The Rudolf Steiner Archive

5. World Development in the Light of Anthroposophy

[ 1 ] It should have become clear from the observations I took the liberty of presenting to you here that, above all, for the sake of genuine supersensible knowledge, it is a matter of separating—through exercises such as I have described—the two aspects of human nature that are usually imprecisely referred to as the human inner and the human outer. It may be worth pointing out that in ordinary consciousness, when people speak of the external and the internal, they do not make a precise distinction. And the way in which that emergence of the human being’s emotional and volitional nature during the state of sleep was to be characterized, and how to further characterize the awareness in supersensible perception outside the human body—will show that it is precisely in this supersensible perception that a precise distinction can be made between what is actually referred to in ordinary consciousness, only intuitively, as the outer and inner aspects of the human being. I would like to say that through this separation, the inner being of the human being becomes the outer, and what the human being otherwise refers to as his or her outer becomes the inner.

[ 2 ] What actually happens there? During sleep, the human being’s will-and-feeling essence emerges from what has been called the human physical body and the human form-body or etheric body, and this will-and-feeling essence of the human being looks back upon the physical body and the etheric body as if they were objects. We have shown that, in this act of looking back, the entire fabric of thought now appears to us outside the human inner being. What fills us in ordinary consciousness as our world of thought—in which the external world is reflected—does not, upon falling asleep, go with the actual inner being of the human being; rather, it remains behind as the actual forces of the etheric body alongside the physical body. And in this way we have been able to understand—because, as one can easily verify through self-observation, the human being experiences the ordinary waking state through his world of thought—that in the waking state, the human being cannot be conscious of precisely that which now emerges in sleep as the unconscious for ordinary consciousness.

[ 3 ] There is a dull, twilight-like state of being within that human being who, upon falling asleep, leaves the physical body and the etheric body, and one only comes to know this inner human being when it is, so to speak, illuminated and warmed by supersensible knowledge—when one becomes just as conscious within this inner being as one is otherwise in the physical body. But one also comes to understand why one lives unconsciously during ordinary sleep. Consciousness arises precisely when, upon waking, one immerses oneself in the physical and etheric bodies. And through this immersion in the physical body, one makes use of one’s senses, which connect one to the external world. The result of this is that the sensory world awakens, and one thereby becomes conscious within this sensory world.

[ 4 ] Similarly, one immerses oneself in one’s etheric or life body—that is, in one’s world of thoughts—and becomes conscious through thought. Ordinary consciousness, then, is based on making use of the instruments of one’s physical body and, I might say, on making use of the fabric of formative forces in the etheric body. In ordinary life, this true inner being of the human being—woven from feeling and will—is unable to attain consciousness because it has no organs. By performing the exercises of thought and will that I have spoken of, one endows the soul itself with organs. This soul, which is at first indeterminate in ordinary consciousness, is plastically shaped, just as our physical body and our etheric body are otherwise plastically shaped into the senses and the organs of thought. Thus, the actual soul-spiritual being of the human being is given a concrete form. And to the same extent that it is given this concrete form—by acquiring, so to speak, spiritual-soul sensory organs, if I may use this paradoxical expression—the spiritual-soul world emerges around this human inner being. What is otherwise in a dull, twilight state—and can therefore perceive only one world, namely the sensory world, when it makes use of the physical and etheric organs—gains form, enters into a relationship with the world that otherwise always surrounds us without our knowing it, and in which we did indeed live before we entered the physical being through birth or conception in the manner described here the day before yesterday, and in which we will live again—for we then recognize it as belonging to us and not limited by birth and death—when we pass through the gate of death. However, upon entering the spiritual-soul world, one has a specific experience: The fact is that one cannot enter this spiritual world in the same abstract, theoretical way that one lives in the sensory world and in the world of the intellect or thought. In the sensory world and in the world of the intellect, we make use of thoughts and ideas which, as such, actually leave us—I might say—cold. Anyone who engages in even a little self-observation knows that when they rise into the realm of pure thought, when they surrender to the external sensory world without any particular interests, without any special connection to anything, both the external sensory world and the world of ideas actually leave them cold. One need only examine specific examples from life to see how this is the case. One need only compare, for example, how differently a person usually regards their homeland as an inner experience compared to some foreign region that is indifferent to them. One will then see how a person must draw upon their feelings and will—which, after all, only emerge into the physical world upon waking and from there establish a connection with the sensory and intellectual worlds—in order to take a lively interest in their surroundings. The fact that we kindle our feelings into love—and perhaps also into hatred—toward certain people we encounter in the physical world, and that we are inclined to perform certain acts out of compassion for them: all of this first requires that we draw our sensations, our feelings, and everything that constitutes our inner being toward what confronts us in the outer physical world. And how well does the human being know how his inner life grows cold when he ascends into the realms commonly called the realms of pale, dry thought and theoretical study.

