a form of clairvoyance that has not yet been illuminated by the ego, that is still twilight-like. And we can practically reconstruct the very word we used for the old clairvoyance: human beings must have possessed a twilight-like clairvoyance. They must have gone through states in the past where they possessed a twilight-like clairvoyance. |

[ 16 ] Once again, it is our present organization that shows us that in times past, human beings lived with a different organization. If what has been said is true, then something very important for practical life follows from this. It follows that, for all conditions of the sensory world, sensory perception—apart from sensory illusions—is something that can express the truth. For in regard to sensory perception, human beings stand in a direct relationship to the external world, in direct contact with the external world. It also follows that a person can know anything about what is within them only through the power of their intellect. For example, when the “I” flows inward, it is, of course, within. So when a person applies their thinking to the “I,” it is quite natural that this thinking about the “I”—because the “I” is within—is capable of determining something about this “I.” You have seen this in Dr. Unger’s lectures. And now you will also be able to locate the process. It is the encounter of the intellectual soul with the “I” that generates pure thinking, thinking directed inward. And you will understand that this thinking, which grasps itself, cannot be subject to error like that thinking which wanders about out in the world and seeks to draw judgments from things. For this thinking can only go so far in reflecting on the external world as it can first find within itself the concepts, the truth about external things. Man must hold up the concepts of things as mirror images to the things themselves. The things themselves can provide only the sensory aspect. Man must allow the concepts of things, the thoughts of things, to rise within him from a proper disposition toward truth. About what, then, do we have a judgment in the external world? In truth, human beings have a judgment only about that in the external world which first presents itself to their senses. About what eludes the senses, the senses themselves can decide nothing. What, then, is it actually in human beings that appears solely and exclusively in its truth? In human beings—and also in the other beings of nature—the only thing that appears in its truth on the physical plane is what the senses can actually perceive. As soon as something eludes the senses in their immediate presence, no judgment can be made about the matter from the physical plane. For at that moment, the intellect, if it is not guided and directed by inner correctness or a sense of truth, will necessarily fall into all manner of errors.

[ 17 ] I would rather explain this to you using an example. I would like to present two teachings to you. You are familiar with one from spiritual scientific research: the teaching regarding the forms humanity has undergone in earlier states of existence, through the Atlantean and Lemurian periods and so on, up to the ancient Moon, Sun, and Saturn epochs. Here, spiritual scientific research shows you the states humanity has passed through. And today we have seen an example of how wonderfully comprehensible what the senses perceive becomes to us when we truly make this doctrine of human evolution our own and apply it to the external world. And you can become more and more convinced of how striking it is that everything external provides confirmation for what spiritual scientific research establishes from the facts of the spiritual world.

[ 18 ] Let us now consider, by way of contrast, sensory research—the sensory theory of evolution—which has only recently come into its own. Here we see, above all, that an important law has been established, one I have mentioned frequently: the fundamental law of biogenetics, which describes the external facts in such a way that the human being, in its embryonic state, briefly passes through all those forms that resemble certain animal figures; in certain stages, it resembles a small fish, and so on. One might say that he repeats the various forms of the animal kingdom. Now you all know that, especially during the period when this theory of evolution had run amok, it was concluded from this factual world that human beings had indeed passed through these forms in a previous world, forms that repeatedly appear in their embryonic state. One might say in response to this fact: It was truly a blessing for humanity that this observation remained hidden through the care of the gods until the time when—since things almost always overlap—it could undergo correction through spiritual science, almost simultaneously after it had been established in its wilder forms. — What the human being goes through up to the point where he appears on the physical plane for sensory perception was veiled by the gods and could not be observed. For if it had been observed even earlier, the human being might have formed even more erroneous concepts about it. The facts are, of course, correct, for they are observed through the senses. But when it comes to judging them, then what comes into play is the power of the intellectual soul. This cannot grasp what cannot be seen by the senses. Therefore, if it does not possess the inner capacity for truth, it is necessarily subject to error. And here we have a striking example of how the power of judgment, which comes from the intellectual soul, can sail straight into error.

