The Rudolf Steiner Archive

8. The Origin of Humanity in the Light of Spiritual Science

[ 1 ] What spiritual science—from whose perspective these lectures are presented—has to say about the important question of the origin of humankind must, in essence, be of the utmost interest to all those individuals who, prompted by the great philosophical questions of our time, take an interest in this spiritual science. For the question of the origin of humankind has attracted immense interest from all quarters in recent decades, interest that was particularly fueled in the second half of the nineteenth century by the great and admirable advances in the natural sciences. And it is understandable that, given the forceful manner in which the natural sciences have sought to elevate themselves to the status of a worldview in recent decades, the question of the origin of humankind has been raised time and again and, in a sense, had to be placed at the center of modern philosophical questions.

[ 2 ] At first glance, it might seem as though, precisely with regard to this question of the origin of humankind, the worldview that seeks to stand on the firm ground of natural science in our present age and the one represented here as a spiritual science stand in the sharpest possible contrast to one another. However, if one considers the state of affairs within the development of the natural sciences as it existed just a few decades ago—or perhaps even more recently—then it might seem highly plausible to assume such a stark contrast. For one need only consider what it meant in 1864, when—based on Darwin’s scientific views, which were still in their infancy at the time but were already on their way to gaining widespread acceptance—at a German naturalists’ conference, before Darwin himself had clearly articulated the application of his principles to the question of human origins, Ernst Haeckel applied these Darwinian principles to the science of man in such a way that he vigorously, boldly, and courageously not only advocated the kinship of man with higher animals in terms of his form and living conditions, but also vigorously advocated the direct, real descent—the actual origin of man from and within the higher animal world.

[ 3 ] At that time, if one wished to remain open-minded in this regard, one would have had to believe—in the broadest circles—that future discoveries in scientific research would increasingly confirm and reinforce what Ernst Haeckel had articulated in 1864 as a bold research program: the derivation and arrangement of all scientific principles in such a way that one could recognize how the order of humankind had gradually developed from the animal kingdoms. If what Haeckel proclaimed at the time as a kind of program—but which he himself already regarded as an irrefutable truth—had come to pass, if scientific research had truly taken the path he had assumed, then the radical contrast between the natural sciences and the humanities mentioned above would undoubtedly exist today. But that is not how things turned out. Natural science itself has, in essence, yielded entirely different results and entailed consequences—particularly in recent decades—than had been assumed at the time. And the fact that we still have such great difficulty today in seeing clearly in this area—when it comes to elucidating the relationship between the natural sciences and the humanities—stems solely from the fact that the popular dissemination and internalization of scientific knowledge do not keep pace with the discovery and production of that knowledge. We still find ourselves today in a situation with regard to popular consciousness where, in the broadest circles—and particularly in popular literature—the belief is widespread as if it were a fixed dogma: namely, that only those who today fully submit to the assertion that human beings are, outwardly, real—as perceived by the external senses—has evolved over time from animal forms that, in terms of their structure and living conditions, immediately border on him within the animal kingdom. This belief is widespread, and if one listens carefully, one can still hear everywhere that anyone who seeks to challenge this belief, this dogma, is simply told: “Well, you just don’t know anything about the worldview that emerges when one truly stands on the solid ground of scientific facts.”—In fact, in the broadest circles, people know nothing of this, because popular literature presents everything in such a way that one cannot know that this belief has become quite fragile in recent years, and that what scientific research actually brings to light today regarding our question has, in fact, already moved into a position that is troubling for the materialistic-monistic worldview—one that is alarmingly close to what spiritual science has to say. For one might say: The way in which natural science has developed in recent years with regard to our question is such that the old views of a direct descent of humankind from the adjacent animal kingdom must be called into question everywhere. And if we take a brief look at the course this science has taken—before delving into the matters of the spiritual sciences— it will show us that it is indeed true that the humanities today are actually much less likely to contradict the natural sciences than the scientific theories and hypotheses—which are still held by a materialistic-monistic worldview—are in contradiction with the facts of the natural sciences.

[ 4 ] To briefly outline what took place, let us turn to the views that, for example, gained quite understandable popularity in the 1860s and 1870s. When Darwin himself followed up his 1858 book On the Origin of Species in the Animal and Plant Kingdoms with his insightful 1871 work On the Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex, what ideas naturally took shape at that time among him and his immediate followers—those more or less close to him or even surpassing him? The view took shape that, at a time long before our own, humans had gradually evolved from forms belonging to the ape species—forms that, while not necessarily identical to the forms of this animal species that have survived to the present day, were nevertheless, in a certain sense, externally similar to them. A type of creature was regarded as the ancestor of humankind—one that had four limbs which, in contrast to the modern division of the human limbs into hands and feet, were more uniformly shaped; a sort of four-handed creature in which even the limbs that have since been transformed into feet were hand-like. Thus, humans would have been a kind of four-handed climbing creature, still covered with a kind of fur, with an imperfectly developed brain and, accordingly, a differently shaped skull. And then, in a more or less straight line, such an ape-like creature would have evolved into modern humans through adaptation to its environment and through everything that resulted from the struggle for existence. Scholars have gone so far as to reject the notion that merely the external forms and ‘the more animal-like conditions of human life had gradually developed from such an animal-like form, but also to the view that all human mental activities represent merely a higher stage of development compared to what is already found in the animal world in terms of mind- and soul-like activities.

