Rudolf
Steiner's curious relationship to Ernst
Haeckel has been much remarked upon. Indeed,
it has been the subject of several books. Just what did Steiner,
of all people, see in the "Pope of Monism"?
Rudolf Steiner himself gave an answer,
and no one who has gone into any depth
on the subject has yet found it necessary
to object to Steiner's description. In
Haeckel Steiner saw the seeds of a few
important ideas, and these he championed.
The rest he cared little for but did not
speak of this publicly, at least not initially.
In examining this question we are really
delving into the cultural battles of a
bygone era, but this is important in order
to understand Haeckel, Steiner, and their
cultural milieu.
Mainstream
central European thought towards the end
of the 19th century was still dealing
with the upheavals brought by Darwin
and the challenges of natural science
to the authority of the Church. In this
Austria particularly
was a little behind in this struggle.
These questions had been widely discussed
to a far greater degree in England
and the United
States
by that point in time. Religious dogmatism
was still fighting valiantly in Austria for its
hold on the mind of the masses. Steiner
had a number of objections to religious
dogmatism, including the fact that the
Church presents it tenets as revealed
knowledge, as in: truth, take it or leave
it. The static nature of the religious
dogmatism was particularly troubling to
Steiner. There was no place for the concept
of development in the religious beliefs
that he encountered.
Who was Ernst Haeckel?
Ernst
Heinrich Philipp August Haeckel was born
1834 in Potsdam,
but grew up in Merseburg, just outside
of Leipzig.
His father was a lawyer and worked for
the government. After studying at Würtzburg,
in 1857 he obtained a medical degree from
the University of Berlin
under pressure from his family. His own
interests were towards Botany and, through
his professor Johannes Müller (1801-1858), Zoology. Müller was an anatomist
and physiologist, and it was with him
that Haeckel did field work, observing
small sea creatures on the north German
coast. Haeckel opened his medical practice,
but he was not enthusiastic about it.
Reading
Darwin's Origin of the Species by Means
of Natural Selection was an important
event in his life. He went back to school
in Jena, studying under Carl Gegenbauer and then
became professor of comparative anatomy
there in 1862. Haeckel's early scientific
work was in the area of invertebrates.
Well regarded to this day for his fieldwork,
he named thousands of new species from
1859 to 1887. It was out of this work
that Haeckel developed a number of the
ideas for which he is known, including
his law of recapitulation: ontology recapitulates
phylogeny. This thesis is also
known as the Biogenetic Law, and states
that the development of an embryo and
the stages of growth of the young of a
species repeat the evolutionary development
of that species. Haeckel was quite quotable,
and has left as a legacy to biology such
words as phylum, phylogeny and ecology
- "oekologie" which he created from the
Greek root oikos to refer to the relationship of an animal to
its organic and inorganic environment.
Haeckel
was deeply impressed with Darwin's Origin
of the Species by Means of Natural Selection.
While
he deprecated the idea of natural selection
as the mechanism of evolution, he was
enthusiastic about the concept of biological
evolution itself. In his 1862 monograph
on Radiolaria he placed Darwin's concept in a central role, and in his 1866 book General Morphology he attempted to work out the practical implications
of evolutionary theory in a general way.
Haeckel's General morphology did not sell
very well, so Haeckel rewrote the concepts
in a more popular form and published the
results in an 1868 book called The Natural History Of Creation (Natürliche Schöpfungsgeschichte). This along
with an active lecturing and writing career
led him to become the leading proponent
of evolution in German-speaking countries.
It is important to note that although
Haeckel was a proponent of Evolution,
he was not technically a Darwinian because
he did not believe that natural selection
was the method by which evolution progressed.
This deprecation of the concept of natural
selection as the mechanism of forward
progress of evolution Haeckel had in common
with Rudolf Steiner, another strong proponent
of evolution, although of a more spiritual
kind. Haeckel's view was
more in the tradition of Lamarck; he felt
that environmental influences acted upon
organisms to create differentiation.
Haeckel's efforts on behalf of evolution went well
beyond merely scientific endeavors. He
wrote profusely on many non-scientific
subjects. While still considered quite
competent as an invertebrate anatomist,
most of his speculative writings have
come to be regarded as mistaken. These
speculative writings branch out into areas
such as anthropology, psychology (which
he proposed be considered a branch of
physiology), ethics, theology, politics,
and cosmology. His was a systematic and
synthesizing mind and he was unafraid
to go boldly where the evidence would
barely support him. One area of speculation
was how organic matter arose from inorganic
matter, or the origin of life. Having
studied the rather crystalline Radiolaria,
Haeckel arrived at the conclusion that
a process of crystallization had produced
organic life forms from inorganic matter
in a spontaneous process. He posited the
existence of a "monera" or protoplasm
without nuclei, as the common ancestor
of all organic life forms. Evidence of
such a creature has not yet been found,
and most biologists doubt it ever will
be.
