The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Tenth Lecture

[ 1 ] In our previous reflections, we had to point out that at this stage in the development of our branch, certain things need to be said for advanced theosophists, and it was already noted that the term “advanced theosophists” is not meant to imply a special theoretical or more in-depth knowledge of theosophical teachings. What is meant is something we can understand by bringing to mind that life within a Theosophical branch, when it lasts for some time, has significance for the human soul. During this life within a Theosophical branch, one acquires not only ideas and concepts about the nature of the human being, about higher worlds, about evolution, and so on, but—more than what the individual actually brings to consciousness—one acquires a certain sum of sensations and feelings which are different from those one brings with oneself as a complete novice when one first enters Theosophy. These feelings and sensations relate specifically to the fact that, with complete calm and serenity and a certain inner faith, one learns to listen to things and descriptions and to accept them as something which is neither fantasy nor daydreaming—representations of which one would probably have laughed at and mocked before entering theosophy, and whose descriptions the vast majority of our contemporaries would certainly mock today as mere fantasy. Far more important than the details of theosophical teachings is this sum of sensations and feelings that we gradually instill in our souls. For through this process we do indeed gradually become entirely different people, and those who have cultivated such feelings and sensibilities toward other worlds—toward those worlds that, while present within our own and constantly pulsing through us, are imperceptible to the external senses—such people, who possess these sensibilities and feelings and who relate to other worlds as has been indicated, are referred to here as advanced “theosophists.” Thus, it is not your theoretical understanding but your heart and feelings that are being appealed to if we are to accept such reflections without prejudice—reflections that include both the final one and today’s. If we were merely to speak of general, abstract “theories” that would offend so-called common sense as little as possible, we would only be deceiving ourselves; we would lack the necessary will to truly open up, little by little, the worlds that must be revealed through the Theosophical Movement.

[ 2 ] What we would like to discuss briefly today concerns a topic that is intended to familiarize us with beings who do indeed exist—who are among us, if we regard ourselves as spiritual beings—but whose description has played a lesser role in our previous considerations. In all our theosophical discussions, we have placed humanity—as the microcosm—at the center of our perspectives. However, in order to understand humanity and to learn about its evolution, we have mostly had to look up to other beings—higher, spiritual beings—who, in relation to the evolution of our Earth, once played a role similar to the one humanity plays on Earth today. We have seen that, before the Earth entered its present state, it was what we are accustomed to calling the ancient Moon, and we have realized that certain spiritual beings—who possess higher abilities than humans do today, abilities that humans will possess only in future stages of the Earth’s evolution—were at that time on the Moon at the human level, albeit under different conditions. These are the angels or Angeloi, the spirits of twilight. Likewise, the so-called archangels, or Archangeloi, or fire spirits—who today stand two levels higher than human beings—passed through their human stage on the ancient Sun, just as the Asuras, the spirits of personality, and the Archai—who today stand far above human beings in terms of good or evil qualities—passed through this stage on the ancient Saturn. Thus, over the course of time, we have examined in greater detail a whole series of such beings who are involved in the entire development of the Earth and of our entire life and existence. We have become acquainted with a series of such beings to whom, in a certain sense, we must look up. For those who observe such beings clairvoyantly, a significant difference becomes apparent between these beings and human beings.

[ 3 ] When we classify human beings according to the finer structure of their nature, we divide them into what we call the actual physical body, the etheric body, and the astral body. Then, we distinguish the soul from this physical body; we divide the soul into the feeling soul, the intellectual soul, and the conscious soul, and as the third aspect of the human being, we distinguish the spirit, which is only at the beginning of its development today. Humanity will bring it to its fullest potential in future stages of development. These three parts of the human being—the physical, the soul, and the spirit—constitute, broadly speaking, the threefold nature of the human being.