[ 19 ] What does the fact that, at a certain stage of its embryonic development, the human being resembles a small fish actually show? This fact shows that the human being has no use for the fish-like form, that it had to cast it off before entering into its human existence. And the next embryonic form is, in turn, one that humans had to shed because it does not belong to them, just as humans had to shed all animal forms because they do not belong to them. Humans could not have become human if they had ever appeared on Earth in a form such as these animal forms. They had to separate themselves from them precisely so that they could become human. If you follow these thoughts correctly, you will also arrive at a correct judgment. What do the facts show when, for example, the human being in the embryonic stage looks like a little fish? These facts show that he has never resembled a little fish in the course of his lineage, that he has precisely cast off the fish form in the course of his development; he could not use it because he was not allowed to resemble it. Now consider all the other successive forms that modern science shows you in the forms of embryonic life. What do these forms reveal? They reveal everything that the human being was not in prehistory, everything that he had to cast out of himself. They reveal all those images to which he has never resembled. Thus, through embryology, one can truly learn how the human being never looked in prehistory. All the things that human beings did not go through, but which they expelled, can be learned through this. But if one draws the conclusion from this that human beings are descended from all of this, that they went through it in order to reach their present stage of development, then one stands on the same ground as someone who might say: Here stands the son, here the father. If I compare the two, I will never believe that the son descends from the father. I will believe that the son descends from himself, or the father from the son. It is precisely the reverse order of evolution that has been assumed by sailing into error, because the intellect has truly proven quite unsuited to truly thinking through these facts of reality. Certainly, these images of the past are extraordinarily important to us, because they show us exactly what we never looked like.

[ 20 ] But this can be seen much more clearly in something else. It can be seen in the realms that are presented to us through the external sensory world itself, which do not elude us. For all these forms are, after all, also given to us in the external world. One can observe them through what might be called ordinary, correctly applied human perception. As long as people relied solely on this observation—as long as they applied their intellect not to what is hidden from sensory perception, but to what lies spread out before it—they did not arrive at that false judgment. Of course, back then people did not judge their ancestry through reason, but rather through their natural, straightforward sense of truth. They looked at the ape and felt that peculiar sensation that every sound mind feels when looking at an ape, and which can be compared to nothing other than a certain sense of shame. And this sense of shame was truer than what the erring intellect later claimed. In this sense of shame lay the emotional judgment that the ape is actually a being that has fallen away from the human stream, a being that has been left behind, that it descends from the human line and had to be separated out. So the feeling was that man could only have reached his present level by first having to separate from himself that which has become the present form of the ape. Had he retained it, he could never have become human. This lies in the natural, healthy feeling. Then these matters were investigated by the intellect, and through the intellect the error became apparent: that humans claimed the human form originated from the ape lineage! That is an error. The more you reflect, the more you will find how profoundly justified is precisely what has just been said. That man is descended from the ape is an error, which can already become clear to you from something quite ordinary.

[ 21 ] Suppose you regard those aspects of human nature that are directly accessible to your own perception—that is, what you observe in yourself—or suppose you regard that aspect of human nature which you can observe in other people as, in turn, what is given to sensory observation. Since two currents now flow into one another within the human being—the current of the sensory body flowing from front to back and the current of the sensory soul flowing from back to front— we must distinguish, in what appears to us, so to speak, in a human being when we stand before them, between what acts from front to back as the current of the sensory body, and what acts from back to front as the current of the sensory soul. Let us look into a human being’s face from this perspective. Insofar as we perceive the human being through the senses, the image is naturally correct. We cannot be mistaken about this; that is what sensory observation tells us. But now the human intellect comes into play, albeit still at a subconscious level. And here it immediately errs in a truly classic example. For how does it regard the human face in terms of its formative powers? It regards it as something that is somehow constructed from the outside. In truth, what we see in the human face is built up from the inside out by the feeling soul. And we make a false judgment when we look into a person’s face and say that it is at all an external body. We must say: What the senses see here is the outer image of the soul of feeling—indeed, of the soul itself—acting outwardly. If you interpret the human face as a soul, and divert your attention from the idea that it might be a body, then you have the correct judgment. - Here you have the tremendous deception: you look at a human face, the image of a soul, and you take it for a body by looking into the image of the soul—only the image of the soul, of course. - That is precisely the fundamentally false view; it shows how, as soon as human judgment comes into play, people misinterpret things. Human beings can only perceive the outer images correctly when they understand them in the right way, when they speak of the human face as the image of the soul, and that everything leads to a false explanation—whatever one can learn about this human face from the mere forces that come into play as forces of the physical or etheric nature. For this human face must be interpreted from the forces of the soul itself—the visible from the invisible in this case. You will be able to see this very clearly in spiritual science, the deeper you penetrate it: that it is a high school of thinking, and that the chaotic thinking that dominates all circles today—and most of all the scientific circles—must cease. It may therefore sometimes be taxing for you to hear all that is said here, particularly with regard to the thoughts you must form in the process. But at the same time, spiritual science is also the highest school of logical thinking, because it compels us to interpret the things of the world correctly. And we must also correctly interpret certain phenomena that lead us beyond the realm of the individual’s anthroposophy into the realm of the anthroposophy of all humanity.

