The Mission of the Individual Folk Souls
GA 121
10 June 1910, Oslo
4. The Evolution of Races and Civilization
If we wish to understand the relationship of the races of mankind to one another and the origins of the individual folk communities, we must realize that man as we know him today is a highly complex being and that his present form and inner being could only have arisen through the cooperation of countless numbers of cosmic Beings. From the study of the ‘Akashic Record’ and other observations on the evolution of man we know that in prehistoric times our Earth, before reaching its present condition, had to pass through three conditions, in the course of which the three so-called members or vehicles of man, the physical body, the etheric body and the astral body were prefigured, gradually realized and developed until they reached their present state. It is only during his present Earth incarnation that man has been able to develop a fourth member, an ego. These four members testify to the activity of the spiritual Beings during the three or four incarnations of our Earth—Old Saturn, Old Sun, Old Moon and the Earth period itself up to the present moment. If you will call to mind all the Beings who worked together during those incarnations, the Spirits of Will or Thrones, the Spirits of Wisdom, of Movement, of Form, of Personality, the Archangels down to the Angels—and above the Thrones, the Cherubim and Seraphim—it is clear that man's present organization could only have been created through a complex interplay of spiritual forces. We have seen that not only was the cooperation of many Beings and nature-forces in the Cosmos a necessity, but that for the creation of man it was also necessary that at certain epochs, certain Beings should renounce the normal course of their evolution and remain behind in order to be able to participate in the organization of man in a way that would have been impossible in the normal course of their evolution.
And so when we seek to understand man as he is today, we find a richly varied and much patterned fabric. Only when we examine this fabric closely and watch the activity of the several Beings do we begin to understand how man first came into existence through the cooperation of these Beings. The chief Being who is of importance for contemporary man is the one who has gradually made ego-consciousness possible. The opportunity to develop ego-consciousness was first provided by the Spirits of Form, the Beings whom we call Powers or Exusiai. If we follow the activity of these Beings alone and ask ourselves how man would fare if the normal Spirits alone were predominantly active in him, we shall find that they are the donors of the ego-organization. And this implies that their chief interest is to further man's ego-development, which can only be realized in the man of today at a certain age.
If you recall the teachings of Spiritual Science on the subject of the education of the child you will know that in the first seven-year period of life, between birth and the change of teeth, man develops principally the physical body. The Spirits of Form have no particular interest in the development of the physical body since this is really a recapitulation of what man underwent on Old Saturn (which has often been repeated) and which from the last physical birth up to the age of seven has for the time being been recapitulated in a particular way for the last time. The second seven-years period of life from the ages of seven to fourteen, the age of puberty) is also a period which holds little interest for the Spirits of Form since it is a recapitulation of what man underwent on Old Sun. In reality the Spirits of Form only wished to embark on their chief activity, the bestowal of an ego, during man's life on Earth. The third seven-year period covers the years between fifteen and twenty-one. During this period man recapitulates the development of the astral body that normally belongs to the Old Moon epoch. And again the normal Spirits of Form show no interest. The three life-periods, then, that precede the actual birth of the ego at the age of twenty approximately, have no immediate appeal. The Spirits of Form only intervene on their own initiative at the age of twenty approximately. On reflection, therefore, you will not be surprised to learn that the Spirits of Form intended, in fact, that man should incarnate only at the normal developmental stage of twenty or thereabouts.
In the eyes of these Spirits of Form all that has been developed in man hitherto is, in reality, a kind of embryonic state, a sort of germinal condition. And if I may speak somewhat figuratively I might say that the Spirits of Form who have developed normally would far prefer it if things proceeded with almost clock-work regularity, if hitherto no-one encroached upon their province. If these Spirits of Form had free rein until man's twentieth year, then in the first seven years of his life man would have the consciousness pertaining to the physical body, namely, the very dim consciousness of the mineral kingdom. In the second seven years, between the ages of seven and fourteen, he would have a sleep-consciousness. From the fourteenth to the twentieth year he would be very active inwardly, but would live in a kind of dreamlike consciousness of the Old Moon evolution. Not until the age of twenty-one approximately would he awaken to ego-consciousness. If he followed the normal course of development therefore he would only awaken to ego-consciousness at that age and perceive the external world in the form that is familiar to us today.
If we only take into account the activity of the Spirits of Form it is clear that man attains his present-day consciousness much too early. Now in modern man this consciousness, as you know, awakens to some extent soon after birth. He would not develop a clear and distinct perception of the external world if other Spirits, in reality Spirits of Movement, had not remained behind and renounced the development of certain capacities which they could otherwise have acquired up to the time of the Earth-evolution, so that they could intervene in man's development in a particular way during this present Earth-evolution. Because their evolution followed a different path they are in a position to bestow upon man prematurely that which he ought to acquire only in his twentieth year approximately. These are spiritual Beings who renounced the possibility of continuing their evolution normally up to the stage of their Earth-evolution Beings who might have been Spirits of Movement during the Earth-evolution, but who remained at the stage of the Spirits of Form and are now active in the Earth-evolution as Spirits of Form. Thus they are able, during the Earth-evolution, to bestow upon man, who is by no means mature enough to receive it and has much to redeem from an earlier epoch, the ego-consciousness that would normally be his only around the age of twenty. Hence the abnormal Spirits of Form endow man with capacities which otherwise he would have received about his twentieth year only.
The consequences are highly significant. Let us assume for a moment that evolution had followed its normal course. If these abnormal Spirits had not intervened, man would have incarnated on the physical plane in the condition which is natural to him at the age of twenty approximately and would have to go through a totally different embryonic development. Indeed through these abnormal Spirits of Form, man's development from birth to the age of twenty, that is, for about the first third of his life, is subject to the forces of the external world. The first third of our Earth-life therefore is not controlled by spiritual Beings who determine Earth conditions, but by other abnormal spiritual Beings. And because these abnormal Beings participate in evolution, we do not possess therefore the form that we should have if we had incarnated in the condition natural to us at the age of twenty. To compensate for this man must spend the first third of his life (up to the age of twenty) under the powerful influence of these abnormal Beings. In the course of his whole development man is subject to the influence of these abnormal Beings. And the penalty he has to pay for this is that after the middle third of life which is under the influence of normal Spirits of Form only, a progressive decline sets in and the etheric and astral organizations begin to disintegrate. Life therefore is divided into three periods or thirds—an ascending third, a middle third and a descending third. It is only in the middle third that man is a fully integrated person in his Earth-life. In the last third of his life man has to give back what he received during the first, the ascending third; he must repay the debt in kind.
If man had been wholly subject to the influence of the normal Spirits of Form all that he experiences today up to the twentieth year would take on a different complexion, a totally different form. The situation would have been totally different, so that everything associated with the development of man during the first of his three life-periods is fundamentally an anticipation of much that belongs to the later epochs. In consequence, up to the second life-period man has become a more material being than he would otherwise have been. He would have experienced up to this time purely spiritual conditions and would have incarnated on Earth only at that period of his development which he undergoes in his twentieth or twenty-first year when he would find himself Earth-bound. We learn from Spiritual Science that if his development had proceeded in this way man would have incarnated only in the condition which he now attains in his twentieth or twenty-first year. He would not have been able to go through the preceding conditions on Earth; he would have been obliged to go through them in the spiritual spheres surrounding the Earth.
The whole course of human development through childhood and adolescence should now be clear to you. If the line BC represents life on Earth between twenty and forty, it would have been the intention of the Spirits of Form that man should incarnate only at B (the age of twenty to twenty-one). Having come down to Earth at this age he would have left it again after his fortieth year (at C) and have spent the last third of his life in a spiritualized state. Through the abnormal Beings man was forced to descend upon the Earth at A and begin his life cycle. That is the secret of our existence. Thus it is only in the middle third of life that we are wholly under the influence of these Beings who actually control us; the periods of our maturity and decline are subject to entirely different Beings who in one way or another have renounced their normal development.
If man had lived through the first and last thirds of his life in the spiritual sphere surrounding the Earth and had incarnated only during the second third, thereby becoming a totally different being, he would not have become Earth-bound to the extent that he is today. If man's development had followed this course, then all those incarnating on Earth would be alike in (physical) form and inner being, they would be standardized. Only a single, uniform humanity would exist. That which determines the racial types with their specific characteristics is unrelated to the middle third of life. Through the circumstances of the earlier years, through the influences of the first third of life, we, with all our forces, are more Earth-bound than the normal Spirits of Form had intended. In consequence man has become more dependent upon the Earth than he would otherwise have been; he has become dependent on the locality where he lives. Because of his premature incarnation—in opposition to the intentions of the Spirits of Form, so to speak—he becomes dependent upon the locality of his birth, he unites with his physical environment in a condition which is not designed for him. It would have been of no consequence whether he had incarnated in the middle third of his life or whether he had been born in the north, south, east or west. But because he has become dependent on his environment, because his youth is lived in the way I have described, he becomes Earth-bound, he becomes closely associated with, and an integral part of the geographical area where he was born. He cannot escape the environmental conditions of that locality—the incidence of the sun's rays, the proximity of the region to the Equator or to a more temperate zone, whether he is born in the lowlands or on a high plateau. The rate of respiration in the plains is different from that in the mountains. Man therefore becomes wholly dependent upon the environmental conditions of his birthplace. He becomes wholly identified with his native soil through his close association with the locality of his birth. He is moulded by those attributes which he thus receives because these etheric formative forces of the Earth associated with the particular locality where he is born are active in him. All these factors determine his racial character, and the abnormal Spirits of Form, those Spirits or Powers who are responsible for our present consciousness—not between the ages of twenty-one and twenty-three but at some other time—are indirectly the source of the racial differences in mankind everywhere, for these differences depend upon the particular locality where a man is born.
During the first third of life when, in effect, he is under the dominion of the abnormal Spirits of Form, man reaches sexual maturity and develops his capacity for reproduction. His reproductive capacity is acquired during the period when he is not wholly under the direction of the normal Spirits of Form. It is possible therefore that a man is not only dependent on the locality of his birth, but that the characteristics thus acquired may also be inherited by his descendants. Thus racial homogeneity is reflected not only in the influence of the habitat, but also in the racial inheritance. This explains why racial characteristics can be inherited and why, as we shall learn from Spiritual Science, it was only in the past that racial characteristics were determined by the locality where man was born. In the latter part of the Lemurian epoch and in the early Atlantean epoch, for example, man was directly dependent upon his physical environment. In later times race was no longer associated with locality, but was bound up with heredity. In race therefore we see something that was originally associated with a particular geographical region, was later passed on via inheritance, but became increasingly independent of a particular locality.
The period of evolution when one can justifiably speak of the idea of race will be clear to you from what I have just said. One cannot speak of race in the true sense of the term before the Lemurian epoch, for only then did man incarnate on Earth. Before that time he lived in the spiritual environment of the Earth. He then incarnated and racial characteristics were hereditary from the beginning of the Atlantean epoch up to our post-Atlantean epoch. We shall learn later how, in our own time, the national characteristics prepare in their turn the break-down of the racial characteristics and begin to eradicate them.
We must carefully avoid seeing evolution in the form of a perpetually revolving wheel, for this idea which is widely canvassed in many a mystical world-view serves only to confuse the true picture of evolution. If one pictures evolution as a wheel, revolving round a fixed centre and divided into so many races, then we fail to grasp that everything is in a state of evolution and that the races are evolving too. Races are born and will at some future time cease to exist. They do not repeat themselves in the same way as Sinnett mistakenly claims in his Esoteric Buddhism. We must look for the origin of racial characteristics in the old Lemurian epoch; we must follow their propagation down to our own day; at the same time we must realize that when our fifth post-Atlantean epoch is superseded by the sixth and seventh, race as such will have ceased to exist. But if we picture evolution as the mechanical, steady, continuous revolution of a wheel, then we carry the picture of a mill wheel in our mind and have not the slightest understanding of evolutionary processes.
