The Rudolf Steiner Archive

16. Darwin and Parapsychological Research

[ 1 ] It was October 13, 1882. A man carrying the seeds of death within him was traveling from a hotel in Turin to the train station. And on the way to the station, it became clear that he would not be able to make the journey he had planned to Pisa. He died in Turin, alone, without friends around him—some of whom, according to the arrangements that had been made, were not supposed to meet him again until they reached Pisa. A remarkable man, whose death, one might say, is symbolically indicative of the way he lived. He died alone in Turin on his way from the hotel to the train station, cared for at the time only by the hotel manager, who had foreseen the gravity of his physical condition. The man died alone, just as he had long lived alone with the best he possessed—alone in his soul, even within a life that was actually quite eventful and interspersed with rich social diversions. A remarkable man. He conducted research into his family tree. Whether or not we accept his research as historical truth, its results had a profound effect—as we shall soon see—on this man’s consciousness, and in a certain sense we can perceive his impact on the world as permeated by the impulses he derived from this research into his family tree. He traced his family tree back to the ninth century, identifying the Viking Otar Jarl as his ancestor in that century, and continued tracing his lineage through the descendants of the Germanic god Odin all the way back to Odin himself. One might say that a sense of pride may have emerged from the results of such genealogical research. In the case of the figure I am referring to here—Arthur Count Gobineau—this sense of identity transformed into far-reaching, significant ideas that, like few others, set the tone and charted the course for the entire intellectual development of the nineteenth century; indeed, one might say, for the entire intellectual development of modern times. And when Gobineau’s most important work, containing the results of his research into ideas, was published in 1853, the few—for there were indeed only a few who understood anything of what this work contained—were able to gain the realization that it was not an individual who had spoken through this man, nor a particular personality, but rather the consciousness of Western humanity at a very specific stage in its development. This work contains ideas that may seem strange to many. But for those who attempt to view it in the spirit of spiritual science—as we have been able to see in the lectures this winter—the work is filled with ideas that, more than anything else, point to the way in which an advanced, particularly distinguished thinker must have thought around the middle of the nineteenth century.

[ 2 ] “On the Inequality of Human Races”—that would be the title, rendered into German, of the French work that, as mentioned, was published in 1853: “Essai sur l’inégalité des races humaines.” This work was inspired by the insights Count Gobineau had gained during his numerous diplomatic postings, which he held not only at European courts but, above all, in the Orient. He had witnessed much of the interplay of intellectual, psychological, and moral forces within the fabric we call human life. And from an extraordinarily rich wealth of observations—made, moreover, with the most acute insight—the idea had emerged that humanity had its origins in a number of primordial human types, which he saw, looking back as far as he could discern, at the starting point of human development, asserting themselves in various parts of the world, human types of varying form and value. To each of these human types he attributed, as it were, a certain inner richness of developmental potential, which, as human history unfolded, they were to draw forth from within themselves—or had drawn forth—and bring to fruition from their innate dispositions into the broader life of the Earth. And Count Gobineau saw the upward course of development in the fact that these original human types—particularly as long as they remained unmixed—drew their original potentials from within themselves and brought them into ever greater unfolding across the globe, so that the results of this unfolding of the various human types, in their interplay, constituted what we call the history of the Earth. To the same extent, however, Count Gobineau reasoned, as the members of these original human types intermingled—and that they intermingled is a necessity for the later, further development of humanity—what we might call a certain uniformity among individuals across the Earth begins to spread; yet he saw everything great, powerful, elemental, and enduring in human culture as emerging from the various, unequal human types, which he regarded as different human races. According to his view, he saw this reflected in the way that, over the course of time, what might be called the flooding of humanity with the idea of equality—the overcoming of racial inequality—did indeed take shape. But Count Gobineau saw in this, at the same time, the driving forces behind the decline of civilizations. Therefore, he envisioned human progress in such a way that what is meant to happen will most certainly happen—that people will mix more and more with one another—but that with this mixing, with this assimilation of one person into another, there will come about a state that, while making people equal, will also—as Count Gobineau, radical as he is, believes—render them worthless.

[ 3 ] In particular, Count Gobineau sees in what might be called Christian culture—with its ideas of equality and its notions of universal humanity—something that, while of infinite value for the further development of humanity, nevertheless contains precisely what must gradually lead to the homogenization of human beings. Thus, he characterizes Christianity as the religion which, according to his views, could never, in essence, transform itself into a Christian civilization. He expresses himself sharply in this regard, stating that Christianity will allow the Chinese and the Eskimo alike to retain their outward forms; that even if the Chinese were to adopt Christianity, it would leave intact the fundamental structure of their religious being, and the same would apply to the Eskimo. For Count Gobineau sees Christianity as a religion that is “not of this world,” that is to say, one that gives human beings something capable of acting within the soul, but which cannot be transformed in such a way that it manifests outwardly, becoming impulses that reshape and further develop humanity with regard to what is evident in human beings outwardly—in external culture and social customs. He sees everything that can manifest in such external culture and social customs as originating in what was originally inherent in the typical racial characters, which were unequal at the starting point of human development on Earth. And with regard to our earthly existence, a peculiar pessimism now springs from Count Gobineau’s view of humanity. As he turns his gaze to what may come about through the balancing of the opposites of the original human types, and as he traces the course of humanity—as it increasingly embraces Christianity—into the future, it becomes clear to him that, precisely in human beings, with regard to what is most sacred to them, most important to them, something will develop within them—something that cannot serve as an impulse for an external civilization. Instead, however, the Christian worldview, by making people all the same, will at the same time lead to degeneration, so that there will be fewer and fewer vital impulses for the further progress of humanity, and people will decline more and more in terms of civilization, to the point that civilization will be replaced by degeneration. And one day, as he puts it, the Earth will outlive the human race, which will die out on it because, fundamentally, it has exhausted all the vital impulses it contained within itself and no longer possesses any further life-giving impulses for the future. Thus, Count Gobineau’s gaze is directed toward the Earth, which will one day remain as a surviving planet. Humanity on it will have become extinct, and the harbingers of this extinction are all those impulses in the course of human development that point toward the assimilation of human beings into one another and the leveling of opposites.