[ 22 ] Let us look back once more at what we have called the sense of sound, and at the sense of concepts or imagination, and ask ourselves, with regard to human development on Earth: Did human beings develop in such a way that the sense of sound arose first, or did the sense of concepts or imagination arise first? — We have actually accomplished a great deal if we can look into human development in this lower realm in such a way that we can answer the question: Did human beings first learn to understand words, or did they first learn to perceive and comprehend the images that come to them? This question actually belongs only marginally to the realm of spiritual science, for anyone can answer it by observing how a child learns to speak and to perceive thoughts. Everyone knows that a child first learns to speak and only then to perceive thoughts. Language is the prerequisite for the perception of thoughts. Why is this so? For the simple reason that the sense of sound is the prerequisite for the sense of imagination. The child learns to speak because it can hear, because it can listen to what the sense of sound can perceive, and speaking itself is then mere imitation. That is why you will also find that the child always imitates speech sounds long before it understands anything that is already a concept. Observe closely, and you will see that this is the case: first the sense of sound develops, and only on the basis of the sense of sound does the sense of concept develop. The sense of sound is thus the ability not only to perceive sounds, but to perceive what we call speech sounds. And this raises the question for us: If, in the course of their development, human beings have become capable of perceiving sounds and, as a result, have become capable of acquiring language, how must this have happened? How must it have come about that human beings acquired language in the course of their development?

[ 23 ] We need to be clear about one thing here. If, then, human beings were to learn to speak—not merely to hear, but to speak—it was necessary that something should not only approach them from the outside and be perceived by them, but that something within them should follow the same path as the currents of the sensory soul do when they move from back to front. Something like this was necessary. So it had to come about in human development that the soul of sensation was permeated by a current acting in the same direction as those currents in the soul in general that produce what is generated precisely by the movement from back to front. This had to happen for language to emerge. But this language was to come before the sense of imagination; it was to come before one was able to perceive, within the words themselves—even within the very words one uttered—that which is imagination. Indeed, humanity first had to learn to utter sounds and be able to live within the sensation of these sounds before it could associate certain concepts with them—concepts that could only come later. At first, it was something that was not yet a concept or an idea, but a feeling for what permeated the sounds as they were uttered. Language originated from this.

[ 24 ] This development had to take place at a time when the restructuring and the establishment of the circulatory system had already occurred, for animals cannot speak. The I had to be working from above down below. But although this I, which worked from above down below, was already there, humanity could not yet conceive of this I. For the power of imagination had not yet developed. What, then, follows from this? It follows that human beings cannot have received language through their own I, but through another I, which we can compare to the animal group-I. Language is thus, in this sense, truly a gift from the gods; it was instilled in humanity from above along the path taken by the ego, when the ego was not yet capable of developing language on its own. So the ego flowing down from above was not capable of developing language. It did not yet possess within itself the organs that could have provided the impulse to develop language. The group-I had to do that. But by then, humanity was already complete. Humanity was already an upright being. The group-I had to work from above down into the physical, the etheric organism, and so on, in order to bring about language. A current flowed toward this group-I from below. From above came the current of the group-I, and from below a current with which the current of the group-I met. They come together and create a kind of vortex. If you draw a straight line through the center of the larynx, that is the direction of the current used by the spirits who bestowed language. And from these two converging currents, the peculiar form of the human larynx arose in physical matter. We must therefore conclude that human beings, under the influence of a group soul living in the vicinity of the Earth, had to develop this language.

[ 25 ] Now you may recall that I spoke about how the group souls actually work on Earth. I said: The animal has its spinal cord lying horizontally, through which the current of the group soul flows. But these currents of force, flowing from top to bottom, constantly circle the Earth, just as they once circled the ancient Moon. These are therefore currents that do not remain where they are, but circle the Earth vertically. The group souls, which are vertical in their direction of movement, circle the Earth in orbits. What follows from this? If, under the influence of group souls, human beings were to learn to develop language, this could not happen while they remained in the same place where they were; rather, they had to move, they had to wander, traveling from one region to another, so that they might meet the directions of the group soul. Humanity would never have learned to speak if it had remained in the place where it once was, when it could not yet speak.