[ 5 ] First, what remains in that dull, twilight state from the moment we fall asleep until we wake up must, as it were, be woven together with thought and sensory experiences through our inner participation during waking hours, so that the full diversity of interests in the external world can emerge. And so we recognize how, in life itself, feeling and will are engaged with the sensory world and the world of thought. But in the fullest sense of the word, we experience this only when, through supersensible knowledge—free from the physical body and free from the etheric body—we experience ourselves outside of these bodies in the emotional and volitional nature of the human being. And there it becomes clear that we must begin to speak about the world in a completely different way than we do in ordinary life, in ordinary consciousness. One must begin to infuse what one is otherwise accustomed to presenting in science—with dry ideas and natural laws that may interest us theoretically but leave us emotionally detached—with certain nuances of language that characterize things in a different way than one is accustomed to characterizing the outer world in ordinary life. Through this supersensible knowledge, inner experience becomes significantly more intense. One engages more deeply with the external world than usual. One is simply incapable of devoting oneself to inner ideas in a detached and cold manner. Of course, this exposes one to the accusation that a certain inner warmth is awakened, that feeling is stirred, and that, by awakening the subjective sense, one is distorting objectivity. Yet only those who are unfamiliar with the circumstances level this accusation.

[ 6 ] What one perceives in supersensible knowledge causes one to speak differently about the objects of supersensible knowledge. These objects do not become any different; they do not become any less objective, for they are, after all, objective. And when I look at a masterfully painted picture, it does not change simply because I stand before it full of passion and enthusiasm. But I would have to be a cold, sober person if, with an appreciation for art, I were to stand coldly and soberly before a Madonna by Raphael or a painting by Leonardo. It is the same when the spiritual worlds emerge in supersensible knowledge. What they contain is not altered by the fact that one must be connected to these worlds with a stronger inner involvement than one is usually connected to objects in the outer world. Therefore, some things spoken from the insight into these higher worlds will be expressed differently than what one is accustomed to hearing in ordinary life. But this does not make this world any less objective. On the contrary, one could say: The subjective aspect that now emerges from the physical and etheric bodies becomes, in its entire experience, more objective and selfless. And so the first thing one experiences upon stepping out of the physical body and consciously experiencing one’s true inner self—whereas one otherwise always experiences oneself unconsciously—is a feeling of absolute loneliness. One never otherwise has this experience in ordinary consciousness—that, while dwelling solely within this inner self, one is lonely, regardless of what else may exist in the world, and that one is entirely dependent on oneself with all that is now to be the content of the soul and spirit.

[ 7 ] What appears in the physical world only as a reflection—and even then is sometimes painful enough for some people—in the form of the feeling of loneliness, intensifies immeasurably when one enters the supersensible world in this way. But then one looks back at what appears as the spiritual environment reflected in the physical and etheric bodies that one has left behind. There one becomes aware of the complete sense of loneliness through which one can maintain one’s sense of self in this world. Otherwise, one would dissolve in this world of the spirit if one did not experience this sense of the “I” through loneliness in the spiritual world—just as one has a sense of the “I” here through one’s body and bodily sensations. It is thanks to this loneliness that the “I” is sustained in the spiritual world. Then one learns to recognize this spiritual world as that which surrounds one. But one knows that one can only come to know it—just as one sees through the eyes in the physical world—through the inner soul-spiritual eye. This is indeed the case when a human being—as I shall explain here in further detail, building on what I said yesterday—leaves their physical body and their etheric body through the gate of death. It is true that the physical body is then surrendered to the elements of the earth, and that the etheric body, as I have described, dissolves into the universal world ether. But what a person has come to know as their physical world—that is, what they have come to know through feeling and willing, within which they have experienced themselves in ordinary consciousness between birth and death—that remains with the person. The physical body filled with matter and the body of formative forces permeated by ether are cast off at death, but what the human being has experienced within them remains present as a further mirror. From the spiritual world, one looks back through death—which one has passed through—into one’s last earthly life. And precisely because, after death, one has this last earthly life before oneself as a kind of solid backdrop against which everything is reflected, everything that surrounds one is now also reflected throughout the entire passage through the spiritual-soul world between death and a new birth. And from what one experiences in this way, one now sees everything emerge in a more intense form than one has known here in the physical world. And as a spiritual-soul being, one first sees everything with which one has formed a certain connection in this world through one’s destiny, through one’s karma. The people one has grown to love appear as souls. What one has experienced with them comes into view through one’s supersensible perception.

