The Nature of Man in the Light of Spiritual Science

GA 68d — 19 March 1908, Munich

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

Nowhere in life is there a greater need for a spiritual understanding of existence than in the face of a growing child, for anyone who has an open mind. For even if it is of infinite importance for all life and being to see through the world of the senses to the spiritual foundations of existence, it appears to be something quite special to help the still hidden spirit to its full free existence in relation to the growing child, regardless of the relationship we have with him. The child stands before us, enveloped in the material existence of his future. We know that this future is to be brought out of the material, we know that out of the material the spirit is to unfold, we are faced with the task of nurturing and caring for the spirit within the outer appearance of the senses. And if material knowledge can lead us into error with regard to our world view, we know that we will actually stray from our path when it comes to our duty to save humanity if we have no sense of the hidden spirit of the growing child. Spiritual science enables us to free the spirit from material shells.

Earlier I was allowed to speak about education, today we should be more concerned with what the child is. We should be concerned with what the child's relationship is to his future, to a full, human existence. For from such knowledge we will learn how to properly support the growing child.

It is an important question: how should we relate to the child in the past if we want to find the right path for future development?

In today's world, which is steeped in material ideas, heredity and descent play a major role. If we have an intuitive sense of how the child's qualities are passed on, first to the parents and then to the ancestors, we understand how scientific thinking about heredity has blossomed magnificently. But spiritual science will show that we cannot get by with this in relation to the important relationship between man, woman and child. Those who have the task of educating the child see how the talents and abilities, what we summarize as individual, prove to be a new mystery. Those who take their task seriously feel like a new puzzle solver in the face of each individual child's individuality.

Heredity and individuality are part of our subject. Heredity is something that has grown out of contemporary scientific ideas. These are based much less on comprehensive observation of human life than on the nature of plants and animals. Not a single word of criticism is to be said against the positive achievements of scientific research in this field. Much remains to be done in this area. But research is insufficient with regard to the human being. If one observes the individual characteristics of the human being, and first of all the purely physical ones, inherited like those of animals, one falls into abstractions. One arrives at poor concepts for the human being, whereas one arrives at extremely fruitful concepts for the animalistic. We must bear in mind the tremendous difference between humans and animals, that the concepts gained in the lower realms are not sufficient for human life. In the case of humans, we have four elements of their being and so on. The human soul and what flows from the I is independent of the two elements of physical and etheric body. If we consider that in the plant kingdom we are only dealing with the physical and etheric bodies, and in the animal kingdom with these and the astral body, that the astral body is completely devoted to the physical body, while in humans the astral body is influenced by the ego, then we will understand that we cannot transfer the concepts from the other kingdoms to humans.

There is a very simple train of thought to make this clear. The great difference between humans and animals, if we disregard everything occult, appears to us through purely logical consideration. In the case of animals, our interest is equally divided between grandfather, father, son and grandson, and what mainly interests us is the generic. Our interest in the individuality is far below our interest in the species. The species aspect far outweighs the individual. That is why animals have no biography. Only humans have a biography because, in the case of humans, the sentence applies that, in certain respects, they are their own species. Just as we are strongly interested in the species in the case of animals, we must be just as interested in the individual in the case of humans. Some dog owners will say that humans differ from animals only in degrees, and that anyone who observes an animal could also write a biography of their dog. Of course, there are transfers from one to the other. You can also write the biography of a steel spring. But in the true sense, only humans have one, and even the most insignificant ones.

Something else is connected with the fact of the biography. We see how the animal is born and has reached perfection shortly after birth, how it performs certain actions because these actions are related to heredity. Because humans are individuals, we see that we are justified in bringing out the very individuality in each person through education, which corresponds to the development of the animal, which passes through the species.

This leads us to the spiritual-scientific fact that the animal has only three bodies and the human being has the fourth in addition. When we see that movements and impulses, joy and pain, emanate from the animal body, we say that the astral body is connected to the lower bodies and receives their peculiarities through inheritance. This is shown by the similarity of the physiognomy and the individual limbs. The etheric body is the shaper of the images of the physical body. Both receive their structure through their descent.

Because the human being is an individuality, and thus has an underlying ego, the impulses of the ego express themselves in the astral body. When the astral body has inner impulses, there are things in the human being that cannot be understood if one assumes mere inheritance. Objections can easily be raised from the point of view of observation (the Bach and Bernoulli families).

Such things appear as if human inheritance existed, but in a more spiritualized, higher form than in plants and animals. One goes further and shows that in such a case the significant genius can be traced backwards. The genius is a summation of the qualities of his ancestors. — A strange conclusion, because this last genius is not inherited. From one logic, one should not be particularly surprised that a descendant, even if he is a genius, shows certain characteristics of his ancestors; but it is actually only a matter of having a correct understanding of this inheritance. With a plant, one will not be particularly surprised if it turns out differently in different soils.

But no one doubts that it was not the soil that made the plant, but the seed that was planted in the soil. So there is no need to be surprised when you come back wet from the water. To want to prove inheritance by the fact that genius appears at the end of a generation is proof that it does not continue to be inherited. People do not notice the illogicality.

