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

of the plant kingdom. Thirdly a soul or astral body, the bearer of the inner world of desire, pleasure and pain and the qualitative world of emotions. This man shares with the animal ingdom, and it finds expression also in animals’ physiognomic forms, gestures and behaviour. It already marks a turning inwards, backwards on itself, of the more outwardly growing vegetative life. It expresses itself especially in the katabolic, down-breaking phase of metabolic processes, and we can see how the inner soul experience is purchased at the cost of a certain destruction of the upbuilding anabolic vegetative process. The fourth principle, the Ego principle in Man, comes to expression in the upright posture and walking, in the speaking and thinking of the human being. This principle by entering into the three bodily elements begins to transform them so that they begin a process of metamorphosis in which the meaning of the future evolution of human life can be envisaged.

We must however attempt to clarify the relationship between Man and Nature from another side, that of past evolution. The great achievements of 19th century natural science compelled us all to accept an evolutionary process in which transformation of natural forms and species unfolded. In place of the omnipotent creative fiat of God, through which the distinctive forms and creatures came into existence once and for all, there was unfolded the picture of a gradual evolutionary development in which new forms came into manifestation. A real development of new, unforeseen forms came about, an epigenesis of new formations, not merely the unfolding of those already spatially present. And all this was explained by Darwin and his successors as coming about by natural forces acting blindly without aim or intention. At the summit of this process, often portrayed as a genealogical tree, appeared Man, the product of purely natural forces, the last to appear.

When however we turn our attention to actual biological events we find that a seed from a specific plant will grow only into that plant. Only an ovum from an elephant will grow into an elephant or from a lion into a lion. In the ovum no trace of the future organs and forms is visible; these unfold epigenetically. Yet a supersensible real Idea of the coming organism must be active from a supersensible or spiritual world to organise the

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