[ 8 ] Whoever acquires spiritual, supersensory insights gains the ability to visualize them right here in the physical world through everything I have described. The person who passes through the gate of death in the ordinary way also has this vision, although it is somewhat different from the vision experienced here. From what appears as the shed, shell-like aspects of the physical body and the etheric body, everything emerges with which we were connected in our earthly life—whether by fate or otherwise. As long as those we have left behind are still here on Earth, the connection with them is more difficult. But then, when they have followed us into the free spiritual-soul life, the communion with all that one, as a human being, has associated with oneself in one’s surroundings emerges. That—if I may now express it in the words of ordinary consciousness—the people who have proven themselves to belong together here in this physical world will find one another again in the spiritual-soul world, after they have passed through the gate of death, is not, for supersensible knowledge, a matter of faith accepted on the basis of a vague intuition, but rather a certainty just as certain as the findings of physics or chemistry. And this is precisely what anthroposophical spiritual science is able to add to what humanity possesses today in its civilization. People today have become accustomed to attaining certainty in a specific way, as scientific consciousness becomes increasingly widespread. They no longer seek to learn about the supersensible worlds through ancient intuitions, as traditional creeds have handed down; but have now become accustomed to—and have been educated in—the kind of certainty that the external world can offer. Anthroposophical spiritual science seeks to open the path to what lies beyond birth and death and to offer the same kind of certainty in this regard. It is indeed capable of doing so. Only those who follow the path I have described into the spiritual worlds can extend the knowledge we have gained in physics and chemistry all the way into the worlds we enter when we pass through the gate of death.

[ 9 ] However, not everything appears to us in this way when we look back at this body from outside it through supersensible knowledge. And something appears there that is particularly enigmatic. What appears there in such a mysterious way best demonstrates that anthroposophical spiritual science does not translate the things it incorporates into its knowledge into sober, dry rationalism. It leads people to see, or, in communicating its insights, it speaks of something that can be seen. But one does not lose one’s full sense of awe for the mysteries the world contains—for the things in the world that inspire awe—simply by being led, through contemplation, to what would otherwise be open only to vague intuition at best. And the mystery I am referring to, which appears to one there, is that one now comes to know what the relationship of human beings to the earth is, namely, what the relationship of human beings to the physical, mineral earth is.

[ 10 ] I have just described from a wide variety of perspectives how, bound to the physical body, our fabric of thought remains behind; and in addition to what I have now described—that which is reflected and which leads us, through knowledge, to the eternal core of the human being—one can also recognize the very nature of the mirror itself that one has before one. I would like to say: Just as in the physical world one has a mirror before oneself and sees in the mirror the world that lies before one, together with oneself, so does the spiritual world appear to us through this mirror in supersensible cognition. But just as one can now touch the mirror with its coating, just as one can examine it in its essence, so too can one examine this mirror of the supersensible—namely, our physical and etheric bodies—when one has stepped outside of them with one’s true spiritual-soul being.

[ 11 ] And this shows that, during their earthly life, human beings are constantly absorbing substances from the external world for their growth and for their entire life. We do, of course, take in substances from the animal and plant kingdoms, but all these substances we take in from the animal and plant kingdoms also contain mineral substances. Plants contain mineral substances, for the plant builds itself up from these mineral substances. For example, when we consume plant-based food, we build our own physical body from mineral substances. And here, as we now look back at our physical body from the outside, the true significance of these mineral substances we take in becomes clear. For what is not even easily discerned through ordinary consciousness now reveals itself to our perception: how thinking operates. We have, after all, left thinking behind. The thoughts, I would say, continue to smolder, continue to shine within the physical body we wear. So we can now observe the effect of thoughts on the physical body from the outside, as if it were an objective entity. And we see that the effect of thoughts on the human physical body is that the physical substances are dissolved—in a certain sense, they disintegrate into nothing. I know that I now seem to be speaking against the law of conservation of energy, but there is not enough time here to discuss what would show that my statements are in full harmony with this law. In view of the nature of the matter, I must express myself in somewhat popular terms. But it can be understood that what is actually incorporated into human beings as purely mineral—what they carry within themselves as purely mineral—must be present in them because it must be dissolved by thoughts. Thoughts could not exist—for that is their condition of life—if they did not dissolve mineral, earthly substances—as was also stated in earlier, more intuitive spiritual sciences. This dissolution, this breaking down of physical substances, so to speak, is what constitutes the physical mediation of thought.

[ 12 ] We now come to realize, by being present with our emotional and volitional self—that is, with our own inner human being—within our physical and etheric bodies, and by being permeated by thought, that this thinking process occurs through the continuous destruction of mineral, physical substance. One now learns to recognize how our ordinary consciousness actually functions. It does not function in such a way that the growth forces, which develop in the rest of the organism through the intake of food, are at work within us. In the very same sense that the growth forces become active within us, thinking is actually dampened. Upon waking, thinking must, I might say, gain free rein in dissolving physical matter and excreting it from the physical body. And for anthroposophical spiritual science, the human nervous system is precisely the organ that mediates the excretion of the mineral-physical throughout the entire body. And it is precisely in this separation of the mineral-physical that the very thinking we otherwise usually carry through the world develops.

[ 13 ] So you see that through anthroposophical spiritual science, one not only comes to know the eternal, but also comes to know the way in which this eternal aspect of the human being works within the physical body—how, for example, thinking can exist only because the human being continually develops the mineral, that is, the dead, within themselves. And so we can say: When we come to know the human being in this way, we also come to know death in a different way than I have already described. Otherwise, death appears to us as the conclusion of life, as a moment in life, as a one-time experience. When one, so to speak, examines the physical and etheric bodies of the human being in this way, one comes to understand the slow process of death—that is, the gradual shedding of mineral-physical substance—and dying is, after all, nothing other than the sudden shedding of this mineral-physical substance— one comes to know the ceaseless shedding of a corpse-like element within us. One comes to realize that, in fact, we are always dying in part from the moment of birth, and only when we do with the entire body what we otherwise do throughout our entire life only through the nervous system in a small part of the body—only then do we die.