[ 4 ] If we now look up from human beings toward those higher beings we have just spoken of, we may say: They differ in a certain way from human beings in that, as they descend, they no longer develop the coarser physicality. We therefore cannot perceive in them the coarser physicality that is perceptible to the senses. When we consider the Lunar Pitris—or angels, as Christian esotericism calls them—who underwent their stage of human development on the Moon, it follows from what we have said that we must not attribute to them a physicality as coarse as that of human beings. On the other hand, they have already developed the higher members that human beings will only develop in the future, so that we can say: Unlike human beings, we find realized in them the fact that they are spirit and soul, in contrast to human beings, who are threefold beings: spirit, soul, and body. Thus, in the cosmos, we have focused primarily on those beings who are, in fact, human—that is, who possess spirit, soul, and body—and on beings who stand above human beings and possess spirit and soul.

[ 5 ] For the occult observer, however, there are in fact other entities that are very much hidden, particularly at this stage of human development, yet still play a role in the evolution of the cosmos. For there are also beings in whom the one who surveys the world with clairvoyant vision cannot discern what we are accustomed to calling the “spirit” in human beings, but who essentially consist of body and soul. You are now familiar with an entire group of such beings from our previous considerations; these are the animals—they have body and soul. We know, however, that these animals are connected upward to their group souls or group-I’s, and these are already of a spiritual nature. Thus, while in the individual animal that stands before us in the physical world we have a being that possesses only body and soul, this being continues, so to speak, into the higher worlds and is linked to the spiritual realm. I have often given you the analogy that we may use in reference to these group-I’s of the animals: If there were a wall here and I were to stick my ten fingers through ten openings in the wall, and you were to see not me but only my ten fingers, you would rightly conclude that this movement of my fingers must come from a being that is behind the wall. So it is with the animals and with the group-I’s. They exist, and the animal gradually, step by step, merges into them. The various animals that are of the same form are connected to these group-Ics of their own. Thus, only when we speak of that part of animality which, here on the physical plane, constitutes the individual animal can we say that animals have a body and a soul; we then disregard the continuation into the astral realm.

[ 6 ] But there are other beings—beings that also consist only of body and soul—who are no longer visible to the physical eye. They are very often called “elemental spirits” in the various theosophical teachings, but calling them elemental spirits is as clumsy as it gets, for they are precisely beings that have no spirit—entities without a “spirit”—and are therefore better referred to as elemental beings. We will see in the course of today’s discussion why their bodies are actually invisible. For now, before we provide anything more than a sort of definition of these entities, let us say that, in a certain sense, they are beings composed of body and soul who stand below human beings. These entities are, of course, denied in our Enlightenment-era world, for human beings, at their present stage of development, cannot perceive them. Anyone who wishes to perceive them must have advanced to a certain degree of clairvoyant consciousness. However, the fact that something is not perceptible does not mean that it is not active in our world. The activity of these beings, who possess body and soul, certainly extends into our world. What they do is very much perceptible; it is only they themselves who are not perceptible.

[ 7 ] The point is that we must form a concept of such elemental beings, insofar as this is possible without direct perception. These elemental beings exist in various forms within the spiritual realm that encompasses us all, and they are also referred to as “nature spirits.” They are generally given the most varied names. But these names are not what matters. What is necessary is that we form a certain concept of them. This is where what truly appeals to your theosophical feelings and sensibilities begins, for I would like to describe, without embellishment, how such beings appear to the clairvoyant gaze.

[ 8 ] There are various entities that exist in a wide variety of places on Earth. For example, you can see them when you go to depths within the Earth that have never been overgrown or inhabited by living beings or plants—such as places in a mine that have always been of a mineral nature. When you lift the metallic or rocky soil there, you will find beings who at first make their presence known in a strange way, as if something were scattering. It becomes apparent to us that they were huddled together in immense numbers, and “when the soil is exposed, they burst apart, as it were.” And this is the essential point: they not only burst apart and scatter, but also grow larger in their own physical form. Even when they have reached their maximum size, they are still smaller than human beings. Today’s enlightened human being is unfamiliar with these entities. But people who have retained a certain sense of nature—that is, a certain clairvoyant power that all humans once possessed, but which had to be lost through the conquest of external, objective consciousness—such people could very well tell you about these beings, and they have given them a wide variety of names: goblins, gnomes, and so on. These beings differ from humans in that they are not visible in their physical form, as humans are; and also, quite fundamentally, in that they could never reasonably be attributed any moral responsibility. So they do not possess what we call moral responsibility in human beings. What they do, they do almost automatically. Yet what they do is by no means unlike what, for example, the human mind or human intelligence does. They even possess, to the highest degree, what is called “wit,” and anyone who comes into contact with them can experience fine examples of their wit, because they can play all sorts of pranks on humans—as any miner who has retained a bit of sound common sense can still occasionally observe—specifically the metal miner, not the coal miner.

