The Rudolf Steiner Archive

6. The Basic Concepts of Theosophy: Human Races

[ 1 ] It has often been said that man’s best and most important subject of study is man himself, and that man’s greatest mystery is also man himself. In light of certain facts, it must be emphasized that this mystery confronts man in the most diverse forms. How multifaceted the mystery of humanity appears to us, and how it gazes at us from all sides. One such manifestation of the mystery of humanity is undoubtedly the manifold forms of human beings, which we call the races of humanity. The natural sciences and the humanities have always strived to shed light on this diversity of human existence, on these various forms of humanity. A wealth of questions arises in this context. We carry within us the awareness that a unified nature and essence lies within all human beings. But how does this unified nature and essence relate to the most diverse forms and physiognomies that we encounter in the races? This question is particularly close to our hearts when we see how differently predisposed and how differently gifted the individual human races are. One stands at the highest level of what we call culture, while the other—at least from our perspective—seems to be at the most primitive, subordinate level of culture. All of this makes it seem strange to us that human beings, who after all share a unified nature, can appear in such diverse and even imperfect forms. It is often perceived as an injustice of nature that it condemns some to an existence within a human race far below and elevates others to a seemingly perfect race.

[ 2 ] The spiritual-scientific worldview seems better suited than any other to shed light on this darkness and to unravel this mystery a little. For this spiritual-scientific worldview does not speak of the unified human being in the same sense as other worldviews. It has a concept of the human being that differs from that of philosophers, religions, and so on; it speaks of the eternal return of the human soul. It tells us that the soul living in today’s human individual has already been on this Earth many times and will return many times more. And if we examine the matter more closely, we see that human souls pass through the various races. Thus, meaning and reason are already present in the diversity of the races. Thus, we see that one person is not condemned to live solely in a primitive race, while another is destined to be on the highly developed stages of racial existence. Each of us passes through the most diverse stages of the races, and for the individual soul, this passage signifies precisely further development. The person who appears today as a member of the European race has, in earlier times, passed through other human races and will, in later times, pass through races other than our own. The races appear to us as stages of learning, and coherence and purpose emerge within this diversity.

[ 3 ] But if we are to fully grasp this meaning, we must certainly delve more deeply into what underlies the development of the various races. Those who rise above mere sensory perception into the invisible, supersensory world and seek to answer this question from such realms can truly arrive at a satisfactory solution to the mystery. Conventional natural science, which must limit itself to sensory observation in this matter, has been able to provide only a guiding thread in these cases concerning the types of humanity presented to us. Natural science takes us back to the imperfect stages of human existence, as it is able to do in the sense of today’s Darwinian perspective. It traces humanity back to the earlier epochs of Earth’s development. It shows us how, in earlier times, humanity passed through stages in which it satisfied its needs with simple, rudimentary tools, and in which it was capable of performing only minimal labor. And natural science seeks to take us back to even earlier times, when humankind evolved from the animal kingdom. We are led to the conclusion that, from a scientific standpoint, we can probably no longer verify the earliest stages of human evolution—presumably because the regions of the Earth where modern humans once evolved are now covered by the ocean’s waters. There is only one region to which science repeatedly points us: the region south of Asia, east of Africa, and down to Australia. Ernst Haeckel speculates that an ancient, sunken continent is to be found there and that the intermediate stages between animals and humans once developed there. He calls this continent Lemuria.

[ 4 ] However, in the same sense that Haeckel speaks of this continent and its inhabitants—that is, in the sense of merely ape-like humans as the ancestors of modern humans—spiritual science, based on its own experiences, cannot speak on this matter. I have attempted to show that there are other methods and means of learning about the past than those on which the natural sciences must rely—other than the study of the remains left behind in the earth. In my account of human history, in the essays “From the Akashic Records,” you will find, drawn from inner, mystical experience, everything that has been taught since time immemorial in the so-called secret schools regarding the origin of humankind and its division into different races. Physical records and sensory experience cannot take us back to the times that can truly provide the decisive answers to this question. Only supersensible experience can teach us this. Today I can offer only a faint glimpse of this supersensible experience, and only a comparison can lead us to the source of what we essentially wish to discuss today.