The evolution of races begins therefore only in the Lemurian epoch through the activity of the abnormal Spirits of Form, who permit the etheric forces from the soil to intervene at the locality where man has to spend the first years of his life. And this influence is carried over to some extent into his later life because man is endowed with a memory, through which he still remembers even in his later life, the time spent under the influence of the abnormal Spirits before his twenty-first year on Earth. Man would be a totally different being if he were subject only to the influence of the normal Spirits of Form. Through the influence of the abnormal Spirits of Form he is dependent upon the particular locality in which he lives. I have already described how man departed from the laws of the normal Spirits of Form, with the result that the locality of his birth during a particular incarnation was of importance to him.
These relationships will become clearer to us if we take into account the following factor. To a certain extent the etheric forces emanating from the soil permeate the human organism so that man becomes dependent upon the soil of a particular geographical area. In this connection I should like to refer to certain regions of the Earth that are connected with the historical development of the human being. We shall discuss these relationships in more detail later on. I now propose to describe them in general.
Here is for example a point or a centre of cosmic influence situated in the interior of Africa. At this centre are active all those terrestrial forces emanating from the soil which can influence man especially during his early childhood. Later on their influence diminishes; man is less subject to these forces. Nevertheless their formative influences make a powerful impression upon him. The locality where a man lives exercises its most potent influence in early childhood and thereby determines for their whole life those who are completely dependent on these forces’ so that the particular locality impresses the characteristics of their early childhood permanently upon them. This is more or less typical of all those who, in respect of their racial character, are determined by the etheric formative forces of the Earth in the neighbourhood of that particular locality. The black or Negro race is substantially determined by these childhood characteristics.
If we now cross over to Asia, we find a point or centre where the formative forces of the Earth impress permanently on man the particular characteristics of later youth or adolescence and determine his racial character. Such races are the yellow and brown races of our time.
If we continue northward and then turn in a westerly direction towards Europe, a third point or centre is reached which permanently impresses upon man the characteristics of his adult life. In this way man is determined by the etheric forces emanating from the Earth. When we look more closely into these separate points or centres we find that they follow a line which takes an unusual direction. These centres still exist today. The centre in Africa corresponds to those terrestrial forces which imprint on man the characteristics of early childhood; the centre in Asia corresponds to those which give man the characteristics of youth, and the corresponding centre in Europe imprints upon man the characteristics of maturity. This is simply a universal law. Since all men in their different incarnations pass through the various races the claim that the European is superior to the black and yellow races has no real validity. In such cases the truth is sometimes veiled, but you see that with the help of Spiritual Science we do after all light upon remarkable truths.
If we continue this line (see diagram) still further westward we come to America, where the forces of old age, of the final third of life, are active. These forces—I beg you not to misunderstand what I am about to say, it only refers to man in so far as he is dependent upon the forces which determine his physical organism, the terrestrial forces of his environment, forces unrelated to his fundamental being—these forces are associated with the decline of man. This line which in reality describes a curve obeys a cosmic law and does in fact exist; it is a reality and expresses the law according to which our Earth acts upon man. The forces, which determine man's racial character, follow this cosmic pattern. The American Indians died out, not because of European persecutions, but because they were destined to succumb to those forces which hastened their extinction. The destiny of the races and the changes wrought by the forces which are not under the influence of the normal Spirits of Form are determined by the peculiar characteristics of these different centres of cosmic influence. When determining racial characteristics these Spirits work in this way; but in our age the racial character is gradually being overcome. The first steps in this direction were undertaken for the most part in the earliest period of the Earth's history. If we were to go back to the old Lemurian epoch we would find that the very first indications of racial development could be traced back to the regions of present-day Africa and Asia. Later, a migration westward sets in and as we follow westward the forces which determine race we note their decline amongst the American Indians. The death of races begins with their westward migration. In order to seek the rejuvenating forces, races migrate eastward, from Atlantis across Europe to Asia. Then the westward migration is repeated, but on this occasion we witness, not the movement of races but, as it were, a higher stage of racial development of civilizations. Thus in a certain way we see that the evolution of civilizations is characterized by a continuation of the racial development on a higher plane. For instance, the old Indian civilization, the first post-Atlantean civilization, to which we have already given due recognition in this lecture, corresponds to early childhood, the period when man's response to physical nature is still dormant, when he is receptive to the manifestations of a spiritual world.
The first Indian civilization is in fact a revelation from spiritual worlds and could only manifest in man because he came under the influence of the terrestrial forces of India to which he had already been subject from earliest times. In the primeval past men owed their racial characteristics to the etheric formative forces of the soil; now, they owed that disposition of soul peculiar to the ancient Indians to their continuous presence in the same geographical region. Through the migration from West to East they received those fresh, youthful forces which made possible the emergence of that peculiar spiritual configuration so typical of the original Indian civilization. Thus a very ancient Indian civilization which has not yet been studied and of which the Indian civilization now known to science is only an offshoot, can be explained by the fact that the Atlantean civilization is repeated to a certain extent in the primeval Indian civilization.
When we consider the successive civilizations of the post-Atlantean epoch, we can see that they represent successive recapitulations of conditions experienced earlier in the physical body, but which have been transformed through the forces of rejuvenation. Thus the Persian civilization shows a conflict between the virile forces of early manhood, when man is still subject to the influences of the abnormal Spirits of Form, and the forces which stem from the normal Spirits of Form. In the Persian civilization this dualism is reflected in the polarity of light and darkness, of Ormuzd and Ahriman.
The farther we move westward the more we see that the civilization bears the impress of the characteristics of a more mature age. We must admit that up to the present time the creations of man are still dependent to a large extent upon the abnormal forces and Beings of the universe. Nevertheless we can now understand that racial characteristics are no longer decisive factors as man moves westward and also that, to a certain extent, the tendency of civilization is such that its youthful vigour, its creative potentialities, decline more and more the further it moves towards the West.
To the unprejudiced observer a variety of factors serves to show that our contemporary civilization is also determined in this way in accordance with a fixed law. But people are not disposed to be objective. If you bear in mind that, in reality, all civilization is in a state of flux, you will then realize that the further we move westward, the less productive civilization becomes. As civilization it is already moribund. The further West one goes, the more civilization becomes externalized; it is no longer vitalized by the forces of youth, but is given over to the hardening forces of old age. Western man will still be able to benefit mankind by making valuable and important contributions in physics, chemistry and astronomy and in all fields which are independent of the rejuvenating forces of youth. But that which calls for creative energy requires a different configuration of those forces which work upon man.
Let us take the example of a man growing up from childhood to the stage when his spiritual life matures. He first develops physically. The forces concentrated within the youthful organism must be allowed to expand physically. Later, when growth is completed, these physical forces are turned inwards. Mankind in general undergoes a similar process. The curve of development which we have already described reveals a remarkable law which applies even to the continents. First of all we observe the first signs of man's development in Africa; then his native territory expands far afield. Characteristic of this expansion is the wide-open spaces of Asia where man inhabits vast tracts of country.
Let us now glance at the repetition of race development in the post-Atlantean civilizations. Just as in his youth man looks out with curiosity upon his environment, so does the man of the old Indian civilization look out into the world. This is associated with the fresh, youthful forces which help man to grow until he reaches his full stature when the spiritual life must begin to unfold and the physical must be compressed. As civilization advances westward into Europe it is remarkable that the geographical area which mankind inhabits is narrowed down to smaller and smaller lands. We observe that Europe is the smallest continent, and the further civilization moves westward the more it tends towards delimitation, and finally in its westward course is confined to peninsulas and islands.
All this is connected with the spiritual course of evolution. Here we have a unique insight into the mysteries of spiritual evolution. But with this narrowing of the geographical area a critical situation arises; on account of this crisis a more unproductive element begins to operate. Creative activity dies out to some extent in the peninsulas the further westward one goes. This creative impoverishment is illustrated in what I have already described, namely that civilization itself, the further it moves westward, becomes progressively more rigid and senile, and slowly declines. This was always known in the Mystery Schools. You will now understand why I said that what I had to communicate might be somewhat dangerous because people might take offence. By no means everything can be revealed that would enable man to command the higher members of his being so that he may perceive the terrestrial forces that determine the race, forces that later on determine the character of the civilization and which in a still later epoch will have lost their significance when man rediscovers his spiritual vision. Thus you will understand that the whole process of the evolution of mankind is connected with the spiritual evolution which has always been known to those who were initiated into the deeper secrets of existence. The truth of what I have just said does not depend upon whether one approves or disapproves; it depends upon evolutionary necessity. To deny this necessity is pointless; it serves only to put obstacles in the way of understanding. Therefore it is only natural that those w ho migrate to areas lying more to the West must seek rejuvenating power, spiritual substance, from the East; but Central Europe must call to mind its own creative activity as it existed before the formation of peninsulas and islands. That is why precisely in Europe—in the region embracing our two countries, Scandinavia and Germany—man has to draw upon the resources of his own soul-life and why, on the other hand, we must look especially in the West for that part of humanity which is to receive spiritual nourishment from the East. This urge is deeply rooted in the nature of all mankind. You see this repeated in the development of Spiritual Science. We witness it again in the fourth post-Atlantean civilization, amongst the Greeks and Romans. The Romans, it is true, are in certain respects more advanced than the Greeks, but they took their spiritual life from the people they conquered, who lived more towards the East.
The further countries lie to the West the more is the law thus revealed to us confirmed. Now these important truths can only be indicated; they reveal what accords with the inner nature of the future mission of mankind in every corner of the globe. We must understand therefore the task that lies before us if we wish to raise ourselves to the level of the all-human. Here lies the great responsibility which we take upon ourselves if we wish to participate in the spiritual evolution of mankind. In this realm neither personal sympathy nor personal enthusiasm may play a part. They are of no consequence; only what is determined by the great laws of humanity is decisive. The great laws themselves must apprise us of this; we must not allow ourselves to be prejudiced in favour of any particular law.
That is the fundamental characteristic of Rosicrucianism. Rosicrucianism implies acting in accordance with the evolution of all mankind. If we are aware of the configuration of the landscape we inhabit, including islands and peninsulas, then we shall realize what sentiments must fill our hearts if we seek to work for the benefit of the evolution of humanity.
In the remote past man descended to Earth under the guidance of the abnormal Spirits of Form and was associated with his particular geographical region. Thus the foundations were laid for the development of the races. Then a progressive intermingling of the races takes place. The evolution of races is interrupted to make way for the evolution of nations; i.e. nations develop out of races. And the development of nations enters even into the evolution of the individual human being. Behind the question, who was Plato, what was his origin and ancestry, a great mystery is concealed. He was an individual who grew up in the lineage of Solon, was a member of the Ionian tribe, the Greek nation and the whole Caucasian race. The realization that Plato was a descendant of Solon, an Ionian, a Greek, a Caucasian, expresses a profound mystery if we understand the law behind it. It shows us how the normal and abnormal Spirits of Form whose major concern is to prepare man's incarnation on Earth work in concert over the whole Earth, how, by this cooperative activity, the human race is subdivided and how then those other Beings intervene of whom we have already spoken when describing the characteristics of the several peoples. Each individual is intimately associated with these processes by means of which all these higher Beings, these higher Spirits, determine the evolution of the world by their cooperative activity.
