14. The Development of the German Soul

Now the spiritual researcher must bear in mind that what we encounter in human development as a whole, in the full human being, shows us that the external material, the physical, is always permeated, imbued with spiritual soul. But if one regards human development in the way that one is scientifically accustomed to today, then one grasps this development in such a way that one now actually only follows the events in the succession of time. One looks at an earlier state, a later state, again a later one and so on, and always imagines the later one emerging from the earlier one. That is how one regards development. But just as it would be wrong to look at the human organism in spatial terms, as one would a machine, in that one only considers the neighboring parts in relation to each other, so one must consider the human organism in such a way that there are, as it were, mysterious relationships between the most distant organs, which do not spatially neither do we, when we consider the whole human being in his fullness, consider what happens in the succession of time in such a way that things do not simply develop apart in the succession of time, but that what happens to the human being is intertwined in many ways. You will soon see what I mean. For the spiritual researcher, it is clear that in human development up to the change of teeth, the soul-spiritual, let us say, pushes out of its inner being – I cannot speak more specifically today due to the limited time – and, imbued, as it were, physiognomized, the material, the material. What is it exactly that pushes out as soul-spiritual during the period just mentioned?