# 12. Perspectives of Anthroposophy _The human being finds in everything he sees around him,  the traces left behind of his own beingness._[^1]  (Rudolf Steiner) One cannot explain the living from the dead, the organism from its genes, the organic whole from its parts and the cognition and spiritual being of man from a chain of coincidences. All this has been presented in this book. So there must be other reasons for life, evolution and man which cannot be found by materialistic natural science because of its presuppositions. One must therefore either resort to some form of faith or seek another approach. Such an approach is opened up by anthroposophy. Rudolf Steiner's representations claim to be mentally comprehensible and finally also to become observable if one undergoes a corresponding meditative training. Here we can only give sketchy views of possible answers as found in Steiners works. Rudolf Steiner's view of evolution, like that of natural science, rests on an empirical basis, but not only on sensual experience, but above all on spiritual experience. Steiner took the natural scientific facts and their relations as they had been described by Darwin and Haeckel, but interpreted them completely differently. From his point of view, man did not evolve from the animals, but vice versa. Physically, however, he was the last to appear on earth in his present form, but spiritually, for Steiner, he existed from the beginning of the earth's, indeed the world's, development and gradually separated the animals - as well as the other kingdoms of nature - from his being. On the basis of what was separated out, he was finally able to take on physical form himself, in which the archetype of the spiritual human being expresses and embodies itself. Steiner was of the opinion that this spiritual view of evolution was called to take the place of the Darwinian one.[^2] According to Steiner, the evolution of man already began on 'old Saturn', that of the animal kingdom on the 'old Sun', i.e. on spiritual precursor stages of today's earth. An account of how man and animals developed from Saturn via the Sun and the 'old Moon' to the earth would go far beyond the scope given here. Steiner's manifold explanations of the condensation stages of the earth in the 'Polar', 'Hyperborean', 'Lemurian' and 'Atlantean' periods, of 'astral-etheric', 'fiery-airy' and 'soft-bodied' transitional forms[^3], which occurred in the process of the separation of the animals from the human being, as well as of the higher, spiritual beings involved, must also be left out. In the comprehensive work by Dankmar Bosse _The Common Evolution of Earth and Man_ one finds a detailed and at the same time clear presentation of practically all important aspects of this development.[^4] I limit myself here to presentations in which Steiner describes the principles of the evolution of man and animals on earth. For this purpose I have included the relevant passages in his work as fully as possible. The clarification of one's own origins represents a central concern of the anthroposophical world view. Thus there are some fundamental accounts of the evolution of man by Steiner in his writings[^5] and public lectures[^6], and many shorter or longer mentions and additions.[^7] In the following, quite a few of these passages, if not directly quoted, will be referred to. For ease of reading, I use the indicative, but this is to be read everywhere in the sense that Rudolf Steiner's view is being referred to. ## 12.1 The Primacy of the Spiritual Steiner's consistent paradigm is the primacy of the spiritual. Everything that exists in the world as material is only a transformed spiritual. "_Today spiritual science must add to the achievements of Francesco Redi the proposition that the spiritual can only develop from the spiritual. And because, after all, all earthly development culminates in the spiritual, as it presents itself simply and on a subordinate level in the animal world, as it presents itself on a higher level in the normal human being, and on the highest level in the human spirit itself, this spiritual, which finally emerges as if from the apparently spiritless, can only be traced back to an original spiritual_."[^8] Something similar applies to the living. Natural science cannot answer the question how life is supposed to have arisen on the materially conceived earth, but the question is wrongly put; the living did not arise from the dead, but vice versa. "_Today's natural science is downright sick with the question which it asks again and again and which is so intimately connected with our theme of the beginning of the earth: How was it possible for living things to develop out of lifeless things? If there is only lifeless matter on our earth, how could the living develop from it? The only answer is that the question is wrong. No living thing has ever developed from the inanimate, but all inanimate things have arisen from the living."[^9] Steiner conceives the primordial as the spiritual being of man himself, which gradually condensed, materialised, in the course of the earth's development. Man was spiritually present on earth even before the other kingdoms of nature, animals, plants and minerals came into being. The earth originally consisted of nothing but spiritual men, who had only their soul and spiritual members, the 'astral body' and the 'I'. "_At first man did not exist materially, nor as an etheric body, but the astral body and the 'I' existed first. ... Yes, there was even ... man as a spiritual being present on earth before animals, before plants, before minerals were present on earth. At first the earth consisted of an assemblage of all such spiritual human beings, which consisted of the I and the astral body. That is the beginning of the earth. ... At first man is there as a spiritual being, then as an etheric being, and only at last does the spiritual crystallise out the human physical body_."[^10] ## 12.2 Evolution through Segregation According to Steiner, the animals, indeed the kingdoms of nature in general, came into being through segregation from the spiritual human being. These "imperfect earth beings" therefore do not represent ancestors, but on the contrary descendants of the spiritual man, who could not develop to his height. "_Man is the first-born of the earth as a spiritual being, and little by little, as a spiritual being, if I may use the expression, he has crystallised out of himself stage by stage the material. At each stage the subordinate beings have gradually come to a standstill, so that in the whole series of the more imperfect earthly beings we do not see ancestors of man, but on the contrary descendants of the spiritual man who have not come along. They are the retarded brothers, retarded beings on the preliminary stages, who, because they have continued their life into our time, have come into decadence. ... Thus everything imperfect goes back to the higher. Not in our physical form is the higher, the original, but in the spirit_."