We cannot understand the individual if we do not see how he owes his whole development to the cooperation of these Beings. Because a Caucasian race was once created on Earth through the mysterious interplay of the normal and abnormal Spirits of Form the stage was set for the incarnation of a Plato. And because we are aware of the intervention of the normal and abnormal Archangels down to the Angels, we realize the steps which were necessary to bring forth a Plato whom we could recognize as a human being endowed with the specific human attributes of thinking, feeling and willing. The nation occupies an intermediate position between the race and the individual.
It was first necessary therefore to outline the conditions fundamental to the evolution of race. Tomorrow we shall discuss the emergence of nations out of races, the intervention of other Spirits of the Hierarchies and especially their intervention in the activity of the Spirits of Form.
Vierter Vortrag
Will man zu dem Verhältnis der Menschenrassen zu einander vordringen, welche ja die Grundlage sind, aus welcher sich die einzelnen Volksgemeinschaften herausheben, dann muß man berücksichtigen, daß der Mensch, den wir vor uns haben, der wir selber sind, eigentlich ein recht kompliziertes Wesen ist und nur durch das Zusammenwirken vieler, vieler Wesenheiten des Weltalls in seiner heutigen Form und Wesenheit hat entstehen können. Wir wissen ja aus der Betrachtung der «AkashaChronik» und aus anderen Betrachtungen, die über die Entwickelung des Menschen gepflogen worden sind, daß unsere Erde selbst früher — bevor sie den jetzigen Zustand erreicht hat — drei Zustände hat durchmachen müssen. Im Verlaufe dieser drei Zustände sind nach und nach veranlagt und bis zu ihrem heutigen Grade ausgebildet worden die drei sogenannten Glieder des Menschen: der physische Leib, der Ather- oder Lebensleib und der Astralleib. Während der jetzigen Erdenverkörperung ist erst der Mensch fähig geworden, ein viertes Glied, ein Ich in sich aufzunehmen. Diese vier Glieder seiner Wesenheit zeigen uns alles das, was durch die drei oder vier Verkörperungen unserer Erde hindurch geschehen ist, durch die Verkörperung als Saturn, Sonne, Mond und durch die Erdenzeit selbst, soweit sie bis jetzt verlaufen ist. Wenn Sie vorüberziehen lassen vor Ihrem Blick alle die Wesenheiten, die da zusammengewirkt haben, diese Geister des Willens oder 'Throne, die Geister der Weisheit, Geister der Bewegung, Geister der Form, Geister der Persönlichkeit, Erzengel, bis herunter zu den Engeln, und über den Geistern des Willens oder Thronen die Cherubime und Seraphime, so werden Sie sich sagen können, daß aus einem ganz komplizierten Zusammenwirken erst hervorgehen konnte, was des Menschen heutige Organisation möglich macht. Wir haben gesehen, daß nicht nur notwendig war, daß so viele Wesenheiten und Naturkräfte zusammenwirkten im Kosmos, sondern daß zum Zustandekommen des Menschen auch noch nötig war, daß zu gewissen Epochen gewisse Wesenheiten auf den normalen Gang ihrer Entwickelung verzichteten, zurückgeblieben sind, so daß sie in anderer Weise, als es bei ihrem normalen Entwickelungsgange möglich gewesen wäre, in die menschliche Organisation eingreifen konnten.
Also wir sehen in ein wunderbar vielgestaltiges und mannigfaltiges Gewebe hinein, wenn wir den Menschen, so wie er uns heute vor Augen tritt, eigentlich verstehen wollen. Wir müssen uns auch klar sein darüber, daß wir nur dann, wenn wir gewissermaßen dieses Gewebe auseinanderhalten und die einzelnen Wesen in ihrer Tätigkeit belauschen, verstehen lernen, wie durch das Zusammenwirken dieser Wesenheiten der Mensch erst zustande gekommen ist. Da können wir nun sagen: Die hauptsächlichste Wesenheit, welche für den heutigen Menschen in Betracht kommt, ist diejenige, welche ihm die Möglichkeit gegeben hat, zu sich «Ich» zu sagen, nach und nach zu dem Bewußtsein des Ich zu kommen. Und wir wissen, daß diese Möglichkeit zuerst von den Geistern der Form, von denjenigen Wesenheiten gegeben worden ist, die wir Gewalten, Exusiai nennen. Wenn wir gerade diese Wesenheiten bei ihrer Tätigkeit, welche sie dem Menschen zuwenden, belauschen und uns gewissermaßen fragen: Wie würde es mit dem Menschen werden, wenn bloß diese Wesenheiten, und zwar nur diejenige Art dieser Wesenheiten, die in normaler Entwickelung sich befindet, in der Hauptsache im Menschen tätig wäre? — so werden wir finden: Sie sind die Verleiher der Ich-Organisation. Damit ist aber schon gesagt, daß sie eigentlich, wenn wir sie ihrer eigenen Natur nach betrachten, ihr Hauptinteresse daran haben, den Menschen zu seinem Ich zu bringen. Nun aber ist das, was diese Wesenheiten eigentlich im Menschen zu verrichten haben, im heutigen Menschenleben erst in einem bestimmten Lebensalter aktuell, tritt erst in einem bestimmten Lebensalter zutage.
Wenn Sie sich an das erinnern, was über die Erziehung des Kindes vom Standpunkte der Geisteswissenschaft gesagt worden ist, so werden Sie sich sagen: Der Mensch entwickelt hauptsächlich zwischen seiner physischen Geburt und dem Zahnwechsel, also bis zum siebenten Jahre hin, den physischen Leib. An der Entwickelung dieses physischen Leibes haben diese Geister der Form gar kein besonderes Interesse, denn diese ist im Grunde genommen eine Wiederholung dessen, was auf dem alten Saturn mit dem Menschen geschah, was sich schon oftmals wiederholt hat, und was sich nach der letzten physischen Geburt bis zum siebenten Lebensjahre vorläufig zum letzten Male in einer besonderen Art wiederholt hat. Dann kommt die Zeit vom siebenten bis zum vierzehnten Jahre, also bis zur Geschlechtsreife. Auch das ist eine Zeit, an der die Geister der Form kein besonderes Interesse haben; es ist eine Wiederholung der alten Sonnenzeit, und die Geister der Form wollten eigentlich mit ihrer Haupttätigkeit, mit der Verleihung des Ich, erst im Zustande des Erdenlebens eingreifen. Wir kommen dann zu dem dritten Lebensalter, das zwischen dem fünfzehnten und dem ein- oder zweiundzwanzigsten Lebensjahre abläuft. In dieser Zeit wird der Astralleib, der in normaler Weise der Mondentwickelung zugehört, wiederholentlich entwickelt im Menschen. Da haben die Geister der Form, die sich normal entwickeln, noch immer kein Interesse am Menschen, so daß wir sagen müssen: Die drei Lebensalter des Menschen, die der eigentlichen Geburt des Ich vorangehen, die erst um das zwanzigste Jahr herum eintritt, bieten kein unmittelbares Interesse für die Geister der Form. Sie greifen - man möchte sagen, aus ihrer eigenen Natur heraus— erst um das zwanzigste Lebensjahr herum ein, so daß, wenn Sie das bedenken, Sie es nicht mehr so ganz sonderbar finden werden, wenn gesagt wird: Nach der eigentlichen Intention der Geister der Form würde der Mensch erst in dem Zustande, in welchem er sich um das zwanzigste Lebensjahr herum befindet, da zu sein brauchen. Das, was sich im Menschen bis dahin entwickelt, ist im Grunde genommen für diese Geister der Form eine Art Embryonal-, eine Art Keimzustand. Und wenn ich etwas bildlich sprechen darf, so möchte ich sagen: Den Geistern der Form, welche sich normal entwickelt haben, wäre es am liebsten, wenn alles mit einer gewissen Regelmäßigkeit herginge, wenn ihnen bis dahin niemand ins Handwerk pfuschte. Wenn niemand diesen Geistern der Form bis zum zwanzigsten Jahre dazwischen käme, so würde der Mensch während der ersten sieben Jahre der Entwickelung das Bewußtsein haben, das dem physischen Leibe zukommt; das ist nämlich ein sehr dumpfes Bewußtsein, wie es die Mineralwelt hat. Im zweiten Stadium — in der Zeit vom siebenten bis zum vierzehnten Jahre — würde er ein Schlafbewußtsein haben. Vom vierzehnten bis zwanzigsten Jahre würde er in intensiver Weise im Inneren wirksam sein, aber eine Art von Traumdasein führen. Nach diesem Bewußtsein als Mondenwesenheit, etwa im einundzwanzigsten Jahre, würde der Mensch erst eigentlich erwachen. Da würde er erst zu dem Ichbewußtsein kommen. Wenn es nach der normalen Entwickelung ginge, dann würde er da erst aus sich herausgehen und die Außenwelt in dem Weltbilde überblicken, das heute unser bekanntes Weltbild ist.
So also sehen Sie, daß im Grunde genommen, wenn wir nur die Tätigkeit der Geister der Form in Betracht ziehen, der Mensch sehr verfrüht zu seinem Bewußtsein kommt, wie er es heute hat, denn Sie wissen, daß dieses Bewußtsein beim heutigen Menschen in gewissem Grade bald nach der physischen Geburt erwacht. Es würde nicht in der Form erwachen, daß es klar und deutlich die physische Außenwelt sieht, wenn nicht andere Geister, die eigentlich Geister der Bewegung sind, zurückgeblieben wären und verzichtet hätten auf die Entwickelung gewisser Fähigkeiten, die sie bis zur Erdenentwickelung hätten erlangen können, wenn sie nicht stehengeblieben wären in ihrer Entwickelung, so daß sie jetzt während der Erdenentwickelung in die Entwickelung des Menschen in besonderer Weise eingreifen können. Weil sie ihre Entwickelung in einer anderen Weise durchgemacht haben, sind sie in der Lage, dem Menschen schon früher das beizubringen, was: er erst um das zwanzigste Jahr herum erringen sollte. So also sind das: geistige Wesenheiten, welche verzichtet haben auf die Möglichkeit, ihre Entwickelung bis zur Erdenentwickelung in normaler Weise weiterzutreiben, geistige Wesenheiten, die während der Erdenentwickelung Geister der Bewegung hätten sein können, die aber stehen geblieben sind auf der Stufe der Geister der Form und die nun in der Erdenentwickelung als Geister der Form wirken. So können sie während der Erdenentwickelung dem Menschen, der eigentlich noch gar nicht reif ist dazu und der manches aus der früheren Zeit noch nachzuholen hat, das verleihen, was die normale Entwickelungsform erst um das zwanzigste Jahr herum verleihen würde. So tritt der Mensch in das Dasein und erhält von den abnormen Geistern der Form Fähigkeiten, die er sonst erst um das zwanzigste Jahr herum erhalten würde.