[ 9 ] These beings can be studied through the means of occultism—in terms of their composition—just as humans can. When we examine the human being in this regard, the physical body appears as its lowest member, followed by the etheric body, the astral body, and the “I.” And what gradually develops from the lower members through the work of the “I,” we call the spiritual self or Manas, the life spirit or Buddhi, and the spiritual human being or Atma. The essential elements relevant to the current stage of human development are the four members: the physical body, the etheric body, the astral body, and the ego; thus we say that the ego is the highest of the members, and the physical body is the lowest. Now, we would be very wrong to insist, in a purely abstract sense, that this physical human body has nothing to do with the human ego. In the physical human body, we have the instrument for the human I. We have seen that this human body is a very complex structure. We have also said that the I has its physical instrument in the circulatory system, the astral body in the nervous system, the etheric body in the endocrine system, and the physical body itself in the physical, purely mechanically functioning organs; so that we must conceive that everything that takes place in the astral body as part of inner human experience finds its material expression in the nervous system, everything that takes place in the etheric body finds its material expression in the glandular system, and so on. Thus, the physical human body forms, as it were, a reflection of the fourfold nature of the human being.

[ 10 ] Now take the physical human body as you see it before you, and consider everything that constitutes this physical human body as the instrument of the thinking, intelligent “I.” You can best understand what this means by considering that the “I” itself remains the same from incarnation to incarnation, but that the instrument is rebuilt anew with each incarnation. What distinguishes humans from animals in terms of finer, material organization—above all, the organization that manifests human intelligence—has come about because the “I” has slowly and gradually, over a long period of time, learned to work on the astral body. For we know, after all, that the astral body in every human being consists of two parts: one part that has been received from the cosmos, upon which the “I” has not yet worked, and another part that the “I” has already transformed. In every human being, these two components of the astral body are developed to a certain degree. In the higher nervous system—namely, in the brain, which is rebuilt anew with each incarnation—you find the outer, material expression of what the human being has worked on in their astral body through their “I,” even if for the most part unconsciously. The fact that human beings have a much more highly developed and perfect forebrain than animals stems from the fact that this forebrain is the expression, the manifestation, of the astral body that has been worked upon and transformed by the “I.” Yet it is the astral body that also finds its outward expression in the nervous system. Now we can easily see that the moment any part of our organism is transformed, a change in the entire rest of the organism is necessary. Why can’t humans walk on all fours? Why have they transformed their front limbs into working organs? Because humans worked on their astral body, and this brought about the necessary transformation of their front limbs into working organs; and so, too, the shape of the human brain is a result of this inner work. The outer form is always a true revelation of the inner. Everything we see in the physical body in its present stage of development is a specific result of spiritual evolution.

[ 11 ] Now you will see that everything that exists in the material realm, with the exception of its form, is a result of what lies behind this material realm as an active force. So when we have before us beings such as those I have just described—who lack the ability to transform their astral body, since they lack spirituality and no “I” is at work on their astral body—then this astral body, which is nevertheless the sum of the soul experiences that an astral body can have, must find expression in a material form. This material form, which belongs to a being not imbued with an “I,” cannot be visible in the physical world at our current stage of development, and it is invisible precisely because it lies one degree lower than our visible matter. Please understand clearly what is meant by this.