[^11] Once man had the whole of nature within him and then "crystallised" it out of himself, like the snail its house. Thus the theosophical (anthroposophical) proposition is to be understood, that we are all that ourselves which surrounds us. "_Theosophy says: We are a unity with all that surrounds us. This is to be understood in the sense that man once had everything within himself. Indeed, the earth's crust came into being because man once crystallised it; and as the snail has its house, so man has had all the other beings and kingdoms, mineral, vegetable and animal, within himself, and can say to them all, 'The substances were in me, I crystallised out the constituents.' - Thus he now looks at something apart from himself, and now it acquires a tangible meaning when, looking at them, he says: All this is myself_."[^12] Steiner describes this quite concretely: the apes are not ancestors of man, for man is the "_first-born on our earth_". "_So the higher mammal nature has been repelled, so that we have no ancestor to see in the ape; rather we have to see in man the first-born on our earth. Man exists incarnate in the Akashic Ether, and all that exists apart from him has been gradually expelled from him. Man and animals have adapted to the conditions and circumstances and have become what we can know them as today. ... At that time man, in order that he might develop more freely, upwards in nobler qualities, cast off the nature which today constitutes ape-formation. Thus the ape race degenerated and developed in a different direction. The ape is not remotely to be regarded as the ancestor of man. But this brings the development of man further_."[^13] In a detailed account Steiner described how the various classes of animals branched off from the line of human development: the higher mammals in the middle so-called 'Atlantean period', lower mammals in the oldest Atlantean period. Even earlier branched off the reptiles and birds, before that the fish, again earlier the invertebrates, and finally the unicellular creatures. The apes were the latest to be repelled by man. "_Quite late in the Atlantean period the species branched off, which later formed into the apes of today. Earlier in the Atlantean period certain higher mammals branched off; certain lower mammals branched off in the oldest Atlantean period. The physical human being was then of the developmental value of a mammal; only the mammals stopped at this stage, while the human being developed further. In still earlier times man had the developmental value of a reptile. The body was quite different from that of a reptile of today, but the reptile has evolved as its bodily development has fallen into decadence. Man has brought his inner members to development, but the reptile remained behind. It is a retarded brother of man. Even earlier branched off what became the bird species. And still further back was man on the stage which is preserved in the fish race of today. At that time there was nothing higher on earth than complicated fish forms. In primeval times man stood on the level of an invertebrate animal. And branched off in the most ancient time, and so coming down to our time, is the unicellular being which Haeckel calls Monere, which represents a brother of man branched off in the most ancient time_."[^14] To illustrate the "separation" of the animals from the essence of man, Steiner used various images, including that of a mass of water from which gradually larger and larger quantities are separated by crystallisation. In the end, almost the entire "water-mother-substance" in man takes the form of ice. "_At that time, in the first period of the evolution of the earth, there were no other creatures on earth than man. He was the first-born. He was entirely spiritual. For embodiment consists in a condensation. Let us imagine a mass of water that could float freely. Through some process in this mass of water, parts are crystallised. Let us first imagine a small part of the water crystallised into ice, and then that the same process is repeated again and again. And now we imagine that part of the mass of water has dropped the small pieces of ice that have crystallised out, so that these small pieces of ice are now separated from the whole mass of water. Because each small piece of ice can only increase in size as long as it is within the whole mass of water, when it has fallen out of this mass it remains on the level on which it stands. If we imagine a part of the mass of water separated out as small pieces of ice, we imagine the progressive freezing of the masses of water, and on a next stage again new masses of water following the small lumps of ice, these again falling out, and so on, until at the end a very large part crystallises out of the mass of water and takes on the form of ice. This latter has taken the most out of the water-mother-substance, it has been able to wait the longest before it has separated from this water-mother-substance._"[^15] Steiner calls this mother substance the astral man: "_And so, as from the lump of water the ice, in the course of the development of the earth, ever more differentiated, more perfect and more perfectly formed creatures have developed, physical forms, up to the human being of today, who in his outer physical expression is a likeness of the spiritual dispositions and possibilities which were already originally contained at the beginning of the earth in the spirit, that is, in the astral body of man_."[^16] Elsewhere it is similarly said: "_The whole sum of earthly living beings is in truth descended from man. What today thinks and acts in him as 'soul' has brought about the development of living beings_."[^17] Steiner sees the human form as a likeness of the original, spiritual-soul human being, as an "_image of his spiritual_". If man at the end of his physical development represents what he was already predisposed to at the beginning, then evolution has followed an inner direction.[^18] At the end of his life Steiner summarised his view once more. He wrote that "_in primeval times there was in spiritual reality quite different beingness than the simplest organisms. That man as a spirit-being is older than all other living beings, and that in order to assume his present physical form he had to separate himself from a world-being which contained him and the other organisms. These are thus waste products of human evolution; not something from which he emerged, but something which he left behind, separated from himself, in order to assume his physical form as the image of his spiritual_."[^19] ## 12.3 Steiner on Darwin and Haeckel Like Darwin and Haeckel, Steiner looks at the series of animals from unicellular organisms to man, but under the primacy of the spiritual. Haeckel's family tree could be taken over, only with the difference that spiritual science already sees man in the primordial form and consequently regards the animals as "_degenerate human beings_". Man "_has developed in a straight line, has left the other beings behind at the various stages_."