This courage to fill gaps in scientific knowledge
with intuitions was typical of Haeckel.
He was the first to attempt a systematic
genealogical tree showing the evolution
of higher life forms from lower ones,
filling in the gaps where necessary. He
perfected and elaborated his genealogical
tree over decades. While some particulars
have changed from Haeckel's time, his
basic outline remains essentially intact,
and the concept of an evolutionary tree
is central to modern biology.
Haeckel's popular presentation of evolution in German-speaking
countries and his eminently quotable prose
led him to become a nineteenth-century
celebrity. He appeared to enjoy this role
greatly, and seemed encouraged by this
to take on the greater philosophical questions,
as well as rattle the chains of old church
dogma with great enthusiasm. His speculative
writings saw a culmination in his 1899
book The Riddle Of The Universe (Die Welträtzel). In this
book he elaborated a comprehensive philosophical
system based upon his biological and evolutionary
findings. Here he contemplated the philosophical
implications and theological consequences
of organic evolution. Ultimately he saw
not qualitative but only quantitative
differences between self-conscious human
beings and other highly evolved mammals.
His was a philosophy of Monism - namely
a belief that the universe is ultimately
a differentiation of a single type of
substance.
Haeckel's work was very influential in his lifetime
and for some time thereafter. His efforts
were a significant factor in the wider
acceptance of the theory of evolution
in central Europe, and his more philosophical
works were a subject of much debate in
intellectual circles for decades. Parts
of his philosophical works show the influence
of the negative traits of his time period,
and these in particular were exploited
by admiring national socialists. In Haeckel
they found justifications for a eugenic
policy is based on Social Darwinism, for
racism, and for nationalism. Haeckel's
quote "politics is applied biology"
was taken to its logical conclusion under
Hitler.
Creationists have found Haeckel a favorite target
because of errors both small and large
in the various parts of his scientific
work.
While
Haeckel's
"law of recapitulation" (ontology recapitulates phylogeny)
has been boldly declared disproved for
much of the 20th century, a comprehensive
understanding, as usual, shows that such
a statement is overly simple. An unsigned
presentation on the University of California
at Berkeley's Evolution website revisited
the idea recently:
"The 'law of recapitulation'
has been discredited since the beginning
of the twentieth century. Experimental
morphologists and biologists have shown
that there is not a one-to-one correspondence
between phylogeny and ontogeny. Although
a strong form of recapitulation is not
correct, phylogeny and ontogeny are intertwined,
and many biologists are beginning to both
explore and understand the basis for this
connection."
Haeckel and
Fascism
Haeckel's philosophy,
like the Social Darwinism of Spencer,
easily lent itself to use as a justification
for certain political policies, and was
especially favored by the National Socialists.
Haeckel's own statement, "politics
is applied biology" shows that Haeckel
himself was not unaware of the possibilities,
or averse in principle to such an application
of his ideas. That Haeckel and his Monist
philosophy were in application politically
reactionary and provided important justification
to National Socialism does not, in itself,
mean that every idea of Haeckel's is necessarily
tainted. And if we examined carefully
exactly which aspects of Haeckel's work
Rudolf Steiner admired, it becomes clear
that these aspects were not the ones that
National Socialists favored.
Rudolf Steiner's Relationship
to Haeckel
Steiner's view of Haeckel
was more or less consistent throughout
his lifetime. In public Steiner expressed
himself carefully about certain aspects
of Haeckel's thought while maintaining
a silence concerning other portions with
which he disagreed. Privately, he was
considerably more direct about his opinions.
The following quote is probably the most
concise summary of Steiner's views. It
was written by Steiner for Eduard Schuré,
a writer and publicist for esotericism
and author of the book The Great Initiates.
Schuré was at that point an admirer of
Steiner's, and had asked for information
about Steiner's intellectual and spiritual
background. The answer was several pages,
written by Steiner in Barre, Alsace (France),
in 1907 when Steiner was 46, and today
referred to as "The Barre Document".
"And
not long afterwards Haeckel's 60th birthday
took place, celebrated with great festivity
in Jena. Haeckel's friends invited me.