Das alles hat ganz bedeutsame Folgen. Denken Sie sich einmal, es wäre nicht so. Wenn es nicht so wäre, wenn diese Geister mit abnormer Entwickelung nicht eingreifen würden, dann würde der Mensch überhaupt erst für die physische Welt in Betracht kommen in dem Zustande, den er um das zwanzigste Jahr herum hat, das heißt, er müßte in diesem Zustande als physisches Wesen geboren werden, er müßte ganz andere Keimzustände durchmachen. In der Tat wird durch dieseabnormen Geister der Form die menschliche Entwickelung schon von der Geburt an bis zum zwanzigsten Jahre in die physische Welt hinausgestellt; das ist ungefähr das erste Drittel unseres Erdenlebens. Wir müssen also sagen: Das erste Drittel unseres Erdenlebens wird nicht durch die den Erdenzustand beherrschenden geistigen Wesenheiten, sondern durch andere, abnorme geistige Wesenheiten regiert, und weil diese teilnehmen an der Entwickelung, so haben wir Menschen auch nicht die Gestalt, die wir hätten, wenn wir in dem Zustande geboren würden, den wir um das zwanzigste Jahr herum haben. Das muß der Mensch damit bezahlen, daß er ein Drittel seines Lebens — die Zeit bis zu seinem zwanzigsten Jahre hin — so zubringt, daß er dem großen Einfluß dieser abnormen Wesenheiten hingegeben ist. Sein ganzes Wachstum macht der Mensch eigentlich unter den Einflüssen der abnormen Wesenheiten durch. Er muß es dadurch bezahlen, daß, nachdem das mittlere Drittel abgelaufen ist — das im Grunde nur den normalen Geistern der Form gehört —, die absteigende Bahn, ein Zurückgehen beginnt, und seine Äther- und Astralorganisation zerfallen, so daß das Leben in drei Glieder oder Abteilungen zerfällt: in ein aufsteigendes, ein mittleres und ein absteigendes Drittel. In dem mittleren Teil wird der Mensch während seines Erdenlebens eigentlich erst Mensch, und im letzten Drittel muß er das zurückgeben, was er während des ersten, aufsteigenden Drittels empfangen hat, muß er die entsprechende Abschlagszahlung leisten. Wäre der Mensch in der Tat ausschließlich den Einflüssen der normalen Geister der Form hingegeben gewesen, dann würde alles das, was heute bis ins zwanzigste Jahr hinein geschieht, ein ganz anderes Antlitz, eine ganz andere Gestalt haben. Es wäre alles ganz anders verlaufen, so daß alles das, was mit des Menschen heutiger Entwickelung zusammenhängt in der ersten der drei Lebensepochen, im Grunde genommen ein Dasein ist, das vieles von den späteren Lebensepochen vorausnimmt. Dadurch ist der Mensch bis zu der zweiten Epoche seines Lebens ein materielleres Wesen geworden, als er sonst geworden wäre. Der Mensch hätte sonst bis zu diesem Momente seines Lebens nur geistige Zustände durchgemacht und würde bis zur jetzigen materiellen Verdichtung erst herabgestiegen sein in dem Zeitpunkte der Entwickelung, den er erst im zwanzigsten oder einundzwanzigsten Lebensjahre durchmacht, wo er sich selber an die Erde gebunden vorfände. Es sagt uns also die Geisteswissenschaft, daß, wenn diese Entwickelung so vorwärts gegangen wäre, der Mensch erst in dem Zustande so recht eigentlich auf die Erde herabgestiegen wäre, den er heute im zwanzigsten oder einundzwanzigsten Lebensjahre erreicht; er würde die vorangehenden Zustände nicht auf der Erde haben durchmachen können. Er hätte sie erhöht über der Erde, im Umkreis der Erde durchmachen müssen. Und jetzt begreifen Sie den ganzen Gang der menschlichen Kindheit und Jugendentwickelung.
02
Wir können sehen, wenn wir diese gerade Linie B C als Erdenweg bezeichnen, so wären es die Geister der Form, die den Menschen dazu bestimmt hätten, herunterzusteigen erst in diesem Punkte, (20/21 der Zeichnung). Hier würde der Mensch also erst die Erde erreicht haben, und er würde wieder hinaufsteigen nach dem vierzigsten Jahre und das letzte Drittel seines Lebens in einem vergeistigten Zustande durchmachen. Durch die abnormen Wesenheiten wurde der Mensch gedrängt, schon hier (bei A der Zeichnung) herabzusteigen und das Leben auf der Erde aufzunehmen. Das ist das Geheimnis unseres Daseins. So sehen wir, daß wir durch die uns eigentlich dirigierenden normalen Wesenheiten nur in dem mittleren Drittel unseres Lebens ganz beherrscht sind, während unsere Wachstums- und unsere Niedergangsperiode unter dem Einfluß ganz anderer Wesenheiten stehen, die in irgendeiner Weise auf ihre normale Entwickelung verzichtet haben. Wenn das alles so geworden wäre, wie es nicht geworden ist, wenn der Mensch erhöht im Umkreis der Erde das erste und dritte Drittel seines Lebens durchgemacht und nur im mittleren Teile die Erde berührt hätte, also im Grunde genommen ein ganz anderes Wesen geworden wäre, dann würde der Mensch nicht in dem Grade an die Erde gebunden sein, in dem er tatsächlich heute an dieselbe gebunden ist. Wenn das eingetreten wäre, dann würden alle Menschen, welche die Erde betreten, von gleicher Gestalt und Wesenheit sein; dann würden alle Menschen, die über die Erde hingegangen sind, gleich gestaltet gewesen sein. Eine Menschheit gäbe es nur. Dasjenige, was uns zu einem solchen Wesen macht, daß sich daraus die spezifischen Eigenschaften der Rassen ergeben, die im Menschentum zum Ausdruck kommen, das ist nicht im mittleren Drittel des Lebens enthalten. Durch alles das, was in der Zeit vorher liegt, was im ersten Drittel des Lebens sich vollzieht, sind wir mehr mit allen unseren Kräften an die Erde gebunden, als es die normalen Geister der Form für uns bestimmt haben. Dadurch aber ist der Mensch mehr von der Erde, auf der er lebt, abhängig geworden, als er es sonst geworden wäre. Er ist abhängig geworden von dem Orte der Erde, auf dem er lebt. Dadurch, daß der Mensch — sozusagen gegen die Intentionen der Geister der Form — früher auf die Erde heruntersteigt, wird er abhängig von dem Orte, weil er sich in einem Zustande mit der Erde verbindet, der ihm gar nicht vorgezeichnet ist. Unabhängig wäre der Mensch geworden davon, ob er im Norden oder Süden, im Osten oder Westen die Erde betreten hätte, wenn er sie nur im mittleren Drittel seines Lebens betreten hätte. Dadurch aber, daß er abhängig wird von der Erde, dadurch, daß er eine Jugend durchmacht in der Weise, wie wir es charakterisiert haben, wird er erdgebunden, wird er ein mit dem Gebiete, auf dem er geboren ist, zusammenhängendes, zu ihm gehörendes Wesen. Dadurch wird er abhängig von all den Verhältnissen der Erde, die diesem Orte zugehören, von dem Einfallen der Sonnenstrahlen, von dem Umstand, ob die Gegend nahe dem Aquator in der heißen Zone oder in einem mehr gemäßigten Gebiete sich befindet, ob er auf einem niedrig gelegenen Gebiet oder auf einem Hochplateau geboren ist. Man atmet ja ganz verschiedenartig in der Ebene oder im Gebirge. Der Mensch wird also ganz abhängig von den irdischen Verhältnissen, von dem Ort, an dem er geboren ist. So sehen wir, daß der Mensch förmlich mit seiner Erdenmutter zusammengewachsen ist dadurch, daß er so eng zusammenhängt mit dem Orte, mit dem Gebiete der Erde, auf dem er jeweils geboren wird, und daß er bestimmt wird durch diejenigen Eigenschaften, die er dadurch erhält, daß diese Kräfte der Erde, die durch den betreffenden Ort bestimmt sind, in ihm wirken. Das alles bestimmt seinen Rassencharakter, und auf diesem Umwege sind die abnormen Geister der Form — diejenigen Geister der Form oder Gewalten, die zu einer anderen Zeit als zwischen dem einundzwanzigsten bis dreiundvierzigsten Jahre dem Menschen das geben, was wir heutiges Erdenbewußtsein nennen — die Verursacher der Rassenverschiedenheit des Menschen über die ganze Erde hin, die also von dem Orte auf der Erde abhängt, auf dem der Mensch geboren wird.
Nun erlangt der Mensch während dieser Zeit — die also im Grunde genommen unter der Herrschaft der abnormen Geister der Form steht — auch die Möglichkeit, die Fähigkeit, seinesgleichen hervorzubringen. Auch diese Fähigkeit wird während der Zeit erworben, in welcher der Mensch gar nicht rein von den normalen Geistern der Form dirigiert wird. Dadurch ist die Möglichkeit gegeben, daß der Mensch nicht nur in der geschilderten Weise abhängig wird von dem Orte, auf dem er geboren ist, sondern daß die Eigenschaften, die er dadurch erhält, auch auf seine Nachkommen vererbt werden können, daß also die Rassenzusammengehörigkeit nicht nur sich ausspricht in den Einflüssen des Wohnplatzes, sondern auch in dem, was durch die Rasse vererbt ist. Darin haben Sie die Erklärung dafür, warum die Rasse dasjenige ist, was vererbbar ist, und wir werden verstehen, was die Geisteswissenschaft zeigt: daß nur in der Vergangenheit die Rassenmerkmale durch den Ort hervorgebracht sind, an dem die Menschen geboren wurden. Das war in der letzten lemurischen und in der ersten atlantischen Zeit der Fall, als der Mensch direkt von der irdischen Umgebung abhängig war. In späterer Zeit beginnt die Rasse den Charakter zu haben, daß sie an die Vererbung gebunden ist und nicht mehr an den Ort. So sehen wir in der Rasse etwas, was ursprünglich an einen bestimmten Ort der Erde gebunden war und das sich dann in der Menschheit durch die Vererbung fortpflanzte, aber vom Orte immer unabhängiger wurde. Aus dem, was ich jetzt gesagt habe, werden Sie erkennen, in welchem Zeitraume der Evolution es erst einen Sinn hat, von dem Rassenbegriff zu sprechen. Es hat keinen Sinn — im eigentlichen Sinne des Wortes—, vor der lemurischen Zeit von einem Rassenbegriff zu sprechen, denn in dieser Zeit steigt der Mensch erst auf die Erde herab. Vorher war er im Umkreis der Erde; dann kam er auf die Erde, und es vererbten sich die Rassenmerkmale in der atlantischen Zeit und bis herein in unsere nachatlantische Epoche. Wir werden sehen, wie in unserer Zeit die Volksmerkmale das sind, was die Rassencharaktere wieder auseinander bringt, was sie wieder auszulöschen beginnt. Das alles werden wir noch später sehen. Wir müssen uns jetzt nur hüten, die Welt so zu betrachten, als ob die Evolution nur wie ein Rad wäre, das anfang- und endlos um sich herumrollte; die Vorstellung von dem rollenden Rad, die in mancher mystischen Weltanschauung so breit ausgeführt wird, bringt eine furchtbare Verwirrung in den Begriff der eigentlichen Menschheitsevolution. Wenn man sich den Vorgang so vorstellt, daß sich alles sozusagen wie um ein bleibendes Zentrum herum bewegt, wobei es in so- und soviele Rassen gegliedert ist, dann hat man eigentlich keinen Begriff davon, daß alles sich in Entwickelung befindet, und daß auch die Rassen sich entwickeln. Die Rassen sind entstanden und werden einmal vergehen, werden einmal nicht mehr da sein. Sie wiederholen sich nicht etwa immer in der gleichen Art, wie es bei Sinnett falsch im «Esoterischen Buddhismus» dargestellt wird. In der alten lemurischen Zeit müssen wir das Aufgehen der Rassenmerkmale, der Rasseneigentümlichkeiten suchen; wir müssen dann deren Sich-Fortpflanzen bis in unsere Zeit verfolgen, müssen uns dabei aber klar sein, daß, wenn unsere gegenwärtige fünfte Entwickelungsepoche von der sechsten und siebenten abgelöst wird, keine Rede mehr sein kann von einem Zustande, den wir als Rasse werden bezeichnen können. Wenn wir uns diese Entwickelung aber so vorstellen, als ob sie immer nur gleichmäßig so fortrollte, dann haben wir nur eine Art Mühlrad im Kopfe, sind aber weit entfernt von dem Verständnisse dessen, was in der Welt wirklich vor sich geht.
