The Rudolf Steiner Archive

1. Life and Death

[ 1 ] When people pay attention to the interests of their souls, then the question to which our present reflection is dedicated—the question of life and death—is certainly a recognized and significant one, and the answer to this question must address the deep needs of the human soul. Nevertheless, in our present age it is difficult to speak about such things, since it is difficult to strike a chord in the soul; for the concepts, views, and ideas that our time has derived from seemingly established scientific concepts contradict what must be said on the basis of spiritual scientific research; and it is difficult to bring an unbiased perspective to bear in contrast to these scientific concepts.

[ 2 ] Now, it may well be that those who are attempting to answer these questions today should be met with an unbiased perspective; however, one need only pay attention to what is presented to us in the [contemporary scientific] literature to recognize how little sound thinking and how few sound concepts there are—and how few of them reach a broad audience.

[ 3 ] The concept of “life”—let’s take the “physiology” of one of the greatest naturalists of modern times, Huxley: Here we have an exemplary book on [contemporary] science, and in this book we find a discussion of the concept of life. First, he speaks of humans, and it is stated that life in humans depends on the brain, lungs, and heart, and that if one of these organs does not function properly, life is endangered. And then a curious transition is made. It is said that if one could, so to speak, deprive a human being of his brain, but artificially keep the lungs and heart functioning, life would continue. From a certain standpoint—one that is so highly valued today—this naturally makes good sense, but from the standpoint of a worldview that takes the whole human being into account, it makes not the slightest sense, for one would not want a life in which the things one experiences are not present in one’s consciousness. – True death occurs where this consciousness ceases. Thus, even the greatest natural scientist of our time is entirely incapable of grasping the concept of “life” in the proper way.

[ 4 ] [In modern science, people take an extraordinarily simplistic approach to defining life.] It is believed that life is the same in humans, animals, and plants—everything is lumped together, whereas we should be clear that, when it comes to this question, we must consider each being at its [own level]. The most essential aspect of our view of the world is overlooked, for Huxley has grown accustomed to focusing on that aspect of human beings which is most irrelevant to human life and nature: the physical body. And so, in all seriousness, he quotes Hamlet’s line—and it is fitting for Hamlet, in his melancholic state of mind, to utter such a line and, gazing upon the substance of the body, to pursue this substance after the great Caesar has died, and to say:

The great Caesar, now dead and turned to clay.
May he plug a hole against the harsh north wind;
Oh, that the earth, which made the world tremble,
Might form a wall against wind and weather.

[ 5 ] And Huxley points to a [conceivable] “Negro slave Caesar” or a “chained dog Caesar” and says: Even in this slave or in this dog, the atoms of the great Caesar might be found. – Thus, one pursues what is most irrelevant to human life, unaware that one should be pursuing what shapes matter in such a way that it conforms to humanity. Physics will soon abandon these fanciful notions about atoms—research on radium has already shown that atoms disintegrate in human hands.

[ 6 ] As you can see: Even from the heights of knowledge, one cannot form a true understanding of what life and death are. But natural science is at an important turning point today, and anyone who does not rely on catchphrases but instead grapples with scientific findings and observations will see that natural science is already beginning to address the spirit [gap in the transcript].

[ 7 ] She cannot grasp the concept, and perhaps this is because she lacks a proper understanding of life. The biologist Weismann says: Only the experience of death occurring can convince one of its reality; it cannot be grasped from life itself. Here, people speak of the immortality of single-celled organisms. It is said that such an organism divides into two, continues to live as two, and this process goes on indefinitely. One speaks of a multiplication in number, and these countless beings represent the same thing as the first being. One cannot, therefore, speak of death in this context. – But this has led to a calamity: Weismann sought in this way a definition of death that is characteristic of the contemporary way of thinking and that has turned out to be rather peculiar. He says that the essential aspect of death is the presence of a corpse. – Contemporary natural science is thus only capable of speaking of life when it is no longer present, and seeks to understand the relationship between life and death through the dead, through the corpse. Verworn, a student of Haeckel, says that while individual living beings die, life itself is preserved. People have resorted to all manner of theories to solve the riddle of life and death, but the confusion has only grown greater.

[ 8 ] The humanities don't have it so easy that they can just lump everything together – [end of transcript; continued in the second transcript].

[ 9 ] First, it should be noted that death in plants and animals is something entirely different from death in humans. For many plants, it is a characteristic phenomenon that the plant dies when it brings forth a new being; at the moment fertilization occurs, it transitions into a different form of existence. Up until that moment, it was permeated by the etheric body. – It is not at all difficult to mock such things; but it becomes evident time and again that anyone who deeply engages in the observation of life phenomena cannot make sense of them without accepting the concept of the etheric or life body. The withering and dying of a plant are based on its adherence to physical and chemical laws. Through the etheric body, the plant is removed from the influence of these physical and chemical laws. Where does what is taken from the plant go? It passes into the new plant; it is the stream of life that flows through the ranks of plants. — In the animal, there is even more than the etheric body: so that consciousness can arise within it, the animal is endowed with an astral body, which is the builder of the organs of consciousness. — In the human being, the “I” is added as well.