[ 26 ] Now let us ask ourselves: In which direction must people have been driven back then? — You can very easily determine this direction in the following way. We know that etheric currents in the human being flow from right to left, and that physical currents flow from left to right. Where, then, are the group souls that endowed human beings with language? We come close to the answer to this question through the following consideration.

[ 27 ] Let us consider the Earth in its unique formation. If you consider that humans learned language at a time when they were, so to speak, already fully formed, you will admit that a powerful force was necessary, for the larynx, in its soft form, first had to be transformed into the human larynx. This had to take place under conditions on Earth that were entirely different from those we have today. But what must those conditions have been like? Let us look at the Earth in this regard. Imagine that we position ourselves on the Earth so that we are facing east; then we have the west behind us, the north to our left, and the south to our right. Now let us see what a remarkable fact emerges for us there. The currents in the human being that are connected with the formation of the physical human body run from left to right. These currents also exist in the outer world and were therefore present during the formation of the Earth. There you have the strong currents that come from the north and flow toward the south. There you have the currents that bring about physical matter. On the other hand, you have the etheric currents that run from right to left and do not aim to make physical matter denser and denser. In the Earth, therefore, you still see this one-sidedness, this asymmetry: in the direction of the physical current, you have the northern hemisphere with its continents. There, the condensed physical matter contracts. And on the other side, in the southern hemisphere, you have the vast expanses of ocean. From the north comes the current that is of the same nature as the current flowing from left to right in the human being; from the south comes the current that is of the same nature as the one flowing from right to left in the human being. Let us now consider the two other currents in the human being: the current that flows from front to back, and the other from back to front. The current flowing from front to back, as we have seen, goes from the sensory body into the sensory soul, indeed into the soul itself; the other current flows outward. If you now take this into account—but I ask you to take it into account very precisely; it is not entirely easy—then you will say to yourselves: In order to learn to speak, it was necessary for the human being to generate a current that made its way from the inside out, that is, into the sensory body. He therefore had to meet a group-soul current and offer his inner organization to it, so that what could form his own larynx might accumulate there. He had to meet such a current within our Earth’s sphere that could work into his astral body. Thus, when he set out to learn to speak, he had to take neither the direction toward the north nor the opposite direction toward the south, but the other direction, which is perpendicular to them. From this you will understand that human beings had to move in a west-east or east-west direction when they were to learn language. Spiritual science tells us that human beings once lived in ancient Lemuria, where the sea now lies between Asia and Africa. Then they set out to learn language. They could not go south or north; they had to go west, and they went to ancient Atlantis. Thus, by traveling this way to ancient Atlantis, toward the west, they moved toward those group souls that could bring forth language within them. By truly understanding the structure of human language, you will find that what is derived from spiritual scientific observations is confirmed. This is how humanity learned language in ancient Atlantis. |

[ 28 ] But then he should use language to develop his sense of imagination. He should not stop at mere language, but move on to the sense of imagination. How could that happen?

[ 29 ] Of course, he could not continue in the same direction. He had to proceed in such a way that, while maintaining the same current, he now took the opposite direction. Why is that? We have seen what actually happens when the concept arises from the sound sense. We have seen how sound arises from melody; when one transforms the melody into harmony, one disregards the fundamental tones and perceives only the system of overtones. Then, in order to develop the sense of imagination, one had to omit from language that which had been developed on one side, in favor of the other side. Humanity had to turn back after learning to speak. It had to migrate eastward from Atlantis in order to further develop the sense of imagination based on the language it had learned. And here you have the meaning of the migration that spiritual science reveals to you by stating that the ancient Atlanteans, who were ready for it, set out to migrate from the West back toward the East. Through this, they were able to develop the power of imagination in a fruitful way. But then it would follow, in turn, that if people had migrated in the opposite direction—that is, to the West—they would not have been able to develop the power of imagination in a fruitful way. There were also people who migrated in the opposite direction at that time: these are the Native Americans. Why were they unable to sustain themselves? Why did what had been learned in the East have to be brought to them later? Because they had migrated in the opposite direction. That is the cosmic destiny of the indigenous peoples of America: that they had migrated in the opposite direction.

