The Nature of Man in the Light of Spiritual Science

GA 68d — 21 May 1908, Hamburg

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

Science speaks of heredity, but the word is far too crude to indicate the subtle, subtle differences. Theosophy or spiritual science only focuses on the laws that apply to humans, not to other living creatures, animals and plants. Why is there so much similarity between daughters and fathers, and between sons and mothers? Science does not have a proper answer to this. You have to go deep to find it. When you see a child develop gradually, you see the soul unfold. How much of that comes from the parents, and how much from other circumstances, and so on? Where do the details come from?

William [James], America, writes: Man does not weep because he is sad; he is sad because he weeps. Something in the human environment causes the tears to be pushed out of the lacrimal glands into the eyes and then fall down, and then the person is sad. — This is, of course, the opposite of the truth. The human body is built from the soul and spirit. What people develop as intellect, ability and feeling, and so on, results from what the human being has taken with them into the core of their being from all their previous lives. What comes from the parents is in the physical and etheric bodies; the core of our being points us back to what it has worked for in previous embodiments.

When a child is given to a couple as a gift, we must remember that a new individuality is not created there. This couple can give him the most suitable physical and etheric body, and that is why the essence of the child is drawn to them. This is how the past and the future come together.

Much of what you observe in a child can be seen in the father and mother. But there is still much that cannot be derived from heredity. The same hereditary conditions exist in several children of the same parents, and yet each has its own individuality.

We have to separate what a person has inherited physically and what he has acquired through his own efforts. Schiller, for example, inherited his nose, his walk, even his temperament; but his genius, that which makes Schiller into Schiller, he acquired through his own efforts in many lives.

Why is a particular core of being drawn to a particular pair of parents? Arthur Schopenhauer made an interesting observation. There is something individual in the sympathy of the love passion between man and woman, if we pay attention to the glances that go back and forth; there is something individual in the love process itself, which is as individual as what arises from this act of love.

The love life between man and woman provides the attraction for the new being. In the individual acts of love, very different feelings go back and forth. In the third, fourth, fifth year of marriage and so on, the fabric is woven for those who fit into the family.

In the Holbein family of painters, the talent for painting is inherited. You see how the talent is inherited, it is said. It is the same in the Bach and Bernoulli families. The musical ear is based on a subtle inner structure. The mathematical sense is not tied to a particular brain, but there are three semicircular canals in the ear, which is the organ for spatial perception. If these channels are particularly finely developed and trained, then there is a mathematical sense. A great talent is at the end of a developmental series. This does not prove the inheritance of talent; on the contrary: if it were at the beginning of such a series and were now inherited, this would prove the inheritance. But it does not, it is not inherited.

Carnegie: “The Gospel of Wealth”. It is useful for theosophists to read such books. If Theosophy is to become the powerful impulse it is meant to be, then we must show that we do not identify with the people at the “tea table”, but with people who are in the world and dealing with issues like Carnegie. We don't have to agree with him. Some doting fathers are too anxious to transfer supposed commercial qualities to the son in order to hand over the business to him. But many stoppages of payments are due to this, have occurred because the same abilities were not inherited. In business, you should not take people who, through biological inheritance, do not have the commercial skills; rather, you should hire people who may be without any talent, but who are endowed with the appropriate abilities.

Life demands the whole personality of the human being right now. In educating the child, we must respect the child's own individuality, let it develop freely, not in a stereotyped way according to supposed inheritance.