[ 4 ] When we survey this train of thought—which we may certainly call a monumental one—we must, in light of everything that has emerged from the lectures this winter, describe it as one that fully corresponds to all the prerequisites of nineteenth-century intellectual life—one that exists precisely as these prerequisites of nineteenth-century intellectual life were bound to be reflected in a great, brilliant man who felt the need not merely to consider the ideas of his time a quarter or half way through, but to truly pursue them to their ultimate consequences. However significant Count Gobineau’s ideas were in the sense just described, they were nevertheless able to take root only to a limited extent in the consciousness of his time. It is fair to say that Count Gobineau’s name was known to few, even after the publication of his monumental work On the Inequality of the Human Races.

[ 5 ] A few years later, an awareness of time emerged in an entirely different form, once again through a figure in whom, strangely enough, not only individuality but the entire era found expression. In 1853, the first two volumes of Count Gobineau’s work, as described above, were published; the last two followed in 1855. In 1859, Charles Darwin’s work was published: “On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Life.”

[ 6 ] First of all, we can see from the impact this work had that Darwin’s book introduced something significant into the intellectual development of humanity. What effect did it have, for example, in our German homeland? Just as significant works generally do at first, this one had an impact in that the leading scholars—who believed they could encompass all of science with their logic—initially reacted to Darwin’s work by laughing at it, by mocking the man who, based on his observations of the animal world, presumed to speak of a transformation of animal forms, which, until then, people had been accustomed to placing side by side without considering how they relate to one another, and without considering how to incorporate the idea of becoming into the concept of being—of constant being. But it took only a few years for Darwin’s work to have an impact, particularly within German scholarship, where the courageous and bold Ernst Haeckel, at the 1863 meeting of naturalists in Stettin, immediately drew the most extreme conclusion from the Darwinian premises: that one must now consider that human beings, too, in terms of their development, must be brought into alignment with the development of animal forms—forms that do not merely coexist in the world but have evolved from the imperfect to the ever more perfect. But not only did this take place; something quite different happened as well. The guiding principles of the work—the guiding ideas of the Darwinian worldview in general—penetrated the entire field of scientific research, becoming so deeply ingrained that within a few decades the entire scientific literature was permeated by what had first struck Darwin as an idea. And today we see that those who have not yet grasped that Darwinism has led beyond itself—precisely in serious research—are even founding a complete worldview, indeed, one might say a “religion,” on Darwinian lines of thought. What a curious contrast in the fates of these two men: Count Gobineau little known, while Darwin’s name has become widely known, his ideas taking root in people’s minds. So that anyone who truly surveys cultural development in light of intellectual development can say: The thinking of a great many people has been completely transformed by Darwin in just a few decades. — Only those who have not familiarized themselves with the ideas that are prevalent today, with what permeates all public thought, and at the same time with the ideas that dominated public thought before the spread of the Darwinian view of nature can doubt this last statement. The answer to the question of why the fates of these two men are so different also reveals something of what can bring home to us the task and significance of the humanities in the present day.

[ 7 ] If we first take a look at what Darwinism has introduced into a part of humanity’s consciousness, we must say: This Darwinism is based entirely on the idea that scientific observation of the process of becoming can arise only from external sensory facts and the processing of these external sensory facts by thought, which is bound to the instrument of the brain. Anything that goes beyond such a scientific approach belongs, in the sense of Darwinian thinking as it has come to be—as Darwin himself did not yet hold—to the realm of the unscientific, to the realm of that with which mere faith may perhaps be content, but which must never play a role in science. Now, those who view the course of events and what has come to be from the outside will readily say: Well, what earlier times thought about the evolution of humankind and the evolution of other organisms simply reflects imperfect human research; it was not until the nineteenth century that science was able to establish a worldview strictly grounded in genuine, sound, and well-founded research. — Therefore, such thinkers who speak so lightly will say: Science itself compels human beings to refrain from considering anything supersensible in their understanding and to limit themselves to the course of events that arises when science is restricted solely to sensory facts and to what the intellect can make of them. — And so many people today probably believe that science and scientific thinking compel them to simply reject all supernatural inquiry.