I saw Haeckel for the first time on that
occasion. His personality is enchanting,
and stands in complete contrast to the
tone of his writings. If, at any time,
he had studied even just a small amount
of philosophy, in which he is not merely
a dilettante but a child, he would quite
surely have drawn the highest spiritual
conclusions from his epoch-making phylogenetic
studies.
"Now,
in spite of all German philosophy, in
spite of all the rest of German culture,
Haeckel's phylogenetic idea is the most
significant event in German intellectual
life in the latter half of the nineteenth
century. And there is no better scientific
foundation to esotericism than Haeckel's
teaching. Haeckel's teaching is exemplary,
but Haeckel is the worst commentator on
it. Culture is not served by exposing
Haeckel's weaknesses to his contemporaries,
but by explaining to them the greatness
of his phylogenetic concept. This I now
did in my two volumes: 'Thinking in the
19th Century' which is dedicated to Haeckel,
and the little publication, 'Haeckel and
his Opponents'.
"At
present, German spiritual life really
exists only in Haeckel's phylogeny; philosophy
is in a state of hopeless unproductiveness,
theology is a web of hypocrisy which is
not aware in the slightest of its dishonesty,
and the sciences have fallen into the
most barren philosophical ignorance in
spite of great empirical progress.
[6]
These paragraphs are essential
for understanding Steiner's view of Haeckel.
Haeckel's phylogenetic concept is extraordinarily
valuable, but Haeckel himself is the worst
advocate for this concept.
[7]
Further, the quote "culture
is not served by exposing Haeckel's weaknesses
to his contemporaries" is essential
in understanding Steiner's failure to
criticize the more ridiculous aspects
of Haeckel's Monist philosophy. This failure
to criticize has led more than one thinker
to conclude that Steiner was in full agreement
with these more ridiculous aspects. However,
a more careful reading of Steiner's actual
"praise" will show how narrowly
directed it actually is.
"I
cannot speak of Lyell or Darwin without
thinking of Haeckel. All three belong
together. What Lyell and Darwin began,
Haeckel took further. He expanded it in
full consciousness, to serve not only
the scientific needs but also the religious
consciousness of mankind. He is the most
modern spirit, because his Weltanschauung
(view of the world) does not cling to
any of the old prejudices, such as was
still the case, for example, with Darwin.
He is the most modern thinker, because
he sees the natural as the only realm
for thinking, and he is the most modern
in sensibility, because he wants to know
life as organized in accordance with the
natural. . When Haeckel talks with us
about the processes of Nature, every word
has a secondary meaning for us that is
related with our feeling. He sits at the
rudder, and steers powerfully. Even when
many of the places towards which he steers
us are ones we would rather not go past;
still, he has the direction in which we
want to go. From Lyell and Darwin's hands
he took the handle of the rudder, and
they could have given it to no one better.
He will pass it on to others that will
travel in his direction. And our community
sails rapidly forwards, leaving behind
the helpless ferrymen of the old Weltanschauungs."
[8]
Haeckel is praised for
being a modern thinker - for the processes
of his thought and for his general direction,
and not for any specific results. Steiner
also speaks of the feeling that Haeckel's
contemporaries (and Steiner includes himself)
have about Haeckel's work. And Steiner
states that Haeckel's general direction
is correct, even as he registers his metaphorical
reservations to some of Haeckel's specific
conclusions.
Besides the Law of Recapitulation,
Steiner valued Haeckel's actual courage
to think beyond the narrow confines of
his specialty and grapple with the deeper
questions of existence. Whether Haeckel's
results were correct or not was immaterial
to Steiner; the effort was rare and deserved
praise.
"Then
for the first time I saw in Haeckel the
person who placed himself courageously
at the thinker's point of view in natural
science, while all other researchers excluded
thought and admitted only the results
of sense-observation. The fact that Haeckel
placed value upon creative thought in
laying the foundation for reality drew
me again and again to him."
[9]
Haeckel dared to use creative
thought, and even if the results of this
thought ended up being philosophical dilettantism
or worse, Steiner admired the attempt.
And Steiner was quite clear on how he
disagreed with Haeckel:
"I believe [Haeckel] never knew what the philosophers
wished from him. This was my impression
from a conversation I had with him in
Leipzig after the appearance of his Riddle
of the Universe, ... He then said:
"People say I deny the spirit. I wish
they could see how materials shape themselves
through their forces; then they would
perceive 'spirit' in everything that happens
in a retort. Everywhere there is spirit."