[ 5 ] In particular, an effort has been made to show that what human thought, human feeling, human volition, and the nature of this volition are—as measured against the standards of a moral worldview—turn out to be nothing more than a complication, a development of simpler, primitive activities of the soul and mind—activities that are also found in the animal kingdom—which have simply become as complicated and transformed as the external forms of the brain or the limbs. It would therefore be important that such a view must lead to the assumption that everything which humans today experience as their spiritual life, as the content of their inner life, is in fact merely the product, the expression of a physical-bodily life that can be traced back to times when there was actually only a bodily life manifesting itself in an animalistic manner—times for which it makes no sense to speak of such a spiritual process or spiritual content as is lived out in the human soul today. Accordingly, human spiritual life would have developed as a kind of superstructure over earlier, lower forms, so that there would be no justification for linking human spiritual life—as it unfolds in the soul, and for which people have long ascribed a higher, purer origin—directly to a spiritual world that extends into our physical world. And for even more distant times in the past, it would follow that animal life developed out of lower forms and that what can be called the spiritual and soul-related aspects in animals must be traced back to an existence in primeval times, in which there were only those processes and essences that human beings today are inclined to not to conceive as having been lived through and interwoven with any kind of spiritual influence. But this would present the spirit, so to speak, as an illusion, as an illusory substantiality that seems to burst forth from the physical, and everything spiritual would be reduced to what surrounds us as a physical, corporeal sensibility.

[ 6 ] It is well known how, in the second half of the nineteenth century, ideological movements sprang up like mushrooms, animated entirely by the spirit just described, movements that saw their greatness in breaking with everything that traditional views had handed down regarding the origin of humankind from a spiritual world and regarding humankind’s reception into a spiritual world once a person has passed through the gate of death. It may be said that it was precisely the most sincere sense of truth and a keen intellectual conscience that, in the course of the nineteenth century, led the most diverse personalities to such a worldview—a worldview that at that time was by no means underpinned by a materialistic mindset, but rather sought to act and think in harmony with a noble and genuine idealism that declared: No human being can hope to belong directly to a spiritual world, but only that the spirit, which has developed out of material existence, will find a more or less prolonged existence within the human soul. Human culture itself would continue to develop the spiritual realm in the course of evolution; however, whatever one could accomplish in the spiritual realm would not even be preserved in a spiritual world, but could only live on—with the complete extinction of human personality and individuality—in what the human race produces as culture. — Yes, one may say that even among many people an extraordinary amount of spiritual heroism was intertwined with such a view, and that, particularly among the leading figures in this field, not the slightest degree of contradiction with moral worldviews can be observed. For many have told themselves that this is precisely what the soul must strive for if it understands itself well: to act selflessly on the basis of what it can gain in the world, and then to give itself up selflessly, in full recognition that it will be extinguished and that only its deeds will live on. It was repeatedly emphasized that seeking immortality in any form is, in fact, selfishness.

[ 7 ] The humanities are generally not inclined to dismiss views that have arisen from a genuine sense of truth and an intellectual disposition; rather, they must understand how such views are formed. Spiritual science could never engage in dismissing worldviews by pointing out—as is often done in the world—the morally disastrous consequences that must result from the worldview in question. But it is quite another matter when an objective view of the world, deeper knowledge, and deeper insight themselves reveal such a worldview to be fragile in every respect. And here one must say: Everything that has been achieved in such an admirable way by the history of evolution, comparative anatomy, paleontology, geology, and the rest of the natural sciences—and which seemed to point so decisively toward the confirmation of such a worldview—has, in fact, led more and more to the point where it has become impossible maintain such a worldview today on the basis of scientific facts. Consequently, certain researchers—of whom we can mention here only representative examples in the brief outline with which we seek to characterize the development of this worldview— have come to oppose ideas that developed on the basis of earlier assumptions and hypotheses, precisely because the most advanced scientific knowledge has brought to light facts that are by no means consistent with certain hypotheses and views. Let us highlight a figure such as Kollmann, because he is typical of the views that we find, in various nuances, among others as well—precisely because they are grounded in facts. Based on what emerged from observations of evolutionary history—from the observation of the prenatal human, the human embryo, and animal embryos before birth—and from what was revealed to him in paleontology, Kollmann had to conclude that it was impossible to assume that the ancestors of humankind in earlier times had been shaped in the way that, for example, orthodox Darwinists assumed in the 1870s and still assume today. It is impossible to conceive of humans having a form in which one would observe a receding, low forehead, an undeveloped, so to speak, shrunken brain—in short, a form that would resemble the form of today’s apes. On the contrary, the aforementioned researcher found himself compelled, time and again, on the basis of his discoveries, to assume that—on the very contrary—one must postulate a brain configuration far exceeding the current similarity between the human brain and the ape brain, from which today’s ape brain would then have evolved from an original form that must actually have been much more similar to today’s human brain than the present-day ape brain is. Thus, the modern ape brain should be viewed as a kind of regression from a form that no longer exists today, and which—because its brain structure has become more defined—should also be regarded as the ancestral form of the human brain. Furthermore, the same researcher felt compelled to assume that humans could not be derived from the forms of higher animals, but must instead be derived from small, pygmy-like beings. And so he searched everywhere for remains of such an ancient, dwarfish human race.