[^20] "_Whoever still knows how to add the spirit to what the materialist says, studies in this Haeckelism the most beautiful elementary theosophy._"[^21] Haeckel also emphasises that man is not descended from the apes living today, but from a common ancestral form. Steiner formulates that from this ape-like form one branch developed upwards to the present man, the other downwards to the present ape. "_How, then, is the relation of animal and human to be conceived? - The doctrine of descent from the ape may be regarded as overcome; it is based on a false line of thought. Think of a morally degenerate and a morally superior man. The assertion that man descends from the ape is similar to the assertion that the perfect descends from the imperfect. They do not need to be descended from each other; they can have a common father and be brothers. One develops upwards, the other goes into decadence. The relationship between ape and man can also be seen in this way. In the beginning of Atlantis the human form was still ape-like, and in Lemuria the soul took possession of a much more imperfect body. This body then evolved. The ape-like forms, however, have partly fallen into decadence and have become the apes of today. The apes are therefore the bodily brothers of man who have fallen into decadence. In the Atlantean period, therefore, a branching took place, a bifurcation within the human species: one main tribe developed upwards to become the man of today, the other downwards to become the ape of today. Thus all the animals that live around us are human beings cast out into degeneration. Only by certain beings sacrificing themselves is the ascent of others possible. The higher expels the lower in order to be able to rise even higher. Later on a compensation takes place for the outcasts._"[^22] Steiner compares this principle of development to the clarification of a turbid liquid, from which the solid constituents settle downwards. "_Think of it, that all the qualities which are dispersed in animalism were in man. He purified himself of them. This enabled him to develop more highly. If we have a turbid liquid before us and let the coarse part of it settle as a sediment, the finer part remains at the top. In the same way, in the animal forms, the coarser matter, which man could not have used in his present state of development, has settled down like sediment. By throwing these animal forms out of his line of development as his elder brothers, man has reached his present height. Thus humanity rises by separating the lower forms from itself in order to purify itself. ... Every quality that man has today he owes to the fact that he has put forth a certain animal form. Whoever looks at the various animals with the clairvoyant's eye knows exactly what we owe to the individual animal. We look at the lion's form and say to ourselves: If it were not for the lion, man would not have this or that quality, for by creating it he has acquired this or that quality. And so it is with all the rest of the forms of the animal world_."[^23] However, the phylogenetic forms in Haeckel's phylogenetic tree were only hypothetical, "imagined" living beings, and they should actually be imagined not as formed, but as formless or as soft-bodied, "gelatinous" beings, whose outer forms were still very easily influenced by the inner life of the soul. "_Peculiar that we find this, which has now been said, fully explained when we read such books as Haeckel's, for example. There, it is true, the assertion is outwardly made that man can be traced back to the animals. But if we follow the ladder, we see that man can be traced back to something that cannot be traced back to the present conditions of the earth, but to imaginary living beings. And likewise the animals. We find those beings to which spiritual science points as hypothetical beings also in Haeckel's genealogical tree, only that these then do not lead back to the formed, but to the formless_."[^24] "_Going further back from the point of Atlantic times, where Europeans and Indians were still united with each other, we come to a time when the body of man was still comparatively soft, of gelatinous density_."[^25] According to Steiner, the actual primeval forms could not have been physical, for they would not have been viable at all under present earthly conditions. "_The question is actually soon solved why petrification science, geology, can show no right documents for such a ... primeval man, and why everything that can at present be found of petrified apes and men deviates from this primeval form. - This can soon be found out. If we consider the present earthly conditions, we must say to ourselves: it is impossible that such a primeval form, which would be that of man and ape at the same time, would be viable today, that it could exist under the present earthly conditions of life_."[^26] And so, summarising the comparison of the anthroposophical with the Haeckelian family tree, it is said: "_Externally, therefore, there is a similarity between the Haeckelian and the theosophical or spiritual-scientific family trees; inwardly - according to the sense - they are vastly different_."[^27] Steiner summarised his view of evolution in an important lecture of 1912, in which he compared the work of the (general) human spirit on the ascending animal series with that which the (individual) spirit of man performs on his body in his childlike development: "_In that which, without suspecting it, Darwinian culture has given, [lies] the total deed of the human spirit. In it it has acted as our I acts in the child's organism. In the second half of the nineteenth century and right up to our own day, Darwinism studied, without knowing it, the divine deeds of the human spirit. ... Thus [through Darwinism] a great, a mighty thing is prepared, which is only misunderstood, which is taken as if it were efficacious of itself, whereas it is the plan which the creating divine Spirit has followed in its way towards humanity_."[^28] ## 12.4 Man as the Archetype and Compendium of Animals From all this emerges an imaginative understanding of man and animals. When looking at individual animals, these may appear as pure coincidence. But if one approaches the animals with an "imaginative view", one finds a piece of man in every animal. "_One could almost say: it is a pure coincidence that a lion is a lion, a camel a camel. Yes, in the observation of the lion [one has...] only a chance observation; likewise in the camel. This observation has no meaning at all at first, if one starts out from the living. What about the animal? Well, he who approaches the animal not with abstract intellectuality, but with pictorial contemplation, finds in every animal a piece of man. One animal has particularly well developed legs, which in humans serve the whole. The other animal has developed the sense organs, a sense organ in the extreme. One animal sniffs particularly; the other animal, when it is in the air, is particularly predisposed to the eyes. And if we take the whole animal world together, we find distributed in abstractions outside as the animal world that which in summary gives man. If I combine all the animals synthetically, I get man. ... So that man is a synthesis of lion, eagle, ape, camel, cow and everything else. The whole animal kingdom is regarded as a disassembled human nature_."