Ninth Lecture

What I have just said has a very significant consequence. It has the consequence that everything we call nature has a completely different character than everything we have to regard as a certain part of the human being itself. For example, Ahriman also works in nature outside, or rather the Ahrimanic powers work; but the Ahrimanic powers never work in nature outside at the present time. If you look at nature as a whole, Ahriman is at work in nature, but he is working from a distant time. Ahriman works from the past. And whether you look at the mineral, the vegetable or the animal kingdom, you must never say that there is something in what is currently unfolding before your eyes in which Ahriman is active. And yet Ahriman is active in it; but from the past. If I were to describe the matter, I would have to say: Here is the line of development from the past into the future, and here you survey nature.