[ 8 ] Is that so? A great deal depends on the answer to this question today! If it were truly the case that science compels us to exclude everything supernatural from our observations, then anyone who takes science seriously would inevitably have to accept this consequence. But let us ask: On what is the basis for what is presented as a kind of scientific necessity—one that supposedly only became apparent to mature humanity in the nineteenth century? For Darwin and the subsequent Darwinists, the reason they placed human beings directly within the animal kingdom—so that they were to represent, not only in their physical but also in their psychological and spiritual nature, merely a more perfected being that had gradually evolved from the animal kingdom—was that they told themselves: When one considers humans as well as the rest of the animal kingdom, a profound similarity is evident everywhere—first and foremost, for example, in skeletal structure, but also in the forms of other organs and in the activities of individual beings. — In particular, Darwinists such as Huxley emphasized how similar human skeletal structure is to that of higher animals. This, it was said, compels the assumption that, all things considered, what humans possess has the same origin as the animal kingdom—indeed, that it has gradually developed from the animal kingdom through a mere refinement of animal characteristics and organs. We ask ourselves: Is it really the case for the human mind that it is compelled, on the basis of such findings, to draw the conclusion just characterized?

[ 9 ] Nothing is more instructive in answering this question than the fact that, even before Darwin, Goethe became, in a unique way, a precursor to Darwin. You will find Goethe’s entire worldview not only in my book, which is titled simply Goethe’s Worldview, but also in the preface I wrote in the 1880s for the Goethe editions of Deutsche Nationalliteratur. When we see how intensely Goethe engaged with animal and human forms in order to arrive at a very specific conclusion, and when we consider, in particular, the significant fact that he was inspired by Herder to develop the fundamental ideas of his views, then we must say: Even a person with a completely different way of thinking, with a scientific mindset and spiritual disposition entirely unlike Darwin’s, could have arrived at the same conclusions—indeed, could have sensed the necessity of these conclusions. — At a relatively young age, and contrary to the pronouncements of all the leading naturalists of his time, Goethe strove to demonstrate that there is no external difference in the structure of humans compared to that of higher animals. Strangely enough, during Goethe’s youth, such a difference had been assumed with regard to specific details. It had been claimed, for example, that higher animals differ from humans in that they possess, in their upper jaw, the so-called intermaxillary bone, in which the upper incisors are set, whereas humans lack this bone and their upper jaw consists of a single piece. This was the opinion that the most eminent naturalists of Goethe’s youth felt compelled to hold, because they reasoned: “There must be a difference between higher animals and thinking human beings walking the earth, a difference that is also evident in their external structure.” — Goethe truly set to work with the utmost scientific rigor when, in the face of opposition from the scientific community of his time, he demonstrated that humans, in their embryonic stage before birth, possess the intermaxillary bone in the upper jaw just as other animals do, except that in humans this bone fuses together so that it is no longer visible in adulthood. Goethe considered this discovery to be of great significance. We can see, in particular, from the way he wrote to Herder about it at the time that he regarded its implications as significant as well, for on March 27, 1784, he wrote to Herder: “You should also be truly delighted, for it is like the keystone of humanity—it is not missing; it is there! And how! I have also considered it in connection with your overall work—how beautiful it will be there.” And the fact that this must truly be attributed not to a materialistic mindset but to the opposite is proven by the fact that Goethe, in full harmony with Herder, saw in this discovery of his—in this consequence of his thinking—precisely the reinforcement of a worldview grounded in spiritual realities: that the spirit reigns everywhere, from the lowest creatures all the way up to the highest, and follows the same fundamental pattern everywhere.

[ 10 ] Goethe’s intention was to prove this, and to him, the conclusion he had reached was precisely proof of the power of the mind. Therefore, it was also proof to him of the power of the spirit when he made the discovery—which, in fact, was not rediscovered by the natural sciences until the second half of the nineteenth century—that the bones of the skull are actually transformed vertebral bones. For Goethe, this signified the workings of the spiritual in such a way that this spiritual has a basic form in the vertebrae, which it transforms and whose shape it alters, so that this form becomes suitable for enclosing the organ of the brain—for it is precisely in the transformation of forms that the creative, governing spirit reveals itself, emerging from simple forms. And—if I may speak of something personal here—it was, in a certain sense, a truly marvelous experience for me when, during my six-and-a-half years of study and research at the Goethe and Schiller Archive in Weimar, I one day came across a notebook of Goethe’s containing a pencil-written entry in which Goethe said to himself: The entire human brain is actually nothing more than a transformed nerve node; within every nerve node, as it were, lies in embryonic form what the spirit transforms and reshapes, so that it becomes the complex organ of the brain. — Here we see how what was later regarded by the Darwinists as proof that one must look only to sensory facts when seeking to explain the development of humankind became, in Goethe’s view, proof of the all-pervading and all-weaving spirit, which, so to speak, conjures up the most complex forms from the simplest and in this way gradually brings about the development of nature’s work.