[ 30 ] In this way, you can almost grasp with your own hands what spiritual scientific research tells you. You can understand the entire structure of the Earth. Everything you see in the arrangement of the continents, the landmasses, the seas, everything you see in the migration of peoples—you can understand it all if you know the secret of those currents that we have come to know through anthroposophy in the human being himself. And so anthroposophy truly leads us into that life through which the human being and the external world become transparent and understandable to us. And now on.

[ 31 ] We might further ask ourselves: But shouldn’t humanity, having developed the power of imagination, continue to learn; shouldn’t it move beyond mere images and progress toward concepts? — To do so, it had to ascend once more from the mere power of imagination into the life of the soul. Once again, it had to take the opposite direction there. Humanity first takes the direction toward the East to arrive at the life of imagination. Pure concepts, however, had to be conquered anew through a backward migration; they could only be attained again in the West—and specifically after having migrated to the West. We could also understand, in detail, the migrations of peoples through the four post-Atlantean cultural epochs if we had the time to compile everything that anthroposophy offers us on this subject. There you would find a marvelous tapestry of the spiritual forces at work in the entire formation of the Earth—including humanity.

[ 32 ] So far, we have considered those currents that flow from top to bottom, from right to left, from front to back, and so on. But in a certain sense, we come to a standstill here. We are held back. We cannot really proceed any further at this point. Spiritual science now shows us that above the sense of imagination there are an imaginative sense, an inspirational sense, and an intuitive sense; that in ordinary life these flow inward within the soul life, but in clairvoyant consciousness they flow outward. This is what spiritual science shows us. And now the question arises: All these things, if they are to live within the physical human being, must surely also build organs for themselves and act in a certain way. Let us first consider something that is unique to human beings, something not yet found in animals in the same way: the inner soul activity of memory. For the idea that animals have memory is a fantasy of the natural scientists. It is not surprising that animals exhibit phenomena that can be explained by the same principle as in humans, but it is a mistake to interpret them as phenomena of memory. For the main direction that the animal possesses—and which had to be raised in humans so that the ego could flow in and memory could develop—remains horizontal and forward-directed in the animal, in the same position as in humans, so that there is no obstacle to the flow of the soul of sensation, the soul of understanding, and the soul of consciousness passing through it, but without the ego. Therefore, it may well be that the animal performs actions that are indeed intelligent but are by no means permeated by the ego. That is why one must not speak of the “intellect” of animals. Here begins a major field of error in our modern science. The facts merely show that one can be directed by an intellect without being intelligent oneself. This is precisely what is at stake with regard to animals. That one can encounter phenomena in the animal world that may resemble the phenomena of human memory is self-evident from the form of the animal itself. But to speak of the “form of memory” is nonsense that confuses all concepts. In memory, we are dealing with something entirely different from what we have, for example, in mere rational thinking or even in imagination. In memory, we are dealing with the fact that an idea we have had remains, that it is still there even when the perception, the impression, has passed—not that one later does something that resembles what one did before. If that were the essence of memory, then Professor Hering would be right when he says: When the chick hatches from the egg, it can peck right away; therefore, it has memory because it repeats what its ancestors did. — One has simply not understood what memory is if one does the unheard-of things that are happening today in the field of psychology. Then the clock would also have memory, for it too repeats something it did yesterday! These are misleading concepts in the broadest sense of the word. One speaks of memory when an idea remains within, not when a fact is repeated externally. When an idea remains within, it is retained by an “I.” This is the essence of memory: that the “I” takes possession of the idea and retains it.

[ 33 ] But if this is to be lived out in a human organism, then an organ must also be formed for this purpose; that is to say, the human ego must in turn generate currents. Such currents must emanate from the ego itself and flow into the various other currents coming from the front, from the right, and so on. Currents must flow out from the ego into these. The ego must pour itself into the other currents, into that which exists without the ego. The ego must overcome currents. If one direction goes from the outside to the inside, then the ego must be able to generate a current in the opposite direction within itself. You can see that the ego is not capable of this from the outset from the fact that, when human beings learned language, such an opposing current had to arise, and the ego was not yet capable of this at that time. A group ego had to intervene to drive this current into the soul. But when the actual life of the soul begins, in which the ego participates, currents emanate from the ego itself that bore into the already existing currents.