Haeckel, in fact, knew nothing whatever
of the real Spirit. The very forces of
nature were for him the 'spirit,' and
he could rest content with this."
[10]
Haeckel himself thought
his philosophical work was an Idealistic
Monism and not a Materialistic Monism,
but this, felt Steiner, was a misunderstanding
on Haeckel's part concerning the true
nature of philosophical Idealism.
Steiner also valued Haeckel's
specifically scientific work, including
Haeckel's morphology. Two quotes from
among many will illustrate this. In a
1916 lecture Steiner said:
"Here
I should like to state emphatically that
I cherish the same high respect today
for Haeckel's magnificent scientific achievements
within the cosmic scheme, proper to natural
science, as I did years ago. I still believe
and always have believed that a correct
appreciation of Haeckel's achievements
is the best means of transcending a certain
one-sidedness in his views. It is entirely
intelligible that he could not attain
to this insight himself."
[11]
This reiterates a continual
theme in Steiner's work. In 1908 he said
essentially the same thing in another
lecture:
"Haeckel
does not err when explaining by the laws
of materialistic morphology phenomena
of which he has exceptional knowledge;
if he had confined himself to a certain
category of phenomena he could have performed
an enormous service to humanity."
[12]
And Steiner recommended
studying Haeckel as an exercise and prerequisite
for seeking spiritual vision:
"If
you are touched by the Rosicrucian principle
as here intended, study the system of
Haeckel, with all its materialism; study
it, and at the same time permeate yourselves
with the methods of cognition indicated
in Knowledge of Higher Worlds and its Attainment.
Take what you learn in Haeckel's Anthropogenesis:
on the Ancestors
of Man. In that form it may
very likely repel you. Learn it nevertheless;
learn all that can be learned about it
by outer Natural Science, and carry it
towards the Gods; then you will get what
is related about evolution in my Occult Science."
[13]
So
Steiner valued Haeckel's work in a number
of contexts, and Haeckel's efforts in
general, but by no means subscribed to
all of Haeckel's views.
All
of the quotes so far have been from Steiner's
Anthroposophical period. Did Steiner always
think of Haeckel this way, or was he once
completely under the sway of Haeckel's
philosophy as has been alleged by some
critics attempting to paint Steiner as
inconsistent?
Why
did Steiner dedicate a book to Haeckel?
Just two years before
stepping forward as an initiate Rudolf
Steiner completed a systematic survey
of philosophical thought in the nineteenth
century and dedicated it too, of all people,
Ernst Haeckel. Haeckel himself a just
finished his the book and considered himself
a philosopher as well as a scientist.
Later as he published books such as Theosophy,
Rudolf Steiner found himself in the position
of having to defend this dedication, as
it was considered inconsistent with Anthroposophy
as Steiner was attempting to unfold it.
In the preface to his book An Outline
Of Esoteric Science Rudolf Steiner
noted:
A reader of the author's earlier writings - for example his work on nineteenth
century philosophies or his short essay
on Haeckel and his Opponents -
might well be saying: 'How can one and
the same man be the author of these works
and of the book Theosophy (published
in 1904) or of the present volume? How
can he take up the cudgels for Haeckel
and then offend so grossly against the
straightforward monism, the philosophic
outcome of Haeckel's researches? One could
well understand the writer of this Occult
Science attacking all that Haeckel stood
for; that he defended him and even dedicated
to him one of his main works appears preposterously
inconsistent. Haeckel would have declined
the dedication in no uncertain terms,
had he known that the same author would
one day produce the unwieldy dualism of
the present work.'
Yet in the author's view one can appreciate
Haeckel without having to stigmatize as
nonsense whatever is not the direct outcome
of his range of thought and his assumptions.
We do justice to Haeckel by entering into
the spirit of his scientific work, not
by attacking him - as has been done -
with every weapon that comes to hand.
Least of all does the author hold any
brief for those of Haeckel's adversaries
against whom he defended the great naturalist
in his essay on Haeckel and his Opponents.
If then he goes beyond Haeckel's assumptions
and placed the spiritual view side by
side with Haeckel's purely naturalistic
view of the Universe, this surely does
not rank him with Haeckel's opponents.
Anyone who takes sufficient trouble will
perceive that there is no insuperable
contradiction between the author's present
work and his former writings.
[14]
And
so Steiner himself states the essence
of the argument: it is possible to appreciate
Haeckel without agreeing with him, and
it is possible to disagree with Haeckel
without agreeing with all the others who
disagree with him. 100 years later the
exact same objections are still being
raised to Steiner's work in relationship
to Ernst Haeckel.