[^29] The animal kingdom is a "_fanned out man_," man "_the synthesis of the whole animal world_."[^30] All the organ systems of man are also found in the animals, only in them they are developed one-sidedly by adaptation to the external world. In man they are not adapted to the external world, but "_one to another_" and harmoniously harmonised. "_If we look at the world of the animal kingdom and all that is spread out like the great fan of beings, if we compare it with the human organisation, how in man everything is rounded off, how no system of organisation pushes itself forward, one is adapted to the other, then we find: Yes, in animals the organ systems are always adapted to the outer world; in man the organ systems are not adapted to the outer world, but one to the other. Man is a self-contained totality, a self-contained wholeness._"[^31] Thus, in contrast to the animals, man can also be a "_fully ensouled being_". One sees "_how the whole human being is, as it were, a compendium of the animal world, how in him everything is harmoniously formed, rounded off, how the animals represent one-sided formations and therefore none can have full ensoulment, and how the human being represents the adaptation of one organ system to the other and just through this receives the possibility of being a fully ensouled being_."[^32] Paracelsus had already described man as the word composed of the letters of the animal kingdom. Steiner uses the beautiful comparison of animals with the individual notes of a piece of music, of man with the whole symphony. "_So one finds man's relation to the outer world in relation to his astral body, when one vividly develops his relation to the animal world. And it must be a musical understanding which relates to the astral body. I look into the human being, I look out into the manifold animal forms: it is as if I perceived a symphony in which all the notes sound together in a wonderfully harmonious melodious whole, and then in a longer development I would detach one note from the other and place one note next to the other from this symphony. I look out into the animal world: it is the individual tones. I look into the human astral body and into that which the human astral body forms in the physical and etheric body: I see the symphony. And if one does not remain in a philistine way with the intellectualistic comprehension of the world, but has freedom of the spirit of knowledge enough to rise up in artistic cognition, then one comes to a heartfelt veneration, permeated with religious fervour, of that invisible Being, that wonderful composer of the world, who first dissected the tones in the various animal forms, in order to compose the human being symphonically in relation to that which reveals his animality. One must carry this in one's soul, thus one must understand how to stand to the world, then something will pour into that which one has to describe as the animal forms, not only something of abstract concepts and laws of nature, but something of true ardour towards world-creation and world-forms_."[^33] Man, however, in comparison with the animals, not only has form, but in him lives the archetype in his creative thoughts. "_So we behold the divine spirit in the succession of animal forms. Every animal form is a one-sided representation of the divine spirit. But a harmonious, all-sided expression of it is man. ... And the archetype, which was already created in the most imperfect being, which represents the soul in the most imperfect animal, attains in man the most perfect form in the bearer of the individual soul. Therefore, man has not only been given form like the animals, but man himself makes this archetype come alive in himself in creative thought._"[^34] The human archetype, which can be found spread out over the animal kingdom, expresses itself on the one hand in the form of man, but on the other hand has also remained alive in him as moving spirit. "_Everything that works in the animal forms nevertheless lives itself out in him. It is in him, but it is spirit. That which is spread as sensuous phenomena over the most diverse animal forms is spiritual in man._"[^35] Steiner described this difference between man and animal from various points of view. Thus the animals represent physically what the human being has in his astral body as spirit: "_The human being has, as it were, had animalism within himself in ancient times, but has split it out as side branches. All animals in their various forms represent nothing but individual human passions condensed too early. What man today still has spiritually in his astral body, the animal forms individually represent physically. He has preserved this in his astral body until the latest period in his earthly existence. Hence he was able to ascend highest_."[^36] "_If a part of mankind in the first Atlantean time had not waited to descend into the condensed physical body, the human form would have remained as it was then, with all that was still expressed in the physical form as the instincts, desires and passions of his astral body. At that time there were beings who had solidified and hardened themselves. The animal groups are nothing other than beings who hardened too early. What man today carries in his astral body as desire and passion, was expressed in the physical body of the various animals. Each of these groups of animals has formed a special instinct and has hardened in it_."[^37] And this is also true of human thought. "_Quite the same thing that gives the animal its outward sensuous form lives in man, but as a supersensuous mobile element. It lives in his thinking. That which makes it possible for us to think about things is in us - in a supersensible way - exactly the same as that which outside in the animal world are the manifold species and genera of animals. By tearing himself out of the multiformity of the animals and giving himself, in relation to gravity, his own form independent of the animal form, which is the dwelling-place of the I, man appropriates invisibly what is visible in the animal world. This lives in his thinking. In the animal world is poured out in the most manifold forms what is poured out in us, in that we survey the world thinking_."