[ 5 ] You all know that when I speak here, my words are carried by the wave motions that are set in motion in the air here. The vibrating air carries my words through your ears and into your souls. As I speak here, this entire space is filled with sound waves. Imagine if these sound waves could be recorded by some means; if at any moment a record could be made of what is being spoken here; if the rapid progression of the sound waves crisscrossing this room could be captured—then you would have a record of everything that is being spoken here. Just as the word I am speaking here makes an impression on the medium—the substance surrounding us—so do the other expressions of human nature; though not on the air, which is already somewhat coarse compared to many other, finer substances, for there are substances much finer than air. I am merely referring to the ether, although our discussion has nothing to do with it. But what I actually mean is the finest substance, the Akashic substance, in which not only spoken words are imprinted, but all human thoughts, feelings, and impulses of will. This Akashic substance, with its impressions, truly forms a phonograph on a vast scale. And while these sound waves here in the air constantly fade away—lasting only as long as the sound is heard—the impressions that human activities, right up to our thoughts, make in this so-called Akashic matter remain forever. Those who develop themselves to the point of being able to read this Akashic matter can trace the records that have been inscribed there since time immemorial. And from this knowledge, from these higher spiritual experiences, come the insights that spiritual science provides regarding human evolution through the various races. There we are led back not only to the people whom natural science and archaeology document—when they find, in the caves of France or other caves around the world, the remains of people who possessed primitive tools and weapons, people with receding foreheads who could therefore have had only an undeveloped thinking nature, people who were far removed from what we today call civilized human beings. All this research does not lead us back to those forms of humanity that the spiritual-scientific worldview teaches us about, even though today’s natural scientists believe that they take us back ten to fifteen millennia, perhaps even further. All those human and racial forms that natural scientists can find in the earth point back to human physiognomies of a completely different kind, to races that lived in an entirely different region of the earth—in Atlantis, which stretched between Europe, Africa, and America. Even to the natural sciences, the idea that the Atlantic Ocean was once land is no longer foreign. The similarity of the fauna, the animal kingdom, and the various soil formations, as well as certain linguistic affinities—all these things point even to the natural scientist that we are dealing with a major subsidence of the earth, with the flooding of a vast land area, which took place in the very early stages of our evolution. According to what Plato recounts about the island of Poseidonis—which he still describes as an island in the ocean—this was the last remnant of a bygone world. This is also what the spiritual-scientific perspective teaches us.

[ 6 ] If we look back at the people who lived in Atlantis, we see something quite different from what we see today. We encounter a people in whom the most significant abilities—those that make today’s civilized human beings what they are—were not yet present. The Atlantean people did not yet possess these abilities—the ability to combine, to calculate—nor did they possess the capacity for thought. What people had back then was memory and language. These were only just beginning to develop within them. In return, however, they possessed other abilities. Progress in human abilities occurs only by sacrificing certain so-called higher stages of human existence in exchange for the retreat of earlier stages of development. Just as humans today have only a very limited sense of smell compared to certain animals—while animals have less developed higher senses, particularly the brain, but in return bring their lower abilities to a high degree of perfection—so it is here as well at these higher stages of humanity. The Atlantean possessed an almost omniscient memory. His knowledge was based entirely on memory. For them, there was no such thing as what we call a law or a rule. They did not calculate by knowing their times tables; they certainly did not know those. For them, memory was the foundation of all their thinking. They knew that if they had put two sets of five beans together, that amounted to a pile of such-and-such a quantity. He did not calculate in that way, but rather retained this information for mental visualization. Likewise, his language was entirely different from ours. I will return to this phenomenon later in the lecture. Since the Atlantean had developed only these abilities, he necessarily possessed a certain clairvoyant gift, which receded as our alert daytime consciousness, our intellectual consciousness, our calculative, logical consciousness, and our cultural consciousness developed. The Atlantean was capable, in a completely different sense, of influencing plant growth through the special magical power of his will, arising from his very nature. Without sensory mediation, the Atlantean was able to perform certain magical effects. All of this was also connected to a completely different physical constitution, above all to a significant receding of the forehead and an underdeveloped forebrain. In contrast, other parts of the brain were developed differently than in modern civilized humans. This made it possible for them to make use of their great memory capacities.