[ 8 ] Once one allows such a hypothesis to sink in, one will say to oneself: The question is actually almost solved as to why paleontology and geology cannot provide any real evidence for such a primitive human as Kollmann posits, and why everything that is currently found in the form of fossilized apes and humans differs from this primitive human form. — This can be determined quite easily. When one considers today’s terrestrial conditions, one must conclude: It is impossible for such a primordial form—which would be both human and ape—to be viable today, or to exist under current terrestrial living conditions. — But it follows directly from this—whether or not a researcher states it more or less clearly—that he must assume the Earth must have had conditions in earlier times that were entirely different from today’s, that we must look back to earlier times that had entirely different living conditions, and that we could not find the ancestral form of modern humans on any Earth that already had today’s living conditions. Thus, we would have to go back to Earth conditions that would differ greatly from our current conceptions of present-day Earth conditions. Such a scientific hypothesis points out that, in fact, our Earth must have had a completely different form in prehistoric times, and all conditions must have been different from what they are today.

[ 9 ] This, however, completely shifts the entire issue as it developed in the second half of the nineteenth century. How did natural scientists come to adopt such a worldview? It was because, based on their own ideas and guided by their sense of truth and their intellectual conscience, they had to break with the old view—for example, the Linnaean view, according to which the individual forms of living beings had, as it were, been placed side by side in the world. This view did not seem to correspond to the level of scientific research, as it assumed arbitrary acts of creation that had once placed the individual forms of animals—and alongside them, human beings—on Earth. If one examines why this view did not seem scientific, one must answer: It rightly did not seem scientific when one considers the laws and conditions of formation of living beings as they currently prevail, for according to these natural laws, the placement of animal and human forms side by side is entirely incompatible. If, on the other hand, the scientific facts themselves were compelling us—as we have seen from the more or less conscious or unconscious statements of the aforementioned researcher—to assume entirely different conditions of earthly existence for earlier times, then this foundation no longer holds. Then one cannot say that, for this phase of Earth’s history, there would still be such a conceptual difficulty in conceiving the individual forms of living beings as materially independent of one another and understanding them as dependent on one another only in a spiritual sense.

[ 10 ] But the natural scientist mentioned is merely a type. Of particular importance is what natural-science thinkers such as Klaatsch and Snell have to say based on very specific scientific findings. It became clear to them—and they expressed this in the clearest terms—that, based on observable scientific facts, there could be absolutely no question of humans having any direct kinship with higher, ape-like mammals. It is not possible today to go into detail about the findings of, for example, blood research in recent years, although it would be interesting to do so. Today, the focus will be more on morphology. However, exactly the same could be said about Friedmann’s blood research as has been said about morphological development. These latter researchers found that it is entirely impossible to speak of humans having evolved from higher mammals, because a conscientious examination of what we now know from paleontology leads us to realize that the formative forces and conditions of higher mammals themselves can only be understood as traceable to primordial animal forms, to primordial animal forms, which—in essence, as they must originally be conceived in connection with the Earth—are actually much more similar to humans than to today’s ape-like mammals. Thus, today’s apes would be much less similar to the ancestral forms from which they themselves must be derived than humans are to these ancestral forms.