Wir sehen also, wie die Rassenentwickelung erst beginnt in der lemurischen Zeit durch das Hineinwirken der abnormen Geister der Form. Da lassen diese Geister die Kräfte unseres Erdenplaneten eingreifen an dem Orte, wo der Mensch seine erste Lebenszeit zu verbringen hat, und das überträgt sich in gewisser Weise auch wieder auf das spätere Leben, weil der Mensch ein Gedächtnis hat, durch das er sich erinnert an die eigentlich abnormerweise vor dem einundzwanzigsten Jahre auf der Erde zugebrachte Zeit auch in dem späteren Leben. Der Mensch würde ein ganz anderes Wesen sein, wenn nur die normalen Geister der Form wirkten. Durch die abnormen Geister der Form ist der Mensch abhängig von dem Punkte der Erde, auf dem er lebt. Die Abweichung von den Gesetzen der normalen Geister der Form ist auf die eben geschilderte Weise entstanden, so daß bedeutsam wurde für den Menschen der Punkt der Erde, auf dem er in einer bestimmten Verkörperung lebt.
Wir werden diese Verhältnisse noch genauer begreifen durch die folgende Betrachtung. Da können wir in gewisser Weise angeben, wie der Untergrund, der Bodengrund, sein Wesen nach oben strahlt und die menschliche Organisation durchdringt, so daß der Mensch abhängig wird von diesem Erdenuntergrund. In dieser Beziehung können wir also bestimmte Punkte der Erde angeben, die mit der menschlichen Wesenheit entwickelungsgeschichtlich zusammenhängen. Wir werden auf diese Verhältnisse noch genauer eingehen. Ich will sie jetzt in abstracto charakterisieren.
Da haben Sie zum Beispiel (siehe Figur) einen Punkt, der im Innern von Afrika liegt. An diesem Punkte wirken gleichsam von der Erde ausstrahlend alle diejenigen Kräfte, welche den Menschen namentlich während seiner ersten Kindheitszeit ergreifen können. Später wird der Einfluß solcher Kräfte auf den Menschen geringer; er ist dann diesen Kräften weniger ausgesetzt, aber sie prägen sich ihm mit dem, was aus ihnen kommt, doch in der stärksten Weise auf. So also wirkt jener Punkt auf der Erde, auf dem der Mensch lebt, am allerstärksten in der ersten Kindheitszeit und bestimmt dadurch diejenigen Menschen, die ganz abhängig sind von diesen Kräften, ihr ganzes Leben hindurch so, daß jener Punkt ihnen die ersten Kindheitsmerkmale bleibend aufprägt. Das ist ungefähr eine Charakteristik aller derjenigen Menschen — in bezug auf ihren Rassencharakter —, die sozusagen um diesen Erdenpunkt herum die bestimmenden Kräfte aus der Erde heraus erhalten. Das, was wir schwarze Rasse nennen, ist im wesentlichen durch diese Eigenschaften bedingt.
Wenn Sie nun weiter nach Asien hinübergehen, da haben Sie einen Punkt auf der Erdoberfläche, wo die späteren Jugendmerkmale dem Menschen aus den Erdenkräften heraus bleibend aufgedrückt werden, wo das, was die besonderen Eigenschaften des späteren Jugendzeitalters sind, aus der Erden wesenheit heraus auf den Menschen übertragen wird und ihm den Rassencharakter gibt. Die hier in Betracht kommenden Rassen sind die gelben und bräunlichen Rassen unserer Zeit.
03
Wenn wir dann weiter von Osten nach Westen gehen, so finden wir einen Punkt, der von Asien her gegen Europa zu liegt und der die spätesten Merkmale, diejenigen Merkmale, welche gerade in dem späteren, auf die erste Jugendzeit folgenden Lebensalter dem Menschen zukommen, dem Menschen bleibend aufdrückt, den Punkt, wo der Mensch nicht schon in der Kindheit von den Erdenkräften ergriffen wird, sondern dann, wenn die Jugend in das spätere Lebensalter übergeht. In dieser Art wird der Mensch von den Kräften ergriffen, die von der Erde aus bestimmend für ihn sind, so daß wir, wenn wir diese einzelnen Punkte ins Auge fassen, eine merkwürdig verlaufende Linie erhalten. Diese Linie besteht auch für unsere Zeit. Der afrikanische Punkt entspricht denjenigen Kräften der Erde, welche dem Menschen die ersten Kindheitsmerkmale aufdrücken, der asiatische Punkt denjenigen, welche dem Menschen die Jugendmerkmale geben, und die reifsten Merkmale drückt dem Menschen der entsprechende Punkt im europäischen Gebiete auf. Das ist einfach eine Gesetzmäßigkeit. Da alle Menschen in verschiedenen Reinkarnationen durch die verschiedenen Rassen durchgehen, so besteht, obgleich man uns entgegenhalten kann, daß der Europäer gegen die schwarze und die gelbe Rasse einen Vorsprung hat, doch keine eigentliche Benachteiligung. Hier ist die Wahrheit zwar manchmal verschleiert, aber Sie schen, man kommt mit Hilfe der Geheimwissenschaft doch auf merkwürdige Erkenntnisse.
Wenn wir dann diese Linie weiterziehen, so kommen wir weiter nach Westen nach den amerikanischen Gebieten hinüber, in jene Gebiete, wo diejenigen Kräfte wirksam sind, die jenseits des mittleren Lebensdrittels liegen. Und da kommen wir — ich bitte das nicht mißzuverstehen, was eben gesagt wird; es bezieht sich nur auf den Menschen, insofern er von den physisch-organisatorischen Kräften abhängig ist, von den Kräften, die nicht sein Wesen als Menschen ausmachen, sondern in denen er lebt —, da kommen wir zu den Kräften, die sehr viel zu tun haben mit dem Absterben des Menschen, mit demjenigen im Menschen, was dem letzten Lebensdrittel angehört. Diese gesetzmäßig verlaufende Linie gibt es durchaus; sie ist eine Wahrheit, eine reale Kurve, und drückt die Gesetzmäßigkeit im Wirken unserer Erde auf den Menschen aus. Diesen Gang nehmen die Kräfte, die auf den Menschen rassebestimmend wirken. Nicht etwa deshalb, weil es den Europäern gefallen hat, ist die indianische Bevölkerung ausgestorben, sondern weil die indianische Bevölkerung die Kräfte erwerben mußte, die sie zum Aussterben führten. Von der Eigentümlichkeit dieser Linie hängt das ab, was auf der Oberfläche unserer Erde mit den Rassen sich abspielt, was von den Kräften, die nicht unter dem Einfluß der normalen Geister der Form stehen, bewirkt wird. Wo Rassencharaktere in Betracht kommen, da wirken sie in dieser Weise. In unserer Zeit wird der Rassencharakter aber allmählich überwunden.
So recht vorgebildet hat sich das schon in der allerfrühesten Erdenzeit. Wenn wir bis in die alte lemurische Zeit zurückgehen würden, so könnten wir die allerersten Ausgangspunkte der Rassenentwickelung in der Gegend des heutigen Afrika und Asien finden. Dann sehen wir später eine Herüberbewegung des Menschen nach der westlichen Richtung, und in der Verfolgung der rassebestimmenden Kräfte nach Westen können wir dann das Absterben in den Indianern beobachten. Nach Westen mußte die Menschheit gehen, um als Rasse zu sterben. Um aufzufrischen die Menschheit mit neuer Jugendkraft, findet der Zug nach Osten statt, der Zug, der von Atlantis herüber über Europa nach Asien sich bewegt. Dann geschieht eine Wiederholung des Zuges nach dem Westen. Es wiederholt sich aber jetzt nicht die Bewegung der Rassen, sondern gleichsam eine höhere Stufe der Rassenentwickelung, die Entwickelung der Kulturen. In gewisser Weise kann man sehen, daß die Entwickelung der Kulturen durchaus den Charakter annimmt, der im Sinne einer Fortsetzung der Rassenlinie liegt. So haben wir zum Beispiel diejenige Kultur, welche wir auch schon in dieser Betrachtung mit genügender Bewunderung charakterisiert haben, die uralt-indische Kultur, die als erste nachatlantische Kultur erschien, zu bezeichnen als die dem ersten Kindesalter entsprechende Epoche, wo der Mensch in Beziehung auf die Wertschätzung der physischen Natur noch schläft, und in seine Seele wirken hinein die Offenbarungen einer geistigen Welt. In der Tat ist die erste, indische Kultur eine Offenbarung von oben, eine Offenbarung aus spirituellen Höhen, und sie konnte nur aus dem Grunde in die Menschen hineinwirken, weil der Mensch unter den Einfluß der indischen Erde kam, unter dem er in weit zurückliegender Zeit schon gestanden hatte. Damals in urferner Vergangenheit wurde der physische Rassecharakter aus der Erde heraus bestimmt; jetzt bei wiederholter Anwesenheit an demselben Erdenorte wurde mehr eine Seelenbeschaffenheit, die des altindischen Menschen bestimmt. Durch den Zug von Westen nach Osten ist eine solche Jugendfrische aufgetreten, daß durch diesen Vorgang die eigentümliche Geisteskonfiguration hervorgehen konnte, welche die ursprüngliche indische Kultur charakterisiert. Sie werden sehen, daß eine sehr alte indische Kultur, die noch nicht erforscht worden ist, und von der nur ein Abkömmling ist, was heute die Wissenschaft indische Kultur nennt, in dieser Weise ihre Erklärung findet, nämlich dadurch, daß die atlantische Kultur sich in gewisser Beziehung in der uralt-indischen wiederholt.
Wenn wir nunmehr die Kulturen, die sich in der nachatlantischen Zeit gefolgt sind, betrachten, so können wir sehen, daß sie die aufeinanderfolgende Wiederholung früherer im physischen Leibe durchgemachter, aber wieder durch Verjüngung ganz anders gewordener Verhältnisse darstellen. So sehen wir in der persischen Kultur eine solche, welche in gewisser Weise mit dem zusammenhängt, was wir nennen können ein Sich-Durchringen desjenigen Menschen, der vorzugsweise in der ersten menschlichen Lebenskraft lebt, wo er noch den Einflüssen der abnormen Geister der Form hingegeben ist, mit den Kräften, die von den normalen Geistern der Form stammen. Dieser Gegensatz ist in der persischen Kultur in dem Bewußtsein und in der Gestalt von Licht und Finsternis, von Ormuzd und Ahriman enthalten.
Je weiter wir herüber kommen nach Westen, desto mehr sehen wir, wie die Eigenschaften eines reiferen Alters der Kultur aufgedrückt werden. Wenn wir auch zugeben müssen, daß bis zur heutigen Gegenwart die Schöpfungen der Menschen in höherem Grade noch abhängig sind von den abnormen Kräften und Wesenheiten des Weltalls, so werden wir es doch begreiflich finden, wenn gesagt wird, daß nicht mehr ausschließlich mit Eigenschaften der Rasse die Menschen nach Westen gehen. Auch können wir verstehen, daß in gewisser Weise der Zug der Kultur ein solcher ist, daß die volle Jugendfrische der Kultur, das produktive Element derselben immer mehr erstirbt, je weiter sie nach Westen kommt.
