Knowledge of Soul and Spirit

GA 56 — 9 January 1908, Berlin

Man, Woman, and Child in the Light of Spiritual Science

Notes from a participant

Spiritual science is not just a satisfaction of curiosity, or to put it more nobly, a satisfaction of the urge to research. It should also give people an impulse to live and act. Security and satisfaction in life, competence in action and in accomplishing our tasks should ultimately flow from what spiritual science offers us.

The child is, as it were, a living mystery before our eyes. Prejudices in many branches of life can sometimes still be corrected, but prejudices in the upbringing of children often have a pernicious effect and frequently cannot be remedied.

In the trinity of man, woman, and child, we see, in a certain sense, the whole of humanity. Much of what is inherited from man and woman is found in the child. This raises the question of heredity, which to a certain extent encompasses the mystery of fate. What has the child received from its ancestors? Consider, for example, the dramas of Ibsen. In art and science, the question of heredity is raised everywhere because its importance and practical significance are felt. However, we must not allow ourselves to be misled by the prejudices that are often suggested to us by the facts we encounter when observing lower organisms. One of the greatest mistakes in this field is to apply what observation and experiment show us in animals and plants, or what we know from history about our ancestors, to human beings today without further ado. Spiritual science recognizes what science understands as heredity, but it rises from these facts to higher ones, which are only revealed to us from the aspects of the spiritual world. There is an increase in terms of regularity. A fundamental law prevails throughout nature, through the physical and the spiritual. But with our insights into the laws in lower realms, we must ascend to laws that apply in higher realms. We must absolutely accomplish this ascent.

What does heredity transform into in higher realms? The answer to this question will inspire us with respect for the developing human being. There is a tremendous difference between lower living beings and humans. The fundamental difference between humans and other living beings lies in the following: everything that interests us about animals is included in the concept of genus or species. We do not have the same respect for the individual in animals as we do for humans. The description of a lion is the description of the species of lions. Here, the generic aspect prevails. In humans, on the other hand, individuality prevails. Therefore, a biography is possible for every human being, even the simplest human being. This fact conceals a great deal, above all that the human being is a genus, a species in itself in every single individual. Something dwells in the human being that is equivalent to an entire animal species.

This gives us the law of the reincarnation of the soul or reincarnation. The human individual is completely incomprehensible to us from the perspective of their ancestors. External characteristics can, of course, be traced back to ancestors, but not what belongs to the very essence of a human individual. Nor can we derive the species individuality of any animal from the characteristics of its ancestors.

The causes for the emergence of a living being must always arise from something that is alive. A few centuries ago, people still believed in spontaneous generation, for example that living animals could arise from river mud. The human soul is not glued together from all kinds of characteristics, any more than a worm is made up of certain inorganic substances, as was believed at the time. The soul always goes back to the soul; and the soul that dwells in a human being today goes back to a previous soul existence. It is a reincarnation, but it is not a conglomerate of characteristics from the paternal and maternal sides. This necessarily results in the law of reincarnation. From this point of view, let us consider man, woman, and child.

What appears to be the deeper foundation, the individuality of the child, is that which integrates itself as a soul into the physical body after having lived on in another existence. Man and woman merely have to provide the child with a shell. This in no way diminishes the love of mother and father. The individuality of a human being is already there long before the act of procreation by the parents. A kind of unconscious love leads the child to these particular parents and causes them to conceive. In return, the two parents give the child their parental love.

For certain living beings, death and love are intertwined. Some animals die after mating. Such creatures give us a deep insight into the connection between living beings in the universe and also into the fact of love. For humans, love is something through which they devote their individual existence to the whole of being. It is not just a clichéd thing of poetry, but a force that pervades the whole of nature. Love is the opposite of selfishness. In love, the individual transcends itself, as it were. In more perfect beings, it is an actual enhancement of life.

The most individual being is the human being. The meaning of the individual and love can only be fully understood by considering the nature of the human being as presented to us by Spiritual Science. According to Spiritual Science, the physical body is only a garment of the whole human existence. Humans share the etheric body with animals and plants. The astral body, which animals also have, encompasses everything spiritual, from the lowest instincts to the highest moral ideas.