[ 14 ] One thus learns to observe the moment of death by examining it on a small scale in the workings of thought within the human organism. And the human being can look back on his physical body throughout the entire period he experiences after death because of the following fact. Just think: when, in ordinary life, a thought brightens or flashes within you, the underlying process in the physical body is always that—just as in a salt solution when it is allowed to settle—physical matter precipitates; physical matter precipitates within you. In a sense, you owe the flash of thought to this cloudiness, this precipitation of physical, mineral substance. As you leave the physical body, what you have accumulated in your continuous life of thought is summed up for the entire body in a relatively short time. You are thus faced with the fact that in death you see, as if all at once, what has slowly glowed and shone throughout your entire earthly life, from birth to death.

[ 15 ] And through this powerful impression, in which the life of thought illuminates the soul like a mighty flash of lightning, the human being regains the memory of his physical life on Earth. The physical body can only fall away completely; the etheric body can dissolve entirely into the general world ether. Because one has received this powerful, unique thought-impression—for mathematicians, I would say: this “thought integral,” as opposed to the “thought differentials” from birth to death—therefore, even after one has cast off the physical and the etheric, one has, throughout the entire time after death, this physical earthly life before one at all times like a mirror, through which everything one now experiences is revealed: as, little by little, the human beings with whom one is fatefully bound in love or hatred come into view; as those spiritual beings emerge who exist in the spiritual world but do not descend to Earth, and into whose community one now also enters. The spiritual researcher may say this with confidence, for he knows that he is not speaking from some delusion, but rather that these things reveal themselves to supersensible vision as realities in their own right, when this supersensible vision occurs through the organs of the physical and etheric bodies, which are now outside, he knows that these things are perceived just as physical colors are otherwise perceived by the physical eyes and physical sounds by the physical ears.

[ 16 ] This is how human development fits into the development of the world. When we consider the development of the world—for example, the mineral life of the Earth—we come to understand why the mineral laws of the Earth exist. They exist so that they may also be present within us, and thinking is therefore bound to the Earth. But by seeing how creatures whose thinking is bound to the Earth emerge from what thinking brings forth, one also learns to recognize how human beings, in their true essence, rise above the merely earthly. This is what links the development of the world to the development of humanity, connecting the two. One learns to recognize human beings, and through this one also learns to recognize the world. If one learns to recognize the human physical body as it is mineralized through thinking, then, starting from the human physical body, one also comes to know the dead, mineralized earth. This lays the foundation for understanding world evolution, including its spiritual aspect.

[ 17 ] When one comes to know the inner human being in this way, the development of the world is just like the ordinary earthly experiences one has gone through since birth. If you now draw from your store of memories something you experienced ten years ago, a past event that you lived through appears as an image before your soul. You know precisely from the context of life that this appears as an image. But the image provides you with an understanding of what objectively existed ten years ago. How? Because processes have remained within your organism that now evoke the image for you. Processes have remained within your organism that bring forth the image within you, and through this you can, from the image, reconstruct before yourself—as I once called it here—what you experienced ten years ago. But through supersensible knowledge, one penetrates deeper into the human inner being. One learns, for example, to recognize how the physical body mineralizes during thinking, just as one learns to recognize an experience one has had since birth through what one carries within oneself, through the traces it has left behind.

[ 18 ] Similarly, one can recognize the evolution of the Earth through the evolution of humankind. From what the mineral element does within the human being, one comes to understand the role of the mineral kingdom in the Earth’s evolution. And if one learns to recognize in the same way—as I have just described to you (I can only mention this briefly, as a detailed explanation would take us too far afield)—how the plant kingdom is connected to the human being, and how the animal kingdom is connected to the human being—for this, too, can be understood—then one can come to understand the evolution of the world through the human being. And within this world evolution, something then emerges that is just as important for those interested in today’s civilization as what I have mentioned regarding the true understanding of the human being, the eternal core of the human being.

[ 19 ] We have indeed seen in modern civilization that it has been possible, at least to a certain extent—even if the relevant theories, or as some believe, hypotheses, still contain many unclear points and require further elaboration or modification—to view human beings in their relationship to the development of the world in such a way that we place them in the context of the development of animals. We trace the progression from the simplest organic beings up to the higher animals, and then further still, and we thus arrive at the conclusion that humans stand at the pinnacle of animal evolution. One person does it this way, another that way; one adopts a more idealistic interpretation of Darwinian evolutionary theory, another a more materialistic one, but methodologically, hardly anyone today would deny that—as has, incidentally, been the practice for quite some time—if we wish to understand human beings according to their physical nature using the scientific method, we must place them within the animal kingdom. We must examine how the human head is structured in comparison to the heads of various animal species; we must examine the human limbs, and so on. Through this we arrive at what is called comparative anatomy, comparative morphology, and comparative physiology, and we thereby also gain insights into the way in which, in the course of world evolution, human beings have developed their physical form from lower beings. But in doing so, we always remain within the realm of the physical. Today, the anthroposophical spiritual researcher is criticized for speaking about the spiritual world in the way I have taken the liberty of doing in this lecture. Many regard this as mere fantasy; even if some believe it to be well-intentioned fantasy, they still regard it as fantasy.