[ 11 ] This is an extraordinarily interesting development—one that has found its way into the field of zoology largely through gossip—that has led researchers to conclude: If, for example, one observes human hands, it is impossible to seriously consider, even for a moment, that they evolved from the limbs of today’s higher mammals; rather, one must assume that, in ancient times, there were ancestral forms that were much more similar to today’s human hands than to the limbs of today’s higher mammals. — For example, the researcher in question said: When we observe the gibbon—this remarkable species of ape that is always cited for its resemblance to humans—and see that its limbs still bear the greatest resemblance to human limbs, we must conclude it does not have them because the human form evolved from its form, but because, of all ape species, it has preserved the most of the primordial form from which humans also descend, and which humans have preserved most faithfully. — Thus, this researcher has come to assume that, in times long past, there existed a species of living beings whose entire constitution was such that humans, as they stand before us today, have preserved the vast majority of their characteristics, and that the greatest deviations are found in those “animal forms” that subsequently developed alongside humans from these original forms of prehistoric times. Thus, according to this researcher, humans have most faithfully preserved an original life form that existed long before not only our ape species but also the other mammals were present. An archetypal form, therefore, that dates back to those times when our mammals did not yet exist. And it is interesting that Klaatsch goes so far as to say that one must regard this primordial form of animals as more closely related to the ancient dragon genera described by geology than to today’s mammals and apes. Thus, all mammals are descended from a primordial form that they have, as it were, distorted into a caricature, while humans have preserved it most faithfully.

[ 12 ] These are things we do not discover through some branch of the humanities that natural scientists regard as fanciful, but rather we find them within scientific research in such a way that the researchers feel compelled, based on what they see, to make such claims. Now, of course, one might again say that such researchers make rather strange leaps and that there are many objections to be raised against this. But when one once again conjures up that strange creature from which all humans and mammals are said to have descended, one must admit: Under today’s conditions, such a creature is entirely impossible; it simply cannot exist today. —- Humans have simply reshaped that ancient form in such a way that they have gradually adapted it to present-day conditions. Now it is interesting that a researcher like Klaatsch, when considering the evolution of that primordial form into humans—which, after all, would have nothing to do with the laws that produced the various forms of mammals— feels compelled to assume, as the sites of evolution from such a primordial form, precisely those places within which humans would have been least affected by what is called, in the Darwinian sense, the “struggle for existence.” For he says: If humans had had to survive the brutal struggle for existence against predators and the like in regions where predators were particularly widespread, they would never have been able to endure this struggle; in order for what was a developmental potential within them to come to fruition, they had to be spared from it in conditions that were removed from this struggle for existence. — Thus, such a researcher—who, after all, always has a materialistic-monistic way of thinking in the background—attempts to show us how the modern human foot developed from a limb structure in primitive beings, assuming that the second pair of limbs was a kind of clawed hand. It is possible—though this is, of course, purely a hypothesis put forward by this researcher—that the human race, or this primordial form of the human race, inhabited regions where it lived in sparsely populated, but tall trees, so that while it was not a climbing animal, it was nevertheless able—in adaptation to its climbing, because it could support itself on tree trunks—to develop the hollow of the foot and the peculiar, pointed orientation of the big toe of the human foot. For when humans became creatures that walked on the ground, Klaatsch argues, they must already have developed the foot for that purpose; they must therefore have formed this foot under different conditions.

[ 13 ] That is, however, a strange conclusion and a peculiar hypothesis. For how could the objection not be justified that the foot, when it was still a climbing hand, must also have been adapted to the circumstances? Materialistic-monistic thinking is therefore insufficient here. But it is interesting to observe how such a researcher comes to reject, with regard to the evolution of humans from a primordial being, the very principle on which orthodox Darwinism had long placed such emphasis: the “struggle for existence”—so that he thus seeks to remove humans from this very struggle for existence. How, then, could one say that today’s scientific facts are to be interpreted in any way that would constitute a reaffirmation and confirmation of the worldview program that was conceived with such bold audacity at the dawn of Darwinism? It seems to us highly interesting that natural scientists felt compelled to point to forms—as the ancestral forms of humankind—that do not exist today, forms that are, so to speak, contrived by natural scientists and merely hypothetically assumed. And this goes so far that, for example, Klaatsch can say, in response to all the ideas that humans evolved from higher forms of mammals during the Ice Age through the struggle for existence, that this is a childish notion that can no longer be upheld today. Of course, such a notion—which this researcher calls childish—is still widely espoused in popular literature, and there are still plenty of writers in this popular literature who claim to be presenting facts, when in reality they are merely hypotheses that fail to stand up to what other researchers present as facts. Thus, Dengen’s scientific approach leads entirely away from what is still widely regarded today as a scientific worldview.

[ 14 ] So, how can we briefly outline the course of scientific research from the past to the present? In the 1970s, people used to say: Look at the higher forms of mammals—there you have a picture of what humans looked like in the distant past! — Today it is said: In these mammalian forms, you have animal forms that arose solely because they diverged completely from what once existed as the “primitive human”—a form that cannot be found in the Earth’s fossil layers, for which there is no external evidence, but which today can only be reconstructed from what is discovered through geology. Natural science itself thus leads us back to forms that no longer exist today. Thus, in prehistoric times, humans are linked to forms that are truly quite different from what, until relatively recently, was believed to be the source of human descent.

[ 15 ] This is a path that clearly shows us that it must lead directly to what spiritual science actually has to say about the origin of humankind. How does spiritual science differ from a natural-scientific, materialistic monism with regard to the question of the origin of humankind?

