Supplements to Member Lectures

GA 246 — 1 February 1911, Bonn

35. The Development of Humanity and Spiritual Science

A question that often arises today and seeks an answer is the following: Why is it that some people, and only a small fraction of them, immediately embrace spiritual science, whereas the majority of people today are indifferent to it and often even reject it with disgust? In order to clarify this question about the value of spiritual scientific research, we must not [only] recall what spiritual science teaches us about the various members of the human being, but we must also bear in mind the entire development to which these seven members of the human being have been subjected over thousands of years.

If we could look at these seven members of the human being, say, about 12,000 years ago, we would realize that they were in a completely different connection with each other than they are in the present state of human development. The etheric body of man at that time was not yet so permeated with the astral body as it is in the present age; the astral body was still more separate from the etheric body, it did not influence it as it does today, where it permeates it almost completely and thereby forges the three lower bodies more firmly together, as it were, hardens them. The cause lies in the development of the mind, of the intellect, whereby the astral is detached, indeed, one could say, the soul-like is repelled from itself. The fact that the three lower bodies condense and harden into one another makes it difficult for some people today, whose whole education is directed towards the training of the intellect, to absorb the spiritual, supersensible truths; however, this is also a karmic consequence, and therefore these people cannot, even with the best will in the world, gain any interest in spiritual science. The deeper their astral body has sunk into the etheric body and this again into the physical body, the more indifferent or hostile they are to spiritual science. The consequence of this completely different composition of the three lower bodies or members also has a special significance, namely in relation to the human horoscope. As you know, the human being as a microcosm is closely connected with the forces of the macrocosm. The horoscope that was drawn up for the individual human being thousands of years ago was infallibly accurate as far as his four lower limbs were concerned; however, human development is in a state of eternal flux. And as we have seen, the composition of the various limbs has become quite different since that time; they have undergone a great change, so that through their firmer substance the composition of the whole man has changed. Therefore, the horoscope can no longer be drawn up with absolute accuracy for the lower three members of man; only for the higher members, which relate to the spiritual in man.

If we want to counteract the hardening of these three limbs, which will increase more and more in the future, we must spiritualize our thinking habits, that is, allow ourselves to be filled with the truths of spiritual science, so that thinking about supersensible things makes our astral body freer again and we can connect with the divine through it.

However, it must be emphasized here that the main thing here is not to immerse ourselves in knowledge, in theory alone, for it is not the study of supersensible things that drives our astral body to connect with the divine; study should be a means to an end for us, for through it the sublimity and wisdom of the divinity should take hold of our innermost being so that our heart warms up and flows out into our life, into our deeds and into love for all beings. What good does it do us if we proclaim brotherly love in beautiful words; this does not lead us to spirituality, to the development of our soul. But if we fill our souls with theosophical teachings, we will practise brotherhood of our own accord, without talking about it. For it would cause a feeling of shame in us if we wanted to talk about it, as happens in many associations today.

If we look back to the time of the Greeks, we can really visualize the contrast that exists in the composition of today's man and the man of that time. At that time the human body was actually at the stage of its highest perfection; the care of it was therefore also one of the most important questions of life. The etheric body, the power body, permeated and dominated the physical [body] almost exclusively. The rounded forms, the regularity of the limbs were perfect in their beauty; the mind, the logical thinking, the intellect did not yet exert its influence over man in the same way as it does in our present century, because mankind placed the main emphasis on the cultivation of physical beauty, because the astral body had not yet penetrated matter to any great extent. That is why it was still more plastic, more capable of transformation, in other words, it was not yet so hardened, but softer than it is in the bodies of people today, whose compositions through the centuries and millennia have now become quite different. In the distant future, the development of mankind will again bring forth other human bodies; they will become more and more hardened, people will be born uglier.

However, the soul of man will be able to exert a greater force on the physical forms from within. The physiognomy, the gestures, the way of speaking, they will better express the soul in man externally; man's facial expression will become more characterful, more expressive, radiating the soulful. And humanity will also be able to achieve a longer life through the physicality being in a hardened state.

We can illustrate the latter with a small example. If we take a young tree bursting with green sap and expose it to different weather conditions, it is much more likely to be subjected to the rigors of changing temperatures than an old, dry tree with hardened bark. Today, science is already stating that the registers of mortality rates in recent decades have shown that human life expectancy is increasing. Following on from this, it could be mentioned that the reason why more women than men are attracted to the humanities is that their brains have remained softer, more adept at plastic transformation; they have not indulged in the scientific intellectual exercises and theory-building that the last century demanded of men.

If we take a look at art, we will again notice a difference in relation to what has just been said. For example, if we look at the various Madonnas from the different eras, we notice the great difference in both the external and internal rendering. Let us look at the Raphael and Murillo Madonnas: Here beauty radiates throughout the entire figure. On the other hand, let us place Holbein's Madonnas next to them: there we see the fullness of character, the piety, in their external and internal rendition, where the beauty recedes, but the interior becomes more outward.

The people of today's cultural epoch want to partially evoke the old Greek culture in their games, in their habits. They don't realize that the habits of ancient times cannot be transferred into our time; they no longer fit the composition of our bodies, they are not contemporary for us because our bodies have become different.

So everything in all of humanity is developing towards a certain goal. And so that we can save ourselves back to the spirit, we have been given the great, powerful cosmic current that we call the Christ impulse. The horoscope of the Christ cannot be determined by the laws of the stars either. He did not come when he should have come according to the stars in the heavens; for if he had come there, mankind would have received him blindly - everything would have proceeded according to prescribed laws. People would have received the Christ automatically, without any inner urge. But he came when mankind was a whole period of development further along, so much further along that it later sank deeper and deeper into matter; then he came at the time when people were able to make distinctions between good and evil through their own knowledge and experience as a result of Luciferian temptations. Then Christ broke through the prescribed laws: people were not to become automatons. They were to believe in him out of their own strength so that the spiritual world could be returned to them through faith in him. He should not have come later, because then it would no longer have been possible for people to pull themselves together. It would have been impossible for them to still believe in him. After all, those who believed in him were only a small group of people, those first Christians.

And this Christ should now continue to live and work in us, as Paul expresses it in his words: “Not I, but the Christ in me.” The more we fill ourselves with him, the more we will be able to unite ourselves with the spiritual and divine world through him.

They shine like stars
In the sky of eternal being<
The spirits sent by God.
May all human souls succeed
In the realm of becoming earth
To behold their flames of light.