The Rudolf Steiner Archive

9. The Origin of the Animal Kingdom in the Light of Spiritual Science

[ 1 ] If, from the perspective of currently prevailing ideas, it was already somewhat difficult to examine the origin of humankind from a humanities perspective—which was to be the subject of the last lecture in this series—it will be even less easy today to speak about the origin of the animal kingdom. For while, on the one hand, a difficulty arises from the fact that everything pertaining to the animal world is — at least apparently — is even more remote than anything pertaining to human nature and essence, then on the other hand a particular difficulty must also arise from the fact that, in the context of current thinking, the influence of spiritual facts and causes on the development and origin of animal existence is not accepted at all. Rather, we find that, in the course of the most recent stages of development in our spiritual life, the very notion has emerged with particular force that the development of animal life is supposed to involve precisely the same causes, forces, and entities as those involved in inanimate, so-called inorganic nature. And we know, of course, that the greatest triumphs of natural science have in fact been achieved precisely in this field of the so-called purely natural evolution of living beings.

[ 2 ] Now, however, we must say that, on the one hand, the longing for a purely natural development—as it is commonly called—aims at a development that takes into account only those forces that are also at work in inanimate existence. We see how research proceeding in this direction believes it is rushing from triumph to triumph—and indeed, if interpreted correctly, it does just that. On the other hand, one can observe how deeper thinkers, who are firmly grounded in the facts of natural science and are, moreover, fully familiar with everything that natural science has produced in recent times, are nevertheless unable to share the views of those who would like to derive life entirely from a mere connection or a mere combination—albeit of a very complex nature—of those forces and processes that are also present in inanimate nature. A large number of thinkers of the present and the immediate past did not find it particularly difficult to say: Up to a certain point in time, the development of our Earth consisted primarily in the unfolding of inanimate processes from within themselves, and then a point in time had arrived at which certain substances combined in a complex manner such that the simplest living beings arose, whereupon evolution proceeded in such a way that, as is said, from these simpler living beings—through the struggle for existence and adaptation to the environment—ever more and more complex living beings developed, culminating in human beings. — But another group of recent thinkers had to conclude: It is impossible to conceive that the mere combination of inanimate substances could ever have given rise to what, in the true sense of the word, can be called spontaneous generation—the emergence of the living from the non-living.

[ 3 ] Among such thinkers of the latter type is, in particular, Gustav Theodor Fechner, a man of genius in many respects. Since significant advances in the natural sciences are indeed linked to this figure in so many different fields, one should not dismiss the views of such a thinker so readily, as is usually the case today. Gustav Theodor Fechner cannot conceive that life could ever have developed from non-living matter. Rather, it seems natural to him to imagine that the non-living can arise from the living through processes of secretion, because we do in fact see that the life process within living beings secretes substances which, after having served the life process for their time, pass into the rest of nature and then, so to speak, belong to the non-living, to inorganic processes. Thus, Fechner can well imagine that our Earth, at its very beginning, was once a single, vast living being. From this great living being—the Earth—which may have obtained its respiration, and perhaps also its nourishment, from outer space; from this great, mighty unified organism that was once our Earth—living beings emerged, on the one hand, as if through the specific separation of what were merely living organs within the great Earth organism, through the independence of such organs. And on the other hand, those substances have separated from the great living being that is the Earth which today belong to inanimate natural processes in a similar way to how substances separate from an organism after they have served living processes for a time. Thus, in this thinker’s view, it was not the living that emerged from the inanimate, but rather the inanimate that emerged from the living.

[ 4 ] In a similar way—perhaps even more fantastical—a concept emerged from the naturalist Wilhelm Preyer, who established his legitimacy and right to contribute to the natural sciences not only through his extensive research in physiology and biology, but also through his writings on Darwinism. Preyer also imagines that the Earth, at its very beginning, was a kind of living being. Indeed, he was generally averse to speaking of anything as “inanimate” in the absolute sense. He says: We actually have no particular right to regard a flame as something entirely inanimate; rather, we may very well view the burning within the flame as a kind of life process at the lowest level, one that has been simplified and brought down from a higher level just as those life processes we observe today may have evolved upward. When a flame burns, Preyer argues, it does indeed appear as though, in the consumption of the material and in the entire manner in which the act of burning presents itself to us, something akin to a life process is revealed. And he did not rule out the possibility that the Earth itself was a great life process—a life process that must have unfolded under conditions entirely different from those under which life processes unfold today. And so we see the most remarkable ideas emerging from the mind of a naturalist, which Preyer expresses by saying: the Earth may well have been, at the very beginning of its formation, a vast and mighty organism, whose breathing we must seek in the glowing iron vapors, whose blood flow we must imagine in the molten metals, and whose nourishment must have come from meteorites drawn in from outer space. — This is, admittedly, a peculiar organism and a peculiar life process, but this naturalist believes he cannot express it any other way: he does not trace the living back to the inanimate, but rather the inanimate back to an original living entity. And what appears to us today as our life in the various kingdoms appeared to him merely as a particularly elaborate form of life, whereas the life of a burning candle appeared to him as a life that had, in a certain sense, regressed, so that the latter may well appear to us, outwardly, as lifeless.

