The Rudolf Steiner Archive

30. The Origin of the World and the Descent of Man

Article in the “Mühlheimer Zeitung”, No. 667, December 5, 1905

[ 1 ] a. Cologne, Dec. 4. Last Friday and Saturday, the Secretary-General of the German Section of the Theosophical Society, Dr. Rudolf Steiner, delivered two captivating and significant lectures in the Isabellensaal at the Gürzenich. On Friday, the speaker addressed “The Origin of the World,” and, building on that, on Saturday, “The Creation of Man”; he illuminated both topics from a theosophical perspective. In the first lecture, he highlighted the great difference between the theosophical and materialistic views regarding the creation of the world. Theosophy restores to prominence the ancient creation myths—which are dismissed in our day as childish and naive—that were originally formulated in mythical form to make them accessible to the understanding of their contemporaries. A look at these ancient teachings reveals the same fundamental idea regarding the creation of the world, expressed only in different forms. Among the ancient Germanic peoples, the giant [Ymir] was slain; among the Egyptians, Osiris; and a world was created from their remains; even the later depictions of creation appear different only on the surface. The sacrifice of the god was necessary in all religions [in order] to develop a world or culture. In religions, therefore, the divine spirit is placed at the beginning of events; through it, matter is animated, and the inanimate is brought to life. In our day, since Kant and Laplace, the creation of the Earth has been conceived as arising from a primordial nebula that was in rotational motion. From this, the celestial bodies took shape. Just as smaller drops separate from a large, rotating drop of oil in a glass of water due to its oscillation, so, according to today’s view, the sphere of matter that gradually formed flung off smaller ones, thereby producing suns and planets. Although Theosophy accepts this account of origin—insofar as it pertains to the material realm—this view does not satisfy the Theosophist, since modern theory fails to answer the question of how the spirit came to Earth and how life arose within this matter. The answer to this, the speaker went on to explain, cannot be provided either scientifically or speculatively; clarity on this matter is possible only through a person’s own inner development. Goethe himself emphasized that human beings, whose organs are instruments of far superior order, must be placed above any physical apparatus used as a research instrument. Goethe also pointed out that the great world outside finds its faithful reflection within us, and that no force exists in the external environment that does not also have its counterpart within the human being; therefore, he established a direct relationship between the world around us—the macrocosm—and the world within us—the microcosm. Just as we are connected to a visible world, we are also connected to an invisible one. Human beings, as physical organisms, represent the crown of life, a fact also expressed in their ability to say “I” to themselves. No other being is capable of this; nor can one person say “I” to another—rather, each can say it only to oneself. With the “I,” the human being presents himself as the crown, the fulfillment of physical life, but only as the beginning of the spiritual world. In the external world, as the mirror image of our inner world, we see the perfect spiritual world at the beginning of the physical world. Religions now place the self-sacrifice of God at the forefront of creation for the reason that God did not merely wish to create a beautiful and wise world, but also a loving one. True love, however, can exist only in freedom; therefore, He had to, so to speak, immerse Himself in the world, lose Himself within it, so that we might recognize Him around us and, out of free will, act in His Spirit and develop in accordance with His Spirit. When the ancient Egyptians envisioned their Osiris as sleeping and resting in the world, they thereby demonstrated a subtle understanding of the ancient teachings of wisdom and the very essence of all religions.

[ 2 ] In his second lecture, Dr. Steiner began by noting that the question of human origin is connected to what we understand by human destiny. As a theosophist, one must hold a different view of human origin than materialists do. - Modern humans reveal only some of the characteristic features of their entire nature; to obtain a complete picture of humanity, it would be necessary to keep in mind what these features looked like in the various stages of development. In addition to the physical body, one must also speak of an etheric body within the human being—which constitutes its actual life body—and an astral body, which, according to ancient [theosophical] wisdom, first created the physical body as a sentient soul body. For, according to theosophical view, the speaker said, we create our physical form out of the spirit, through the soul. Depending on external circumstances, the spirit and the soul have shaped our outward appearance and adapted it to the given conditions. During the time of Atlantean civilization, the civilization of a

[ 3 ] On the lost continent situated between America and Europe, conditions on Earth and in the atmosphere were quite different from what they are today. The people of that time mastered their environment through their innate spiritual powers and not through reason, as we do today. They were able to directly harness the forces of nature—such as the life force present in plants, for example—for their own purposes; it was not until much later that humans developed the capacity for thought. Theosophy must reject the claim made by modern researchers that humans are descended from apes; even the latest research already contradicts this theory. No researcher has been able to provide evidence that humans represent a further development of the ape species. If one were to accept this, it would necessarily imply that the ape species whose skull structure is closest to that of modern humans—the gibbon—must have undergone a regression, specifically in its colossal arms and hands. This, however, contradicts any reasonable theory of evolution. Theosophy describes the relationship between humans and animals—and specifically between humans and apes—as follows: humans and apes once stood on the same evolutionary level, in a time that must be placed far before the Atlantean era. From this common stage, the spiritually inclined human rose above his similarly structured but instinct-bound counterpart to the heights of humanity, while the latter, as a degenerate offshoot, became animal-like. This theosophical view corresponds to its fundamental conception of humanity’s relationship to the environment, which is intimately connected to it. In the stone, the plant, and the animal, the theosophist recognizes kindred beings subject to laws similar to his own; for, according to the theosophical view, in order to become human, he first had to develop through all the kingdoms of nature. The speaker, whose captivating presentations we can only briefly summarize here, was met with lively applause.