[ 7 ] When we observe such an Atlantean according to the records of the Akashic Records, we find that at that time, the clarity of our present consciousness had not yet been attained. It was still a dream-like state of consciousness. It was brighter than that, but it did not yet possess the luminous clarity of the intellect that our present-day consciousness possesses. It was more a state of brooding and daydreaming. And what was at work within him was not such that he could regard himself at every moment as the master of what he was bringing about; rather, everything within him was like a kind of inspiration, a kind of intuition. He felt connected to other forces, as if a spirit were flowing through him. For him, the spirit was something much more concrete; it was what was in the wind, what was in the clouds, what grew in the plants. The spirit was something one could sense when one moved one’s hands through the air, when the trees rustled. That was the language of nature. The independence of the Atlantean was also not as great as that of people today,

[ 8 ] If we look further back, we come to the ancestors of this population—those people who lived on a continent known to both the natural sciences and the spiritual sciences: in Lemuria, the continent between Asia, Australia, and Africa. However, spiritual science must describe the appearance and form of those people quite differently than today’s natural scientists do. Outwardly, the spiritual scientist’s description of these people’s form is not so different from what the natural scientist assumes. But spiritually, it is quite different. The Lemurian was, to an even greater degree than the Atlantean, a clairvoyant being. He was endowed with immense willpower; he was a human being in whom language and memory had not yet developed. It was not until later in Lemuria that language began to emerge. The Lemurian, however, could make plants grow; he could command the wind; he could draw natural forces from the earth as if by magic; in short, compared to today’s conceptions, what the Lemurian could do borders on the miraculous. But all of this took place within a completely dulled state of consciousness, in a deeper dream-like slumber than that experienced by the Atlantean. Entirely guided by higher influences, by higher spiritual beings, this Lemurian was a dependent creature in the hands of higher powers, which provided him with the impulses for his decisions of will and for everything he did.

[ 9 ] Thus, we have three successive forms of evolution within our species. This Lemurian evolved from the pre-human ancestors of the ichthyosaurs, plesiosaurs, and so on. These are the fabulous animals that existed even before our mammals and that perished as a result of the great, violent natural upheavals on these continents. Everything that rises out of the ocean as volcanic formations are remnants of that ancient Lemurian era. And even those primitive structures of colossal size and such peculiar shape, as found on Easter Island, are remnants of the Cyclopean structures that reach into our time like a monument to those people who lived so differently in their souls than we do.

[ 10 ] Just a few words are needed to hint at the relationship between human beings and the various forms of animals. Today’s natural scientist, accustomed to materialistic ways of thinking, assumes that human beings evolved from lower animal forms. The spiritual researcher cannot accept this. He assumes that the spiritual preceded the material, that the spiritual is the source of the external, material world, and that the human physical body is an expression of the human soul. What the spiritual researcher describes as the astral body was formed much earlier than the human physical body. This astral body underwent a process of densification, thereby forming the etheric body, and it is only the densification of this etheric body that forms the physical body. The denser form developed only later. The more subtle form—the astral, to be precise—existed in much earlier times. Thus, spiritual science shows us that a being possessing such drives, passions, and instincts as those of a human being did not arise from a random aggregation of physical matter, but rather that these drives and passions are the original elements within a matter suited to them. This matter did not create the passion; rather, the earlier passions created the forms of physiognomy. Thus, human beings undergo a process of densification. And indeed, if we go back to those Lemurians, we see that their bodies become thinner and thinner until we arrive at human beings who, in terms of their physical matter, are very similar to certain animals that today possess a gelatinous substance. If we were to go back even further, we would find ancient human ancestors, formed of a substance that cannot be seen with the ordinary physical eye: the etheric human. But I do not wish to go back to that most ancient time today.