[ 12 ] If you want to understand what constitutes your physical body, say this: The physical body can be seen. — You cannot see the etheric body because it is one level higher in terms of its substantiality. You cannot see the astral body either, because it, in turn, is one level higher than the etheric body. But there is not only substance above physical matter, but also below it, and this, too, cannot be seen, because only a narrow band in the middle of all matter is visible—precisely that which constitutes physical matter, which is seen with the physical eyes. And just as the substantial continues upward into the physical foundation of the etheric and the astral, so it continues downward and becomes invisible there once again. And now that we have visualized the structure of the human being, we will also be able to imagine the structure of these other beings.

[ 13 ] We have seen that, when viewed from below, human beings first have their physical body, then their etheric body, their astral body, and fourthly, their “I.” The beings we now refer to as elemental beings lack the “I,” and therefore they also lack responsibility. Instead, they have developed a principle below the physical body. Call it, if you will, “minus one.” Thus, in them the principles three, two, one, and minus one are developed. But we can go even further. There are not only beings that begin with the astral body and have also developed “minus one,” but also beings that begin at “two”—those who possess only the principle of the etheric body, then the principle of the physical body, then “minus one,” and even “minus two.” And finally, we have beings whose highest principle is what constitutes the lowest principle in humans; they begin with one, and then have developed minus one, minus two, and minus three. We can gain an even clearer understanding of why these beings are not visible. For you might object: If they have a physical body, they ought to be visible. — If the higher members of the human being did not exist, if the human being had only a physical body, it would look quite different. When a human being dies, only the physical body remains; but then it crumbles, dissolves, and scatters into all manner of atoms. That is its natural form. The fact that it is as you know it today stems from the fact that it is permeated from above by the ego, the astral body, and the etheric body. Certainly, the beings we call gnomes or goblins have a physical body, but they lack the I, the astral body, and the etheric body. It is precisely these beings, for whom the physical body is the highest form, that we designate as gnomes. They have three principles lying beneath the physical body, which cause their physical body to be far less visible than that of a human being. The forces of these beings that lie below the physical plane ensure that even the principle of the physical body can never be physically visible to ordinary eyes. If they are to possess matter that is even approximately physical, they can do so only under immense pressure, as occurs when external matter compresses them. Then their physical form is compressed to such an extent that they huddle together in great numbers and develop in the gruesome manner I described earlier. In general, the process that occurs for them when you remove the external pressure is one of dissolution, which takes place with tremendous speed. The same process that you can observe in humans after death takes place in them with tremendous speed when you remove the earth. Therefore, they can never become visible, even though they have a physical body. To those who can see through this physical earth, they have a small physical body. This physical body, which they possess by virtue of the principle of force, does, however, contain something that, in its structure and organization, is similar to the human instrument of thought, the human instrument of intelligence. It is therefore not without reason that those who, out of a certain sense of nature, depict gnomes, emphasize their heads as particularly characteristic. All the symbols drawn there possess a kind of reality. In these gnomes, you find a kind of intelligence that operates almost automatically. It is truly as if you were to imagine removing your brain and this brain were not permeated by your higher faculties; then it would not function in you in the sense of higher development, but rather would work against higher development. That is why we perceive the beings we call gnomes in this way. We will then be able to shed light on the beings that stand lower than human beings.

[ 14 ] Now, since this is connected to the deeper task that lies before us, we must first gain an understanding of how such beings actually came into being in the course of evolution. This question is related not only to past evolution but also, and in particular, to future evolution. That is the essential point. To understand this, let us consider human evolution a little. We know how human beings progress from one incarnation to the next. We know that into each new incarnation, they bring with them the fruits of their previous incarnations. In this way, in every new incarnation, human beings are co-creators of their own form, abilities, and destiny. What they have imprinted on the external world through their actions returns to them as their destiny; what they have imprinted within themselves in their past lives returns to them as their abilities and talents. Thus, they are co-creators of both their external destiny and their inner constitution. Now let us ask ourselves: Where does that which elevates us to a more perfect level come from?—For compared to earlier stages of human development, every average person today stands on a higher level in this regard. What brings about ever-higher degrees of perfection within us is that which we have acquired for ourselves in our progression from incarnation to incarnation. We do not perceive the world in vain, nor do we see with our eyes or hear through our ears in vain; rather, in every incarnation we acquire certain fruits of life. We take these with us after death, and what is active within them forms the seed forces that contribute to our development and growth in the next incarnation.