[ 20 ] Anyone who familiarizes themselves even a little with what I have described—or who even merely sets out to do so—will see that the preparations for this are just as serious as, for example, the preparations for studying mathematics; therefore, there can be no question of “sailing off” into some fantastical realm. But just as, on the one hand, people take offense at the fact that one speaks of the spiritual world as a real, perceptible world, so, on the other hand, they take offense at the fact that, with regard to the physical development of the human being, one actually, in the full sense of the word, aligns oneself with those who, in a Darwinian manner and within the framework of strictly disciplined natural science, trace the animal kingdom all the way up to the human being. One must simply not speculate about what is considered physical and seek all manner of things within the physical realm, as Neo-Vitalism is doing once again today. It speculates deeply into it; the old Vitalism did so as well. When observing the physical world, one must remain within the realm of the physical.

[ 21 ] That is why the anthroposophical spiritual researcher—who, on the one hand, dares to speak in a certain way about the conditions after death and before birth, as I have done here—does not regard it as a reproach, or rather, he easily bears the reproach when he is told that, when he describes the physical world, he does so entirely in the spirit of a modern natural scientist. He does not project any fantasies onto what the physical world actually is. One might then, when he describes the physical world, be tempted to call him a materialist; he accepts this criticism because he makes a strict distinction between the spiritual world—which can only be observed through spiritual methods—and the physical-sensory world, which must be studied using the proper, disciplined methods of modern natural science. Therefore, when the anthroposophical spiritual researcher is very often reproached by those followers who—without a truly deep understanding of natural science—sometimes disparage that very science, and who, in a certain haughty sense of their spiritual-scientific insights, believe they can also have a say—albeit in a negative way—on what constitutes scientific rigor, then the serious spiritual researcher must truly find it deeply painful that, unfortunately, some who also call themselves followers proceed in this amateurish, dilettantish manner. But this is not in the nature of anthroposophical spiritual research. It is precisely in the nature of anthroposophical spiritual research to proceed just as rigorously scientifically in the external sensory world as one does in the spiritual world itself—and vice versa.

[ 22 ] However, when this premise is accepted, the anthroposophical researcher of the spirit, while outwardly standing firmly on the ground of the strictest scientific approach to the view of world development, simultaneously turns his gaze toward the spiritual-soul world. And just as he knows that—when the human being, as an individual entity, arises embryonically in this physical world—this is not merely a physical process, but that a spiritual-psychic element unites with the human embryo, with the human seed, so he also knows that in the entire development of the world, even though it unfolds before the physical body as a tapestry of sensory impressions, and although its natural laws, as they relate to the fabric of thought—that is, to the etheric body—reveal themselves precisely through causality, these natural laws show that this physical world is permeated and guided throughout its development by spiritual forces directed by spiritual beings, who are recognized in the manner I have described. Thus, the anthroposophical researcher knows that it is precisely when he observes the external physical world in the spirit of the truest science that he reaches the proper boundary, where he may then begin his spiritual research.

[ 23 ] If one has carefully traced—as Darwin himself, other Darwinists, or Haeckel did—the animal kingdom all the way up to humankind, and if one has considered the scientific validity of this evolutionary development of humankind, then—precisely when one has correctly positioned oneself at the boundary from a natural-scientific perspective—one can continue the inquiry from a spiritual-scientific perspective at that very boundary. And this is where one arrives—by immersing oneself in supersensible knowledge through a contemplation of form—at the realization that only now can one learn the full significance of the forms as they appear to us in the human kingdom on the one hand, and in the animal kingdom on the other. One comes to understand the full significance of forms. Now, equipped with the insights provided by supersensible research, one sees how the animal—at least for most animals, this is the case— and the exceptions can already be explained—stands on the earth with its four limbs, how the spine is positioned horizontally, parallel to the earth’s surface, and how the head in animals develops in a position on this spine that is entirely different from the way humans carry their heads. One comes to know the entire form of the animal—I would say—internally as a play of forces and also in relation to the entire cosmos. And in doing so, one learns to compare the way in which the human being appears transformed, metamorphosed in form—standing now on only two limbs, positioning, I might say, his human spine at a right angle to the animal spine, perpendicular to the Earth’s surface, and forming his head in accordance with this position relative to the spine. By immersing oneself in the inner art of nature’s creation, by penetrating the cosmic art, one learns to distinguish the human form from the animal form. And one penetrates the development of the world by rising from what are otherwise abstract, constructive thoughts to thoughts that live inwardly, that take artistic form in the spirit.