[ 11 ] Let us begin our reflections with those human beings who are gradually beginning to appear in a physical form such as that of present-day humans, even though the physical form of the human beings who inhabited Lemuria and Atlantis was quite different from our own muscular and skeletal structure. All of that was much softer, more flexible, and more pliable, and adapted to the demands of those dull, dreamlike soul forces, as I have described to you. Precisely because human physical matter becomes denser and denser, the opposite pole to physical matter is created—the instrument of intellectual power. The development of the brain is accompanied by a densification of the rest of the human organs. Thus the brain develops into the instrument of the intellect, of the spirit. And when we consider these three stages together, we find them all in the civilized human being. First we have the Lemurian human, whose consciousness is trance-like; then we have the Atlantean human, who develops memory and language; and finally the true civilized human, the human being of our time.

[ 12 ] When we look at people today, we see that they have evolved into their present form from these earlier stages of existence. When something higher appears, what is primitive does not always disappear immediately. It persists for the time being and undergoes various changes. So we can say: A portion of the earlier Atlantean population migrated from Atlantis to Europe and on to Asia, forming colonies, while another portion remained behind, so that we now have the most diverse stages existing side by side. Each advancing portion leaves behind, as it were, the stages of development as a kind of memory. This is similarly the case with human beings. It is humanity that has brought forth the most diverse forms of animals from within itself. Just as humanity leaves behind lower races, so too does the human being, at even earlier stages, leave behind certain animal forms that are like outward expressions of the retained memory of its former existence. When we observe animals, we can say that they represent the stages of our own evolution, from the lower animal forms up to the forms of our own species. But our own forms did not look like what has been left behind. Conditions were different back then. People usually do not even imagine how infinitely great the changes are that have taken place on Earth. In ancient Atlantis, there was not yet the distribution of rain and sunshine, of air and water, as we have today. There was a completely different kind of air, saturated with water. Rain did not yet exist at that time. Myths and legends vividly record these things. That is why the Norse sagas also speak of “Nifelheim,” “the Land of Mist.” This is based on a real fact. Our ancestors were physically different from us today, and those who remained behind found themselves in conditions they could not endure. They were therefore forced to regress; they fell into decadence; they degenerated.

[ 13 ] The physical conditions of our Earth today make it possible for the intellect to develop to a certain level of evolution in human beings. Had the Earth not evolved—from the entirely different conditions of Atlantis—to our present state of rain and sunshine, humankind would never have been able to evolve to the level at which we find ourselves today. We see that only the progressive race can evolve upward in the corresponding manner. But that which retains the earlier form—and serves as a memento of it—declines, because it does not adapt to the later conditions. If we go back to earlier times, we realize that what we used to be was quite different from the animals we see today. These have changed as a result of the completely altered conditions. We can also recognize, in the lower races, stages of earlier human existence that were, by their very nature, adapted to different earthly conditions.

[ 14 ] The matter becomes much clearer when we examine it in this way. Then we will understand that the Native American population, which seems so enigmatic to us with its social structures and peculiar instincts, must be quite different. The African, the Ethiopian, and the Negro races are yet another matter. There are instincts that are linked to the lower aspects of humanity. And among the Malays, we find a certain dreamlike element. Within the Mongolian population, there are characteristics rooted in a particular vitality of the blood, as well as certain mental qualities that are developed in a very distinctive way. For this reason, the Mongolian race will always refuse to adopt a pantheistic worldview. Their religion is a belief in demons, a cult of the dead. The population known as the Caucasian race represents the true cultural race, which is called upon, through the development of logical thinking, to create tools for working with nature by means of human reason alone—a reason that can no longer wield magical powers but must rely on the mechanical. Everything that humanity possessed in this way during the times of ancient Atlantis was lost, and that is why it manufactured tools—because it could no longer act in that manner; hence, it needed tools for mechanical action.