Wer objektiv betrachtet, kann aus vielen Verhältnissen ersehen, daß auch unsere Zeitkultur in dieser Weise gesetzmäßig bestimmt ist. Man ist aber nicht geneigt, objektiv zu sehen. Wenn Sie aber das, was sich ergibt, betrachten, das betrachten, daß in der Tat alle Kultur im Flusse ist, da sehen Sie, daß, je weiter wir nach Westen kommen, die Kultur immer unproduktiver wird. Sie nähert sich also als Kultur dem Absterben. Je weiter nach Westen, desto mehr werden nur die äußeren Teile der Kultur blühen, die, welche nicht Auffrischung durch Jugendkraft erleben, sondern sich in gewisser Weise in das Greisenhafte hinein ausleben. Daher wird der Mensch im Westen für die Menschheit noch Großes und Gewaltiges leisten können in bezug auf physikalische, chemische und astronomische Entdeckungen, für alles, was unabhängig ist von der erfrischenden Jugendkraft. Das aber, was produktive Kraft benötigt, das braucht in der Tat eine andere Konfiguration der auf den Menschen wirkenden Kräfte.
Nehmen wir an, der Mensch wächst von der Kindheit bis zu einer gewissen Stufe; dann erblüht eigentlich erst sein Geistiges. Zuerst ist der Mensch ein physisch wachsendes Wesen. Es muß sich das, was bei einem kleinen Knirps in einem engen Raume zusammengedrängt ist, erst physisch ausdehnen. Dann wird die Menschenbildung in das Innere zusammengedrängt. — So ist es aber auch mit der Menschheit im großen. Wir sehen ein eigentümliches Gesetz, wenn wir die charakterisierte Kurve verfolgen. Wir finden es sogar in den Kontinenten ausgedrückt. Wir sehen, daß zunächst eine Art ursprünglicher Anfangspunkt der physischen Menschenentwickelung in Afrika vorliegt, daß dann der Raum, auf dem sich die Menschheit ausbildet, sich ins Weite ausdehnt. Das finden wir dann in den weiten Flächen der asiatischen Bildung. Große, mächtige Flächen bewohnt der Mensch da.
Schauen wir nun auf die Wiederholung der Rassenbildung in den nachatlantischen Kulturen. Wie der Mensch in der Jugend gleichsam neugierig mit den Augen hinschaut in die Umgebung, so blickt der Mensch der alten indischen Kultur in die Welt. Das hängt durchaus mit den jugendfrischen Kräften zusammen, die den Menschen ausdehnen und in seinem Wachstum in die Weite organisieren. Dann muß das Geistige beginnen und muß sich das Physische zusammendrängen; da sehen wir, daß, indem die Kultur in Europa fortschreitet, in merkwürdiger Weise der Raum, auf dem diese Menschheit ausgebreitet ist, zusammengedrängt wird in kleinere Dimensionen. Wir sehen, daß Europa der kleinste Erdteil ist, und je weiter der Mensch nach Westen fortschreitet, desto mehr strebt er nach einem Zusammendrängen. Er strebt in Halbinseln hinaus ins Meer und schnürt sich immer mehr zusammen nach dem Westen hin.
Dies hängt alles mit dem geistigen Gang der Entwickelung zusammen. Sie sehen hier in eigenartiger Weise in die Mysterien der geistigen Entwickelung hinein. Aber mit dem Zusammendrängen nach Westen hin ist eine Krisis gegeben. Da ist eine Krisis, durch welche ein mehr unproduktives Element zu wirken beginnt. Die Produktivität stirbt in den Halbinselgebieten nach dem Westen hin in einer gewissen Weise ab. Diese Unproduktivität zeigt sich in dem, was vorhin charakterisiert worden ist, daß nämlich sozusagen selbst die Kultur, je weiter sie nach Westen geht, ein starres, greisenhaftes, nach dem Absterben hin gehendes Element annimmt. Das ist etwas, was in den Geheimschulen immer bekannt war. Sie werden nun begreifen, daß ich sagte, das, was ich mitteilen werde, könnte etwas gefährlich werden, weil die Menschen entrüstet werden könnten. Und es darf noch lange nicht alles gesagt werden, was dazu diente, den Menschen in bezug auf die höheren Gebiete seines Wesens unabhängig zu machen, damit er wahrnimmt, was aus der Erde rassebestimmend aufsteigt, was später den Kulturcharakter bestimmt, und was in noch späterer Zeit wieder unbedeutend werden wird, wenn der Mensch zum Geistigen wieder zurückkehrt. Sie werden daher begreifen, daß mit diesem ganzen Gang der Menschheitsentwickelung der Gang der geistigen Entwicklung, den diejenigen immer gekannt haben, die tiefer in die Geheimnisse des Daseins eingeweiht waren, zusammenhängt. Die Richtigkeit des Gesagten hängt nicht davon ab, ob man für das eine mehr, für das andere weniger begeistert ist; die hängt von der Notwendigkeit in der Entwickelung ab. Wer gegen die Notwendigkeit sprechen würde, der könnte nichts erreichen. Gegen sie sprechen, heißt ihr Hindernisse in den Weg schieben. Daher ist es nur natürlich, daß in gewisser Weise die Menschen, die in das Gebiet ziehen, das mehr nach Westen liegt, sich eine Auffrischung wieder vom Osten holen müssen, einen Einschlag vom Osten erhalten müssen, daß aber das mitteleuropäische Gebiet sich auf die eigene Produktivität, wie sie vor der Halbinselbildung bestanden hat, besinnen muß. Das ist der Grund, warum in Europa gerade — ich meine in dem Strich, der unser gemeinsames Gebiet umfaßt: Skandinavien und Deutschland — die Menschen sich auf ihr eigenes Seelisches besinnen müssen, und warum dagegen gerade im Westen aufgesucht werden muß der Teil der Menschheit, der etwas von Osten übertragen erhalten soll. Das ist tief durch den Gesamtcharakter der Erdenmenschheit bedingt. Sie sehen, daß selbst in der theosophischen Entwicklung das sich noch wiederholt. Auch tritt uns das entgegen in der vierten nachatlantischen Kultur bei dem Römer- und Griechentum. Es ist Tatsache, daß die Römer in gewisser Beziehung weiter sind als die Griechen, daß sie aber von dem von ihnen eroberten Volke, welches weiter östlich wohnt, das Geistesleben nehmen.
Das hier zutage tretende Gesetz wird immer mehr und mehr sich bewahrheiten, je weiter die Gebiete nach Westen gelegen sind. Diese großen Wahrheiten kann man im Grunde genommen nur andeutungsweise sagen. Sie geben uns dasjenige, was dem inneren Charakter unserer Mission für jedes Stück der Erdoberfläche entspricht. Sie sehen, daß wir begreifen müssen dasjenige, was wir zu tun haben, um uns zu dem Gemeinsamkeitscharakter der Menschheit zu erheben. Da liegt die große Verantwortlichkeit, die man hat, wenn man eingreifen will in die große Bewegung der Menschheit. Wo die große Bewegung der Menschheit in Betracht kommt, da darf keine persönliche Sympathie und kein persönlicher Enthusiasmus mitspielen. Denn nicht darauf kommt es an, sondern darauf, was in den großen Gesetzen des Menschentums bedingt ist. Das muß man aus den großen Gesetzen heraus erkennen und sich nicht beeinflussen lassen durch Voreingenommenheit für dieses oder jenes. So ist im Grunde genommen der Charakter des ganzen Rosenkreuzertums. Rosenkreuzertum ist, zu wirken im Sinne der ganzen Menschheitsentwickelung. Wenn man den Boden, auf dem man steht, erkennt bis zur Insel- und Halbinselbildung, dann wird man fühlen, welche Empfindung einen überkommen muß, wenn man im Sinne der Menschheitsentwickelung wirken will.
Einstmals wurde der Mensch durch die abnormen Geister der Form heruntergeführt auf die Erde, gebunden an die verschiedenen Punkte der Erdoberfläche; dadurch wurde die Grundlage der Rassenentwikkelung geschaffen. Dann aber sehen wir immer mehr die Rassen sich vermischen. Wir sehen eingreifen in die Rassenentwickelung, das heißt sich aus ihr erheben die Volksentwickelung. Wir sehen sie hineingreifen bis in die Entwickelung des einzelnen Menschen. Es ist ein großes Mysterium damit ausgesprochen, wenn man etwa sagt: Wer war Plato in bezug auf seine äußere Wesenheit, in bezug auf das Hineingeborensein in die Menschheit? Das war ein Mensch, der hineingewachsen war in das Geschlecht der Soloniden, angehörte dem Stamme der Ionier, dem Volke der Griechen, der ganzen kaukasischen Rasse. — Das Verstehen, daß Plato ein Solonide, ein Ionier, ein Grieche, ein Kaukasier war, das spricht, wenn man es in seiner Gesetzmäßigkeit durchschaut, ein tiefes Mysterium aus. Es spricht das Mysterium aus, das uns zeigt, wie auf der weiten Basis des ganzen Erdenplaneten zusammenwirken die normalen und abnormen Geister der Form, die eigentlich das größte Interesse daran haben, den Menschen zum Erdenmenschen zu machen. Es spricht sich darin aus, wie sich durch dieses Zusammenwirken das Menschentum spezifiziert, wie dann die anderen Wesenheiten eingreifen, von denen wir bei der Charakteristik der einzelnen Völkerschaften schon gesprochen haben. Jeder Mensch ist mit seiner Wesenheit an den Vorgängen beteiligt, durch die alle die höheren Wesenheiten, diese höheren Geister zusammenwirkend die Weltentwickelung gestalten.
Man versteht den einzelnen Menschen nicht, wenn man nicht sieht, wie er in seiner Gesamtentwickelung dadurch, daß diese Wesenheiten zusammenwirken, geworden ist. Dadurch, daß auf unserem Erdenplaneten durch das geheimnisvolle Zusammenwirken der Geister der Form, die die normale Entwickelung durchgemacht haben, und der Geister der Form, die die abnorme Entwickelung durchgemacht haben, einmal eine kaukasische Rasse geschaffen wurde, dadurch wurde der Grund und Boden dafür geschaffen, daß ein Plato überhaupt werden konnte. Dadurch, daß wir die abnormen und normalen Erzengel bis zu den Engeln eingreifen sehen, sehen wir den Weg, der notwendig war, um einen Plato hervorzubringen, der uns als menschliche Wesenheit, mit menschlichem Antlitz, mit ganz bestimmten Verstandes-, Gefühls- und Willenseigenschaften entgegentreten konnte. Zwischen der Rasse und der Individualität liegt das Volkstum mitten darinnen.
Darum mußten wir heute die Grundbedingungen der Rasse im allgemeinen charakterisieren. Morgen wollen wir das Herauswachsen des Volkstumes aus den Rassen, das Eingreifen anderer Geister der Hierarchien und insbesondere deren Eingreifen in das Wirken der Geister der Form betrachten.
Fourth Lecture
If we want to understand the relationship between the human races, which is the basis from which individual communities emerge, we must take into account that the human being we see before us, who we ourselves are, is actually a very complex being and could only have come into being in its present form and essence through the interaction of many, many beings in the universe. We know from studying the Akashic Records and from other observations made about human development that our Earth itself had to go through three stages before it reached its present state. In the course of these three states, the three so-called members of the human being were gradually formed and developed to their present degree: the physical body, the etheric or life body, and the astral body. During the present incarnation on Earth, human beings have only become capable of taking in a fourth member, an I within themselves. These four members of his being show us everything that has happened throughout the three or four incarnations of our Earth, through the incarnation as Saturn, Sun, Moon, and through the Earth time itself, as far as it has progressed until now. If you let all the beings that have worked together pass before your eyes, these spirits of will or 'thrones,' the spirits of wisdom, spirits of movement, spirits of form, spirits of personality, archangels, down to the angels, and above the spirits of will or thrones, the cherubim and seraphim, you will be able to say to yourselves that only from a very complicated interaction could that emerge which makes the present organization of man possible. We have seen that it was not only necessary for so many beings and natural forces to interact in the cosmos, but that in order for human beings to come into being, it was also necessary for certain beings to renounce the normal course of their development at certain epochs and remain behind, so that they could intervene in the human organization in a different way than would have been possible in their normal course of development.