[ 16 ] Spiritual science must assume that human beings, as they are constituted today, lead back into the past—we have already hinted at this as a path into the immediate past in these lectures as well—that, when we trace them backward, we are first led to earlier lives, to earlier incarnations. What lives today as spirit or soul within the human being—based on what has emerged in our recent lectures—we must view in such a way that it can have a life not only within the human physical form, in which it first appears to us in the sensory world, but that it can also have a life in the so-called disembodied state, so that we must view the full human life as divided into that part spent in the period from birth or conception to death, and that part extending from death to a new birth, during which the human being lives in a purely spiritual world and develops and utilizes the forces he has acquired in the physical body. Then, through a new birth, the human being enters into existence in such a way that, while they do acquire the outer physical form and features from the hereditary line as a result of what their parents and further ancestors can bequeath to them, what is thus inherited does not include the actual human core of being; rather, this core, immediately before the human being enters into existence, resides in a spiritual world, where it has equipped itself with corresponding forces from earlier lives, and that the human being can then, through this spiritual core of being, insofar as they have inherited forms as bodily forms and are composed of physical substances, undergo plastic transformations and developments, so that they are thus transformed and, particularly in the early years of childhood, individually structured, enabling the body to become a useful instrument for the spiritual-soul aspect that enters it as an independent entity. Therefore, in spiritual science, we regard the spiritual-soul as an independent entity, as a primary factor that works upon the human being in such a way that the human being inherits the fundamental structure of his form and his physical conditions from hereditary factors, but that the finer, more individual shaping is worked into what he inherits in accordance with these spiritual-soul conditions. However, from the perspective of spiritual science, we do not view the spiritual-soul core as working upon the human form as if it were shaping the entire human being, but rather in such a way that within that physicality which is inherited in the physical world, there still remains enough flexibility and inner malleability for the spiritual-soul core to work its way into it.

[ 17 ] If we now trace human beings back to earlier times, we find that life in the sensory world is followed by a life in the spiritual realm between the last death and the present birth; that this is then followed by a previous earthly life, then another spiritual life, and so on. However, when we turn our attention to the human being’s past existence using the methods available to the spiritual researcher—which will be briefly outlined below in connection with these remarks—we find that these incarnations, this entering into a physical body, came to an end, so to speak, in ancient times; that what we might call the spiritual -soul core of the human being—was indeed present, albeit in a different form than it is now, when the human being enters physical existence through birth; yet it was present and emerged from the spiritual world just as it does now when it connects with the conditions of heredity. But we would find that it originally emerged from the spiritual world in distant prehistory in such a way that it encountered earthly conditions that were quite different from those of the present. Indeed, spiritual science shows us that this spiritual-soul aspect actually encountered such earthly conditions in primeval times that, back then, far, far more had to be shaped and transformed out of what was given to the human being—as a spiritual-soul being—in the form of a physical body. And as we go further and further back in the course of time, we finally find that we ascend to such a primeval era in which the human spiritual-soul aspect was not yet dependent on find ready-made physical forms into which it could merely imprint the finer structures of the brain, the glandular system, and so on; and we are led back to primeval times when the human spiritual-soul nature encountered conditions such that, without the processes of present-day heredity and reproduction, the material conditions and laws of that time could be directly shaped out of the spiritual. Thus, we are not led back to a hypothetical form that is said to have once had a sensory-physical existence, as Klaatsch assumes for the ancient age of the dragons, but we are in truth led back to a spiritual archetype. And in the first incarnation of the human being, we must see a direct, plastic shaping of physicality; and as earthly conditions progressed, the more solid forms of human physicality were then, so to speak, increasingly transferred to what was passed down through heredity, and all that remained for this inner spiritual core—which was growing weaker and weaker in terms of its power to shape the outer form—was the possibility of shaping only what is given within the line of heredity. Today, because the spiritual-soul aspect has grown weaker within the hereditary line and no longer possesses the power to shape the future physical form, it shapes only the finer conditions: the structure of the brain, the finer conditions of blood circulation, and the glandular system. It finds the physical body given to it by heredity. But if we go back to primeval times, we find there entirely different conditions of earthly events, entirely different conditions of the physical realm, in which the spiritual within the physical not only shapes the remainder of the physical substances, as is the case today, but can directly shape the whole human being out of itself, so that what appears to us today as the human form must, in the sense of spiritual science, be regarded as crystallizing out of the spiritual realm, just as we see a cube of salt crystallizing out of a salt solution today, which takes its form from the inner laws of formation. And just as it is not necessary for the salt cubes—which all resemble one another through their inner formation—to descend from a single source, it is equally unnecessary—if one allows these spiritual-scientific considerations to take effect on one’s soul—to think that a physical blood relationship with animals exists simply because what humans possess today in their physical proportions, in their skeletal structure, and in the structure of their other organs resembles the proportions and functions of animals that have similar forms. We must attribute this similarity of form to the welling forth of this principle of form, which we can still recognize today as something directly spiritual and soul-related. This is elaborated in more detail in my Outline of Esoteric Science.