[ 24 ] The important point is that, the moment anthroposophical spiritual research seeks to understand the development of the world, it transforms itself from abstract cognition—which is otherwise rightly described in science as dry, sober, systematic cognition, or combinatory cognition—into a more concrete form of cognition. Not for the higher spiritual world—into which concepts must penetrate as I have described—but for the sensory world, this supersensory cognition is now transformed into a kind of artistic grasping, initially of the forms in the development of the world. When one points out in this way how science is transformed into art, those accustomed to thinking only in terms of modern concepts will naturally object: “But science must not become art!” — Well, one can always make that claim as a human demand. One might say: “I command the logic of the world not to become art, for we learn to recognize reality only when thoughts build upon thoughts and then approach reality in this way.” — Yes, if the world were as human beings imagine it to be, then one could refuse to ascend to art, to the artistic grasping of forms. But if the world is such that it can only be grasped through artistic perception, then one must simply arrive at artistic perception. And that is how it is. That is why those who took this insight seriously—by seeking to grasp the organic aspect of world development—did in fact arrive at an inner structuring of abstract, scientifically recognized thought: the artistic perception of the world. And the moment one continues the ordinary Darwinian theory of evolution with an artistically intuitive gaze, one sees that human beings, understood as a whole, cannot simply be presented as if there had once been lower animals in the world, from which somewhat higher animals, then even higher animals, and so on, had developed, and then human beings had emerged.

[ 25 ] In fact, when studied objectively, embryology contradicts such a conception. But although modern researchers have established the fundamental law of biogenetics and specifically compare embryology with phylogeny, they fail to interpret—precisely because they do not rise to this artistic understanding of the world’s structure—what is already evident even externally in human embryology in the correct sense. When one observes in the human embryo how, I might say, the limbs develop from organs that initially appear stunted, and how everything is essentially a head at first, one already has the first elements of what then fully reveals the artistic grasp of the human form that I have in mind. One cannot simply place the entire human being in the animal lineage. One cannot say: The human being, as he stands before us today, is a descendant of the entire animal lineage. No, he is not. Precisely the person who, with a genuine scientific conscience, immerses himself completely in scientific Darwinism—as it represents the development of the world today—will come to realize that, in higher understanding, he cannot simply place the entire human being at the end, at the pinnacle of the animal kingdom; rather, he must study the human head as such. For this human head alone is the descendant of the entire animal kingdom. As strange and paradoxical as it may sound, what is usually regarded as the most perfect aspect of the human being is a transformation of the animal kingdom.

[ 26 ] With this in mind, embark on a genuine study of the human head. From there, study—but with a certain morphological and artistic sensibility—how the lower jawbones are transformed limbs, how the upper jawbones are transformed limbs, how everything in the head is transformed, elevated, and enhanced animal form—then you will recognize in the human head that what is developed in animals in the most varied ways appears at a higher level. Then you will also recognize why this is SO. When you look at an animal, you see how its head hangs on one side of the spine, and how, in a true animal, it is entirely subject to gravity. In contrast, consider the human head in relation to the human being’s position in the cosmos. The human head is positioned along the vertically oriented spinal column. The human head rests upon the rest of the human body in such a way that the rest of the body, so to speak, protects the head from being subjected solely to gravity. The human head is truly something attached to the rest of the human organism as a relatively independent entity. And one comes to understand that the human head, by being carried by the rest of the organism, actually travels along just as someone who uses a carriage travels along in it. It is the rest of the organism that carries the human head through the world. The human head has its transformed limbs, which have, so to speak, shrunk together. It is set upon the rest of the organism. This rest of the organism relates to the human head just as, in the case of an animal, the entire Earth with its gravity relates to the animal. The human being is connected to the rest of his own organism with regard to his head just as the entire animal is connected to the Earth. One now begins to understand the human being through the evolution of the world. And if one proceeds in such an understanding of the human form with an artistic sensibility grounded in knowledge, one comes to grasp how the human head is the continuation of the animal lineage, while the rest of the organism is, in a sense, only a later member acquired from the earth—one that has only been attached to the human head. And so one comes to understand human evolution only now. When we go back to earlier, more ancient times, we must look for nothing else in the human beings of those primeval times than that which lay at the foundation of their present-day head structure. We must not look for their limbs or their chest structure in those ancient times; these were added only later. But if we view the development of the world in the same way I have described it with regard to human beings—just as we look back on a past experience through memory—we find that human beings had already attained their stage of development when, for example, our higher animals did not yet exist at all. At that time, of course, other animal forms existed from which the human head was formed, but what today’s higher animals are did not yet exist at all. So one can say—let us now take a later period of Earth’s history—that as the human being continued to evolve, he developed his head out of earlier animal beings by being animated by his spiritual nature. This is why he was able to develop his head beyond what it had been before. Then he developed his limbs from the natural forces of the Earth. The animals that came later could only develop to the extent that human beings have developed, excluding the head. They began their development later and therefore did not reach the stage of human head formation. They remain connected to the Earth; human beings separate themselves from the Earth. This shows how meaningful it is to say: Human beings are integrated into the development of the world in such a way that, although they are related to the animal kingdom, they have been elevated above it through their spiritual development; the animals, which came later in their evolution, were able to develop only to the extent that human beings had already developed their limbs and torso. The head remained underdeveloped because a longer series of evolution, such as that undergone by human beings, would have had to precede it in order to reach the stage at which the head could develop.