So we see into a wonderfully multifaceted and diverse fabric when we want to truly understand the human being as he appears to us today. We must also be clear that only when we separate this fabric, so to speak, and listen to the individual beings in their activity, can we begin to understand how the human being came into being through the interaction of these beings. We can now say that the most important entity for human beings today is the one that has given them the ability to say “I” to themselves and gradually come to self-awareness. And we know that this ability was first given by the spirits of form, by those entities we call powers or exusiai. If we listen to these beings as they work on human beings and ask ourselves: What would happen to human beings if only these beings, and only those beings that are in normal development, were active in them? — we will find that they are the givers of the I-organization. This already indicates that, when we consider them according to their own nature, their main interest is in bringing human beings to their ego. However, what these beings actually have to accomplish in human beings is only relevant in human life today at a certain age; it only becomes apparent at a certain age.
If you recall what has been said about the education of the child from the standpoint of spiritual science, you will say to yourselves: The human being develops the physical body mainly between physical birth and the change of teeth, that is, up to the age of seven. These spirits of form have no particular interest in the development of this physical body, because it is basically a repetition of what happened to human beings on ancient Saturn, which has been repeated many times, and which, after the last physical birth, has been repeated for the last time in a special way until the age of seven. Then comes the period from the seventh to the fourteenth year, that is, until sexual maturity. This is also a time in which the spirits of form have no particular interest; it is a repetition of the old solar period, and the spirits of form did not actually want to intervene with their main activity, the bestowal of the I, until the state of earthly life. We then come to the third age of life, which lasts from the fifteenth to the twenty-first or twenty-second year. During this period, the astral body, which normally belongs to the lunar evolution, is repeatedly developed in the human being. The spirits of form, which develop normally, still have no interest in the human being, so that we must say: The three stages of human life that precede the actual birth of the ego, which only occurs around the age of twenty, are of no immediate interest to the spirits of form. They intervene — one might say out of their own nature — only around the age of twenty, so that when you consider this, you will no longer find it so strange when it is said that according to the actual intention of the spirits of form, human beings would only need to be in the state in which they find themselves around the age of twenty. What develops in the human being up to that point is, in essence, a kind of embryonic, a kind of germinal state for these spirits of form. And if I may speak figuratively, I would say: The spirits of form that have developed normally would prefer everything to proceed with a certain regularity, if no one interfered with their work until then. If no one interfered with these spirits of form until the age of twenty, human beings would have the consciousness that belongs to the physical body during the first seven years of their development; this is a very dull consciousness, like that of the mineral world. In the second stage — from the seventh to the fourteenth year — they would have a sleeping consciousness. From the fourteenth to the twentieth year, they would be intensely active within themselves, but would lead a kind of dream existence. After this consciousness as a lunar being, at about the age of twenty-one, the human being would actually awaken. Only then would he come to self-consciousness. If development proceeded normally, he would then step out of himself and survey the external world in the world picture that is familiar to us today.
So you see that, basically, if we only consider the activity of the spirits of form, human beings come to consciousness very early, as they do today, because you know that this consciousness awakens in modern human beings to a certain degree soon after physical birth. It would not awaken in such a way that it sees the physical outer world clearly and distinctly if other spirits, which are actually spirits of movement, had not remained behind and renounced the development of certain abilities that they could have attained by the time of Earth's evolution if they had not remained stationary in their development, so that they can now intervene in the development of human beings in a special way during Earth's evolution. Because they have undergone their development in a different way, they are able to teach human beings at an earlier stage what they should only achieve around the age of twenty. Thus, these are spiritual beings who have renounced the opportunity to continue their development in the normal way until the development of the earth; spiritual beings who could have been spirits of movement during the development of the earth, but who remained at the stage of spirits of form and now work in the development of the earth as spirits of form. Thus, during the Earth's evolution, they can give to human beings who are not yet ready for it and who still have much to make up from earlier times, what the normal form of evolution would only give around the age of twenty. Thus, human beings enter into existence and receive from the abnormal spirits of form abilities that they would otherwise only receive around the age of twenty.
All this has very significant consequences. Just imagine if it were not so. If it were not so, if these spirits with abnormal development did not intervene, then human beings would only be considered for the physical world in the state they are in around the age of twenty, that is, they would have to be born in this state as physical beings, they would have to go through completely different embryonic stages. In fact, through these abnormal spirits of form, human development is postponed from birth until the age of twenty in the physical world; that is approximately the first third of our earthly life. We must therefore say: The first third of our earthly life is not governed by the spiritual beings that rule the earthly state, but by other, abnormal spiritual beings, and because these participate in our development, we humans do not have the form we would have if we were born in the state we are in around the age of twenty. Human beings must pay for this by spending a third of their lives—the time up to their twentieth year—in such a way that they are subject to the great influence of these abnormal beings. Human beings actually undergo their entire growth under the influence of these abnormal beings. He has to pay for this by the fact that, after the middle third has passed — which basically belongs only to the normal spirits of form — the descending path, a decline, begins, and his etheric and astral organization disintegrate, so that life breaks down into three parts or divisions: an ascending, a middle, and a descending third. In the middle part, the human being actually becomes human during his earthly life, and in the last third he must give back what he received during the first, ascending third; he must make the corresponding down payment. If human beings had indeed been exclusively subject to the influences of the normal spirits of form, then everything that happens today up to the age of twenty would have a completely different face, a completely different form. Everything would have been completely different, so that everything connected with human development today in the first of the three epochs of life is, in essence, an existence that anticipates much of the later epochs of life. As a result, by the second epoch of their lives, human beings have become more material beings than they would otherwise have become. Otherwise, until this moment of his life, man would have gone through only spiritual states and would not have descended to the present material condensation until the point in his development that he now experiences in his twentieth or twenty-first year, when he finds himself bound to the earth. Spiritual science therefore tells us that if this development had proceeded in this way, human beings would only have descended to Earth in the state they actually reach today at the age of twenty or twenty-one; they would not have been able to go through the preceding states on Earth. He would have had to go through them above the earth, in the sphere surrounding the earth. And now you can understand the entire course of human childhood and youth development.
02
We can see that if we designate this straight line B C as the path of the earth, it would be the spirits of form that would have determined human beings to descend only at this point (20/21 in the drawing). Here, man would have reached the earth for the first time, and he would have ascended again after the age of forty and spent the last third of his life in a spiritualized state. Through the abnormal beings, man was compelled to descend here (at A in the drawing) and take up life on earth. This is the secret of our existence. We see, then, that we are completely controlled by the normal beings who actually direct us only during the middle third of our lives, while our periods of growth and decline are under the influence of entirely different beings who have in some way renounced their normal development. If everything had turned out as it did not, if human beings had spent the first and third thirds of their lives elevated above the Earth and had only touched the Earth in the middle third, thus becoming fundamentally different beings, then human beings would not be bound to the Earth to the degree that they actually are today. If that had happened, then all human beings who set foot on the earth would be of the same form and essence; then all human beings who have passed over the earth would have been of the same form. There would be only one humanity. That which makes us such beings that the specific characteristics of the races, which find expression in humanity, arise from it, is not contained in the middle third of life. Through everything that lies in the time before, through what takes place in the first third of life, we are bound to the earth with all our powers more than the normal spirits of form have determined for us. As a result, however, human beings have become more dependent on the earth on which they live than they would otherwise have been. He has become dependent on the place on Earth where he lives. Because human beings descend to Earth earlier, so to speak against the intentions of the spirits of form, they become dependent on the place because they connect themselves to the Earth in a state that is not predestined for them. Human beings would have become independent of whether they entered the earth in the north or south, east or west, if they had only entered it in the middle third of their lives. But because they become dependent on the earth, because they go through a youth in the way we have characterized it, they become earthbound, they become beings connected to and belonging to the area where they were born. This makes them dependent on all the conditions of the earth that belong to this place, on the incidence of the sun's rays, on whether the area is close to the equator in the hot zone or in a more temperate region, whether they were born in a low-lying area or on a high plateau. One breathes quite differently in the plains than in the mountains. Man thus becomes completely dependent on earthly conditions, on the place where he is born. We see, then, that human beings have literally grown together with their earthly mother through their close connection with the place, with the region of the earth where they are born, and that they are determined by the characteristics they acquire through the influence of the forces of the earth that are determined by the place in question. All this determines their racial character, and in this roundabout way the abnormal spirits of form—those spirits of form or forces that at a time other than between the ages of twenty-one and forty-three give human beings what we call present-day earth consciousness—are the cause of the racial differences among human beings throughout the earth, which thus depend on the place on earth where a human being is born.
Now, during this time — which is basically under the rule of the abnormal spirits of form — man also gains the possibility, the ability, to produce his own kind. This ability is also acquired during the time when man is not purely directed by the normal spirits of form. This makes it possible that human beings not only become dependent on the place where they are born in the manner described, but that the characteristics they acquire in this way can also be passed on to their descendants, so that racial affiliation is expressed not only in the influences of the place of residence, but also in what is inherited through the race. This explains why race is something that can be inherited, and we can understand what spiritual science shows: that only in the past were racial characteristics produced by the place where people were born. This was the case in the last Lemurian and first Atlantean periods, when human beings were directly dependent on their earthly environment. In later times, the race began to have the characteristic of being bound to heredity and no longer to place. Thus, we see in the race something that was originally bound to a specific place on Earth and then propagated through heredity in humanity, but became increasingly independent of place. From what I have just said, you will recognize in which period of evolution it makes sense to speak of the concept of race. It makes no sense — in the true sense of the word — to speak of a concept of race before the Lemurian epoch, because in that epoch human beings were just descending to the earth. Before that, he was in the vicinity of the Earth; then he came to Earth, and the racial characteristics were inherited in the Atlantean period and into our post-Atlantean epoch. We will see how, in our time, the characteristics of peoples are what separate the racial characters again, what begins to wipe them out again. We will see all this later. We must now be careful not to view the world as if evolution were merely a wheel rolling around endlessly; the idea of the rolling wheel, which is so widely held in some mystical worldviews, brings terrible confusion to the concept of the actual evolution of humanity. If one imagines the process in such a way that everything moves around a permanent center, so to speak, and is divided into so many races, then one has no real concept of the fact that everything is in a state of development and that the races are also developing. The races have come into being and will one day pass away; they will no longer exist. They do not repeat themselves in the same way, as Sinnett wrongly describes in Esoteric Buddhism. In the ancient Lemurian period, we must look for the emergence of racial characteristics, of racial peculiarities; we must then trace their propagation up to our time, but we must be clear that when our present fifth epoch of development is replaced by the sixth and seventh, there can no longer be any question of a state that we can call a race. But if we imagine this development as if it always proceeded in the same way, then we have only a kind of mill wheel in our minds, but are far from understanding what is really going on in the world.
We see, then, how racial development first begins in the Lemurian epoch through the influence of the abnormal spirits of form. These spirits allow the forces of our Earth to intervene at the place where human beings spend their first life, and this is transferred in a certain way to later life, because human beings have a memory through which they remember the time spent on Earth before the age of twenty-one, which is actually abnormal, even in their later life. Human beings would be completely different beings if only the normal spirits of form were at work. Through the abnormal spirits of form, human beings are dependent on the point on Earth where they live. The deviation from the laws of the normal spirits of form arose in the manner just described, so that the point on Earth where human beings live in a particular embodiment became significant for them.