[^38] In animals the life of the soul is much more closely bound up with the body than in man. The reason for this difference, according to Steiner, is that man "descended" from the "formless spiritual" into an earthly form much later than the animals. "_If we look at the animal, how it is wholly in the bodily life, how it is once formed, we see how it digests, how directly the soul pervades the bodily life and how it is linked with the bodily functions. But if we look at how the soul in man rises directly out of the body as an independent thing, we shall see how man is so formed because the animal world, adapted to other conditions of our earthly existence, was formed out of the formless earlier than man._"[^39] Man "waited" until the conditions on earth corresponded to those of today (Steiner mentions here the distribution of air and water). Therefore, man is not adapted to individual specific earth conditions like the animals, but to the whole earth - and was therefore able to populate the whole earth. "_Man has descended from the formless into design, into form at the very latest. Whereas the animals that are in the world today had already taken up the principle of form earlier, so that they had to transform their former form in adaptation to the transformation of the earth, man did not allow himself to be determined to descend already into the old forms, but waited until the earth had that distribution of air and water as it now exists. Only then did the condensation of the still barely formed matter into the later human form occur for man. Because man entered the formed form at the latest, he appeared in such a way that he was not merely adapted to individual specific earth conditions. But if we go back to the animals, we must imagine their origin to have been such that certain forms were adapted to very definite territories of the earth."_[^40] "_Man, then, was from the beginning adapted to such forces of form that his inner being corresponded to the spiritual, that the forces of form could act directly on the spiritual in such a way as to make his outer physical form an upright one, to make his hands living instruments of the spirit_."[^41] ## 12.5 The Importance of Uprightness Above all, man is distinguished from the animal by his upright walk, by his speech and by his thinking. Steiner devoted manifold explanations to these three faculties, of which only the most fundamental can be sketched here. He made the decisive point in a public lecture on 15 April 1918: Animals, with their physique, are in the broadest sense clamped into the external conditions of gravity, while man "_rises out of the equilibrium conditions which are imposed on the animal_." Thus, according to Steiner as early as 1918, the human being "_essentially becomes a 'species', a 'kind'. He frees himself precisely from that which is the cause of the manifold formation in the other animal beings; he creates his uniform form by freeing himself from this determining cause through his upright position. And all that is expressed in human language, in human thought, is intimately connected with these relations of equilibrium_."[^42] Through his upright position man freed himself "_from the shape-forming of the animals_". "_This is one of the most essential characteristics, that what is sensually poured out over the manifold animal forms lives supersensually in man. While he made his form free from the form-forming of the animals, he is able to take this into his supersensible. The animals are 'further' in terms of sensual formation than man. Man has an unstable form. The animal is built in accordance with the whole earthly structure. With man it is different, with him it is incorporated into his own form. Through this he comes to grasp spiritually that which is expressed externally in the sensuous form of the animal structure._"[^43] In this way, however, he has made his form more unstable than that of the animals. But thereby man has regressed his form in comparison with the animals! Man is less developed than the animals, and thereby, according to Steiner, the human brain is formed as an organ of thought. "_Through the fact that certain powers have been eliminated, have been regressed, man has become capable of becoming a bearer of the spiritual-soul, of taking up this spiritual-soul. What I have called so far is essentially nothing other than regression, 'devolution', in contrast to 'evolution'. Take that which gives the individual animal the certain form it has, and another animal another form: this thought determines through and through the whole organisation of the animal. Man, on the other hand, regresses his organisation. It does not come so far as to be thoroughly determined, it comes back to an earlier stage. In this way he can give himself the position of equilibrium which nature does not give him, in this way he frees himself from what nature imposes on the other beings. The whole human being is retarded in its formation; through this arises that which in the human being became the organ of thinking, for naturally this organ is based on it. That which underlies thought is essentially the organ of thought in that it is back-formed, that it has not got as far as where the animal form comes and outwardly expresses the form. Man lives back the form and can supersensually live out the form in thought as the animal lives it out in the outer sensuous._"[^44] In his last writing Steiner formulated this essential difference between animal and human in this way: "_In the astral body the animal form arises outwardly as the whole form and inwardly as the form of the organs. ... If this formation is carried to its end, the animal is formed. In man it is not carried to its end. It is stopped at a certain point on its way, inhibited. ... [It] is drawn into the sphere of a further organisation. One can call this the 'I'-organisation. ... [Thus] the human inner and outer form arises. Through this it becomes the bearer of the self-conscious spiritual life_."[^45] ## 12.6 On the Meaning of Evolution In contrast to the Darwinian view, from Rudolf Steiner's point of view an actual, deep meaning of evolution emerges. For the segregation of the animals signifies a purification (necessary for the becoming of man): "_So we must trace the animal world back to the fact that man, in order that he might develop his spiritual, as he has it today, had first to segregate the whole animal world, so that he, as a finer spiritual entity, might thus develop above on the subsoil of the animal world, as in our comparison the finer substance shows itself when it has segregated the coarser matter below on the ground._"[^46] By segregating the animals, man has advanced a little at a time. For originally all the qualities which are now dispersed in the animals were present in him. "_It must be clear to us that this segregation of the animal forms was indeed necessary for man. Every animal form that has segregated itself from the general stream in the time that has passed means that man has progressed a little. Think that all the qualities that are dispersed in animalism were in man. He has purified himself of them. This enabled him to evolve higher. If we have a turbid liquid before us and let the coarse part of it settle as sediment, the finer part remains at the top. In the same way, in the animal forms, the coarser matter, which man could not have used in his present state of development, has settled down like sediment. By throwing these animal forms out of his line of development as his elder brothers, man has reached his present height. Thus humanity rises by separating the lower forms from itself in order to purify itself. ... This is how humanity ascends. And every quality that man has today he owes to the fact that he has put forth a certain animal form. Whoever looks at the various animals with the clairvoyant's eye knows exactly what we owe to the individual animal. We look at the lion's form and say to ourselves: If it were not for the lion, man would not have this or that quality, for by creating it he has acquired this or that quality. - And so it is with all the other forms of the animal world_."