[ 27 ] Thus, through an artistic contemplation of the forms of world development, the Darwinian theory—which has been adopted with the utmost diligence—is transformed, to the extent that it is scientifically valid today. And through this, human beings are recognized as being so embedded in the development of the world that they have a longer period of pre-development behind them than the animals; the animals develop as their primary form that which human beings merely attach to their heads. And in this way, while the animals are bound to and subject to gravity, human beings are able to lift a part of their being out of gravity. Everything that constitutes our head in conjunction with the sense organs is liberated from gravity; therefore, it does not turn toward heavy matter—toward ponderable matter—but rather toward the ether, which is integrated into the sensory world. This is primarily the work of the senses. If we could examine this more closely, it would become apparent. In this way, for example, the human organ of hearing is also dependent on an etheric structure, not merely on the structure of air.

[ 28 ] Through all of this, human beings not only integrate themselves into the world of dense matter, but also into the ethereal outer world. Through the ethereal world, for example, they perceive what light conjures up for them in the world of colors, and so on. Human beings rise from dense matter up into the free ether simply through their outward form, and we therefore gain a different perspective on the development of the world than is possible if we do not ascend from the natural sciences to the spiritual sciences.

[ 29 ] But we also see what the spiritual-soul aspect does to the human being; we see how we must ascend to the artistic realm if we seek to understand the human being. But we must ascend even further; we must, for example, be able to say: With regard to his spiritual-soul, emotional, and volitional nature, one must speak of solitude and of living together with others as theoretical concepts, as I have described today. One must ascend to the moral world, and ultimately arrives at the religious world. These worlds are structured together as a whole.

[ 30 ] When we view human beings in the context of today’s civilization, according to the habits of scientific thinking, we find the rigid scientific necessity of nature into which human beings are integrated. On the other hand, however, we find that human beings can only become aware of their dignity when they can say: I am truly human only when I feel the moral and religious impulses within me. — But if one honestly stands on the ground of natural science, then all that remains regarding the beginning and end of the Earth are mere hypotheses—ones that speak to us, at the beginning, of the Kant-Laplacean cosmic nebula, and at the end, of heat death.

[ 31 ] If, in light of the demands placed on us by the natural sciences, we consider—solely from the perspective of today’s civilization—that which intuitively reveals itself to us as a moral-religious world—as I did in my *Philosophy of Freedom*—if we look at this, we must say: In reality, we are deluding ourselves with a fog. Can one still believe that, when the Earth undergoes heat death, there would be anything else there—in the scientific sense—other than the death of all ideals as well? This is where spiritual science, anthroposophy, steps in and shows how the spiritual-soul aspect is a reality, how it works upon the physical, how it has placed the human being within the course of world evolution in human form, and that one must look back to animal beings quite different from today’s animals; that while one can retain the methods of modern natural science, one arrives at different results. In this way, anthroposophy integrates the moral and the religious into science. In this way, anthroposophy becomes moral-religious knowledge. We no longer look merely at the Kant-Laplacean primordial nebula; we also look at an original spiritual reality from which that which is revealed as spiritual and soul-related in anthroposophy has developed just as the physical world has developed from the very same physical origin of the Earth. And we look toward the end of the Earth; we can show—because the laws of entropy are fully valid—that the Earth will end in a kind of heat death. But we look at this just as we look, from the anthroposophical point of view, at the end of the individual human being. The physical body is returned to the elements; the human being enters a spiritual world. Thus we look toward the end of the Earth. The scientific findings do not further mislead us, for we know: everything that human beings have developed in the spiritual and soul realms will, once the Earth ceases to exist, pass through the Earth’s gate of death toward new world developments, just as the human being, when passing through his or her individual death, proceeds toward new world developments.

[ 32 ] And when one surveys the Earth in this way, only then does one see the event of Golgotha placed at the very center of its evolution. There one sees how this event of Golgotha is placed at the very center of Earth’s evolution, because prior to that there were only forces at work in this evolution that should long ago have led humanity to a kind of atrophy of its powers. One truly comes to recognize—and I can only mention this here in conclusion—that just as in plant and animal fertilization something special occurs within the fertilized organism, so, through extraterrestrial spiritual worlds in the Mystery of Golgotha, something has been brought into Earth’s evolution that now lives on, accompanying the souls until, at the end of the Earth’s existence, they transform into other forms of our earthly existence. I would have to speak to you for days on end if I were to show you the path that leads, with strict scientific rigor, from what I have presented to you today regarding human and world evolution to what the Mystery of Golgotha is—that is, the appearance of the Christ Being in the earthly context.

