The Rudolf Steiner Archive

23. Man, Woman, and Child in the Light of the Humanities

[ 1 ] Science speaks of heredity, but the word is far too crude to convey the subtle, subtle differences. Theosophy, or spiritual science, focuses only on the laws that apply to human beings, not to other living beings, animals, and plants. Why is so much similar in daughters to their fathers, and in sons to their mothers? Science has no real answer to this. One must delve deeper into this. When one sees a child gradually developing, sees the soul unfolding, how much of that comes from the parents, how much from other circumstances, and so on? Where do the details come from?

[ 2 ] William [James], in *America*, writes: “A person does not cry because they are sad; they are sad because they cry.” Something in a person’s environment causes tears to be forced from the tear glands into the eyes and then to fall, and then the person is sad. — This is, of course, the reversal of the truth. The human body is built up from the soul-spiritual. What people develop as intellect, ability, feeling, and so on results from what the human being has carried with them in their core being from all their previous lives. The physical and etheric bodies contain what comes from the parents; the core of the being points us back to what it has developed in previous incarnations.

[ 3 ] When a child is given to a couple, we must remember that this does not mean a new individual is being created. This couple can provide the child with the most suitable physical and etheric bodies, which is why the core of the being was drawn to them. In this way, the past and the future come together.

[ 4 ] Much of what is observed in a child can be seen in the father and much in the mother. But there is still much that cannot be attributed to heredity. Among several children of the same parents, the same hereditary factors are present, and yet each has his or her own unique individuality.

[ 5 ] One must distinguish between what a person has inherited physically and what they have earned through their own efforts. Schiller, for example, inherited his nose, his gait, and even his temperament; but his genius—that which makes Schiller Schiller—he earned for himself over the course of many lifetimes.

[ 6 ] Why is a particular essence drawn to a particular pair of parents? Arthur Schopenhauer made an interesting observation. There is something individual in the sympathy of passionate love between a man and a woman, if we pay attention to the glances that go back and forth; there is something individual in the process of love itself—it is as individual as what arises from this act of love.

[ 7 ] The love life between a man and a woman is what draws the new being into the world. In the individual acts of love, very different feelings ebb and flow; in the third, fourth, and fifth years of marriage, and so on, a bond is forged for those who become part of the family.

[ 8 ] In the Holbein family of painters, artistic talent runs in the family. “You see how talent is passed down,” they say. It is the same in the Bach and Bernoulli families. A musical ear is based on a subtle inner structure. A mathematical sense is not tied to a particular type of brain; rather, there are three semicircular canals in the ear—that is the organ responsible for spatial perception. If these canals are particularly finely developed and formed, then a mathematical sense is present. Great talent stands at the end of a developmental sequence. This does not prove that the talent is inherited; on the contrary: if it were at the beginning of such a sequence and were now passed down, that would prove heredity. But it does not; it is not inherited.

[ 9 ] Carnegie: “The Gospel of Wealth.” It is useful for Theosophists to read such books. If Theosophy is to become the powerful force it is destined to be, then we must demonstrate that we do not identify with the “tea-table” crowd, but rather with people who are engaged in real life and grapple with questions like Carnegie does. We do not need to agree with him. Some doting fathers are too eager to pass on supposed business acumen to their sons so they can hand the business over to them. But many business failures can be attributed to the fact that those very abilities were not inherited in the same way. One should not hire people for business who, by biological inheritance, lack business acumen; rather, one should hire people who may be without any wealth but are gifted with the appropriate abilities.

[ 10 ] Life demands the whole person, especially now. In raising a child, we must respect the child’s own individuality, allowing the child to develop freely, rather than following a cookie-cutter approach based on supposed inherited traits.