The Rudolf Steiner Archive

28. The Principle of Correlation

[ 1 ] Let us imagine an animal that has a particularly well-developed group of organs. This is not possible without another group being less developed. We see this principle of correlation everywhere in nature. It applies to the most diverse things—not, for example, spatial relationships, as one might object in the case of the elephant. Goethe puts it well: “Nothing can be added to one part without something being taken away from another.”

[ 2 ] The entire seven-round evolution of the earthly planet serves the purpose of enabling human beings to recognize themselves in the external world. Our task is to enter into an interactive relationship with the external world through perception via the senses, the intellect, and other activities.

[ 3 ] To do this, we need a nervous system that receives stimuli and serves as a central hub: the spinal cord. We could not experience pleasure and pain based on perception alone, nor through interaction with the outside world. Pleasure and displeasure must be accompanied by understanding. Understanding the cause of pleasure and displeasure is impossible without a nervous system. The nervous system did not exist during the Lunar Epoch, although pleasure and displeasure were perceived even more subtly. The Lunar Epoch developed what became the foundation of the nervous system: the skeletal framework. Pain existed as a dull sensation in astral consciousness without perception. During the Lunar Epoch, nature creates more perfectly without expending the energy of its budget on the nervous system. Now the law of correlation comes into play here.

[ 4 ] The purpose of the earthly epoch is to develop the nervous system, and the knowledge of the external world gained through it is to be carried over into the next epoch. To achieve this goal of developing the nervous system, the organs must be shaped in such a way that they become subservient to it; their development must be restructured. Three cycles had to be devoted to repeating once again what had been before. Kama must be pushed downward in order to develop knowledge and perception. The lungs and heart were developed in such a way that pleasure and pain could be felt in a refined manner; subjectively elevated to the highest possible level. Now they had to be suppressed in such a way that perception and insight could be developed—certain parts had to be pushed aside so that the others could be put to work. These removed parts formed the mineral kingdom in the first round. - Growth and the reproductive instinct—the plant realm—were also more fully developed during the Lunar Epoch; these were expelled in the second round. We used to have them within us, but we could no longer manage them and have cast them out, leaving them to the elemental spirits.

[ 5 ] Then we had to set the animal kingdom aside and leave it to its own devices in order to now be able to form the human kingdom. In order to develop our nervous energy, we had to work with a different kind of energy on the material he had in excess—the excess of astral life, of pleasure and displeasure, which he was still permitted to have during the Lunar Epoch. Human beings had to set aside some of the lion’s fury, for example, so that the power that overcomes it would remain for other purposes—cosmic debt! We have withdrawn the taming force in order to form a force capable of cognition; thus, we owe our human elevation to the withdrawal of a force that would otherwise have organized Kama. Since this Kama remains unorganized, it would be nonsense to speak of guilt in connection with the furious struggle for existence among animals. - Let us continue this line of thought in the context of earthly evolution; the ascetic must give and thereby replace what he withdraws.

[ 6 ] Thus, the dhyanic nature of humankind could not emerge during the Lunar Epoch—the realms existed in an entirely different form—and the lowest became the eighth sphere, which is now disintegrating.

[ 7 ] Human beings now possess within themselves the spiritual aspect of the animal that was still present in them back then, so that during the Lunar Epoch we do not need to imagine human beings directly as animals. It was the highest flowering of passion, whereas now its degeneration appears in the animal. Back then, therefore, there was no “good and evil” for passion; that is a characteristic of our epoch alone. Only now can it become evil, because a force has been withdrawn from it and it has been pushed down.

[ 8 ] Now the mind, which was once guided, begins to be left to its own devices and sometimes falls into atavism; among the Atlanteans, this stage of development was in its middle phase. In our fifth race, we have passed the lowest point somewhat, and relapses are occurring: an unconscious recollection of good and evil that lay beyond consciousness. For example, Nietzsche’s philosophy. It was correct at a time when there was no philosophizing, but rather this force served to guide passion—which is why evil appears as a displaced good. It is disharmonious because it is out of place at the moment. What once served as a drive for enlightenment is now out of place. “Whoever claims that there is evil in and of itself blasphemes against God,” says the Bible. “Why do you call me perfect? Only the Father is perfect.”

[ 9 ] There is, therefore, no such thing as evil in and of itself; evil is merely good that has lost its proper place. — Only he may be a ruler who derives the power to rule from his ability to overcome.