We will understand these relationships even more clearly through the following consideration. Here we can indicate in a certain way how the underground, the ground, radiates its essence upward and permeates the human organization, so that human beings become dependent on this underground. In this connection, we can therefore indicate certain points on the earth that are connected with the human being in terms of evolutionary history. We will go into these relationships in more detail. I will now characterize them in abstracto.
For example, you have a point (see figure) that lies in the interior of Africa. At this point, all the forces that can affect humans, especially during their early childhood, radiate out from the earth, as it were. Later, the influence of such forces on humans becomes less; they are then less exposed to these forces, but they still have a powerful effect on them through what comes from them. Thus, the point on the Earth where a human being lives has its strongest effect during early childhood and thereby determines those human beings who are completely dependent on these forces throughout their entire lives, in such a way that this point permanently imprints the characteristics of early childhood on them. This is roughly a characteristic of all those people — in terms of their racial character — who, so to speak, receive the determining forces from the earth around this point on the earth. What we call the black race is essentially conditioned by these characteristics.
If you now move further across to Asia, you have a point on the surface of the earth where the later characteristics of youth are permanently imprinted on human beings from the forces of the earth, where the special characteristics of later youth are transferred from the earth's being to human beings and give them their racial character. The races under consideration here are the yellow and brown races of our time.
03
If we then go further from east to west, we find a point that lies from Asia towards Europe and that permanently imprints on humans the latest characteristics, those characteristics that come to humans in the later stage of life following early youth, the point where human beings are not seized by the forces of the earth in childhood, but rather when youth transitions into later life. In this way, human beings are seized by the forces that are decisive for them from the earth, so that when we consider these individual points, we obtain a line that runs in a remarkable way. This line also applies to our time. The African point corresponds to those forces of the earth that impress the first characteristics of childhood on the human being, the Asian point to those that give the human being the characteristics of youth, and the most mature characteristics are impressed on the human being by the corresponding point in the European region. This is simply a law of nature. Since all human beings pass through the various races in different reincarnations, there is no real disadvantage, even though it may be argued that Europeans have an advantage over the black and yellow races. The truth is sometimes veiled here, but with the help of secret science, one arrives at remarkable insights.
If we then continue this line further westward to the American regions, we come to those regions where the forces that lie beyond the middle third of life are effective. And there we come — please do not misunderstand what I am saying; it only refers to human beings insofar as they are dependent on physical-organizational forces — from the forces that do not constitute his essence as a human being, but in which he lives — there we come to the forces that have a great deal to do with the dying of the human being, with that in the human being which belongs to the last third of life. This line, which follows a law, certainly exists; it is a truth, a real curve, and expresses the lawfulness of the Earth's activity upon human beings. This is the course taken by the forces that determine human race. It is not because Europeans liked it that the Indian population died out, but because the Indian population had to acquire the forces that led to its extinction. What happens on the surface of our Earth with the races, what is brought about by forces that are not under the influence of the normal spirits of form, depends on the peculiarity of this line. Where racial characters come into play, they work in this way. In our time, however, the racial character is gradually being overcome.
This was already clearly prefigured in the earliest times on Earth. If we were to go back to the ancient Lemurian period, we would find the very first starting points of racial development in the region of present-day Africa and Asia. Later, we see a movement of humans toward the west, and in following the race-determining forces westward, we can observe their extinction in the Native Americans. Humanity had to go west in order to die out as a race. In order to refresh humanity with new youthful energy, the movement toward the east takes place, the movement that moves from Atlantis across Europe to Asia. Then the movement to the West is repeated. However, it is not the movement of the races that is repeated, but rather a higher stage of racial development, the development of cultures. In a certain sense, one can see that the development of cultures takes on the character of a continuation of the racial line. For example, we can characterize the ancient Indian culture, which we have already described with sufficient admiration in this discussion, as the first post-Atlantean culture. It corresponds to the first stage of childhood, when human beings are still asleep in relation to the appreciation of physical nature, and the revelations of a spiritual world are working into their souls. In fact, the first Indian culture is a revelation from above, a revelation from spiritual heights, and it could only work into human beings because they came under the influence of the Indian earth, under which they had already stood in times long past. Back then, in the distant past, the physical characteristics of the race were determined by the earth; now, with repeated presence in the same place on earth, it was more a soul quality that determined the ancient Indian human being. The migration from west to east brought about such a youthful freshness that this process gave rise to the peculiar spiritual configuration that characterizes the original Indian culture. You will see that a very ancient Indian culture, which has not yet been researched and of which only a descendant is what science today calls Indian culture, finds its explanation in this way, namely in the fact that the Atlantean culture is repeated in a certain way in the ancient Indian culture.
If we now consider the cultures that followed one another in the post-Atlantean period, we can see that they represent the successive repetition of conditions that were previously experienced in the physical body but have become completely different through rejuvenation. Thus, in Persian culture, we see one that is in a certain way connected with what we might call the struggle of the human being who lives primarily in the first human life force, where he is still subject to the influences of the abnormal spirits of form, with the forces that come from the normal spirits of form. This contrast is contained in Persian culture in the consciousness and in the form of light and darkness, of Ormuzd and Ahriman.
The further we come to the West, the more we see how the characteristics of a more mature age of culture are imposed. Even if we have to admit that, up to the present day, human creations are still dependent to a higher degree on the abnormal forces and beings of the universe, we will nevertheless find it understandable when it is said that it is no longer exclusively the characteristics of the race that cause people to move westward. We can also understand that, in a certain sense, the trend of culture is such that the full youthful vigor of culture, its productive element, dies more and more as it moves westward.
Anyone who looks at it objectively can see from many circumstances that our present culture is also determined by this law. But people are not inclined to see things objectively. If, however, you look at what is happening, if you consider that all culture is indeed in flux, you will see that the further we go westward, the more unproductive culture becomes. As a culture, it is therefore approaching extinction. The further west we go, the more only the outer parts of culture will flourish, those parts that do not experience renewal through the energy of youth, but in a certain sense live out their lives into senility. Therefore, people in the West will still be able to achieve great and powerful things for humanity in terms of physical, chemical, and astronomical discoveries, for everything that is independent of the refreshing energy of youth. But what productive power needs is in fact a different configuration of the forces acting on man.
Let us assume that man grows from childhood to a certain stage; only then does his spirit actually blossom. At first, man is a physically growing being. What is crowded together in a small child in a confined space must first expand physically. Then human development is crowded into the inner self. But this is also true of humanity as a whole. We see a peculiar law when we follow the characteristic curve. We even find it expressed in the continents. We see that there is initially a kind of original starting point for physical human development in Africa, and that the space in which humanity develops then expands into the distance. We find this in the vast expanses of Asian civilization. Man inhabits large, powerful areas there.
Let us now look at the repetition of racial formation in the post-Atlantean cultures. Just as human beings in their youth look curiously at their surroundings with their eyes, so the human beings of the ancient Indian culture look at the world. This is entirely connected with the youthful forces that expand human beings and organize them into the vastness of their growth. Then the spiritual must begin and the physical must be compressed; we see that as culture progresses in Europe, the space in which this humanity is spread out is compressed in a remarkable way into smaller dimensions. We see that Europe is the smallest continent, and the further man progresses westward, the more he strives for compression. He strives out into the sea in peninsulas and constricts himself more and more toward the west.
All this is connected with the spiritual course of development. Here you see in a peculiar way into the mysteries of spiritual development. But with the constriction toward the west, a crisis arises. There is a crisis through which a more unproductive element begins to work. Productivity dies out in a certain way in the peninsular regions towards the west. This unproductivity is evident in what has been characterized earlier, namely that the further west one goes, the more culture itself takes on a rigid, senile element that is dying out. This is something that has always been known in the secret schools. You will now understand why I said that what I am about to tell you could be somewhat dangerous, because people could become indignant. And not everything that served to make people independent in relation to the higher realms of their being can be said yet, so that they may perceive what rises from the earth in a race-determining way, what later determines the character of a culture, and what will become insignificant again in even later times when people return to the spiritual. You will therefore understand that this entire course of human development is connected with the course of spiritual development, which has always been known to those who were more deeply initiated into the mysteries of existence. The truth of what has been said does not depend on whether one is more enthusiastic about one thing or the other; it depends on the necessity of development. Anyone who would speak against necessity would achieve nothing. To speak against it is to put obstacles in its way. It is therefore only natural that, in a certain sense, people who move to the more western regions must seek refreshment from the east, must receive an influence from the east, but that the central European region must reflect on its own productivity as it existed before the formation of the peninsula. That is why in Europe—I mean in the strip that encompasses our common territory: Scandinavia and Germany—people must reflect on their own soul life, and why, on the other hand, it is precisely in the West that we must seek out that part of humanity that is to receive something from the East. This is deeply conditioned by the overall character of the human race on Earth. You see that even in theosophical development this is repeated. We also encounter this in the fourth post-Atlantean culture in Roman and Greek civilization. It is a fact that the Romans are in a certain sense further advanced than the Greeks, but that they take their spiritual life from the peoples they conquered, who live further east.
The law that is evident here will become more and more true the further west one goes. These great truths can really only be hinted at. They give us what corresponds to the inner character of our mission for every part of the earth's surface. You see that we must understand what we have to do in order to rise to the common character of humanity. Therein lies the great responsibility one has when one wants to intervene in the great movement of humanity. Where the great movement of humanity is concerned, no personal sympathy or enthusiasm should play a part. For that is not what matters, but rather what is conditioned by the great laws of humanity. This must be recognized from the great laws and one must not allow oneself to be influenced by bias for this or that. This is basically the character of the entire Rosicrucian movement. Rosicrucianism is to work in the sense of the entire development of humanity. If you recognize the ground on which you stand, right down to the formation of islands and peninsulas, then you will feel what sensation must come over you if you want to work in the spirit of human evolution.
Once upon a time, human beings were brought down to earth by abnormal spirits of form, bound to various points on the earth's surface; this created the basis for the development of the races. But then we see the races mixing more and more. We see the development of peoples intervening in the development of the races, that is, rising out of it. We see them reaching into the development of the individual human being. It is a great mystery when one says, for example: Who was Plato in relation to his outer being, in relation to his birth into humanity? He was a human being who had grown up in the Solonian family, belonged to the Ionian tribe, the Greek people, the entire Caucasian race. — The understanding that Plato was a Solonian, an Ionian, a Greek, a Caucasian, speaks of a profound mystery when one sees it in its lawful connection. It expresses the mystery that shows us how, on the broad basis of the entire planet Earth, the normal and abnormal spirits of form, who actually have the greatest interest in making human beings into Earth beings, work together. It expresses how, through this interaction, humanity becomes specific, how the other beings, of which we have already spoken in the characterization of the individual peoples, then intervene. Every human being is involved with his or her being in the processes through which all the higher beings, these higher spirits, interact to shape the development of the world.
One cannot understand the individual human being unless one sees how he has become what he is in his overall development through the interaction of these beings. Through the mysterious interaction on our Earth planet between the spirits of form that have undergone normal development and the spirits of form that have undergone abnormal development, a Caucasian race was once created, and this laid the foundation for Plato to become who he was. By seeing the abnormal and normal archangels intervene down to the angels, we see the path that was necessary to bring forth a Plato who could appear to us as a human being, with a human face and with very specific characteristics of intellect, feeling, and will. Between the race and the individuality lies the national character.
That is why we had to characterize the basic conditions of race in general today. Tomorrow we will consider the emergence of ethnicity from the races, the intervention of other spirits of the hierarchies, and in particular their intervention in the work of the spirits of form.