[ 5 ] If we must say that such phenomena in the development of modern intellectual life can, in a sense, show us how significant thinkers—who stand firmly on the ground of natural science not only in their outlook but also in their insights—do not at all view the Earth merely as the glowing -liquid, lifeless gas ball of the Kant-Laplacean theory, but view the primordial Earth as a great living being in order to explain what lives today, this can, in a sense, teach us that reducing the living to the non-living is not so easy after all. On the other hand, we must say that even the pioneering minds behind the greatest achievements in modern scientific research cannot teach us that scientific thinking has reduced all living things to a lifeless existence, and that, in this regard, natural science would actually contradict what the spiritual sciences have to say—namely, that all material things, and indeed all living beings, can be traced back to spiritual causes. Is it true, then, that what Darwin, Lamarck, or other pioneering minds have contributed to the great achievements of natural science excludes consideration of the spiritual causes underlying these phenomena?

[ 6 ] On numerous occasions, attention has been drawn from this column to a noteworthy passage in Darwin’s writings, in which this great and formidable pioneer points out how he succeeded in demonstrating the transformation of one life form into another, and how it thereby seemed quite possible to him to trace today’s living beings, in all their complexity, back to earlier, perhaps less complex organisms, and thus to explain the diversity of today’s life forms through original life forms that may have differed little from one another. But then Darwin says, in a very telling way: “Thus, it would have been possible to trace today’s diverse life forms back to an original one and to explain the diversity of present-day life through evolution.” — But Darwin speaks of these original life forms in such a way that he assumes—as he puts it verbatim—“that the Creator once breathed life into them.” Indeed, we may go so far as to say that Darwin, the naturalist active in the mid-nineteenth century, believed himself justified in his explanation of the transformation of species in the living world precisely because he assumed that the source to which he originally traced evolution simply originated from the Creator. He would immediately—as we can see from Darwin’s entire way of thinking—have had to face the inadequacy of his explanation if he had not been allowed to assume the intervention of spiritual factors at some point in the Earth’s development. It is precisely this—that he tells himself: if one can assume that primordial life, generated from the spiritual realm, existed in its simplest forms, then one can also expect this life in its simplest forms to have possessed the driving force and impetus necessary to transform itself into complex and diverse forms—that gives him a firm and strong footing on the ground he has tread.

[ 7 ] In an even broader sense, this must be applied to Jean Lamarck, who spoke of a natural evolution of living beings through adaptation to their environment toward increasingly complex forms. It is precisely in Lamarck that one sees his central idea: one may assume an evolution from the outwardly imperfect to the outwardly ever more perfect, because there is no need to view this as contradictory to the fact that this entire evolution is interwoven with and permeated by fundamental spiritual forces. How else could Lamarck have included a passage in his seminal work—which we can quote verbatim—that is precisely indicative of the approach now characterized among older natural scientists? In his Philosophie zoologique, Lamarck states:

[ 8 ] “Since it had not been taken into account that individuals of a species must remain unchanged as long as the circumstances affecting their way of life do not change significantly, and since prevailing prejudices are consistent with the assumption of this progressive generation of similar individuals, it has been assumed that every species is immutable and as old as nature itself, and that it was specially created by the sublime Author of all things.”

[ 9 ] Lamarck is aware that he must depart from the idea of a single creation of all species at the outset of this natural existence, and that he must conceive of the species we see around us today as having arisen through evolution. But then he continues:

[ 10 ] “Certainly, everything exists only by the will of the sublime Creator of all things. But can we prescribe rules to Him in the exercise of His will, or determine the manner in which He has done this? Could not His infinite omnipotence have created an order of things unknown to us, which brought into existence, one after another, everything we see and everything that exists? Whatever His will may have been, the immeasurable greatness of His power is certainly always the same, and however He may have carried out this will, nothing can diminish its greatness. Thus, by respecting the decrees of this infinite wisdom, I confine myself to the role of a simple observer of nature.”

[ 11 ] Thus speaks the man to whom people today—and rightly so—refer when discussing the theory of evolution. At the same time, however, we see that this man thereby outlined his program from the very beginning in the most definitive manner. What is this program?

[ 12 ] Lamarck states: If one determines, through observation, everything available to a simple observer of nature, this gives rise to the possibility of conceiving that organisms have developed in a continuous sequence; but one must originally assume that spiritual driving forces are at work in this entire development, for otherwise one would have no firm ground at all. - This is clearly recognizable as the mindset of the pioneering Lamarck. One must then, however, say: In this way, this natural scientist charted his own particular course by limiting himself to the processes of the external world and not ascending at all to what must lie spiritually at the foundation of the entire evolutionary process. He suddenly consigns the spiritual to a world into which he has no intention of penetrating, a world he presupposes from the outset as the realm of the entire, unhindered creative will; yet he limits himself to describing what has sprung from this creative will and is manifesting itself in ongoing development.