[ 11 ] May we—let us not engage in logical deductions or dialectical games, but rather focus on the existing facts—maintain, in the face of such a fact, the assertion that scientific observations have compelled people to base a kind of materialistic-monistic worldview on Darwinism? We must never do so, for we see how, in Goethe’s case, the very same course of research leads to an idealistic-spiritual result. On what, then, can it possibly depend that in the second half of the nineteenth century, on the basis of Darwinism—which we can quite boldly call a fully developed Goetheanism only in relation to sensory facts—a Darwinist-monistic worldview or even religion developed? It does not stem from the facts themselves, which compel researchers to this conclusion, but solely from habits of thought—from what people wish to believe about the facts; for a mind of a different nature than those who today develop a Darwinist-monistic worldview from the findings of Darwinism—such a mind of a different nature—uses precisely this same scientific mode of thinking to lay the foundation for an entirely different worldview. This is the crucial and essential point we must keep in mind. Then we will also understand how, fundamentally, the materialistic-monistic way of thinking is something that took hold of people in the second half of the nineteenth century, something that deeply permeates all human thought among those who call themselves progressive thinkers, and we will understand how this way of thinking also permeates areas where people do not wish to be Darwinist.

[ 12 ] A significant example—for a humanities-based analysis, it is important to proceed thoroughly in all areas and thus to consult the sources in every case—is provided by a researcher who is certainly underappreciated today; although he may have had may have had some unappealing traits, but who, in terms of his scientific findings, is of great significance for the present day. I am referring to Moriz Benedikt, who has already been mentioned here on several occasions over the years. Moriz Benedikt is not a Darwinian, but a theorist of evolution. He acknowledges evolution, though not in the Darwinian sense. Let me highlight just one finding from the wealth of Benedikt’s research. Benedikt focused his attention on studying morally defective individuals, so-called “criminal types.” Long before Lombroso pointed out such facts in an amateurish manner—in a way more suited to the general public—Benedikt had already conducted such studies, even if this “long before” spans only a few years. Here we see how Moriz Benedikt examines criminal brains—the brains of murderers. He found that these criminal brains all share one characteristic. He found it quite remarkable that certain sulci, which normally lie on the surface of the brain, extended further inward in the criminal brain—that is, they were covered by brain matter and did not extend outward. However, he also examined the brains of murderers who, so to speak, otherwise gave the impression of being good-natured people. There he observed, for example, certain irregularities in the occipital region, how the occipital lobe of the brain did not properly cover what lay beneath it, and how, in such people who had been driven to commit such crimes, the shape of the brain bore a resemblance to that of an ape’s brain. Consequently, Benedikt concluded that, fundamentally, the cause of a person’s abnormal actions lay in this physical organization of the human being—in the underdevelopment of the human being—so that, as it were, that from which humanity originated—the lower, animal nature—is once again expressed in the internal forms, all the way up to the brain. And because humans still carry within themselves that which they should have transcended, they become criminals. Thus, Moriz Benedikt bases his entire view of law, morality, and punishment on the idea that, in the criminal—in the criminal’s individuality—there is, in fact, something akin to a legacy from those times when humans were still at the level of their original nature, alongside the higher animals. As mentioned, Moriz Benedikt is not a Darwinist, but his thinking does not go beyond the belief that one must stop at attributing to the criminal, in his individuality, a constitution that compels him, from a purely physical standpoint, to commit his acts. In anthropology, this nineteenth-century researcher seeks what he believes is necessary for understanding abnormal human acts.

[ 13 ] Thus we see—and we could cite hundreds upon hundreds of similar examples to substantiate what is to be said—how everywhere, regardless of whether people engaged in intellectual activity are Darwinists or not, the mere belief prevails in the primacy of external sensory facts and of the science based on these external sensory facts. Nor should we be surprised that Darwin’s findings were interpreted in a materialistic-monistic manner. It is not Darwin’s findings themselves that compel this interpretation, but rather the habits of thought prevalent in the second half of the nineteenth century. And one might say: If it had been possible for Darwin to have conducted his research in a different era, it would also have been conceivable that the same results would have been interpreted in an ideal -spiritual sense, as we indeed find in Goethe, where the creative, governing Spirit makes use of the transformation of forms to bring forth the diversity of phenomena from a few basic forms. — This is the peculiar fact that must emerge for us from all these considerations with an inner necessity: that the era which has just come to an end had to lead humanity to a deepening of its engagement with external sensory facts, with external sensory science; that for a time humanity had to turn its attention away, so to speak, divert its attention from everything that turns the gaze upward toward the spiritual and supersensory worlds, so that the entire fabric of sensory facts—the fabric of what takes place in the external physical world—might at last be able to take effect upon the human soul. Thus, in the overall course of human development, we see, as it were, the necessity of the materialistic-monistic way of thinking; we see how the nineteenth century was called upon to turn its gaze away from the supersensible for a time and to look solely and closely at what takes place in the sensory realm. And if we wish to grasp the deeper meaning of this fact, we must ask ourselves: Has humanity truly gained anything significant for its spiritual life from such an immersion in the sensory world?