[ 18 ] The idea that spiritual science leads humanity back to a spiritual archetype—an archetype of humanity that is spiritual in itself but so deeply imbued with forces that it still masters matter—should be set aside. And alongside this, it should be shown how natural science must construct—purely from hypothetical thought—the primordial form to which it itself is led, and which is not ape-like. But natural science still believes that this primordial form must have acted as a material being in primeval times. It did not act as a material being in primeval times, any more than, for example, a human being today—when sleeping, when leaving the body as a spiritual-soul being—regulates certain productive processes as a material being during the time between falling asleep and waking up. While today the spiritual-soul aspect is even more active during sleep than during waking hours—namely, in dispelling fatigue—we must conceive of that which is creative in the human being, that which dispels fatigue during sleep, as having been so intensified in primeval times that it was able to bring forth the entire human being in its formative relationships.

[ 19 ] If one then asks: What is the meaning of all this evolution?—one must say: Essentially, human beings today show us—not through bold hypotheses, but through unbiased observation—where the meaning of such a development lies. When we observe human beings in their lives, as we have already done here—how they recall their childhood with their consciousness, with their present “I”—the thread of memory breaks off at some point, and for ordinary consciousness, we can then only rely on what our parents, siblings, and so on tell us about who we were before that point in time; otherwise we would have to place our origin much later. Was the child’s spiritual-soul being not yet present during those times—which we cannot recall—in the child’s twilight-like, sleep-like existence? It was present; indeed, in the early years of childhood, it was even stronger and more vigorous in terms of outward activity than it was later. Before self-consciousness emerged in human beings, this dreamlike, active human being was working precisely on the finer development of the brain’s structure and the finer aspects of the human physical body; and because it directed its forces toward these, an inner human soul-being with self-consciousness had not yet come into being. Once human beings had developed the finer aspects of their physical form from within their soul, this force working on the human being from the outside transformed into what emerged as a conscious inner soul life. Thus we see that, for the outer form to emerge as consciousness, the formative power of the spiritual-soul aspect must weaken. Therefore, it is not absurd for spiritual science to look back through the ages and view the spiritual-soul aspect in such a way that it first appeared as the creator of the human form, and after it had assumed a form that was preserved through heredity across the generations, the spiritual-soul forces were able to withdraw into an inner life—a conscious and ever-increasingly conscious human soul life. Thus, in truth, this spiritual-soul core of the human being has merely become weaker in relation to external formative conditions; but what has been lost and what has been handed over to heredity has emerged in the powers of consciousness, which continue to develop further and further in the processes of culture.

[ 20 ] It is now of interest to consider how the origin of the animal kingdom itself should be understood in relation to this human form. Here, too, only a brief mention can be made of what is elaborated further in Occult Science. It can be said that the earthly conditions into which human beings had to adapt took shape earlier than the human physical form itself, and that at a certain point in time, human beings entered the world of the sensible from the world of the supersensible, so that, as a purely spiritual archetype, the spiritual-soul aspect worked its way into the physical body to such an extent at a certain time that human beings could then emerge as physical beings; and that we must conceive of that into which this spiritual-soul aspect worked itself as something entirely different from later physical forms—namely, as something mobile and malleable in itself. And human beings shaped this malleable substance at a time when it was possible for human forms to do so; for the animal kingdom, spiritual science must assume that it shaped itself into physical matter during a much earlier epoch of Earth’s history—that it could not wait until the conditions had arisen that gave human beings their present form. Humanity, as it were, waited until the Earth was ripe for it, so that what was reflected in its spiritual nature could be imprinted upon the plastic, organic matter as the present-day human physical form. Animals acquired their physical forms earlier and under different conditions, and this meant that—even though their archetype is also spiritual—the spiritual-soul aspect of the animal, which operates within much more limited conditions, manifested itself in a different form within the animal. Therefore, we must regard animals as beings that humanity has, as it were, sent ahead into earthly existence, and because they did not incarnate under the same conditions as humans, we must view them in ancient forms that are not adapted to later earthly conditions.