However, only humans possess the power of the ego, which is why they can be considered the crown of creation. That personality felt the depth of the word “I” who said: “I am what is, was, and will be.” True self-knowledge is the highest form of knowledge in existence. Behind the “veiled image at Sais” stands self-knowledge. “No mortal has yet lifted my veil!” True self-knowledge is only possible for those

power in human beings that is immortal! Only the supersensible in human beings recognizes the immortal. So what is mortal in us does not lift the veil of the goddess.

A German Romantic boldly said: If no mortal lifts the veil of Isis, then we must become immortal!

The physical body develops until the child's first teeth change. Of course, the human being continues to grow, but this growth is only an enlargement of the form, an expansion of the shape that it has acquired by the age of seven. This is an important regulator for education. Until this time, the physical form of the child should be developed first. If this is not done, something has been neglected for the whole life of the person concerned. In the second period, up to puberty, the etheric body develops. Of course, it was not inactive before this time. It is just that until the teeth change, the etheric body is enclosed in a kind of mother's shell. Only from this time on does it become free and able to unfold. At sexual maturity, the development of the etheric body reaches its conclusion, and from now on the development of the astral body becomes free. Even later, the actual formation of the ego begins.

A different picture therefore emerges for the hereditary process of the physical body, another for the etheric body, and yet another for the astral body.

What humans inherit from their ancestors is contained in the physical and etheric bodies. These inherited characteristics become fully visible by the time of sexual maturity. But then the development of the individuality of the human being begins, and this is expressed in love. Certain animal species die during the act of love because their essence ceases and their individual existence comes to an end. The higher the individuality of a being, the more it takes with it beyond sexual maturity as something imperishable. In reality, of course, there are many transitions.

existence comes to an end. The higher the individuality of a being, the more it carries over beyond sexual maturity as something imperishable. In reality, of course, there are many transitions. In this way, human beings save their inner life beyond the merely generic.

A comparison between humans and stones may help us understand this best: in crystals, the external forces that formed them come to an end. They do not imprint anything of value on the interior of the stone. In plants, the essential thing is not an enlargement of form, but only a kind of repetition of the principle of form, as Goethe described. What humans have acquired in earlier stages is now shown as the effect of their ego. Just as plants seek and obtain their materials from the soil to build their bodies, so young people seek the soil from their parents to build their physical bodies.

Here, the mental images of secret science directly influence the will, the feelings, and life itself. We must respect the right of childlike individuality in the deepest sense. People feel differently toward the next generation when they see things in this light.

Natural science says: Through the male principle, a number of characteristics are transferred to the germ, as are those from the female part, the egg cell. Both groups of characteristics must mix in the germ. This prevents the eternal recurrence of the same characteristics. That is the reason for the mixing of the characteristics of the male and female parts of the germ. This is the essence of what is important in the economy of nature.

When it comes to the soul, however, our natural science is the most superstitious there can be. This is also expressed in a brilliant flash of insight by Schopenhauer: that which wants to come into being brings together the human sexual individualities in love. Ultimately, this is also what Spiritual Science teaches. People are brought together for procreation by the generations of the future. If we consider each child in this way, we have no right to impose our own peculiarities on them. The right educator can only promote the child's development to the extent that they themselves have learned this. The child is the educator's greatest teacher.

If the educator thoroughly solves this riddle in the child, then he is the best educator. Those who permeate such views with their whole soul transform them into respect for the child's essence and awaken reverence for what is growing and becoming. The whole future generation. We adults are something like a mother soil for the future generation, from which it develops. We must give the child what it needs to live, but we must not force it to conform to our own image; rather, we must allow it freedom in its development and respect that freedom. Respecting this freedom in the nascent being is a much more important mission for human beings than respecting the freedom of what already exists. Spiritual Science is a true educator for this respect and reverence. It shows us the supersensible and the facts that, since time immemorial, spiritual beings have been active in building the world and thus helping humanity. The knowledge of yesterday enables us to find satisfactory solutions for the present as well. Our work in the present must respect the freedom of the developing supersensible. Freedom of the supersensible in the sensible should be our motto! In this way, we help humanity advance into a future that is beneficial for us and, as it were, represents a state of divinity. Once our eyes are opened to the supersensible in the present, the past becomes understandable to us, and we can learn from it what is useful and feasible for the future.

If yesterday is clear and open to you,
You will act powerfully and freely today,
And you can also hope for a tomorrow
That will be no less happy.