[ 14 ] If we want to answer this question, we must keep in mind several points that have already been mentioned in these lectures—and which can also be found in the relevant literature—namely, that a vast number of significant facts could truly only be investigated by directing one’s gaze impartially toward the world of facts itself, without allowing one’s view to be clouded by all manner of assumptions from the supersensible world, but rather by focusing solely on what one observed externally. And this is far more essential than what is usually regarded as the core tenet of Darwinism in the second half of the nineteenth century—namely, that significant, magnificent interrelationships between the organs of individual animal and plant forms, and interrelationships between individual beings, have been elucidated. In these lectures, we have seen how Darwinism has transcended itself, how the facts today actually compel us to no longer speak of a connection between the animal world and humankind in such a simplistic manner as Ernst Haeckel once did. But despite all this, when one surveys the vast sea of research findings that emerged precisely under the influence of Darwinism in the second half of the nineteenth century, one finds within it insights into what might be called a grand, powerful fundamental plan of the animal and plant world—the world of all organisms. Thanks to this research, we are now able to glimpse interrelationships that would not have become apparent had we approached them with the preconceived ideas of an old, supersensory form of research. Thanks to materialistic one-sidedness, we now have findings at our disposal that will one day be interpreted correctly, but which, given the weakness of human nature, could only have been discovered through that very one-sidedness. Thus, we must not underestimate the great merit of Darwinism; we must not overlook the significance of the fact that Haeckel, beginning with his General Morphology of Organisms (1866) to his comprehensive Systematic Phylogeny (1896), compiled the similarities among animal and plant forms in order to construct, so to speak, a family tree of life. Even if it were the case that all the family trees Haeckel constructed were incorrect—which they are not—even if one were to discard them, even if Haeckel’s concept of descent were entirely wrong, we can set aside the theories he develops and focus on what reveals to us similarities and connections between forms in a way that was unimagined in earlier times. That is what is significant. Once we allow this significance to take root in our souls, we can say: It is only in this that spiritual science, as we view it today, has found firm ground beneath its feet, for now, alongside everything that nineteenth-century spiritual culture has produced, stands spiritual, supersensory research.

[ 15 ] How does this spiritual, supersensory research fit into this picture? It shows how human beings can, through a certain inner development, direct their gaze into the supersensible worlds; and that when they direct their gaze into these worlds using the methods that have been sufficiently described here, they find a world of supersensible facts, and that within this world the true reasons, the true causes of sensory phenomena are to be found. Thus we have seen how human beings, already within themselves—this has been a recurring theme throughout all the lectures — a comprehensive soul-spiritual reality in supersensible self-knowledge, which not only lives within him as he perceives it with his normal consciousness, but which exists as a reality behind normal consciousness, one that we must seek in a spiritual form long before a human being enters earthly existence. We must seek it in such a way that what comes from the father and mother unites with what comes from a spiritual world, as it now lives through the events in the time between birth and death. And when a person enters the spiritual world through their imaginative, inspirational, and intuitive insight, then he comes to know the Master Builder—the creative, constructive being who works upon us even before consciousness arises, who builds up the human body precisely where the human being, with his consciousness, could not yet work upon himself, because this work pertains to the finer organization and the finer structuring of the body. It is precisely there that the “I,” which comes from the spiritual world, works on the finer development not only of the brain but of the entire body.

[ 16 ] Thus, when a person, through the methods of spiritual research, elevates themselves to an awareness of their own spiritual-soul core—which finds its outward expression only in the body—they can recognize, without passing through the gate of death, how a spiritual world shines through the sensory world; a world that is just as real for supersensory perception as the sensory world is for sensory perception. When a person thus has an active awareness of the core of their spiritual-soul nature, and when they know that this core draws the forces and impulses from the spiritual world to fashion for itself a new life and a new earthly incarnation, then he can also easily rise to that insight which, so to speak, links the views on human nature and on the true human being with moral ideas—ideas that bring together the views on the spiritual-soul nature of the human being with what the human being needs as strength for life, as strength for work, as comfort in life, as security in life, and so on. And all the questions as to whether a person will be reunited with those who have become dear to him on earth are answered in a perfectly appropriate manner with a “Yes” — this is further elaborated in my Outline of Esoteric Science — by showing that human beings, in their true essence, do not merely live, perceive, and act within the physical body, but can also live in a disembodied state, where everything they have established in physical life continues to live on in the spiritual realm and forms the foundation for a new incarnation. Those relationships between human beings, as we experience them here, continue in the spiritual world and form, in fact, the starting point for our next incarnation, so that we are reunited with the very same people with whom we form a connection when we are freed from the body—by feeling drawn to them and acquiring the forces necessary to be reunited with them in a new incarnation.

[ 17 ] In this way, spiritual research leads human beings into the sphere of a spiritual world, and leads them even further, so that they no longer find their origin in an animal form from a pre-human world, but rather find the origin of themselves and that of animals in the spiritual world. This is what the lecture on “The Origin of Man” has shown us. As we go further and further back, we can come to realize that human beings have their origin in the spiritual world, and that the creative spirit that lives and works within them can, as such, be understood and recognized by human beings. Spiritual science will demonstrate this more and more clearly to contemporary culture. In doing so, it stands alongside the achievements of the more materialistic-monistic culture that emerged during the nineteenth century. When we see how this Darwinian culture has shown us that a common plan underlies the entire development of living beings—that we can truly perceive fundamental ideas and forces running from the most imperfect to the most perfect stages of life—then such a finding gains its true significance precisely in the light of spiritual science. In this concluding lecture today, we can only draw attention to how what has been presented gains significance by means of a parable.