[ 13 ] On the other hand, however, it must be said that, as things stand today, it can never reasonably occur to the scientific observer that, under the conditions accessible to modern external observation, living matter could ever develop from non-living matter on Earth as we know it today. The idea that life develops from non-living matter is by no means a new one; in fact, it is the older of the two. It has already been emphasized here that it was a major advance in the natural sciences—one that occurred barely two centuries ago—when Francesco Redi articulated the principle: Life can arise only from life. — It is interesting that in the centuries before Francesco Redi, it was still widely assumed that living things—and quite complex organisms at that—could arise from purely non-living matter. Not only was it assumed that from river mud, which to the naked eye appeared to be non-living, lower animals, earthworms, for example, could develop from river mud—which, to the naked eye, appeared to be non-living—without a living seed from an earthworm ancestor having been introduced into the mud; rather, it was quite systematically assumed that animals, up to and including insects or even higher forms, could develop from non-living matter. It is interesting to note that in a work by Saint Isidore, who died in 636, it is quite systematically stated that bees can develop from the carcass of an ox—something that has thus already passed into the inanimate—if one merely beats it sufficiently, Indeed, this man, who stood at the pinnacle of scholarship in his time, not only described how bees can develop from an ox’s carcass, but he also tells us how, in the same way, hornets can develop from horse carcasses, drones from mules, and wasps from donkey carcasses. But that is not all; as late as the seventeenth century, it was claimed that ants and eels could arise from what had already turned into the inanimate. And the belief that living things could arise from non-living matter in the simplest manner was so powerful that Francesco Redi narrowly escaped the fate of Giordano Bruno because he had the audacity to utter the following statement: Life can arise only from life; for the assumption that living beings can develop from inanimate matter can rest only on imprecise observation, since the river mud must already contain the living germs of living beings if life is to develop.

[ 14 ] Spiritual science today must add to Francesco Redi’s achievements the principle that the spiritual can develop only from the spiritual. And since, ultimately, all earthly development culminates in the spiritual—as it manifests itself simply and at a lower level in the animal world, at a higher level in the normal human being, and at the highest level in the human spirit itself—this spiritual, which ultimately seems to emerge from the seemingly non-spiritual, can only be traced back to an original spiritual source. If spiritual science is compelled to assert this today—as we have heard in earlier lectures and also in past years in these lecture series—and if it further seeks to fully substantiate this statement in the various fields: “The spiritual can arise only from the spiritual”—and says: Everything that appears to us as material is merely a transformed form of the spiritual—then it is today, because other things have come into vogue—for people are no longer burned at the stake, no longer subjected to the fate of Francesco Redi or Giordano Bruno, but certainly to a different fate. Because it must today proactively advocate a truth that will become as deeply rooted in cultural life as the statement “The living can arise only from the living” has become, spiritual science will be regarded as a fantasy, as something that by no means stands firmly on the ground of genuine scientific knowledge.

[ 15 ] Now, what spiritual science has to say from its own standpoint regarding the question of the origin of the animal kingdom will be outlined here first. Then, since I have set myself the task in these lectures of harmonizing what spiritual science brings forth with the achievements of natural science, I will show how the insights of spiritual science regarding the origin of the animal world can indeed be brought into harmony with the current achievements of natural scientific knowledge.

[ 16 ] However, spiritual science as such cannot go back to what Gustav Theodor Fechner or Preyer assumed to be the original Earth organism. On the other hand, however, it must be emphasized time and again that no explanation will succeed in making it even remotely logically plausible that, within the course of our Earth’s evolution, the diversity of living beings could have developed from a purely nebulous formation, as the Kant-Laplace theory assumes; unless, so to speak, one were to resort to the tools of the very latest school of thought in order to reconcile the organic or animal world with it. This would lead one to the now widely admired—though no less fantastical—theory of the Swedish researcher Svante Arrhenius, which posits that—let us say, just at the right time, when the Earth was ready to receive the seeds of living beings—it received such seeds from outer space through what is known as radiation pressure. Anyone can easily see that such an explanation is no explanation at all, for one would then be faced with the task of explaining where and how these living beings originated, even if they flowed into the Earth as mere spores through radiation pressure.

[ 17 ] Spiritual science must go back to a stage in the Earth’s history when the Earth did not yet appear to us as being inhabited and populated by living beings such as we recognize today. In a certain sense, spiritual science also reveals to us something similar to what Fechner and Preyer imagined through purely intellectual reasoning—namely, that at its very beginning, the Earth was a living being that did not merely contain gases and vapors in an inanimate state, as the Kant-Laplace theory assumes. This theory can be explained very easily even to the simplest schoolchild by saying: Just look—it is indeed possible that, through the mere rotation of a drop in a liquid, if you let it spin, something can break off, which then, due to the rotation, circles around the larger drop as a smaller one, so that this can give rise to something like a miniature solar system. — The only thing people forget is that it was rotation itself that set the drop in motion in the first place, and that if such a process were really to have taken place on a grand scale—if the planets were to have split off through the rotation of a gaseous sphere—then a giant professor or a giant teacher must have reigned in outer space, for when conducting an experiment, one must take all processes into account and not forget oneself. If it is already impossible, based on what we currently know, to explain even the separation of the planets from a gas sphere that once existed, then it will be even less possible to explain life within a planetary existence without a living being, if only non-living matter is supposed to have existed beforehand.