[ 15 ] Natural science has attempted in a wide variety of ways to classify the different races. It has sought to classify them according to skull shape into those with a narrow skull that is long toward the back, those with a short and broad skull, and those that fall between the two. People were also classified according to skin color: black—Negroes and Ethiopians; yellow-brown—the Malays and Mongols; and white—the Caucasians. This classification is based primarily on external characteristics and reveals certain differences, but it is not exhaustive. In more recent times, language has been used as the basis for classification. However, if you examine the past from a spiritual-scientific perspective, you will arrive at entirely different conclusions. You will find that our white, civilized humanity arose because certain groups separated from the Atlanteans and, under different climatic conditions here, developed to a higher level. Certain segments of the Atlantean population remained at earlier stages of development, so that we can see remnants of the various Atlantean races among the populations of Asia and the Americas. But they have changed and differ from the original Atlantean population.

[ 16 ] We distinguish seven human races within the Atlantic population. Of these seven human races, five are in an ascending stage of development. I will merely mention here that the Chinese population, for the most part, represents in a certain sense a descendant group corresponding to the fourth of the seven human races of the Atlantic population, and that the Mongolian race of Asia represents a descendant group of the seventh subrace of this Atlantic population. Gradually, memory and language developed. It was not until the third subrace, the Proto-Toltecs, that language emerged clearly. A culture based on memory also emerged at that time. The fifth subrace, which we call the Proto-Semites and which had its main center in what is now Ireland, formed the first seed for our present-day Caucasian—or, as we also call it in spiritual science, Aryan—human race. From this subrace—which bears little resemblance to today’s Jewish population but is rightly called Semitic due to certain historical events—a portion migrated to Asia and developed the culture of the intellect, which then spread across present-day Europe, southern Asia, and the population of northern Africa. In contrast, surrounding this center is a belt of human populations whose character traits still bear, in the most varied ways, remnants of inhabitants from earlier times—remnants of the Atlanteans. All these inhabitants left descendants behind, and so we can imagine that the wave I have just spoken of flowed over into Asia, where it encountered a population that had remained from Atlantis and perhaps from Lemuria, and then formed what we today call the Malay races. In them, one can perceive a sleepy disposition and an early maturity with regard to passions and sexual maturity. Thus, from a select branch of the Atlantean population, mixed with the remnants of the older populations, the human race emerged that we call the Indo-Aryan race. It combined a certain dreamlike, clairvoyant nature with a uniquely developed, intellectually structured worldview. Perhaps in no other worldview were the clairvoyant perception of certain deeper forces of nature and a system of thought characterized by such architectural coherence and penetrating acuity so closely intertwined.

[ 17 ] Toward the Near East, we find other, new demographic patterns in entirely different forms. Furthermore, of course—as the spiritual-scientific worldview can demonstrate—a strand of the Atlanteans migrated to America. There were still remnants of the Lemurians and also of the Atlanteans, who had intermingled, partly through bloodlines and partly through their way of life and customs. This population, later known as the Native Americans, then encountered the European immigrants. There, two fundamentally different lines of human development collided. What had lived in ancient times—a completely different spiritual element, something clairvoyant, something of the spirit that permeates the entire world—still lived on in this Native American population. A speech has been preserved to us that an Indian chief delivered at the time of the clash between the Indians and the Europeans. In it, he rebuked the Europeans for breaking their word. For the Indian population had been promised, after their homes had been taken from them, that they would be given other places to live. He spoke something to the following effect: “O you Palefaces, you do not understand what the Great Spirit teaches us. This is because you Palefaces read everything the gods say from books, and let the letters in the books tell you what is true. You promised us that you would give us land again, but you did not keep your promise because your God does not teach you to tell the truth and keep your word. We know a God who speaks to us in the clouds, in the waves, in the rustling of the leaves, in lightning and thunder. And the God of the Red Man keeps his word. That God knows He must be faithful to the tribe. — That was a great, a mighty language. The Great Spirit was a remnant of a human conception that arose from a dreamlike consciousness, from inspirations from higher powers. But for that very reason, it was at the same time closer to the divine, to the sources of the divine.