[ 33 ] But some words in the Gospels will then, precisely through spiritual scientific deepening, shine forth in a completely different way than has been possible for Western consciousness up to now. Let us just imagine: If we stand entirely on the ground of natural science, we must look toward the physical end of the Earth. And whoever then continues to follow this path of natural science will also be able to see how that which ultimately surrounds the Earth—the world of the stars—also decays. They will look toward a future in which this Earth below will no longer be, and these stars above will no longer be. But spiritual science provides the certainty that what emerges each evening from the physical and etheric bodies—and returns to them in the morning—that this eternal essence lives on, just as it lives on when its individual body falls away. When the entire Earth is shed by all human souls and spirits, this eternal essence lives on into new planetary phases, into new phases of world development.

[ 34 ] And now, in a truly wonderful way, Christ’s words resound to us from the Gospel: “Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away.” — And this is followed by Paul’s words: “Not I, but Christ in me.” — And when this is truly felt by the Christian—by the one who thus understands Christianity inwardly—when the Christian says to himself, “Not I, but Christ in me”—and when he understands Christ’s words: “Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words—that is, that which lies in my Eternal Self—will not pass away”—then something shines forth from this Gospel in a remarkable way, like a word that certainly inspires awe but which, if one is honest, cannot be understood so readily.

[ 35 ] When we approach these and many other such words—which confront us from the spiritual darkness of world evolution, the evolution of the Earth and of humanity—with spiritual science as understood in the anthroposophical sense, a light shines upon them. It is indeed as if a light were shining upon a word such as this: “Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away”—when we hear it resound from the very region where the Mystery of Golgotha took place, through which the entire development of the Earth has truly come to have its meaning.

[ 36 ] And so we see how spiritual science, as understood in the context of anthroposophy, strives not only to adhere conscientiously to rigorous sensory methods, but also to extend this rigorous scientific method into those realms where our own eternal being shines forth toward us, where the spiritual essence of world evolution also shines forth toward us, and where the light appears in which world evolution itself, with its spiritual forces and spiritual beings, appears in its spiritual divinity.

[ 37 ] Let me conclude these reflections by saying—and I am very grateful that you have taken an interest in them— for which I am very grateful—that anthroposophy, as a spiritual science, can fully understand how modern humanity—especially the scientifically conscientious segment of modern humanity—has become accustomed to regarding as true and certain that which arises from causal, natural-scientific knowledge, from external sensory observation, and from the intellectual synthesis of sensory observations and experimentation. People have learned certainty from this. And by first learning this certainty in this way, they have developed a certain general attitude toward what can be “certain.” So far, no attempt has been made to investigate the supersensible in the same way that the sensible has been investigated. Consequently, this certainty has not yet been carried into the supersensible worlds. People still believe today that one must remain at the level of mere faith when faced with the supersensible worlds—at the level of a reverent sense of the mysterious—because otherwise the mystery would be lost, because otherwise the supersensible would be rationalized. Spiritual science does not attempt to rationalize the mystery or to dispel the reverent awe that human beings feel toward mysteries. Through contemplation, it leads human beings to these mysteries. It allows them to remain mysteries, but it places them within the realm of world development in the same way that sensory phenomena are situated within that realm.

[ 38 ] And it must be true that human beings also need certainty regarding what lies beyond the merely natural. To the extent that human beings come to feel that spiritual science—as understood in the anthroposophical sense—does not offer a vague, amateurish, or hazy rambling about the worlds, but rather something imbued with the same spirit that expresses itself in modern science—to that same extent, humanity will also feel and sense that the certainty we have acquired, which we have become accustomed to deriving from the sensory world, can also be carried over into the spiritual worlds. And people will feel: Even if we had certainty—but only for the sensory world—what good would that certainty do us when the sensory world passes away? — Human beings need something eternal, for they themselves wish to be rooted in the eternal. They cannot accept that certainty should apply only to the transitory. They must also attain the imperishable nature of true certainty, of certainty born of knowledge.

[ 39 ] In the most modest way possible—as anyone who studies anthroposophical spiritual science today knows—this is what anthroposophical spiritual science seeks today. It seeks to ensure that human beings do not lose, above the certainty of the natural world, a knowledge of the imperishable; above the certainty of the transitory, the certainty of the imperishable. Anthroposophy seeks to bring into our civilization a certainty about the imperishable—and thus a certainty about the mysteries of birth and death, about the mystery of immortality, and about the mysteries of spiritual world developments. And in this way, it believes it can contribute to this civilization. For to the same extent that human beings here come to courageously acknowledge that certainty must be attained not only for the transitory but also for the imperishable, to that same extent will people become accustomed to no longer to regard anthroposophy as fanciful or as the idle pastime of a few, but as something that, just like the other sciences, must become an integral part of our entire spiritual culture—and thus of our civilization as a whole.