[ 21 ] Now, if spiritual science wishes to think strictly in the sense of natural science, it is not merely a matter of conceiving its logic entirely in the sense of natural science, nor is it merely a matter of organizing its logic entirely in the sense of natural science; for you will have seen that the remarks just made are not only conceived strictly in terms of natural science, but that the facts of natural science point entirely toward what has been said today: that the very forms which natural scientists conceive of as archetypes based on the facts and imagine in material, sensory terms must be transformed into spiritual-soul forms—forms that led to the present human form only because they later incarnated into earthly conditions as animal forms. But natural science demonstrates its findings not only through hypothesis but also through experiment and testing. In this respect, too, spiritual science does not lag behind natural science. It has already been pointed out in earlier lectures how human beings can continue to develop in regard to their spiritual and soul life, and how, through intimate soul processes—meditation, concentration, and the like—they can influence their spiritual and soul life in such a way that it becomes much more powerful and vigorous than it is in normal life. Today it can only be pointed out that the thoughts in the meditative life must arise from human volition if they are to develop the individual into a spiritual researcher, whereas all other thoughts are formed by the surrounding circumstances. When a person begins, with full perseverance, to devote himself to such a meditative life—when, through his own free will, he places certain ideas, feelings, or impulses of will at the center of his soul life—he succeeds in detaching his spiritual and soul life from the physical, and he can then, however much this may be ridiculed and mocked today, advance to an inner life where he knows: Now I am living in the core of my spiritual-soul being and, through it, am in direct connection with the spiritual world. I do not experience through my senses or through the intellect, which is bound to the brain, but I experience within myself a spiritual-soul being who has slipped out of his physical body, even out of his brain as an instrument. — And it has been mentioned that in the early stages of such an ascent, when one has not yet progressed far enough, a person has the feeling: You are now experiencing an inner spiritual life, but you cannot conceive of it, cannot translate it into concepts. — This is a transitional state that may seem quite troubling to some. And it is true that while one would otherwise consider oneself a rational person—if one can form concepts based on one’s experiences—the fact that one cannot now grasp things in concepts leads one to feel that one is not a rational person, but rather an idiot, when going through such an experience: “Now you are experiencing something, but you cannot comprehend it!”

[ 22 ] As strange as it may sound, in a certain higher sense one becomes, for a time, a sort of idiot. But as one progresses, one reshapes this spiritual-soul core in such a way that it gains even greater powers—namely, the ability to consciously participate in what the spiritual-soul core does, which would otherwise remain unconscious. While in early childhood one unconsciously works on one’s external configuration, after having practiced for a certain period of time, one realizes that one is strengthening the spiritual-soul core to such an extent that one can now consciously—by working on one’s brain organization—create an organ, so that one can now comprehend what one could not comprehend before and bring into consciousness what one experiences. This is the basis for the communicability of spiritual science. What one can perceive in the early stages of spiritual scientific experience is so indefinite—so entirely an experience within a new element of existence—that it lacks any conceptual contours. But if it were to remain that way, one would not be able to communicate spiritual science. One can only communicate it once one is able to bring these experiences down into consciousness and express them in concepts. But this can only be done through the brain. That is why the spiritual researcher must consciously transform his brain; that is why he initially perceives his brain as a block of wood that he must first reshape.

[ 23 ] Thus we can say: in this higher stage of human spiritual development, we can literally experience how human beings work from their spiritual nature—as if conducting an experiment in the configuration and organization of matter. — Higher spiritual insight always proceeds in such a way that human spiritual life—which initially exists only in the spiritual realm—is worked into matter. There we see how the human soul, which becomes self-aware at a certain stage, continues the process that we observe unfolding from the spiritual world at the beginning of human evolution; and what the human being experiences as a spiritual researcher—when he has spent a long time cultivating the methods outlined above—points to the spiritual origin of the human being in his evolution. Just as earlier states appear in a person’s memory in their everyday life—the life between birth and death—so that when they reach the age of fifty, they know what they experienced at twenty, thirty, and so on, and their consciousness is extended backward, so too is a person’s consciousness, through meditation and concentration, extended backward beyond birth into regions that are otherwise entirely hidden from us when we limit ourselves to the brain in the earthly-physical body. This touches upon a point that is still quite distant from human consciousness today, but for which an understanding will emerge in a relatively short time, when culture is enriched by spiritual science. A realm is touched upon that we may call the extension of human consciousness beyond the limits of the brain and the senses. Through this, we attain an expansion of memories beyond the present life, an expansion of consciousness for soul and spiritual processes. These soul and spiritual processes then present themselves in such a way that one can say: One no longer works merely with logical inferences, as geology, paleontology, comparative anatomy, and so on do, but rather with facts that appear before one’s inner eye, like memories of earlier times in one’s earthly life. Spiritual vision expands. And as the spiritual-soul core of the human being develops, it meets this inner experience, and the spiritual state of origin of our earthly life is indeed conjured up before our inner eye—a state in which the forms of beings are not yet as they are around us, but rather as they are before they have taken on form, as they would appear if one were to perceive a crystal that has not yet taken shape and were about to burst forth into becoming. In short, we learn to recognize what is within the human being, apart from the physical formative forces—how the human being is—without having to take into account the physical aspect that lies in heredity. We come to know the human being spiritually and soulfully, and we can then form a conception of what the human being was like at his place of origin, when he first worked his way into the physical realm through formative activity and incarnated into the sensory world.