[ 18 ] Languages teach us something similar. When we compare the various human races, we find a completely different structure in the languages of this outer belt of peoples. We find the ancient Atlantean structure in the Mongolian languages, and in the Negro languages we find, in the structure of the languages themselves, something that reflects the worldview of Atlantean origin. Certain African languages place primary emphasis on nouns, and they express what we convey through inflections by means of prepositions. From this it can be seen that they arose from a memory that functioned exceptionally well. The Mongolian languages show that they arose at a time when memory no longer functioned as it had in the past. For in these languages, the verbs are more highly developed, already reflecting the intellect. The Atlantean, in fact, did not speak of memory at all. Everything was present to him. It is only when one begins to forget that the verb develops in language. I would say that a magnificent monument from the height of Atlantean culture has been left behind, and that is the Chinese language. This language has something purely synthetic and, at the same time, something original, in which the sound itself expresses something inner, spiritual, and a certain relationship to the outside world. If we were to study certain segments of the population in this context, we could understand this completely.

[ 19 ] We can, however, understand our race if we trace it through the two currents that we can clearly identify. First, there is the current that moved from the West—perhaps from what is now England—across to Asia. It may have given rise to the Indian race, the pre-Asian-Semitic race, the Indo-African-Semitic race, and the Arab-Chaldean race. But then we must also consider another current that did not travel as far—one that perhaps reached only as far as Ireland or Holland, or even into the region inhabited by the ancestors of the ancient Persians. Here we have a belt of related populations stretching through the Persian region, across the Black Sea, and into Europe.

[ 20 ] It is therefore the case that we can identify two zones of human population. One extends from India and encompasses the southern peninsulas of Europe; the other encompasses the northern zones, with various gradations. We have the Aryan and the various Semitic subgroups in Asia and Africa; then, in Greece and Italy, the Greco-Latin population. But we must again conceive of these as having arisen through intermingling with the northern belt of peoples, which would also include the Persian population and all that from which—as if emerging from the depths—the Slavic and Germanic populations developed in the West, along with the ancient Celtic population, which more or less underlies them all. We can imagine that we had an ancient Celtic population in Western Europe. This is the westernmost part of the stream of peoples, while the Persian population represents the part of the stream that extended farthest to the east. In between lie the Slavic and Germanic peoples; intermingled with the southern belt, these formed the Greco-Latin race. Even in the languages, it can be demonstrated that a kinship exists among the populations, which is most strongly expressed in the deep kinship of the languages in the northern belt of peoples. There we find languages that are quite different from what constitutes the distinctive character of Semitic-Egyptian culture. In the Semitic-Egyptian culture, we find, clearly expressed in the structure of the languages, the manifestation of what emerged in the fifth subrace of Atlantis as the proto-Semitic culture. It is characterized by the first dawn of intellect in human evolution. It was here that logic and intellect first took shape. The dreamlike, clairvoyant element of earlier times blended in a wide variety of ways, giving rise to the various religions. The Semitic language, however, does not bear the character of atomism, as we see among the Chinese, but rather that of analysis. In contrast, the Caucasian languages have a synthetic character.

[ 21 ] We distinguish five human groups or races. Whether the term is used correctly or incorrectly is a matter for debate. The first race is that of the ancient Indo-Aryans with their marvelous seeric thinking. They had a culture that preceded the Vedic culture, which is why there are no records of it. What is written in the Vedas are merely echoes of the ancient, seer-like Indian culture. Next comes the ancient Persian culture as the second race—a people whose intellectual powers are primarily directed toward external work. The ancient Indian culture has a quality that withdraws from the world. In this northern region, we find people who embrace the world, who want to conquer the world, who engage with tools and the like. Therefore, we see in this culture how the awareness develops that humanity has something to achieve, that there is good and evil. Ormuzd and Ahriman confront one another here. Then we come to the Near East. There, another race takes shape. What is expressed in the structure of the Semitic languages is the combinatorial, the calculative, the logical-conceptual. This is evident in the architecture of Egypt—expressed in the pyramids and in the magnificent conceptual structures—and then in the marvelous science, in the astrological form of astronomy.

