The nature of man : approached through the philosophy of Rudolf Steiner

and faculities of animals. The basic structure of the human body, its organs and systems are similar to those of the higher animals. A vertebral back bone, four limbs, a head, chest and abdominal cavities, a system of senses based on eyes, ears, nose, tongue and skin, these features compel one to acknowledge a common nature or idea which appears in varied modifications in the different species, families and orders. The question is whether the modifications of this basic vertebrate plan found in the human kingdom are derivable from the same forces and principles as underlie the animal forms. The basic building plan may be similar but the way in which it is carried out may yet reveal a quite distinct principle at work within the human organism.

In the first place we have to take note of the retention of more embryo-like features in the human development. The mature human form has not evolved further from the embryonic than the animal has, it has on the contrary remained nearer to the embryonic. If we study the development of various species through their embryonic and post-embryonic developments we find that the earlier we look the more do the various embryos resemble each other. As they mature so do they fall more and more into diverse specialisation : only the human retains an omnipotentiality. The bodily organisation of animals becomes specialised into instruments, the wings of birds, the fins of fishes, the claws of carnivores, the hoofs of herbivores and so on. The animals becomes imprisoned in these organic formations, they determine its life.

But in the case of the human, the limbs for instance do not become these specific tools. The human being on the contrary develops the ability to invent the tools and then to use them. Aeroplanes, oars of boats, boots, knives and forks and the rest of our inventions which we can freely use, these in the animals have taken hold of their bodily organisation and the limb has become the specific tool not the user of it.

Further, the orientation in space of the animal and human forms points to radical differences in essential principle. The spinal organisation of animals is characteristically horizontal; only in man does it become vertical, a spinal column. In animals the head is only a continuation of the vertebrae; in man it crowns the vertebral column and morphologically repeats in a synthetic mode the whole lower trunk in a new and higher form. The

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