[ 18 ] When we observe a person in later life and compare them to what they were, for example, in childhood, we tell ourselves: The core of our spiritual and soul nature has been at work on our outer constitution. The very same thing of which I become aware when I gain consciousness of what brings forth thoughts, feelings, and impulses of will from the dark depths of the soul—that same thing, when it was not yet able to bring these forth, when I was dreaming my way into life, worked upon my body, which was still an imperfect instrument for the spirit and only later became a more perfect one. That which is purely supersensible—that which lives only in my thoughts, feelings, and ideas—first worked, as the very foundation of my being, on my outer physical sensibility; but it was only later that I was able to become aware of this. — If one grasps this in its fundamental significance, then one has also grasped how the spirit has worked through millions and millions of years to first bring forth the entire range of living beings in their ascending forms, and later, on the basis of these, to bring forth what humanity is in its present-day culture. Just as what we are as thirty-year-olds must emerge in its inner spirituality through our first working on our imperfect childhood organism—using the very same spiritual essence that we later embody—so too could human historical life, cultural life as we survey it, only come into being through the fact that the very same essence that now works supersensibly throughout all of history and all of human culture —this spiritual-soul core, which is, after all, the starting point of all spiritual development—first slowly and gradually prepared its own human organism within the entire series of organisms, just as the individual human being prepares his or her own organism in childhood, which is later to become the instrument of the developed spirit. Just as it is the same “I” that thinks, feels, and wills at the age of thirty, and which, in the first years of life, works on the outer physical organization, overcomes it, and transforms it into an instrument for the spirit—so one can also form the idea—and after the Winter Lectures it will appear as a fully valid conclusion that one can arrive at—that human beings themselves, with their entire spiritual life, had to pre-form and overcome what now confronts us in a fully developed form in the animal world. The deeds of the human spirit, which first prepared itself for what it was to become in its outer animal or, indeed, organic form, come before us when we survey the interconnection of outer forms.

[ 19 ] What, then, did nineteenth-century Darwinian culture accomplish without even realizing it? By developing external forms so eminently, so admirably grand, it revealed the deeds of the human spirit as it worked on the external world before it could penetrate its inner self and unfold its own essence and becoming as history. Progress in human development with regard to spiritual culture will consist in recognizing how the total achievement of the human spirit lies in what Darwinian culture has provided without even suspecting it. Within it, the human spirit has been at work, just as our “I” is at work within the child’s organism. Without realizing it, Darwinism, from the second half of the nineteenth century through to the present day, has been studying the divine deeds of the human spirit. And people will truly appreciate what has been created on the basis of Darwinism when they see the creative human spirit in all these details that have been brought to light, when they admire what the human spirit set out to achieve before it arrived at its conscious, historical creation. Thus, something great and mighty has been prepared—something that is merely misunderstood, taken as if it were effective in and of itself, whereas it is the plan that the creative divine Spirit has followed on its path toward humanity. This will enable humanity to advance a certain step forward in terms of its self-understanding, and it is only through this advancement that humanity will truly recognize what was actually accomplished in the second half of the nineteenth century.

[ 20 ] And now let us turn our attention once more to Count Gobineau. There we see how this man’s brilliant mind operates—albeit from the perspective of nineteenth-century consciousness—how he perceives, so to speak, what presents itself in the external world, yet perceives it with the proud awareness of a person who still knows, personally knows, that human beings are descended from the spiritual. As fantastical as this may seem today, it is precisely this fact that deserves special attention in this context: that there existed in the nineteenth century a person for whom what was a personal, individual reality—whereas for others it is merely a theory, or perhaps a religious conviction—was that when we trace our origins back, we arrive not at something physical but at something spiritual. One will only truly appreciate Count Gobineau’s unique personality when one is able to place his consciousness in the proper light—a consciousness that says: When I trace back what I am—what lives in my abilities and characteristics as they have been bequeathed to me by my ancestors—I find that the line of descent goes back to the Viking Otar Jarl, that it goes even further back to the descendants of the god Odin, and that it does not end with a physical being but with a superphysical being such as Odin himself. — But whatever else may have been contained in Count Gobineau’s line of thought, one thing was not there. It did not include any reference to that spiritual-soul core that works within the human being—not through the line of descent, not merely within the race—but which works within the human being from incarnation to incarnation, which is independent of the outer physical form, indeed, which itself contributes to the outer configuration that arises within the physical form. Thus, in the mid-nineteenth century, Count Gobineau looks only at the outward appearance, only at that which does not include the spiritual-soul core of the human being. How, then, does his perspective stand? It stands as a courageous person stands—one who does not stop at half-measures, but who draws the ultimate consequences of his premises by saying to himself: When I survey the world, what emerges to me is something I can only describe by saying: becoming appears to me as a decline; it withers, it dries up in its outward form; humanity is dying out on Earth, and the Earth will outlive humanity. — So this thought stands there, as if it were being expressed by a plant, a plant that has developed from leaf to leaf to blossom and to the seed, and cannot become aware that it can take in an external form that comes to it, and that it can receive the seed of fertilization from another plant and develop it into a new form. What the plant cannot conceive for itself, Count Gobineau cannot conceive either. He cannot imagine that within the human being, in the context of racial existence, there lives a spiritual core which, at the appropriate moment, can receive a new spiritual element—one that does not lie in the emerging, original, and intermingling races, but rather in the spiritual-soul core of the being, in the individuality—which the individualities receive just as plants receive the seed that comes to them from other plants, and which has a fertilizing effect from the spiritual world upon the spiritual-soul core of the human being and continues the human being when the outer form falls away, just as leaves and blossoms fall from the plant when the mission of the outer form is fulfilled.