[ 18 ] Spiritual science, however, leads us back to an Earth that was, at its very beginning, not only animated but also spiritualized, so that we must trace Earth’s development back to an original, spiritualized Earth being. If we were to visualize this spirit-imbued Earth being, as it were, before our senses, this being would appear, in substance, much as we still see today—as the last remnants of this original Earth state—in the lowest organisms, of which it is actually difficult to say whether they are plant or animal beings: mobile, but not yet formed, living matter. If we consider these lowest organisms—which one might actually describe as “flowing life,” since they initially look like a round droplet that, however, in response to external stimuli changes its matter in terms of form and position, extending into feelers or feet that crawl across the ground, yet possess no definite forms of their own— — when we visualize this primordial substance of life, we have before us, in the sense of spiritual science, the entirety of the primordial Earth matter, and within this Earth matter there is not yet what we today regard as inanimate substances. The entire Earth is, so to speak, a living but as yet unformed substance, and alongside this unformed substance, spiritual science must conceive of—as a purely spiritual entity at the starting point of Earth’s development—what we call the principle of form, the supersensible principle of form. Today, in the sense of spiritual science, we can only form a conception of what this Earth was actually like at the starting point of its becoming if we imagine a sleeping human being and say to ourselves, in the sense we have often done in previous lectures: When we imagine the sleeping human being, we have the physical body lying in bed, and this physical body is permeated by what we, in spiritual science, call a non-sensory bodily form: the etheric body. But outside, as it were, in the sphere surrounding this physical, living body, we have what is within this physical body during waking life: the living life of the soul, which we call the connection between the “I” and the human astral body. — Thus, in the waking human being, we have before us the inner soul-life, permeating the outer physical body; in the sleeping human being, however, we have before us the outer physical body, separated from the inner soul-life. This inner soul-life is unconscious in today’s sleeping human being; it is, so to speak, not permeated by any real inner content—at least not consciously. But for a true thinker, it is impossible to imagine that the sleeping human being actually still possesses this within themselves, or that what is a living activity in the sleeping human being simultaneously brings about the phenomena of soul life itself during the waking state. What can we, if we proceed with truly logical thinking, even imagine? We can only imagine—this can only be sketched out today, but anyone who thinks logically and consistently cannot arrive at any other conclusion—that a person exercises and expresses their soul activity through the waking activity of the body, so that the waking person, in order to develop consciousness, needs their physical organs, and that the physical organs must be structured in such a way that, when animated by the soul principle, they can serve as carriers or mediators of conscious life. However, a person can never imagine that the inner, living, organic activity that takes place during sleep could produce what enters our consciousness during wakefulness as inner mental processes. We need only take a simple comparison, which is entirely sufficient for this purpose, and we will be able to see how this matter stands.

[ 19 ] Let us substitute the lungs and breathing for the brain—the organ of the soul—which brings about our waking, conscious state. Then we must say that the lungs breathe only because oxygen flows into them from the outside. But the activity of the lungs is not limited to the inflow of oxygen, for organic activity has no influence over the supply of oxygen. However, we cannot learn anything about the nature and essence of oxygen from the way we nourish and enliven our lungs from within, nor can the lungs be supplied with oxygen from within. Just as we must conceive of the inner life process as extending into the lungs, so too must we conceive of it as extending into the brain and the other organs during sleep. In the evening, our organs are exhausted because soul activity wears them down, and they must be permeated by a pure life force so that they can once again serve as mediators of soul activity. But just as mere inner life activity cannot supply the lungs with oxygen, neither can inner life activity supply the human being during sleep with what we might call the human being’s drives, desires, passions, and so on. Nothing for a person’s soul activity follows from mere bodily activity, just as nothing regarding the nature of oxygen—which is entirely supplied to the lungs from the outside—follows from mere life activity that flows into the lungs. And no one can escape the entirely compelling conclusion: Just as oxygen as such exists in the external world and is supplied to the lungs, except that the lungs, because they do not fall asleep, are supplied with it not intermittently but continuously—so, too, the human organs of cognition are not summoned from within by mere bodily activity to mediate mental activity; rather, this must flow into them upon waking, just as oxygen flows from the outside into the lungs. There must therefore be something which, as part of the human “I,” flows into bodily activity in the morning and then works within the human organs of the soul. Thus, in the phenomenon of sleep, we must consider the spiritual aspect separately and regard it, so to speak, as something that awakens a part of our bodily organs into organs of the soul in the morning.