[ 22 ] Now we have three races. And now we come to Europe, to the southern peninsulas. There we find what flows in from the north and what finds expression in ancient civilized peoples. We find that something is taking shape there that seeks an inner life. While the Egyptians build outwardly, using inner symbolism, the Greeks begin to cultivate monuments and sculpture, drawing inspiration for this from the mystery dramas. The most significant event within this fourth sub-race or cultural period, however, is the rise of Christianity. The southern races are unable to grasp this Christianity in its unique form. In Greece, it was Hellenized; in Rome, it was Romanized and developed into a state religion. This occurred during the gradual emergence of the fifth subrace in the Middle Ages. This is our own subrace. It is the one that had the task of bringing culture down to the physical plane. This indicates that there is meaning and reason in the sequence of racial development.

[ 23 ] There is also meaning and reason in this racial evolution in another sense. After all, human beings, in their lower nature, consist of three parts: the physical body, the etheric body, and the astral body. The physical body is what we can see with our eyes and touch with our hands. The astral body is the vehicle of our desires, passions, and instincts, as well as our feelings, lusts, emotions, anger, and hatred. The etheric body is the vehicle of the life forces. The human “I” lives within these bodies. It expresses itself in various ways.

[ 24 ] I will begin right away by discussing how this manifests itself in our current cultural period. It has developed the physical body in the most eminent sense, chiseling it out in the most marvelous way. The body and the brain became the tools for intellectual life and for intellectual imagination. The body had to be conquered step by step. If you could look back, you would find that in the Lemurian era, the body resembled a clumsy, gigantic form. The astral body could not yet move the limbs. The ancestors of the Lemurian era were clumsy. You can still see traces of this among the Native American population. On the one hand, instincts still struggle to assert themselves, because people do not yet possess the consciousness to penetrate themselves from within; they work on the body from the outside, tattooing it, because it does not yet seem complete to them. If we move up to the other races, we find that human beings first master the etheric body. The life functions and the functions of nutrition are developed, so that the human being transforms from an unconscious being into a conscious, volitional being.

[ 25 ] Step by step, humankind embarks on a journey of conquest through its own being. The Lemurian era represented the conquest of the astral body, the Atlantean era represented the conquest of the vital body, and our present era represents the conquest of the physical body. This is followed by the conquest of the spiritual and soul forces, which is the task of our time. Thus, an even higher meaning is introduced into racial evolution, and we come to understand that racial evolution is a training of the evolving human spirit. We look back to eras when human beings were structured quite differently. Our souls incarnated during those times and came to know the outer world through its phenomena. Later, they returned to Earth in a different race and thus learned to view the world in a different way. And so it continues. Humanity passes through race after race. Those who are young souls incarnate in the races that have lagged behind at their earlier racial stage.

[ 26 ] Thus, what lives around us as race and souls is organically and spiritually interwoven. Everything takes on meaning, becomes transparent, and can be explained. We are drawing ever closer to solving these mysteries, and we can understand that in the future we will have to pass through other epochs, that we will have to follow paths different from those taken by the race. We must be clear that soul development and racial development are distinct. Within the Atlantean race, our own souls dwelt, which then evolved into a higher human race. This gives us a picture of human evolution up to our own time. In this way, we also come to understand the principle of establishing the core of a universal brotherhood, regardless of race, color, social status, and so on. I will elaborate on this idea in more detail later. Today, I simply wanted to show how the same essence exists within the various forms—and in a much truer sense than natural science teaches. Our soul progresses from stage to stage—that is, from race to race—and we come to understand the significance of humanity when we observe these races. There is one thing we come to understand more and more deeply: namely, how profound and true the saying is: “One man succeeded; he lifted the veil of the goddess at Sais. — But what did he see? He saw—miracle of miracles—himself!” We see ourselves everywhere and in the most diverse forms. — That is self-knowledge! Here, too, the great maxim inscribed on the temple of the Greek School of Wisdom is proven true: O man, know thyself!