[ 15 ] Now, various things can happen. The scales can tip in one direction or the other. The ideal situation would be for a person to make full use of their life in every incarnation—not to leave anything unused that they can experience, that they can go through, and that can bear fruit for subsequent incarnations, but rather to carry forward everything they have previously acquired. However, this does not usually happen. A person veers off in one direction or the other. Either they do not use their life properly to gain everything that is available to them. Then certain powers remain unused, and they bring less with them into their new incarnation than they could. Or, on the other hand, they delve too deeply into their physical constitution; they become too entwined with their incarnation, with their physicality. There are, after all, two kinds of people: some would like to live entirely in the spirit, without descending all the way down to their physicality. Such people are called dreamers, fantasists, and so on by those of an everyday disposition. And there are others who descend too deeply into their physicality; they not only take what is to be gained, but they become too entangled with their incarnation. They find it appealing; they love to grow together with their incarnation. They do not preserve what passes from incarnation to incarnation. They allow it to sink into what is, after all, meant to be only the instrument for the eternal core of the human being.

[ 16 ] I have already pointed out that there is an important myth, an important legend, that presents to our soul what those people may experience who descend too deeply into the temporal and transitory nature of an incarnation. If we take this to its extreme, we can picture it in our minds as follows: We can imagine a person who says: “Oh, what does it matter to me what I carry over from my eternal core of being into another incarnation? I want to be fully immersed in this incarnation—I like it, it suits me—and I don’t care what happens later.”—Where would this lead if such an attitude were to develop to its extreme? It would lead to a character who sits at a crossroads, and one of the great leaders who point the way for humanity passes by. But whoever wants to know nothing about the future rejects such a teacher, such a great leader of humanity: “I want nothing to do with you, who want to guide my essential core in future incarnations to where humanity will be perfected.” I want to remain fused with the present form I have now!”—Such a person, who rejects such a guide of humanity, will reappear in the same form. And if that same attitude is still within him, he will also reject the guides of humanity in his next incarnation, and he will appear again and again in the same form. And when other people—who listen to the great leaders of humanity and preserve the soul with its eternal core—reappear in an advanced race, the one who has refused to know anything of the great Teacher, who pushes the great leader of humanity away, will always reappear in the same race, because he has been able to develop only that one form. This is the deeper idea behind Ahasver, who must always return in the same form because he has rejected the hand of the greatest Guide, the Christ. Thus, the possibility exists for human beings to become fused with the essence of an incarnation, to reject the Guide of humanity, or to undergo the transformation toward higher races and ever greater perfection. Races would not become decadent at all, would not perish at all, if there were not souls who cannot and do not want to advance to a higher racial form. Look at races that have persisted from earlier times: they exist solely because there were souls who could not ascend to a higher level. I cannot speak further today about what is meant by the human being “becoming one with the race.” In the course of Earth’s evolution, a whole series of races has arisen and fallen into decadence. Think back to the Atlantean era. The Atlanteans advanced through the races; the races disappeared, but the human souls passed over into other, higher races. For those, however, who wish to remain stagnant—who wish to become fused with the race—there is the possibility that they will descend “through their own heaviness” and be absorbed into the material world. There are sixteen ways to become fused with the race. These are called the “sixteen paths of ruin.” By moving forward, however, human beings will be able to ascend to ever higher and higher levels.

[ 17 ] Thus we see how it is indeed possible for a person to become so entwined with a single incarnation that he, so to speak, falls behind in evolution. His fellow souls are then at a higher level when he returns in a new incarnation. He, however, must then be content with a lesser incarnation, such as has been left to him by some decadent race. This need not instill fear in anyone. For no one today are the paths laid out in such a way that they could not catch up again and thus be forced to fall behind in evolution. But we must nevertheless keep this possibility in mind.