[ 20 ] We thus have, as it were, a living organism in the sleeping human being and, hovering above it, an independent spiritual entity. During waking life, we must imagine that what flows out of us as soul processes—that is, as spiritual-soul processes— can, of course, only bring about certain processes that undoubtedly run parallel to them in the organism—processes that are effects of the soul processes and which, when they reach their peak, cause fatigue and are, so to speak, processes of dissolution of the material, whereas these processes of fatigue are reversed by the body during sleep.

[ 21 ] In a similar way, spiritual science shows that, at its very beginning, the Earth actually consisted of a duality—of something that is not the same as the sleeping and waking human being, but can well be compared to what was, so to speak, a mobile life substance, much like the last remnants of the simplest organisms still exist today, but in no way were organisms transformed into animal or human forms—not even into plant forms. And just as we must conceive of the human body—surrounding it in sleep—as the soul content of the human being, so too must we conceive of the entire Earth body at its beginning as being surrounded by what we may call the Earth Spirit, the common, unified Earth Spirit. It is within this Earth Spirit that we must seek everything that later took form within the Earth’s development. But within this Earth Spirit, we must also first seek everything that acts as a stimulating force upon the fluid material substance—as it were, upon the sleeping Earth—so that the entire substance of life is set in motion in the most varied ways. Thus we must conceive—I would say as spiritual currents flowing in from the Earth’s surroundings—the stimulating causes within the fluid, living matter which, just as a storm whips up the sea and shapes it into all manner of wave formations, originally evoked in the fluid substance only those forms that did not solidify but, after having temporarily taken shape, resumed their original formless state. The principle of form itself must be conceived as a supersensible, spiritual principle that was connected to the original substance of the Earth. If we wish to imagine something similar today regarding this mode of action or this interaction between spirit and matter in relation to the Earth at its point of origin, we can—as the natural science of the future will reveal—envision a more confined realm in which what occurred at the starting point of the Earth’s development takes place. We can still point to something that acts upon unformed life substance. All such processes that our own spiritual life brings about in the substance of the brain and in the substance of the blood can be compared to the processes that originally took place at the Earth’s point of origin between the spiritual principle of form and what, as living substance, underlies the Earth’s formation.

[ 22 ] Such a thing cannot be proven in the sense we understand it today. What can be proven is only that spiritual science, using the methods already described, creates—so to speak—for the entire development of the Earth something similar to what is created in the memory of the individual human being. Through the cultivation of certain forces—which have also been discussed here—that lie dormant in the depths of the soul—these are also the very forces through whose development the spiritual researcher can look directly into the spiritual being of the Earth—human memory and the human spiritual vision are expanded. In this way, matter and material life can be completely permeated by the spiritual gaze, and material processes can also reveal themselves in their existence in such a way that not only their present states but also the earlier states from which they have developed are made directly visible to the spiritual eye. Just as a person today carries within themselves what has shaped their soul life since childhood and can thus trace the thread of memory, so too can they trace their soul life back to earlier states; they can thus trace it back to how it was not only now, but decades ago and so on. When the spiritual gaze does not merely remain fixed on the outer material world, but penetrates the surfaces of things and delves into their spiritual depths, then something within the spiritual realm comes to the fore that places the human being in a kind of world memory—what is also called “reading the Akashic Records”—and through this, he looks back upon earlier, primordial states of the Earth.

[ 23 ] Evidence, therefore, can only be provided in such a spiritual manner. But once these matters have been investigated, we will have at our disposal the means to corroborate what spiritual researchers have brought to light and to show that there is complete harmony between what things still present to us today and what the spiritual researcher must assert on the basis of his insights. Therefore, even in a popular lecture, one can take no other approach than to describe what presents itself to the spiritual researcher and what flows from direct spiritual observation, while this spiritual-scientific observation transports us, so to speak, to the starting point of the Earth’s formation. But we must at the same time emphasize that, for such states, what we are to recognize as spiritual is indeed much closer to material creation than the spiritual is to material creation today. Today, the spiritual requires the counterforce, the resistance of the material body, so that the spiritual in human beings gives rise only to those images of the material that we bring to mind in our imagination. We cannot bring it to a higher degree of concretization than these images.

[ 24 ] Spiritual science, however, is based on the premise—and the following lectures will draw attention to the origin of matter—that all material existence was originally spiritual, except that the spiritual, when it was still creating matter itself, was in a more primordial, more will-like, and more powerful state than it is today in human spiritual life. Therefore, we must conceive of what, as a spiritual formative principle, surrounded the Earth as being much closer to what we have called the original life substance than is the case today with the sleeping human being in relation to the soul forces surrounding him. And as we proceed further, we must then conceive that through the intervention of the supersensible formative principle into the substance, everything that is today called inanimate nature came into being. In fact, we must conceive that through the influence of the spiritual formative principle, a form of matter separated out from the moving and animated matter, which then became inanimate. In this respect, spiritual science is once again closely aligned with the investigations of Fechner and Preyer. But such inanimate matter is, in a certain sense, once again grasped by the form-principle, in that the form-principle now manifests itself in this inanimate matter as crystallization, so that we must conceive of all the mineral realm as emerging from originally spiritual, animate matter and being grasped by the form-principle. Therefore, even today, when we speak of crystals, we can recognize a supersensible principle of form. The principle of form, however, asserted itself differently in the matter that remained animate. And if we set aside plants for the moment, we must imagine that the Earth, under the influence of those substances that gradually separated from the living substance as inanimate matter and grouped together in the most diverse ways, took shape into what we call solid Earth, liquid water, air, and so on. We must further imagine that during this time the principle of form was at work within the entire living and non-living substance, that the living, formed matter—which is exposed to the external non-living world——indeed, whereas it was previously entirely alive in itself, it must now assert itself against the inanimate matter, including through the fact that, in the course of Earth’s evolution, the principle of nutrition asserted itself as the incorporation of the inanimate into the living.

