Things in Past and Present in the Spirit of Man

GA 167/1916-04-25/p012 ·1916-04-25 · English LowLow alignmentMost translators re-paragraphed Steiner substantially. The locus identifies the same chapter or section, but paragraph-N to paragraph-N mapping is loose. For exact-quotation precision, compare with the German.

Now, just imagine what we have there, in the main, as a totality in us. We have all the instincts, all the different drives of the animals already in us. However, they are only placed into a total relationship through the fact that all of that has been united through the elasticity of our physical body. As physical man, we are human beings and we have received our physical configuration during our earth existence from the Spirits of Form. As physical man we hold all of that which is within us in check. Now, at times one drive comes to manifestation or if one particular part of the ether body achieves the upper hand another drive comes to manifestation. You see what a complicated manifoldness we human beings actually are, and how it is impossible, in the main to approach the human being and understand him with these things which one first sees in the external world. If you focus your attention on the physical body, you first see that the Spirits of Form work there. These Spirits of Form give man his form only during the earth period. The animals have received their inherited form from the ancient Moon Evolution. This animal form is therefore a Luciferically configurated form; it is a form which has remained behind from the ancient Moon Evolution. What was only of an etheric nature at that time today has hardened itself. However, man has received his external physical configuration from the Spirits of Form, but they work in a lesser way in his inner being. Thus these Spirits of Form work less upon the ether body than do the Archai, Archangels and Angels. These Beings work upon the ether body and have something to do with the directing of this manifoldness in the ether body of which I just spoke. When we enter more exactly into the spiritual scientific facts, then we must be clear, for example, that in this our ether body all those forces work which come from the Folk Soul. This national Folk Soul exists deeply in our unconscious. And there exists, in the main, deeper wisdom which as pictures have been imparted to mankind and which can be understood if one exerts the will to do so.

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Cite: GA 167/1916-04-25/p012 · edition English