Sixth Lecture

To reinforce this, I would like to mention one more thing. There are people we should certainly listen to, because they are saying the right thing from the point of view of the present. They say: In earlier times, people did not know what a criminal is, why a person develops as a criminal in the world. Today, however, we know. If you dissect the head of a criminal, you will find that it has a certain characteristic: the occipital lobe does not completely cover the cerebellum, as it does in normal people. It was a great and significant discovery made by Moritz Benedikt, the famous criminal anthropologist, which shows how a certain simple physiology of the occiput determines whether someone is a criminal. So consider: You are a criminal because the posterior lobe does not cover parts of the brain that should be covered! There is nothing to be said against this truth. It is there, and it would be quite foolish to rebel against it, because it is a truth. But think: If you are a materialist, what do you have to say? Well, some people are born with brain lobes that are too small; they are then predestined to become criminals. Consider – I need not elaborate further – the infinite bleakness of such a view of the world! Consider how all human feeling must be changed when one knows nothing but this, and when one must say to oneself: Why do people become criminals? Because that is how nature has placed them in life, so that they cannot help but become criminals. But if one begins to know that the human being has an etheric body, then one knows something else to say about the matter, one knows something else about it. One knows that this ether body encompasses all parts, and that in the case of a person who has a occipital lobe that is too short in the physical sense, the corresponding ether parts can still attain their full development. Whatever the physical condition may be, the correction can also be achieved with the ether body. If we succeed in having a form of education that draws on spiritual science as well as physical science, we can develop an insight into a child's behaviour that enables us to recognise what is needed for its education and what we need to provide so that the ether body develops in such a way that it counteracts the effect of the underdeveloped occipital lobes. Then a person can, even if their hindbrain is not normally formed in the etheric body, still become a good person, even if they are physically predestined to be a criminal. Here you can see how spiritual science can and must practically intervene in life. Because purely physical science must let the criminal brain be a criminal brain, because it is only a science of the physical. But if you take spiritual science into consideration, you paralyze the physical defects. From this you can see what must develop in the future.