[ 25 ] We see, then, that the living, as it were, takes in the non-living, which it has first, in a certain sense, separated from itself. As a result, the living on Earth becomes increasingly subject to the conditions expressed by the non-living in the form of the elements earth, water, air, and so on, and the living can only be shaped in such a way that its forms are adapted to the external elements.

[ 26 ] Now we must imagine the life of the Earth in such a way that, as it progresses, it keeps the inanimate and the animate separate through the principle of form in the most diverse ways. We must imagine that the substances which today have fallen from the heights and are bound to the Earth’s body were, during a middle Earth epoch, still in a dissolved state and present as vapor in the Earth of that time. We can certainly speak of such an Earth epoch in which an atmospheric envelope like the one that exists today was not present. We must speak here of vapors and gases that have long since solidified. We must imagine the entire distribution of water and air in a middle Earth epoch differently. There we must imagine that the principle of form, which must be conceived as purely spiritual—since it shaped living substance into lifeless, formed matter—had to derive from the latter the conditions necessary, for example, for respiration and so on, so that the principle of form had to create in this way the most diverse forms adapted to ancient earthly conditions that no longer exist at all. Spiritual science now shows, however, that evolution proceeded in such a way that, as it were, only a part of the living substance was actually shaped in those times, and that when the formless matter was directly taken up by the spiritual principle, a part of the old, mobile, formless substance was held back. Thus, in ancient times, when the Earth was composed of substances in a completely different way—substances that have since fallen to the ground through compaction or now exist in a liquid state within the Earth itself—the formative principle, as it were, crystallized into ancient forms that could no longer exist under today’s conditions. Let us consider a state in which our Earth, as a planet, did not yet have the form we see today. Quite obviously, different forms of living beings had to arise—beings that were adapted to those ancient conditions and could no longer exist today. It is now easy to understand that many of these life forms had to become completely extinct as the Earth itself changed its form. There we find—as is still geologically verifiable and as paleontology demonstrates—that animals lived which we must imagine as having been adapted, for example, only to water that was just beginning to take on its present form but was still permeated by entirely different substances. We also find other animals there that were adapted to the atmospheric conditions of that time, such as the dinosaur species and so on; in short, we could encounter the most diverse animal forms, all adapted to the conditions of that era. Alongside these, other forms arose that were, so to speak, adapted to the conditions in such a way that, while they could no longer be shaped by the original formative principle out of the formless, moving matter, they were capable of transforming themselves over successive generations and evolving through the line of inheritance in such a way that they developed the later forms from the older ones. The new forms were then adapted to the newer terrestrial conditions. While those forms that had been so strongly permeated by the formative principle in ancient times that they could no longer be reshaped were doomed to die out, the organisms that had remained more flexible—in which the living essence had not yet become so strongly fixed—were able to transform themselves and thus continue to develop.

[ 27 ] For human beings, evolution presents itself in such a way that we cannot perceive them in ancient times within what could have been seen with the physical eyes; rather, we would find them in a formless, mobile substance so subtle that, in the times when animal forms already existed, they could have become anything. Human beings descended from the formless into form at the very latest. While the animals that exist in the world today had already assimilated the principle of form earlier—so that they had to reshape their earlier forms in adaptation to the Earth’s transformation—humanity did not allow itself to descend into the ancient forms, but waited until the Earth had attained the distribution of air and water that exists today. Only then did the condensation of matter—which was still barely formed—into the later human form begin for humankind. Because humankind entered the formed state last of all, it appeared in such a way that it is not merely adapted to specific earthly conditions. But if we go back to the animals, we must conceive of their origin in such a way that certain forms adapted to very specific territories on Earth. These animals then took on a form that in no way resembles their present-day descendants; it was adapted to the conditions of that time. But because the animals were adapted only to territorial conditions that changed rapidly in certain respects, they could change only within certain limits. Human beings, however, who had not yet taken on a specific form during the time when the Earth was still subject to rapid changes—but only later, when it became possible for them to incorporate that form into their physical being across the entire surface of the Earth in such a way that they were, as such, adapted to the whole Earth— was able to populate the Earth as a being least adapted to external conditions and most adapted to inner, soul-driven forces. Human beings were thus adapted from the very beginning to such formative forces that their inner being corresponded to the spiritual, so that the formative forces could act directly upon the soul in such a way as to make their outer physical form an upright one, and to make their hands living instruments of the spirit. But all this could only happen after the Earth had moved beyond certain formative principles, so that human beings could be adapted to that which, from within, could determine their entire form and their way of living. Thus, in human beings, the formative principle determines their form through the medium of the spiritual, whereas in animals, the formative principle had to intervene much more in the inanimate and inorganic. We can still see this in animals today: how they have bound their entire soul life even more closely to the physical, whereas human beings are capable of developing a soul life that rises above bodily life.