[ 34 ] Does the ego perceive this in a certain way when it drills a current into an already existing current? Yes, the ego perceives this very clearly. Up to the level of imagination, so to speak, the ego is not engaged in drilling currents into it. But if the ego is to develop a higher faculty, such as memory, it must drill a current into the already existing current, which must act in opposition to this other current. This becomes apparent in that, as the ego develops further, something else is added to the three currents of space inclined at right angles to one another. As the ego begins to develop memory, it drills something into one direction of space in the opposite direction, and this becomes perceptible to it in the consciousness of time. That is why memory is linked to the concept of time. A concept that we do not pursue in one direction of space, but in the direction of the past, is drilled into the directions of space. This is the case with everything that the ego develops of its own accord. We can—to elaborate on this in detail would take us too far afield—point to the current that flows when the ego develops memory. This is a current that flows from the left to the right side. Similarly, currents flow from the left to the right side when the ego forms something like habits. These are the currents from left to right that are opposite to the earlier currents, which came about without the ego. The ego first drills its way toward them.

[ 35 ] When we consider the life of the soul, we can distinguish between the soul of feeling, the soul of understanding, and the soul of consciousness. The soul of understanding can still be deceptive. I have already said that one can have an intellect without being intelligent. For intelligence requires the “I.” In order to reach the “I” inwardly, the intellectual soul must have developed inwardly up to this “I.” Then it ascends to the conscious soul. Now, these are always opposite directions. When the soul of consciousness becomes conscious, the direction it takes is opposite to the direction pursued by the soul of understanding, which still operates in the unconscious.

[ 36 ] Is there any evidence that the currents of the intellectual soul and the currents of the conscious soul are opposed to one another? Under certain earthly conditions, we can see this. Consider, for a moment, that in a certain sense it is a very intellectual activity—though one that does not necessarily originate from the intellectual ego—when a person learns to read. What I am saying now applies primarily to European conditions, where, as you know, people have in a certain sense been waiting for later cultural conditions. Thus you arrive at something that was already present in Greco-Roman culture when the intellectual soul developed into what is called writing. When the intellectual soul was developing, the very beginnings of reading and writing began; but they were, after all, only the very beginnings. And this character has been retained. Then came the influence of the conscious soul. Conscious activities must, of course, take opposite directions, because the current of the conscious soul acts in the opposite direction to that of the intellectual soul. Human beings could only learn to calculate once they had developed the conscious soul, for that is a conscious activity.

[ 37 ] What appears here as a direction is evident in the illustration: European peoples write from left to right because the forces of the intellectual soul were involved in this, but they calculate from right to left. When they add, for example, they add from right to left. There you see the two different currents overlapping. You see them overlapping in the image: the current of the intellectual soul and the current of the conscious soul. This is not the case everywhere. We can truly grasp the nature of European people through this example. We can see that the people of Europe were destined to wait with the intellectual soul until a certain point in time had come, so as not to hasten the development of the conscious soul. In contrast, other peoples had to develop within the intellectual soul what in Western culture was to be developed only in the conscious soul. They therefore had to be given the opportunity to accomplish something with the intellectual soul that those who waited could accomplish only later with the conscious soul. The peoples who had the mission to lay the groundwork for the conscious soul already during the development of the intellectual soul—thus serving, as it were, as pioneers for the conscious soul—are the Semitic peoples. That is why the Semitic peoples write from right to left!

[ 38 ] In these matters, we have not only a means of understanding human beings as such, but also a means of understanding all cultural phenomena. Why, at a certain point in the Earth’s development, people write in one way or another, or calculate in one way or another—this can be understood from these facts. We could go even further and trace this all the way down to the letter forms used by individual peoples—whether they draw a stroke from left to right or from right to left, and so on. Why a people writes a letter in this or that way follows from an understanding of these spiritual facts.

[ 39 ] Such facts show you what mission spiritual science has in the future, if light is to shine into people’s minds so that they can see through what would otherwise remain incomprehensible to them.

[ 40 ] It might not be quite right, after all, to conclude these reflections at this point. Therefore, they will be continued in a certain sense tomorrow, with the aim of reaching a conclusion, even if only a rough one. I will therefore speak tomorrow, in an anthroposophical sense, about what one might call one of Goethe’s daughters. You know that I wrote the book *Goethe as the Father of a New Aesthetics*. In it, I described Goethe’s fatherhood in relation to the conception and understanding of the arts. Tomorrow I would like to present to you the daughter, Goethe’s child, within a truly modern conception of art history and aesthetics.