[^47] And thus Steiner arrives at the characteristic of animals as individual human passions condensed too early. "_Man has, as it were, had animalism within himself in ancient times, but has split it out as side-branches. All animals in their various forms represent nothing but individual human passions condensed too early. What man today still has spiritually in his astral body, the animal forms individually represent physically. He has preserved this in his astral body until the latest period in his earthly existence. Hence he was able to ascend highest_."[^48] All the "_cruelty and gluttony, but also animal dexterity_" would otherwise still be in man. "_We look at the animals and say: everything that the animals represent in cruelty, in gluttony, in all the animal vices, besides the dexterity they have, we would have in us if we had not been able to put them out of ourselves! - We owe the liberation of our astral body to the fact that all the coarser astral qualities have remained in the animal kingdom of the earth. And we can say: 'Happy are we that we no longer have in us the cruelty of the lion, the cunning of the fox, that it has been drawn out of us and leads an independent existence apart from us!'"[^49] Through the separation, however, the respective positive of such qualities has been preserved in man in a purified form. Thus from the fury of the lion there has remained to him the power which can lead him up to his higher self. "_Every quality has two opposite poles. Thus we find how positive and negative electricity complement each other, or heat and cold, day and night, light and darkness, and so on. ... For example, man in leo has put out of himself anger, which on the other hand, if he ennobles it, nis the force that can lead him up to his higher self. Passion is not to be destroyed, but purified. The negative pole must be led up to a higher level. ... At first man had within him the rage of the lion and the cunning of the fox. The anger was then fixed by him, so to speak, in the lion and the cunning in the fox. Thus the warm-blooded animal kingdom is a picture book of camouflage characteristics. Today, the view is widespread that the 'tat tvam asi', the 'this is you', is to be understood as something vaguely general, but one must think of something specific. For example, in the case of the lion, man must say to himself, 'that is you!'_"[^50]. Man has once passed through all that he sees around him as animals, he has lived in all these forms: "_With such feelings, approximately, lives the man who looks with truly occult reason into his surroundings. He says to himself: 'In the course of my becoming a man I have passed through that which now confronts me in lions and serpents; I have lived in all these forms because my own inner being has passed through the qualities which are formed in these animal forms.' Those human beings who have become capable of rising above all this to ever higher stages, who have preserved their inner center, have found a balance so that in them lie only the possibilities of these passions, that these passions are only a soul being and do not take on an outer form. This signifies the higher development of man._"[^51] But the whole process of the splitting off of the animals and the development of the physical form of man has also taken place "_because man was to become an inner being; he had to put all this out of himself in order to be able to look at himself_."[^52] To explain this, Steiner draws on a comparison he often uses with child development, from which one can read the meaning of evolution "_through an unprejudiced observation_". For before the self-consciousness appears in the child, the human being works as a "dreamlike-active" on the finer shaping of the brain relations and the finer human corporeality, and therefore, as long as the spiritual forces are used for the shaping of the body, no self-consciousness comes into being. Only when the body is so far formed that it can bear a conscious soul-life, does the formative power of the spiritual-soul become weaker and can then appear as consciousness. "_If one then asks: What is the meaning of the whole evolution?, one must say: Basically, the human being of today already shows us, not in bold hypotheses, but by an unprejudiced contemplation, wherein lies the meaning of such a development. ... Before the I-consciousness appeared in man, this dream-active human being was working on the finer shaping of the brain relations and the finer human corporeality, and because it sent its forces into it, an inner human soul being with I-consciousness did not yet come into being. Then, when the human being had formed the finer relations of his corporeality out of his soul, this working on the human being from the outside changed into that which appeared as a conscious inner soul life. Thus we see that for the outer form the formative power of the spiritual-soul must become weaker so that it can appear as consciousness. Therefore it is not absurd for spiritual science to go back in time and to regard the spiritual-soul as having first created the human form, and after it had assumed such a form, which was preserved by heredity through the generations, the spiritual-soul forces could withdraw to an inner life, to a conscious and ever more conscious human soul life. Thus, in truth, this spiritual-soul nucleus of man's being has only become weak in relation to the external formative conditions, but what has been lost and what he has surrendered to heredity has appeared in the forces of consciousness, which continue to develop further and further in the processes of culture_."[^53] The whole process of evolution on earth is ordered to the bringing forth of man's inner imaginative life like the blossom or fruit from a plant. "_When we turn our gaze out into the whole world, by what, at bottom, does everything that surrounds us there gain its right value? Only by the fact, as Goethe says, that it is finally reflected in a human soul. For spiritual science, however, the natural earth-process also shows itself in such a way that it basically progresses from the oldest to the youngest forms in such a way that everything - as the blossoming of the earth-form - is ordered towards being able to imagine that which must finally be brought forth from the earth-process, just as the blossom or fruit is brought forth from the plant."[^54] ## 12.7 The Dimension of Destiny The ascent of man has been possible only because the animals sacrificed themselves. ("_The higher pushes out the lower in order to be able to ascend still higher_."