[ 28 ] If we consider the animal as it is completely immersed in its physical life, once it has taken shape, we see how it digests, how the soul permeates physical life directly and manifests itself in connection with the bodily functions. But if we consider how, in human beings, the soul emerges directly from the physical as an independent entity, we will see that human beings are constituted in this way because the animal world, adapted to different conditions of our earthly existence, was formed from the formless before human beings were. Only in this way could a soul entity become active within the human being that became so independent of physical life that the human being can retain the formative principle within this soul entity even when that human being passes through the gate of death and initially lays aside their physical life. Because the formative principle took hold of the animal soul so much earlier—to the extent that an intimate connection with physical life had to be established—and because the animal is therefore completely absorbed in physical life, what is experienced in the individual animal does not detach itself from physical life. In the case of human beings, it does detach itself; it retains a formative principle not only in the organic, physical substance but also in the soul, and can once again form a new physical life after the period between death and a new birth. It is only because the formative principle in human beings has directly grasped the spiritual-soul aspect that this spiritual-soul aspect possesses the independence that can pass from life to life, enabling it to traverse its existence through repeated lives. In contrast, the intimate connection with the form of existence—which in animals had to be established between the formative principle and living matter—meant that when the animal dies, is exhausted within the organic realm, and the animal’s soul reverts to a general animal soul life; it continues not in an individual form but in a general animal form—in the continued existence of the animal’s group soul rather than that of the individual animal soul.

[ 29 ] Thus we see that the origin of the animal nature lies in the fact that what enters and permeates human beings at a later stage enters animals at an earlier stage. The animal is, as it were, left behind by the ongoing principle of evolution. It is a being that has lagged behind in relation to human beings, who are advanced beings. We can easily imagine how this formation took place through a simple comparison: imagine a liquid in a glass containing a substance dissolved in it in such a way that it cannot be distinguished from the liquid. But if we let it stand, a sediment settles at the bottom and the finer liquid remains at the top. This is how we should imagine the entire process of development: within what we regard as a duality—so to speak, between the spiritually formative and what lies below as the living substance—lies that which is the spiritual substance. This also contains the formative principle for human beings. But for human beings, the formless state persists the longest. For the animal, the process of formation begins earlier, so that at a time when human beings were still preserved above in a formless, more ethereal substance, the animal being had already condensed below and continued to live in such a way that it could develop within itself ever stronger and stronger forms, which transform over the course of time. In contrast, in terms of form, human beings can be traced back only to what originally exists in a formless living substance, into which, however, the spirit acts as a driving principle, gradually bringing it to its present form. As we proceed further, we must also conceive of animal forms in such a way that they did not all emerge from a single animal form, but rather, while certain animals took shape here and there, others remained behind, some forming only later, others descending even later, and so on. Thus, human beings descended last.

[ 30 ] It is curious that we find a full explanation of what has just been said when we read books such as those by Haeckel. Outwardly, it is claimed that human beings can be traced back to animals. But when we follow the evolutionary ladder, we see that human beings can be traced back to something that cannot be traced to present-day earthly conditions, but rather to hypothetical living beings. And the same applies to animals. We find those beings to which spiritual science points, as hypothetical beings, even in Haeckel’s evolutionary tree—only that these do not trace back to formed beings, but to formless ones. It is not possible at this time to elaborate on this further. But it follows from my Occult Science that what is now presented as the Earth has evolved downward from earlier spiritual stages. This means that one cannot say that spiritual science is simply introducing yet another unknown factor. No! Ultimately, the Earth is traced back to earlier planetary stages of existence, just as the human being, in relation to his present life, is traced back to earlier lives. And when we go back to those earlier stages, we find the material not as something living, but as something spiritual. We come to recognize the starting point of all life as the spirit. In this way, we trace the foundation back to something known—namely, the spirit, which is something we possess within ourselves—while external science traces it back to something unknown. Spiritual science is in a different position here than the current hypothetical theory of evolution. Spiritual science traces evolution back to something that existed as a spiritual entity and still exists today. It is just that the spiritual within us does not reveal itself in the same way that the thinner liquid separates from the denser substance in the glass. The finer spiritual element in human beings has separated just as the finer element in the glass has separated from the denser, settled matter.

