# Supplements to Member Lectures

## GA 246 — 14 February 1911, Munich

### 38. On Inheritance

What, for example, causes so much confusion about the concept of heredity? Is the occurrence of the same characteristics useful for grasping the concept of inheritance? No, it cannot be grasped in this way!

Salt, for example, is placed in lukewarm liquid; it dissolves in it; we let it crystallize again and we get a salt cube just like it. And yet it would never occur to anyone to say that this cube of rock salt has “inherited” the properties of the first cube! It is merely the appearance of the same shape. The rock salt cube has no inherited characteristics. - But people live in this illusion.

A truly correct concept of heredity can only emerge if we consider what is not heredity and take into account the findings of spiritual science.

We are talking about the human physical body. It differs from the animal world in terms of form. This form of the human physical body is nothing physical, for it is a supersensible law that is imprinted on the physical body. But the physical human form, which has passed through Saturn, the sun and the moon, is permeated by the astral body and the ego.

Physical and etheric bodies are not at all to be subsumed under the usual concepts of heredity; rather: Inherited is only that which the astral body and the ego have imprinted during the moon and earth development.

Imagine Saturn; there were gods who - let us say - took a lump of wax and formed it into the physical body; the sun gods transformed it again; the moon gods transformed it again; and through the ego it is transformed once more. - Thus the physical form is transformed three times.

Only the latter - the moon and earth transformations - are hereditary. The others are forms that originate from Saturn and the sun. They are to be regarded in the same sense as the crystal forms, of which one cannot speak of heredity either, but of the fact that they arise through certain world laws, which are all present as in the salt crystal; thus they cannot be inherited. Inheritance is only that which is changed in the forms of the physical body through the impressions of the astral body and the ego. - Not everything that the physical body carries is inheritable, but only that which is imprinted on it in its form.

Yes, what concept do we come to then? We come to a concept that is fixed in occultism, but which today's natural science will abhor. We come to recognize that only that which comes from the father and mother through heredity, that which comes from the astral body and the ego as qualities, and which are imprinted into the physical body and also into the etheric body. On the other hand, nothing is inherited from certain original qualities of the physical body.

Yes, what happens that these come about? Something very peculiar happens. They have nothing at all to do with any physical mixing of human beings, but are transferred directly from the cosmos to the maternal organism as a law of the world; it has nothing at all to do with the relationship of the sexes. There are qualities of the physical and etheric body in the human being which are not based on any mixing of the sexes, but which flow into the maternal body, as it were, when the opportunity is given, and they enforce what the human being is to become by means of these forces. This is based on an influence of the gods from the cosmos, on a conceptio immaculata, on a virginal procreation, namely the basic relationships of the human form and human organ relationships.

We have in man only a cosmic origin in relation to his physical and etheric body; and then a generational origin in relation to that which lives in the physical and etheric body through the astral body and the ego.

Through the astral body everything is formed that is connected with the races. But the general human form, which makes Negroes, Europeans and all human beings, is born out of the cosmos and has nothing to do with heredity. On Saturn and the sun, the general human character was pronounced in the archetypes; one cannot speak of races there; that would be sheer nonsense!

Now there is something else. Certain higher qualities of human nature are also not hereditary (only the middle ones are hereditary). The qualities of pure thinking, spiritual cognition and mystical deepening cannot be inherited through the generations; there is no such thing; they are no more transmissible through the line of descendants than the qualities of the physical body.

So that the human being breaks down into qualities out of the cosmos, then qualities that stand in the middle and come out in certain blood qualities and in certain life qualities of the etheric body, but which derive from the astral body and the ego. The highest qualities that we derive as a thinking person and as a spiritually cognizing person and as a mystically deepening person, which rise to a certain spirituality - these are not hereditary. They have to come from somewhere else, but they need physical tools. As soon as we come into existence through birth, we are bound to the physical instrument: the physical and the etheric body must become tools for the qualities of pure thinking, spiritual cognition and mystical deepening. The physical tools that man needs for these highest qualities [cannot] be inherited.

Where do the outer tools come from? The inner activity of the soul clings to the remembering human core; but the tools are only there in the spiritual world and must be attached to it.

Where do they come from? Again, they come directly from the macrocosm and have nothing to do with a succession of generations. Where do they come from? They come in a roundabout way through the father, who actually receives the corresponding macrocosmic influence, precisely for these higher forces, in that they are actually magnetically attracted by the father and only have a spiritual effect on the child. So that we can say: We have before us in the human being a maternal part, which contains only qualities in which we can speak of heredity, and a part of high, macrocosmic qualities which come in a roundabout way through the mother. And then there are the qualities that make it possible to activate the three qualities mentioned and that come indirectly through the father, which in turn have nothing to do with any mixing of the sexes. This is a purely spiritual process.

When the human being prepares to embody himself, he first surrounds himself spiritually with those forces that magnetically attract the tools that give expression to thought. They have an effect on the father; this is a spiritual process and has nothing to do with heredity; it is transmitted directly from the macrocosm. Only the middle in man has anything to do with heredity. Mental images are not transmitted; what can be transmitted are physical forms, nose, ears, fingers and so on; but never direct ideas.

[Gap in the text base]

There I am telling you certain things from occult research, which of course contradict scientific research. And there will be enough people who will say that it is impertinent to even say such things. - But what do the facts say?

There is the famous dispute between Haeckel and Professor His in Leipzig, a whole literature already exists about this dispute [gap in the text].

Forced by the facts, His explains, something arises in man through virgin conception. He has come to say, through factual research, that the human germ is first formed in the head. The other is a kind of appendix and could be related quite well to the basic biogenetic law.

Haeckel's basic biogenetic law is correct with regard to the appendix. This only develops later, in that the forces are drawn from the macrocosm in a roundabout way through the mother.

O, just study the zoology books - as far as they bring facts, they are good and quite correct; occultism and the drawings of external research agree; but what this research says about it, the theories about it, can only be understood by people who have been deprived of the habit of thinking. Mankind is full of prejudices, and so the concept of heredity is also a concept that is not useful. - You inherit the symptoms of a disease, not what is in the ascending line.

If we wanted to talk about these things in public now, it would be fruitless, we would be talking past the point of understanding. We can only hope for a careful development of humanity; then things will get better!

We must spread Theosophy everywhere. Our task must be to permeate the whole of life with spiritual-scientific thoughts.

From the second part of the lecture in which Dr. Steiner spoke about art:

Art- a down payment from the spiritual world.- A bond towards the spiritual world. Art builds a bridge from the spiritual world.

The temple buildings of the Greeks, the pyramids of the Egyptians - all of this emerged from ancient clairvoyance. The temple form of the Persians ... a person lying on the ground with outstretched arms, wanting to rise up ... then the cherubim and above them the triangular shape. - There are many secrets hidden there.

Doctor Steiner then spoke about music - especially the music of Richard Wagner, who instinctively grasped the right music and, out of an eminently correct, instinctive feeling, took his figures not from the earth, but symbolic figures from mythology. Richard Wagner touched the heart of the cosmos with his music, he touched the heart of the cosmos with his music.

*Further explanations*:

In the further remarks, it was indicated in a very delicate, tactful but clear way that we are still far from having the right understanding of our great task - namely to build Rosicrucian temples. If we were to face this task with the right inner attitude, we would also receive the help of the spiritual powers. But as long as we are so indifferent and uncomprehending towards this matter - lacking trust in the occult powers - nothing can happen.