[^55]) Both the animals and man can feel pain. But through his I, man has the ability to process his pain and thereby develop further. Man has given the ability to suffer to the animals, but not the ability to overcome suffering and the karmic higher development that goes with it. "_So the animals have in common with us that which is our astral body, and have thereby the possibility of being able to feel pain. But precisely through what has now been said, they have not been able to attain the possibility of rising higher and higher through pain and through overcoming pain. For they have no individuality. Thus the animals are much, much worse off than we are. We have to bear the pain; but every pain is a means of perfection for us; by overcoming it, we rise higher through the pain. We have left the animals as something that already had the capacity for pain, but not yet that which could raise them above the pain, by which they overcome the pain. That is the fate of the animals. They show us our own organisation at the stage when we were capable of pain but not yet able to transform pain into the wholesome for humanity by overcoming it. Thus, in the course of the earth's evolution, we have given the animals our worse part, and they stand around us as emblems of the fact that we have come to our perfection. We would not have got rid of the dregs had we not left the animals behind._"[^56] But in the future a deeper awareness of these karmic conditions will come a treatment of the animals by which man will "bring them up" again. "_Man could not but evolve higher; he had to push other beings into the abyss in order to rise higher himself. He could not give the animals an individuality which would compensate in karma what the animals must suffer; he could only hand them pain without being able to give them the karmic law of compensation. But what he could not give them before, man will give them one day when he has come to freedom and to the selflessness of his individuality. Then he will - in a conscious way - grasp the karmic lawfulness in this field too and will say: To the animals I owe what I am. What I can no longer give to the individual animal beings, who have descended from an individual existence into a shadow existence, what I once owed to the animals, so to speak, I must now make up for in the animals through the treatment I give them! - Therefore, with the progress of evolution, through the consciousness of the karmic relationships, a better relationship between man and the animal kingdom will again come about than exists at present, especially in the Occident. A treatment of the animals will come, by which man will draw up again the animals which he has pushed down._"[^57] Thus a comprehensive, "cosmic" compassion for the animal world may arise. "_We must look at the animals with the feeling: out there you are, animals. When you suffer, you suffer something that benefits us humans. We human beings have the possibility of overcoming suffering; you must endure suffering. ... When you develop this cosmic feeling from theory, it becomes the comprehensive compassion for the animal world_."[^58] This is the spiritual evolutionary doctrine of anthroposophy, "_the doctrine of descent which is called to take the place of the ... [Darwinian] one_."[^59]) As a doctrine of the interrelation of all living beings, however, Darwinism is also justified, and it has, moreover, the mission of awakening a counterforce in the human soul, a longing for the teachings of the supersensible world. "_From the counter-force which develops out of the mere looking of common Darwinism at the merely external world of facts, the longing of human hearts for the supersensible world will be kindled, and because our time already beholds the dawn of this longing, which arises as a counter-force against common Darwinism, it comes to meet it and works in the minds of men_."[^60] Summing up, Rudolf Steiner said, "_Everything lower has evolved out of the higher; that is the theory of evolution. ... In the animals you see spread out in a literal sense the stages which we have left behind. Man sees in every animal more or less a piece of himself left behind. ... Hence in man lies the sense of what is spread out around him._"[^61] [^1]: Steiner, Rudolf (1906): _Vor dem Tore der Theosophie_. GA 095, Dornach 1990, p. 79, 29.08.1906. [^2]: Steiner, Rudolf (1904, 1905): _Ursprung und Ziel des Menschen_. GA 053, Dornach 1981, p. 224, 09.02.1905. [^3]: Das Verständnis dieser Übergangsformen bleibt einer imaginativen Anschauung vorbehalten, die sich möglicherweise aus der meditativen Vertie­fung des begrifflich Fassbaren und den von Steiner gegebenen Bildern ent­wickeln lässt. [^4]: Bosse, Dankmar (2002): _Die gemeinsame Evolution von Erde und Mensch. Entwurf einer Geologie und Paläontologie der lebendigen Erde._ Stuttgart 2002. [^5]: Steiner, Rudolf (1904): _Aus der Akasha-Chronik_. GA 011, Dornach 1986; Steiner, Rudolf (1910): _Die Geheimwissenschaft im Umriss_. GA 013, Dornach 1989. [^6]: Steiner (1904, 1905): GA 053, pp. 232–254, 09.03.1905; Ebd., pp. 204–231, 09.02.1905; Steiner (1903-1906): GA 054, pp. 9-34, 05.10.1905; Steiner (1907-1908): GA 056, pp. 166-190, 23.01.1908; Ebd., pp. 264–286, 09.04.1908; Steiner (1911-1912): GA 061, pp. 221–252, 04.01.1912; Ebd., pp. 253–284, 18.01.1912; Ebd., pp. 480–513, 28.03.1912; Steiner (1918): GA 067, pp. 255–289, 15.04.1918; Steiner (1921): GA 079, pp. 139-170, 01.12.1921. [^7]: Steiner (1904-1907): GA 092, pp. 45–52, 22.07.1904; Steiner (1903-1906): GA 089, pp. 149–154, 31.10.1904; Ebd., pp. 163-169, 02.11.1904; Steiner (1905): GA 093a, pp. 50-55, 01.10.1905; Steiner (1906): GA 094, pp. 164-167, 07.07.1906; Ebd., pp. 263-273, 03.11.1906; Steiner (1906): GA 095, pp. 73-82, 29.08.1906; Steiner (1907): GA 100, pp. 133–148, 26.06.1907; Ebd., pp. 243–254, 22.11.1907; Steiner (1908): GA 102, pp. 82–95, 16.03.1908; Steiner (1908): GA 104, pp. 11–33, 17.06.1908; Ebd., pp. 87–103, 21.06.1908; Steiner (1908): GA 105, pp. 95–110, 10.08.1908; Ebd., pp. 111–126, 11.08.1908; Steiner (1911-1912): GA 133, pp. 61-80, 23.04.1912; Steiner (1917): GA 175, p. 229, 12.04.1917; Steiner (1919): GA 293, pp. 45–61, 23.08.1919; Ebd., pp. 146-159, 01.09.1919; Steiner (1920): GA 312, pp. 13-34, 21.03.1920; Steiner (1920): GA 334, pp. 251–272, 05.05.1920; Steiner (1922): GA 303, pp. 177–196, 01.01.1922; Steiner (1923): GA 230, pp. 92–108, 28.10.1923; Steiner (1923): GA 232, pp. 72–88, 01.12.1923; Steiner (1924): GA 354, pp. 60–75, 09.07.1924. [^8]: Steiner, Rudolf (1911-1912): _Menschengeschichte im Lichte der Geistesforschung_. GA 061, Dornach 1983, p. 262, 18.01.1912. [^9]: Steiner, Rudolf (1907-1908): _Die Erkenntnis der Seele und des Geistes_. GA 056, Dornach 1985, pp. 280-281, 09.04.1908. [^10]: Steiner (1907-1908), GA 056, pp. 277-278, 09.04.1908. [^11]: Steiner (1907-1908), GA 056, p. 280, 09.04.1908. [^12]: Steiner (1906): GA 095, pp. 78-79, 29.08.1906. [^13]: Steiner (1904, 1905): GA 053, pp. 223-224, 09.02.1905. [^14]: Steiner, Rudolf (1907): _Menschheitsentwickelung und Christus-Erkenntnis_. GA 100, Dornach 1981, p. 248, 22.11.1907. [^15]: Steiner, Rudolf (1908): _Die Apokalypse des Johannes_. GA 104, Dornach 1985, pp. 