[ 31 ] Thus, we must attribute the animal kingdom to the fact that, in order for human beings to develop their spiritual nature as it exists today, they first had to separate themselves from the entire animal kingdom so that, as finer spiritual beings, they could develop above the foundation of the animal world—just as, in our analogy, the finer substance reveals itself when it has separated itself from the coarser matter below on the ground. Today we can only point to these events to the extent that they reveal to us the origin of the animal kingdom. How the spiritual and soul aspects subsequently take shape must be left to a later lecture. It must be mentioned, however, that the facts by no means contradict this principle, and that natural science will come to realize that the course of events could not actually have been any different from how it is presented today. For do animals present themselves to us in such a way that it would be necessary to speak of a special spirituality found only in human beings? On the contrary! Closer observation will reveal that there is sometimes far more intelligence within the animal kingdom, that human beings must first acquire their intelligence, and that perhaps the advantage of human beings over animals lies precisely in the fact that they were able to acquire their limited intelligence in the first place. Everywhere we look in the animal world—at beavers, wasps, and so on—we see intelligence at work; we see a spirit at work that makes use of the animals. One cannot say that this intelligence resides within the individual animals. One need only point out how certain insects care for their offspring. There we see that we are dealing with a supersensible intelligence pervading the animal kingdom, which is objective to the animal world, just as matter itself is objective to the animal world. We can observe this when the insect lays its eggs in such a way that the larva must live under entirely different conditions. The insect itself may have lived in the air, but the larva must first live in water. The insect, then, may not even be aware of the conditions under which the larva must live. It can therefore only be guided by an instinct inherent within it to lay its eggs where the larva can survive. Or let us consider animals such as the beaver and others, which, with their innate physiological structures, create what might be called external architecture. Then we will not be far from acknowledging, based on the principles of external observation, that intelligence is at work within the animal substance itself. When we consider human beings, we see that, once they come into being, they must first acquire the very abilities that are already formed within animals. They have not yet reached the stage where they possess within themselves what animals have already formed within themselves. This provides a yardstick by which we can see that animals are formed earlier, and that human beings continue to be shaped even after they are born. It does not serve as confirmation of human descent from apes that the naturalist Emil Selenka has found that the nature of the ape, in its embryonic state, is much closer to the human form than the later form of the ape—from which one might assume that the human form is shaped much earlier than that of the ape— except that humans only acquire their form once they enter the world themselves.

[ 32 ] Everywhere, the natural sciences demonstrate through their findings that what the humanities have to say is confirmed precisely by the most advanced natural sciences. Indeed, one could go even further—I do not shy away from doing so—and show how, today, natural science is, so to speak, bringing to light something that runs counter to its own theories, yet provides full confirmation of the facts established by the humanities. Precisely when one examines research findings such as those on the reproductive process of lower animals by the two brothers Oscar and Richard Hertwig from 1875—which have since been confirmed many times—showing that the principle of fertilization, for example in sea urchins can be entirely replaced by the influence of acids—meaning that fertilization can be derived from what is initially a purely inorganic process—it must be said that the processes now associated with the principle of heredity can only be conceived of and occur as they appear externally, whereas in ancient times they manifested themselves quite differently. Thus, one can very well speak of the fertilization of the animate earth core—which was formless living matter—by the spiritual principle of form flowing around it, even while remaining in harmony with the facts of natural science—so that the living took shape out of the form-principle, and the non-living then separated from the living, which was the unified substance of the entire Earth.

[ 33 ] It becomes clear to us that, fundamentally, the whole of earthly existence presents itself in such a way that we can understand it only in the sense intended by Goethe, who, however, merely hinted at what emerges as reality for the spiritual researcher with regard to the origin of animals and human beings. For when we turn our gaze out into the whole world, how does everything that surrounds us ultimately gain its true value? Only, as Goethe says, by being ultimately reflected in a human soul. For spiritual science, however, the natural process of the Earth also reveals itself in such a way that, fundamentally, it progresses from the oldest to the youngest forms in a manner such that everything—as the flower of the Earth’s form—is ordered toward enabling us to conceive of what must ultimately be brought forth from the Earth’s process, just as the flower or fruit is brought forth from the plant.

[ 34 ] Thus, an examination of the origin of the animal kingdom reveals a fundamental conviction of spiritual scientific knowledge, which can be summarized in words that shed light on the human being—words that, at the same time, however, impose a responsibility upon us through our awareness of human dignity, which is built upon the foundation of all other existence. Because we could only become human beings through the fact that the entire rest of Earth’s evolution was directed toward us, we must prove ourselves worthy of this Earth by striving to advance from one degree of perfection to the next; for evolution shows us that it is directed toward the perfection of the human being. And this imposes upon us the obligation not to stand still, but to advance into ever finer and finer forms of spiritual life. The spiritual life that humanity carries within itself today could only be built upon the foundation of the lower realms, and we must once again cast off the present and leave it to the lower elements so that even more spiritual life can develop within us. Summarizing this, we can say: It is true for humanity, but it also establishes its highest duty:

The elements
allow themselves to be permeated by the Spirit.
They had to receive
the Spirit’s ultimate impulse:
to clothe the human being
in spiritual form and soul life.