[ 24 ] This presents a finding that anyone can verify if they are willing to muster the perseverance and courage required for such a self-experiment. For when a person experiences the core of their spiritual-soul nature within themselves, they experience—even before they comprehend it—not something that appears as entirely foreign to them, even though it is not born of the sensory environment, but rather as something that emerges as entirely new, yet of which they feel: What you sense as an innermost impulse is related to your entire innermost nature; this is yourself as an eternal being, which, as the first and eternal foundation, underlies all outward physical form. There one feels that one is now facing the whole human being not with the senses, but spiritually. And there one finds a remarkable point of comparison with what we encounter in everyday life. The spiritual researcher experiences that he cannot say: “What I am forming here is connected to my brain or my eye and so on,” but rather he must say: “It is connected to the whole human being.” — It is similar to when we observe a child in ordinary life. There we see that a child actually laughs and cries differently than an adult. It is indeed different. The child laughs and cries with its whole body. What in an adult occurs merely through the secretion of the tear glands extends, in the child, throughout the entire organism. The child feels deeply moved by what is expressed through crying. The same is true of laughter: the child laughs with their whole body, whereas an adult might merely curl the corners of their mouth. This can also be observed later in life. Whatever moves the soul first affects the whole person; only then does it affect the tear glands or the muscles of the face. This response becomes specialized, focusing on a particular organ. Notice how, during a certain period of your life, when you are moved, you feel something like a constriction or a tension in your chest; later in life, this concentrates into a subtle sensation in the larynx that you can perceive if you pay attention to it. Thus, what becomes specialized emerges from the experience that moves the whole person. The spiritual-soul aspect works its way out of the whole human being and then specializes in individual parts.

[ 25 ] As a spiritual researcher, one goes through exactly the same process. One feels a second human being developing within oneself. One feels that this inner human being, who lives within one as a spiritual being, is working on the development of the organic body only to a lesser extent than he originally did at the starting point of Earth’s evolution.

[ 26 ] I have cited individual facts that may serve to reinforce the assertion that human beings—as natural science still believes today, even though its findings compel it to entertain entirely different ideas—if traced back to the origin of their earthly existence, would not arrive at a primordial life form that, while different from today’s form, but would still be a physical human or animal form;—rather, it becomes clear to us that we are traced back to a primal form that is spiritual-soul-based, and that, in fact, before the first physical human form could take shape, human beings already existed as spiritual-soul-based beings. In this respect, too, human beings are creatures who create themselves out of their innermost spiritual-soul core—beings who give themselves form according to the conditions they possess in the spiritual-soul realm. But the spiritual-soul realm also appears to us as the primordial reality for human beings in the past. The spirit reveals itself to us as the truly creative force, and later, what appears to us as material life in the external world will also be revealed as having been shaped out of the spirit.

[ 27 ] Today, the sole purpose is to bring this particular chapter on human ancestry—the origin of humankind—to your attention, tracing it back to that point in human evolution when humankind was not yet a physical being but rather a spiritual-soul being. If natural science continues to follow the paths that have been outlined today—and that it has already taken—it will converge with spiritual science. Therefore, anyone who looks at things without prejudice today will have to say: It only seemed as though one could trace human beings back to animal forms of origin, indeed as though one need only regard the spiritual-soul aspect as a manifestation of physical forms. On the contrary, one must say: That which was believed to be the result of the sensory realm proves to be the original, the first, the creative, and the sensory realm the result. — Everywhere, wherever human beings can perceive with their senses and think with their intellect, they are led to the spiritual. And when they recognize the Spirit—to which we shall return—in its eternity, they will feel secure in the spiritual-soul aspect of the world, which we can address only with the attribute of eternity.

[ 28 ] Everything originates from the spirit! This is the insight of spiritual science. And because everything originates from the spirit, and material existence is merely a transitional stage in which we are to acquire powers that we cannot acquire elsewhere, we perceive material existence as a stepping stone back to a life imbued with spirit in the future. Just as human incarnations on Earth began with the human being emerging from a purely spiritual existence, so will they end when they have fulfilled their purpose for the human being: namely, to provide the human being with what leaves a lasting impression upon them, so that they may take it with them into the spiritual world. Just as human beings return to earthly existence after each death to develop what they were previously unable to develop, and just as we look back on the beginning of incarnations, so do we look ahead into the future to the end of incarnations—and with it, the human being’s return to the spiritual world.

[ 29 ] Everything originates from the Spirit. The human soul lives within the Spirit, where it feels its full power. Once it has reached its goal on Earth and acquired all that the physical body can offer, it will return to the Spirit. From the Spirit—through matter—to the Spirit! This is the profound, life-affirming answer that spiritual science offers to the question of humanity’s origin and destiny.