[ 18 ] Let’s consider the most extreme case: A person becomes as closely united as possible with the very essence of an incarnation. He cannot do it immediately, because he is not strong enough to do it all at once, but over the course of sixteen incarnations he could do it, if he were to take those sixteen wrong paths. Let’s assume they could do it; then they would achieve the following. The Earth, with its souls, does not wait; it moves forward. But since the material is always an expression of the spiritual, such a person eventually reaches a stage where they can no longer find a way to obtain a body for themselves, because it is indeed possible that there will be no more bodies available for souls who have become too closely bound to physicality. In the process, such souls lose the ability to incarnate and find no other opportunity. Consider what such souls stand to lose, even if it is only in exceptional cases that this state might fully arise during the future development of the Earth. Only for very special individuals would the possibility arise, even during the Earth stage, that they might be so inclined toward evil that they would find no possibility at all of incarnating, because there would be no bodies left that would be bad enough for them. They would then have nothing else either, which is the expression of normal development. Let us suppose that such a being were to remain on Earth. When the Earth transforms into Jupiter—since what comes later is always merely the result of what came before—it would not find bodies suitable for itself there either, for such beings are too good for the bodies that will exist in the lower kingdoms of nature, and too bad for the bodies that human beings will have. This means that they must now create a disembodied existence for themselves, that they must truly sever themselves from the course of human development. They have brought this upon themselves by failing to make use of life. The world is all around them. They did not use their surroundings to enrich their inner core through the senses and to create ever-new forms of perfection for themselves. They do not advance with the development of the world; they remain behind at a certain stage. Such beings, who remain behind at this stage, then appear in later periods with a character roughly corresponding to that of the earlier period, for they have become ingrained in it. But they do not appear in the forms and shapes of the later period; rather, in these later periods they appear as subordinate nature spirits, as we have described them in a similar manner earlier. The human race will provide a whole host of such new nature spirits in the second half of Jupiter’s evolution, for by the Jupiter stage, human beings will have developed the fifth member of their being, Manas. But those human beings who did not take advantage of the opportunity on Earth to develop the fifth member will, in their evolution on Jupiter, appear as nature spirits with four fundamental parts, the fourth being the highest. While human beings on Jupiter have five, four, three, and two, these nature spirits—as beings that cannot take on an outward form—have four, three, two, and one. This would be the fate of those human beings who did not gradually develop their higher constituent parts by making use of their earthly lives. They will, so to speak, be nature spirits acting invisibly in a future epoch of evolution. This is what happened to our present-day nature spirits in earlier epochs of evolution, except that this, of course, is constantly changing depending on the character of the individual epochs of evolution. The nature spirits on Jupiter, who originate from human beings, will already possess a certain moral responsibility—since we, too, have such responsibility here on Earth—and this will distinguish them from the nature beings of earthly existence.

[ 19 ] Now let us recall what I said about how Jupiter differs from our Earth. We have described the nature of the Earth as the planet of love, in contrast to the nature of the Moon, which we have called the planet of wisdom. Just as love gradually develops here on Earth, so has the wisdom we find all around us developed on the Moon. Love sprouted in its lowest form during the Lemurian era and is transforming through ever-higher stages toward the highest spiritual form of love. During the Jupiter phase, the inhabitants of Jupiter will look upon love just as Earth humans look upon wisdom. When a person on Earth looks at the wisdom that surrounds them—for example, at a thigh bone—and sees the marvelous structure, how one beam fits together with another, they must say to themselves: Even today, with the greatest engineering skill, humanity cannot yet achieve what cosmic wisdom has accomplished in a single piece of thigh bone. The entire Earth is, in this way, crystallized wisdom that took shape on the Moon. And in the same way, love is gradually taking shape here on Earth. Just as we here admire the wisdom all around us in every flower, so will the inhabitant of Jupiter feel love wafting toward him, radiating from all beings; just as wisdom speaks to us, wisdom that has been enshrined within the Earth through the ancient lunar existence.