[ 21 ] Thus, Count Gobineau was able to correctly conceive of the external world—to think of it in such a way that it is heading toward degeneration. But he still lacked an understanding of that spiritual-soul core of the human being, which is revealed through supersensible research. He was still able to compensate for this through his awareness of his personal connection to the divine world. He could do this on a personal level, but he remained isolated in this regard. Humanity, however, had reached the stage where, looking back, it found only sensory facts as the starting point of its own origin; it found its ancestors in the animal kingdom, whereas in fact the animal kingdom must be conceived of as it has just been characterized. But when a person is able to understand what is at work within them, independent of all external forms—which nineteenth-century natural science has explained to us in such a magnificent way—when they turn their gaze toward the spiritual world, and fathoms what springs forth from it in its resemblance to the core of his spiritual-soul being, then he will also be able to admit that ever new and fresh inspirations flow into the core of his spiritual-soul being, so that the thought, which is otherwise pessimistic, is transformed into the wondrous vision of humanity’s development into the future. So when we look, along with Count Gobineau, at what was originally bestowed upon the races, what can be seen outwardly does indeed die away, but inwardly, that which can absorb new impulses lives on—that which becomes ever richer in content—and, leaving the earth behind—just as the spirit leaves the physical body when we pass through the gate of death—moves on toward new forms, in order to create a new existence out of the spirit in the course of that eternity we discussed in the last lecture. Now we see how, so to speak, Count Gobineau stands out as a bold, energetic, and brilliant thinker from a bygone era, one who thinks through to its conclusion what must become of humanity if one’s gaze is directed solely toward the external. Thus we see how humanity, having arrived at these conclusions, requires—in a different line of thought—that which the becoming gains the strength to recognize the eternal within itself, which carries the essential over into other forms of existence, even if the outer, shell-like aspect falls away from the essential and actually takes the course that Count Gobineau has mapped out. All power develops through the overcoming of opposing forces. Count Gobineau, so to speak, still derived the fulfillment of his thinking with a divine-spiritual element from his personal belief in his own origin. Darwinism has ultimately driven out of all views on human origins and on the spiritual origin of organisms those elements that are non-sensory facts; it has directed human attention solely toward sensory facts and toward what can be derived from those sensory facts using the brain as an instrument. From the counterforce that arises from the mere focus of conventional Darwinism on the purely external world of facts, the longing of human hearts for the supersensible world will be kindled; and because our time already beholds the dawn of this longing—which is emerging as a counterforce to conventional Darwinism—it meets this longing head-on and takes effect in the minds of people. The number of people who feel this longing—who sense that old ways of thinking, even among the most brilliant thinkers, must lead to consequences such as those of Count Gobineau or conventional Darwinism—will grow ever larger. But when people come to realize that they cannot possibly remain stuck with what appears to be so firmly grounded in external science, they will demand supersensory research, and then people will increasingly come to realize how the logic and all thinking involved in this supersensible research can proceed in exactly the same conscientious manner as external science, which has advanced so far in the course of the nineteenth century and which could truly be admired by no one more than by spiritual science itself.

[ 22 ] When we survey these connections in this way, we recognize the necessity of supersensible research in our time, and then we will easily understand what this supersensible research actually aims to achieve. An understanding of its aims was, after all, intended to be awakened in these winter lectures, just as it was in the numerous lecture series of past years. The entire lecture series was, in essence, a pointer to what has been summarized today, and it sought specifically to show in detail how this spiritual science consciously inserts itself into the cultural life of our present time in order to serve it in an appropriate manner. It is therefore not surprising that this spiritual science is so frequently misunderstood today. The overall tone of the lectures has undoubtedly shown—to anyone willing to see through them—that those who stand on the ground of spiritual science are well aware of the objections that can be raised against it. And many of these objections have been raised from this very platform, precisely to demonstrate how objections to what has been presented here can arise. Time and again, one sees that this or that objection raised here is later presented by those who listened as their own objection, so that no attention is paid to how what might possibly be objected to has already been addressed by spiritual science itself. But anyone who understands the course of human culture and takes into account everything that has transpired with regard to the progress of humanity will not be disheartened by the judgments that spiritual science faces in the outer world today; rather, they will be able to point to the numerous examples of how what was later regarded as self-evident— such as Darwinism itself, initially provoked the strongest opposition. Examples of this kind are numerous. One thing will always remain in the background for the true spiritual scientist: he tells himself, “Even if individual elements may crumble away, this is no different from any other science; but the fundamental essence and the basic truths must remain and will take root, for every genuine look at our lives shows us the necessity of this spiritual science.” — It is precisely when we turn to the greatest figures—as we have seen today with Count Gobineau and the proponents of Darwinism—that we realize how vitally necessary it is to integrate supersensible research into the spiritual life of our time, and we realize how supersensible research corresponds directly to the longing of those people who desire the true progress of spiritual life in our time.