We only see what we want to see. For the educator who stands before the developing child, there is no need for proof that something very individual is released from within, in addition to the inherited traits. When we see this individuality being released, we have to ask ourselves: where does this individuality come from? Materialism has a superstitious chapter on this in its findings. Here, materialism goes against all its assumptions. It would not have been a miracle if 300 years ago it had been said that the individual comes out of nothing, out of the sum of the ancestral line. 300 years ago, people believed that fish could form out of mud. Then an Italian naturalist said: “The living cannot arise from the seemingly dead.” Today, all of natural science shares Haeckel's belief that ‘the living can only arise from the living.’ But when Redi expressed this, it was considered heresy, and he only narrowly escaped the fate of Giordano Bruno.

Today it is no longer fashionable to burn such heretics; they are seen as backward people. Materialism does not burn, it uses other inquisitorial means. For spiritual science, the following applies: spiritual can only arise from spiritual. No combination of physical causes can explain the individual without appealing to a miracle. The materialist is superstitious when it comes to the spiritual. Spiritual science is firmly grounded in the fact that spiritual arises from spiritual. We trace individuality back to spiritual.

Here we are confronted with the comprehensive law that spiritual science presents us with. What appears to us as a species in the lower ranks appears to us in relation to humans as repeated lives on earth. What a person acquires in this life is the basis for their development in the following lives. Thus we see true individuality permeating many earthly lives as a spiritual unity. If we put the whole human individual together, we find that the physical and etheric bodies lie in the line of inheritance, but that the I and the astral body can be traced back to earlier earth lives and the spiritual. If we bring this before our spiritual eyes, it can give us a satisfactory explanation for the fact that the human being standing before us as a child appears to us as a combination of inheritance and embodiments.

How do we explain such phenomena of inheritance? We have to admit that the child was there long before the physical characteristics that can be inherited could be thought of. Just as there is attraction and repulsion in the physical life, there is this force between the sheaths given by man and woman.

A child is not drawn to every pair of parents, but to where it fits. Much finer characteristics than the face are inherited, but these are precisely what attract the individual. Man has not only the outer but also the inner physiognomy. The child must be driven by the bond of attraction to that embodiment which the outer instruments give to his talents. The incarnating human individuality chooses its parents. The organ of mathematical thinking is not the brain, but the three semicircular canals in the ear, which are perpendicular to each other in the three directions of space and which, when injured, impair the sense of orientation. Painting is based on the very specific structure of the eye.

There is no contradiction between heredity and re-embodiment. Men and women only inherit the physical. The child is born into a pair of parents, as it is born out of them. We see the plant absorbing the characteristic features of the soil. The child springs forth from the soil of its descent and displays everything that is in the father and mother. We also see the individual germinal, which is only sunk into this soil as a true individuality, which is a closed entity, going through various incarnations. We remember Schopenhauer: by man and woman seeking each other, the offspring are already at work.

He often had penetrating flashes of inspiration that are extremely apt, but which are only fully understood when illuminated by spiritual science. The will of the developing life already lies in the individuality of love between man and woman, and in the looks with which the lovers meet, lies the child striving into existence. But spiritual science only illuminates it in the right way. What do we see in the individuality, in the I and the astral body? What is it that plays a part in the love between man and woman, that constitutes the feeling of pleasure in each individual case? The reflex, the mirror image of the individuality that wants to enter into life. The descending individuality announces itself in feeling. The feeling of love is given to the child's individuality by father and mother.

Such things cannot be proved, but they are true for those who feel and see through to the truth. There is no proof for the law of reincarnation, it must be an experience of the inner life. In the feelings between man and woman we see the descending individuality flooding in. The child foreshadows the man and the woman. Love and desire are only emanations of the astral. The physical and etheric bodies of man and woman compose the child. The child stimulates the astral body between man and woman, and the result is the play of love sensations.

Now some may say: How can you come to terms with the actual mother and father feeling? They arise again in their child. The love that exists between parents and children appears in a higher splendor. From the child's side it played before conception. The child was drawn to its still spiritualized love, which played before the first atom of the physical came into being. The child loves the parents it seeks out, and its love casts a shadow into the act of love. Love appears to us even more refined, spiritualized.

When we look at things this way, the inheritance system becomes much more understandable. If there is feminine in the man and masculine in the woman, then we will understand that the qualities of the daughters come from the father and those of the sons from the mother. People who have a particularly strong soul often get it from their mother. We have four characteristics, from which a great combination of characteristics arises. We will not say such strange things: we need not be surprised that women now have these or those characteristics. These people always forget that women also had a father. It puts a spiritual and physical aspect in a completely different light. There must be an important consequence when we take this awareness into life. We will not only look at physical inheritance, but at individuality, which must be sacred to us, something we must redeem from its shells. Such an outlook will transform itself into a completely different and higher respect and appreciation of the enigmatic individuality, which is to be unravelled. We will not only learn to respect the freedom of adults, but also of children's individuality. Spiritual science leads us to feelings, sensations and practical creativity in the face of life's tasks. Spiritual science sees the creative spirit behind the physical, sees matter as the effect of past spirituality.

Spiritual science sees the spirit, which is still veiled, shaping itself into the future as its helper. Our knowledge leads us into the spiritual creation of the past. This leads us to an appreciation of the evolving entities. Only by respecting the freedom of the developing human being can we ensure human progress into the future. With many a sentence, Goethe captured the great circumstances that are repeated in everyday life. We look back into the past and see the creative spirit. The great yesterday of the world becomes apparent to us through knowledge, and in this way we attain respect and appreciation for the spirit that first wants to become.

If yesterday is clear and open to you,
you will be strong in today,
so you can hope for tomorrow,
which will be no less happy.