[ 20 ] Thus does the Earth advance from stage to stage. The Earth is the cosmos of love. Every planetary state has its own special task, and we will understand the task of an era only when we are imbued with this insight. Just as universal wisdom permeates our Earth, so will love permeate Jupiter. And just as the destructive forces in wisdom stem from the beings of the old Moon who have remained behind, so too will there be destructive forces of love on Jupiter, which will be placed right in the midst of the universal fabric as the ugly forms of the Earth beings who have remained behind—beings who, as nature spirits with selfish love, will make demands for love. They will form truly immense, devastating forces within Jupiter’s existence. The lagging behind of individual human beings creates the destructive forces of nature. Thus we see how the world is woven, both in its beneficial and its harmful aspects. Thus we have a moral element woven into the world process.

	Physical Body and Above	Below
Gnomes	1	3
Undines	2	2
Sylphs	3	1
Salamanders	4	0

[ 21 ] All nature spirits that are structured as shown in our diagram—that is, having one limb above the human level and three limbs below it—are those we call “gnomes”; those called “undines” have two limbs below the human level; and the “sylphs” have three limbs above the human level and one limb below it. They all remained behind in earlier planetary epochs. They did not attain the level of a spirit that is already unfolding in human beings today. They stand below human beings; they are “sub-spiritual” and consist only of body and soul. They are two-part beings, and we call them gnomes, undines, and sylphs. Now, when you hear the name “salamander,” you will ask me, where do these come from?

[ 22 ] Gnomes, Undines, and Sylphs are entities that have remained behind from earlier stages of the Earth’s development. The Salamanders came into being, in a certain sense, because they developed the fourth principle—but only partially—and did not progress far enough to be able to assume a human form. So where do the salamanders come from? I would like to clarify this for you as we conclude. For if you understand this fourth type of being, you will understand many of the mysteries of the nature that surrounds us.

[ 23 ] If we trace human beings back through evolution, we arrive at increasingly spiritual forms. We know that the various animal species have gradually emerged as the “left-behind brothers” of humanity’s progressive evolution, having remained at earlier stages. As a result, human beings have risen so high that they emerged with their physical being at the very end. The other beings have become what they are because they could not wait; they forced their way into physical incarnation earlier. Animals have group souls; these are, admittedly, entities that exist only on the astral plane, but they work their way into the physical world. What the Moon has given to our evolution—wisdom—we see spread throughout the animal kingdom in the most comprehensive way through the group souls in animal forms. Human beings must not claim wisdom for themselves alone. They do indeed use it to create their culture, but to a much greater extent, wisdom is present throughout the entire Earth. A person who takes pride in humanity can say: “How far has humanity come in wisdom? The new inventions bear witness to this.” — “How even schoolchildren today are taught all that human wisdom has brought about! Among the things listed, you will also find paper. Certainly, paper is an achievement of human wisdom, but the wasp was able to make paper much earlier!” A wasp nest is constructed from exactly the same material as real paper. It is made in precisely the same way—only through the life process—as human paper. We could go through all of nature in this way, and we would find prevailing wisdom everywhere. How much earlier did the group soul of the wasp species invent paper than humans did! It is not the individual wasp that does this, but the group soul.