92–93, 21.06.1908. [^16]: Steiner (1907-1908): GA 056, pp. 278–280, 09.04.1908. [^17]: Steiner, Rudolf (1903-1906): _Die Welträtsel und die Anthroposophie_. GA 054, Dornach 1983. p. 31, 05.10.1905. [^18]: Steiner schildert allerdings, dass im Verlauf der Evolution Gefährdungen der Menschwerdung aufgetreten sind, die durch die Hilfe eines hohen geistigen Wesens überwunden wurden. Steiner, Rudolf (1913-1914): _Vorstufen zum Mysterium von Golgatha_. GA 152, Dornach 1990, pp. 93-100, 05.03.1914. [^19]: Steiner, Rudolf (1923-1925): _Mein Lebensgang - eine nicht vollendete Autobiographie_. GA 028, Dornach 1982, p. 403. [^20]: Steiner (1907): GA 100, p. 249, 22.11.1907. [^21]: Steiner (1903-1906): GA 054, pp. 19–20, 05.10.1905. [^22]: Steiner, Rudolf (1906): _Kosmogonie_. GA 094, Dornach 2001, pp. 165–166, 07.07.1906. [^23]: Steiner (1908): GA 104, pp. 94-95, 21.06.1908; Steiner, Rudolf (1910): _Die Offenbarungen des Karma_. GA 120, Dornach 1992, pp. 45–46, 17.05.1910; Steiner, Rudolf (1919): _Allgemeine Menschenkunde als Grundlage der Pädagogik_. GA 293, Dornach 1992, p. 52, 23.08.1919. [^24]: Steiner (1911-1912): GA 061, p. 279, 18.01.1912. [^25]: Steiner (1907): GA 100, p. 245, 22.11.1907. [^26]: Steiner (1911-1912): GA 061, p. 230, 04.01.1912. [^27]: Steiner (1903-1906): GA 054, p. 32, 05.10.1905. [^28]: Steiner (1911-1912): GA 061, p. 502, 28.03.1912. [^29]: Steiner, Rudolf (1922): _Die geistig-seelischen Grundkräfte der Erziehungskunst_. GA 305, Dornach 1991.pp. 107-108, 21.08.1923. [^30]: Steiner, Rudolf (1920): _Die Erneuerung der pädagogisch-didaktischen Kunst durch Geisteswissenschaft_. GA 301, Dornach 1991, p. 132, 03.05.1920. [^31]: Steiner (1920): GA 301, p. 128, 03.05.1920. [^32]: Steiner (1920): GA 301, p. 129, 03.05.1920. [^33]: Steiner, Rudolf (1924): _Die Methodik des Lehrens und die Lebensbedingungen des Erziehens_. GA 308, Dornach 1986, pp. 71–72, 10.04.1924. [^34]: Steiner (1907-1908): GA 056, pp. 189–190, 23.01.1908. [^35]: Steiner, Rudolf (1918): _Das Ewige in der Menschenseele. Unsterblichkeit und Freiheit_. GA 067, Dornach 1992, pp. 269-270, 15.04.1918. [^36]: Steiner (1908): GA 104, p. 94, 21.06.1908. [^37]: Steiner, Rudolf (1909): _Aus der Bilderschrift der Apokalypse des Johannes_. GA 104a, Dornach 1991, p. 107, 17.05.1909. [^38]: Steiner (1918): GA 067, p. 270, 15.04.1918. [^39]: Steiner (1911-1912): GA 061, p. 277, 18.01.1912. [^40]: Steiner (1911-1912): GA 061, 275-276, 18.01.1912. [^41]: Steiner (1911-1912): GA 061, pp. 276-277, 18.01.1912. [^42]: Steiner (1918): GA 067, p. 268, 15.04.1918. [^43]: Steiner (1918): GA 067, p. 271, 15.04.1918. [^44]: Steiner (1918): GA 067, pp. 272-273, 15.04.1918. [^45]: Steiner, Rudolf; Wegman, Ita (1925): _Grundlegendes für eine Erweiterung der Heilkunst nach geisteswissenschaftlichen Erkenntnissen_. GA 027, Dornach 1991, pp. 35-36. [^46]: Steiner (1911-1912): GA 061, p. 280, 18.01.1912. [^47]: Steiner (1908): GA 104, pp. 94-95, 21.06.1908. [^48]: Steiner (1908): GA 104, p. 94, 21.06.1908. [^49]: Steiner (1910): GA 120, S. 52, 17.05.1910. [^50]: Steiner, Rudolf (1905): _Grundelemente der Esoterik_. GA 093a, Dornach 1987, pp. 52–53, 01.10.1905. [^51]: Steiner, Rudolf (1908): _Welt, Erde und Mensch – deren Wesen und Entwicklung_. GA 105, Dornach 1983, S. 113, 11.08.1908. [^52]: Steiner (1906): GA 095, S. 79, 29.08.1906. [^53]: Steiner (1911-1912): GA 061, pp. 242-243, 04.01.1912. [^54]: Steiner (1911-1912): GA 061, S. 283, 18.01.1912. [^55]: Steiner (1906): GA 094, pp. 165–166, 07.07.1906. [^56]: Steiner (1910): GA 120, pp. 52–53, 17.05.1910. [^57]: Steiner (1910): GA 120, S. 54, 17.05.1910. [^58]: Steiner (1910): GA 120, S. 53, 17.05.1910. [^59]: Steiner (1904, 1905): GA 053, S. 224, 09.02.1905. [^60]: Steiner (1911-1912): GA 061, S. 506, 28.03.1912. [^61]: Steiner, Rudolf (1907): GA 100, S. 138, 26.06.1907 ## Bibliography of Cited Works by Steiner Steiner, Rudolf (1903-1906): _Bewußtsein - Leben - Form_. GA 089, Dornach 2001. Steiner, Rudolf (1903-1906): _Die Welträtsel und die Anthroposophie_. GA 054, Dornach 1983. Steiner, Rudolf (1904): _Aus der Akasha-Chronik_. GA 011, Dornach 1986. Steiner, Rudolf (1904-1907): _Die okkulten Wahrheiten alter Mythen und Sagen_. GA 092, Dornach 1999. Steiner, Rudolf (1904, 1905): _Ursprung und Ziel des Menschen_. GA 053, Dornach 1981. Steiner, Rudolf (1905): _Grundelemente der Esoterik_. GA 093a, Dornach 1987. Steiner, Rudolf (1906): _Kosmogonie_. GA 094, Dornach 2001. Steiner, Rudolf (1906): _Vor dem Tore der Theosophie_. GA 095, Dornach 1990. Steiner, Rudolf (1907-1908): _Die Erkenntnis der Seele und des Geistes_. GA 056, Dornach 1985. Steiner, Rudolf (1907): _Menschheitsentwickelung und Christus-Erkenntnis_. GA 100, Dornach 1981. Steiner, Rudolf (1908): _Das Hereinwirken geistiger Wesenheiten in den Menschen_. GA 102, Dornach 2001. Steiner, Rudolf (1908): _Die Apokalypse des Johannes_. GA 104, Dornach 1985. Steiner, Rudolf (1908): _Welt, Erde und Mensch – deren Wesen und Entwicklung_. GA 105, Dornach 1983. Steiner, Rudolf (1909): _Aus der Bilderschrift der Apokalypse des Johannes_. GA 104a, Dornach 1991. Steiner, Rudolf (1910): _Die Geheimwissenschaft im Umriss_. GA 013, Dornach 1989. Steiner, Rudolf (1910): _Die Offenbarungen des Karma_. GA 120, Dornach 1992. Steiner, Rudolf (1911-1912): _Der irdische und der kosmische Mensch_. GA 133, Dornach 1989. Steiner, Rudolf (1911-1912): _Menschengeschichte im Lichte der Geistesforschung_. GA 061, Dornach 1983. Steiner, Rudolf (1913-1914): _Vorstufen zum Mysterium von Golgatha_. GA 152, Dornach 1990. Steiner, Rudolf (1917): _Bausteine zu einer Erkenntnis des Mysteriums von Golgatha_. GA 175, Dornach 1996. Steiner, Rudolf (1918): _Das Ewige in der Menschenseele. Unsterblichkeit und Freiheit_. GA 067, Dornach 1992. Steiner, Rudolf (1919): _Allgemeine Menschenkunde als Grundlage der Pädagogik_. GA 293, Dornach 1992. Steiner, Rudolf (1920): _Die Erneuerung der pädagogisch-didaktischen Kunst durch Geisteswissenschaft_. GA 301, Dornach 1991. Steiner, Rudolf (1920): _Geisteswissenschaft und Medizin_. GA 312, Dornach 1999. Steiner, Rudolf (1920): _Vom Einheitsstaat zum dreigliedrigen sozialen Organismus_. GA 334, Dornach 1983. Steiner, Rudolf (1921): _Die Wirklichkeit der höheren Welten_. GA 079, Dornach 1988. Steiner, Rudolf (1922): _Die geistig-seelischen Grundkräfte der Erziehungskunst_. GA 305, Dornach 1991. Steiner, Rudolf (1922): _Die gesunde Entwickelung des Menschenwesens_. GA 303, Dornach 1987. Steiner, Rudolf (1923): _Der Mensch als Zusammenklang des schaffenden, bildenden und gestaltenden Weltenwortes_. GA 230, Dornach 1993. Steiner, Rudolf (1923-1925): _Mein Lebensgang - eine nicht vollendete Autobiographie_. GA 028, Dornach 1982. Steiner, Rudolf (1923): _Mysteriengestaltungen_. GA 232, Dornach 1998. Steiner, Rudolf (1924): _Die Methodik des Lehrens und die Lebensbedingungen des Erziehens_. GA 308, Dornach 1986. Steiner, Rudolf (1924): _Die Schöpfung des Menschen und der Welt_. GA 354, Dornach 2000. Steiner, Rudolf; Wegman, Ita (1925): _Grundlegendes für eine Erweiterung der Heilkunst nach geisteswissenschaftlichen Erkenntnissen_. GA 027, Dornach 1991.