[ 23 ] However, in the near future, out in the world—if people are even interested in spiritual science or anthroposophy at all—much more emphasis will be placed on all sorts of sensational events that have occurred here and there, or are still occurring, as if they were excesses of spiritual science. It will be easy to portray this spiritual science as something fantastical, grotesque, or perhaps even as folly, if one limits oneself to focusing on its excesses; but for a certain segment of the public, it will simply be more convenient to mock these excesses than to engage seriously and with dignity with what can be considered scientific research within this spiritual science. And anyone who considers the spirit of the lectures presented here must at least concede one thing: that these lectures have attempted to introduce into this humanistic discipline the same logic, the same striving, and the same scientific thinking that prevail in the natural sciences. And even if some are unwilling to admit it, I may perhaps speak here in the words of Count Gobineau’s German biographer, who said: “Many have objected to Count Gobineau’s ideas, saying: ‘What Count Gobineau means can easily be refuted, for even a high school sophomore can know this, and any high school sophomore can grasp these ideas.’ — But ‘one must assume that the thinking of a high school sophomore is not sufficient to understand Count Gobineau, and that one must go beyond what one believes to be one’s own solid logic and not remain at the level of a high school sophomore’s logic if one wishes to grasp the essence of spiritual science.’ Even if one were to continue for a long time to follow the approach just outlined in assessing spiritual science and its results, there will always be a few such people who will nevertheless recognize how, at the very least, attempts are being made to proceed in spiritual research with the same conscientiousness and the same rigorous logic as are customary following the training of thought that humanity has undergone over the course of the recent centuries. It is by this intention that spiritual science should be recognized—not by certain errors made within it, nor by certain excesses that may perhaps manifest themselves within it. And the few who recognize this will initially form the core of that human thinking and human will whose necessity one recognizes precisely when one builds upon the most consistent thinkers who have emerged in our time. That is why today’s concluding lecture drew upon not only Darwin but also Count Gobineau.

[ 24 ] May those who form the core of such human thought and human will still stand alone today. All those who became the bearers of such ideas—ideas that would later be taken for granted—stood alone. In an age in which science has derived a materialistic-monistic religion from its very foundations, it is not surprising that a spiritual science—anthroposophy—should also, in a certain sense, drive people into solitude. For this spiritual science, with its actual object—that which it seeks to grasp—presents itself, at first, in such a way that its object is denied in the widest circles today, or at least that the possibility of knowing this object is denied. But human beings will not be able to remain without knowledge of the spirit. And because they must not remain without this knowledge of the spirit, spiritual science enters the picture. These lectures are intended to illustrate that this is indeed the case. Just as in the outer sensory world—especially when it presents itself to us in its most wondrous forms and interrelationships, as modern science can reveal—we see something akin to a shell that a shell-bearing creature sheds after it has experienced the forces contained within that shell, so does the outer world appear. And just as that which has overcome the shell, so does the spiritual—which creates itself—appear through spiritual science. What had to be overcome, and what, having been overcome, still serves as a tool that we must make use of—this is what external science teaches. But spiritual science will forcefully bring home to people that knowledge need not remain limited to the outer shell, to the outer crust of being. It will show that in the outer form, in the outer shell, we must see the deeds of the spirit—how it lives in its activities and in its results, and how it remains the same when it withdraws into its true source, into its innermost being—but also how, in this source, it possesses something that gives it a perspective on eternity.

[ 25 ] The humanities will renew—that was, as it were, the theme of these winter lectures—but in a more elevated form, a certain Goethean perspective, which, with deep conviction, provided the entire framework for these lectures, with which Goethe confronted the natural sciences of his time when one of their representatives, Haller, declared:

No creative spirit
Can penetrate the depths of nature.
Blessed is the one to whom she shows
Only her outer shell!

[ 26 ] Goethe replied—and this is what spiritual science will always reply to those who believe that all human knowledge must be limited to the external world— Spiritual science will reply: You, too, will recognize this external world in its true form only when you perceive the true Spirit. You will recognize what Darwinism has created in its true form when you view it as the deeds of the active Spirit—as shells and deeds that the active Spirit has set aside so that it may make use of them. — And by directing the human soul toward itself, spiritual science will bring people to the full realization that one recognizes even the shell only when one recognizes it as an expression of the spirit, and since one recognizes the Spirit only when one grasps it in its creative work—as it already promises in present existence to bring forth new forms from the bosom of the future, as it must become creative within itself. This is what the outer shell reveals; it reveals what the Spirit has created. That is why spiritual science responds in the manner characteristic of it when confronted with the statement:

No creative spirit
Can penetrate the depths of nature.
Blessed is he to whom she shows
Only her outer shell!

[ 27 ] to someone like that, the words that Goethe had already foreseen and spoken:

Examine yourself above all else,
To see if you are spirit or shell!

[ 28 ] This concludes these winter lectures, and it may be said that the speaker is guided by the following conviction: May spiritual science truly find its goal and fulfill its mission in such a way that it does not remain a mere theory, a mere sum of ideas, but rather—as has often been characterized— become an elixir of life that remains active and works within the human being—not merely by acting upon the recognition of the outer shell, but above all by working within—so that the human being may recognize whether he is core or shell, and so that a strong will may give rise to the impulse not to remain a shell, but to be and become the core forever.