[ 24 ] Thus we see how human wisdom is woven into and imprinted upon the entire being of the Earth. We could examine the Earth piece by piece and would indeed find this wisdom everywhere. But only up to a certain point is the relationship of the animal to its group soul what it is, if I may put it that way, actually meant to be from a cosmic point of view. What is this relationship of the group soul to the individual animal? Consider the group soul of any species of insect. When an individual insect dies, it is no different for the group soul than when a hair falls out of your head or a fingernail is cut off. The animals that are constantly being formed anew are merely new members replacing the old ones in the animal group soul. In this way, you can trace animal lineages far back, and you will find that what exists on the physical plane appears like a cloud that is constantly dissolving and reforming. Physical existence undergoes metamorphosis, and the group spirit merely renews what settles down from it. This continues up to a certain level. Then something new emerges. In higher animals—and the higher you go among them, the more this is the case—something emerges that no longer resembles what I have just described to you. Take the monkey, for example. The monkey takes too much from the group spirit down into the individual form that is below; and whereas in lower animals everything returns to the group spirit, the monkey—because it has become too complex—retains something within its physical organization. Too much has flowed in from the group spirit; it cannot go back. This is the progressive group spirit. It works in such a way that it creates a link among the lower animals; then it absorbs the entire being again, creates a new one, absorbs that again, and so on. This is also the case with the lion. But if you take a monkey, for example, the group soul creates the monkey, but the monkey draws something out of the group soul that cannot be returned. Whereas with the lion, when it dies, the physical body dissolves and the soul returns to the group spirit, with the monkey, what it severs from the group spirit cannot return. In humans, the “I” passes from incarnation to incarnation and is capable of developing because it can take on new incarnations. This is not the case with the monkey. Monkeys, however, cannot return either. This is why the monkey seems so strange to the naive mind, because in reality it is a being severed from the group spirit; it can no longer return to the group spirit, nor can it reincarnate itself. Marsupials are another type of such animals that tear something away from the group spirit. What remains of these, so to speak, individual animal souls—which, however, cannot reincarnate either—is the true origin of a fourth group of elemental spirits. These are severed parts of such animals that cannot return to the group spirit because they have skipped the normal stage in evolution. Such ego-like entities remain from numerous animals, and these are the salamanders. This is the highest form of nature spirits, for it is ego-like.

[ 25 ] I have thus introduced you to the nature of a series of beings whom we will come to know with ever greater precision. So far, we have only learned about the nature and purpose of their existence and their interrelationships. But they are active in our world, and their manifestations can be perceived. Today we want to gain a further understanding of these so-called elemental spirits. These salamanders already come into being today—and this can certainly be asserted—in a remarkable way when certain particularly low-natured human beings, who nevertheless continue to incarnate, leave behind a part of their low nature. These are particularly evil elements—the nature left behind by certain lower human beings in our evolution, these human natures that have been partially set aside and have remained as a kind of nature spirit, permeating our existence. And much of what permeates our spiritual realm—which becomes perceptible to human beings in a strange way, though you would never dream it existed, not even that it is there—manifests itself all too clearly in its revelations. These spiritual beings all share a partial kinship with human beings, and they intervene in human evolution, albeit mostly in a disruptive manner. Many negative cultural phenomena that seem natural today will only become understandable to people once they realize what disruptive, retarding forces they are dealing with. The effects will play themselves out in various manifestations of decadence in our culture. It is precisely because this is clearly recognized by those who know how to interpret the signs of the times that our Theosophical Society came into being, for only knowledge has a healing effect in the world. Those who stand in the world without knowledge must allow these things to affect them and often form all sorts of fantastical notions about them. Only those who have insight into the workings of these entities will be sufficiently able to recognize the value of the Theosophical Movement; they will understand the profoundly spiritual and healing nature of the Theosophical Movement. It seeks to free humanity from the entities that would hold it back in culture. Otherwise, our culture would completely fall into decadence. In the near future, we will witness all manner of appalling cultural phenomena; and we will also see that those who cannot find their bearings will then label as dreamers and fantasists those who correctly identify such cultural phenomena. More and more, the world will take on the character of calling those who know the spiritual, the true reality, “dreamers” and “fantasts,” while the true dreamers and fantasts are those who declare spiritual reality to be folly. The true progress of our culture, however, lies in humanity penetrating what are hostile forces with knowledge. And knowledge is what, within the theosophical spiritual current, fulfills the saying that the guide of the Christian life also proclaimed to his followers: “You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free!” But only a truth that also encompasses the full and true reality can be one that will set humanity completely free.