[ 10 ] The difference between animals and humans is easy to discern; one need not look for differences where there are none. The need to completely blur this distinction, as materialistic monism does today, did not yet exist in the previous century. However, the difference in the lower jaw was emphasized with great passion—[as] Kant did. This approach did not suit Goethe, for he understood how to think spiritually. He studied anatomy and physiology in Jena and proved that it was nonsense to assert this difference. He demonstrated the presence of the small bone—[the intermaxillary bone]—in humans as well and showed that it was merely fused. These matters are discussed in greater detail in the forthcoming booklet on anthroposophy. One should seek the difference in the spiritual realm. In animals, the scope of their abilities is bound to their organs and to what is inherited at birth. In humans, various activities remain open, for which they must first develop the ability. Many things are innate in animals that humans must first acquire through spiritual powers. The monkey has a predetermined sense of balance; humans must first learn to walk and stand. Balance is not innate in humans; it is the spirit that gradually works to develop it. Goethe says:

[ 11 ] “Animals are guided by their organs,” said the ancients; I would add: so are humans, but they have the advantage of being able to guide their organs in turn.

[ 12 ] Today, people strive to attribute all human dispositions to heredity, and to do so, they resort to invoking ancestors from the distant past. But what interests us about the individual human being—what determines his or her unique position and role in the world—cannot be explained by the line of ancestors. The unbiased educator can even discern a clear distinction between inherited dispositions and those inner forces within a person that stem from past lives. The fact that animals can also be trained is no valid objection for those who are able to look at the essence of the matter. A distinction must be made here: we attribute a group, species, or generic soul to animals—yet it is a fact that we are just as interested in the individual human being as we are in an entire species of animals. In animals, spiritual individuality does not manifest in the individual being but in the species as a whole. One can compare the individual feelings of a human being to those of an individual animal and the whole human being to the animal species. An animal lives as long as the group soul has not lost interest in the individual specimen. Weismann cannot find the reason for death in animals precisely because he overlooks this. — In human beings, something comes into being at birth that is found neither in animals nor in plants nor in minerals.

[ 13 ] There are, however, thinkers who have moved beyond the view that human beings are composed solely of inherited faculties. They recognize that individuality precedes physical existence and shapes it, yet they do not find the solution in the assumption of repeated earthly lives; see Immanuel Hermann Fichte, “Anthropology”:

Parents are not the creators in the full sense of the word: They provide the organic material, and not merely that, but also that intermediate, sensual-emotional element, which manifests itself in temperament, in a distinctive emotional coloring, in a specific configuration of the drives, and the like—the “imagination,” in that broader sense we have demonstrated, having emerged as their common source. In all these elements of personality, the mixture and distinctive combination of the parental souls is unmistakable; it is therefore entirely justified to regard them as mere products of procreation, especially if—as we were compelled to conclude—procreation is understood as a genuine process of the soul. But the actual, definitive center of the personality is precisely what is missing here; for upon deeper, more penetrating observation, it becomes clear that even those pleasant idiosyncrasies are merely a shell and an instrument for encompassing the truly spiritual, ideal dispositions of the human being—suitable for fostering or hindering their development, but by no means capable of bringing them into being on their own. [...] Each person preexists according to his or her fundamental spiritual form; for, viewed spiritually, no individual resembles another any more than one species of animal resembles another.

[ 14 ] Francesco Redi was the first to assert that living things can only arise from other living things. Only imprecise observation in earlier times could have led to the belief that hornets arise from rotting oxen, bees from horse carcasses, and wasps from donkeys. Just as modern science protests against such superstition, so too must the researcher of the spiritual realm protest against the notion that spiritual-soul aspects can be explained by heredity. Human individuality points back to itself in previous earthly lives.

[ 15 ] A common objection to this is: If a person does not remember, then those earlier experiences have no value. – Yet there is also a period between birth and death that one does not remember: the first years after birth—and yet one was there; self-awareness simply was not yet strong enough. The moment when self-awareness first emerges is also the boundary for recollection. Thus, this “being-in-it” of the self creates the possibility of remembering. When a person learns to remember, they will simply remember. It is not easy to grasp this; only through a very specific way of perceiving—absolute equanimity, serenity, and no fear of fate— This is what propels our “I” forward. — The theory of heredity has produced some strange notions, such as the idea that a genius stands at the end of a line of descent rather than at the beginning. This is really no more surprising than the fact that someone who has fallen into water is wet when pulled out. We are all familiar with Goethe’s joke:

From my father I got my build,
A serious approach to life,
From my dear mother, her cheerful nature,
And a love of storytelling.
[...]
What, then, about this little fellow
Can truly be called original?

[ 16 ] Well, humanity will surely know what can be called the “original being.” — Our body is composed of the forces we have acquired from a previous incarnation; but whatever spiritual abilities we acquire now in this incarnation will create the conditions for our next life. In this body, a soul has developed that possesses greater abilities than in the previous life; and we feel a sense of gratitude that this body dies, for when the senses grow dull, the soul is already building another body and can cast off what is not suited to the soul’s further development. Modern science is already very close to this assumption. It has already been discovered that we become fatigued only by activities connected with our consciousness; that is already something. A modern natural scientist, Thomson, says: “The soul stands to the body in roughly the same relationship as a rider to his horse.” This is the idea that ancient art expressed through the centaur. There are, however, people who claim that to the ancients, the wild peoples of the East—as they rode through the mist—appeared to be fused with their horses, and that this inspired their imagination to create the figure of the centaur.

[ 17 ] The spiritual researcher does not look at the corpse, but at what the corpse leaves behind:

The Smallest Human on Earth
A Son of Eternity,
Will, in new life,
Defeat death.