Steiner
dedicated a book to Haeckel because he
appreciated Haeckel's efforts and found
some very useful aspects in them. He was
not then, nor was he ever, in complete
agreement with everything Haeckel said.
That this fact continues to be ignored
by so many critics of Anthroposophy speaks
either to their ignorance of Steiner and
his work or to a deliberate distortion
thereof.
Appendix
1:
Steiner's
description of his meeting with Ernst
Haeckel:
I had at first no occasion
to become personally acquainted with Haeckel,
about whom I was impelled to think very
much. Then his sixtieth birthday came.
I was invited to share in the brilliant
festival which was being arranged in Jena.
The human element in this festival attracted
me. During the banquet Haeckel's son,
whom I had come to know at Weimar, where
he was attending the school of painting,
came to me and said that his father wished
to have me presented to him. The son then
did this.
Thus I became personally
acquainted with Haeckel. He was a fascinating
personality. A pair of eyes which looked
naïvely into the world, so mild that one
had the feeling that this look must break
when the sharpness of thought penetrated
through. This look could endure only sense-impressions,
not thoughts which reveal themselves in
things and occurrences. Every movement
of Haeckel's was directed to the purpose
of admitting what the senses expressed,
not to permit the ruling thoughts to reveal
themselves in the senses. I understood
why Haeckel liked so much to paint. He
surrendered himself to physical vision.
Where he ought to have begun to think,
there he ceased to unfold the activity
of his mind and preferred to fix by means
of his brush what he had seen.
Such was the very being
of Haeckel. Had he merely unfolded this,
something human unusually stimulating
would have been thus revealed.
But in one corner of
his soul something stirred which was wilfully
determined to enforce itself as a definite
thought content - something derived from
quite another attitude toward the world
than his sense for nature. The tendency
of a previous earthly life, with a fanatical
turn directed toward something quite other
than nature, craved the satisfaction of
its passion. Religious politics vitally
manifested itself from the lower part
of the soul and made use of ideas of nature
for its self-expression.
In such contradictory
fashion lived two beings in Haeckel. A
man with mild love-filled sense for nature
and in the background something like a
shadowy being with incompletely thought-out,
narrowly limited ideas breathing out fanaticism.
When Haeckel spoke, it was with difficulty
that he permitted the fanaticism to pour
forth into his words; it was as if the
softness which he naturally desired blunted
in speech a hidden demonic something.
A human riddle which one could but love
when one beheld it, but about which one
could often speak in wrath when it expressed
opinions. Thus I saw Haeckel before me
as he was then preparing in the nineties
of the last century what led later to
the furious spiritual battle that raged
over his tendency of thought at the turning-point
between the centuries.
[15]
Appendix
2:
Some
other Statements of Steiner's concerning
Haeckel and his work:
1.
Describing his relationship
to Haeckel's philosophy in his autobiography:
"Thus
the natural-scientific evolutionary succession,
as represented by Haeckel, never constituted
for me something wherein mechanical or
merely organic laws controlled, but as
something wherein the spirit led the living
being from the simple through the complex
up to man. I saw in Darwinism a mode of
thinking which is on the way to that of
Goethe, but which remains behind this."
[16]
2.
In
his autobiography Steiner also attempts
to show how he continually maintained
his intellectual independence from Haeckel:
"The other lecture
I gave in Vienna at the invitation of
the Scientific Club. It dealt with the
possibility of a monistic conception of
the world on the basis of a real knowledge
of the spiritual. There I set forth that
man by means of his senses grasps the
physical side of reality "from without"
and by means of his spiritual awareness
grasps its spiritual side "from within,"
so that all which is experienced appears
as an unified world in which the sensible
manifests the spirit and the spirit reveals
itself creatively in the sensible.
This occurred at the time when Haeckel
had formulated his own monistic philosophy
through his lecture on Monismus als
Band Zwischen Religion und Wissenschaft
(Monism as a bond between religion and
science). Haeckel, who knew of
my being in Weimar, sent me a copy of
his speech. I reciprocated his courtesy
by sending him the issue of the newspaper
in which my lecture at Vienna was printed.
Whoever reads this lecture must see how
opposed I then was to the monism advanced
by Haeckel when occasion rose for me to
express what a man has to say about this
monism for whom the spiritual world is
something into which he sees.
But there was at that time another occasion
for me to give thought to monism in the
colouring given it by Haeckel. He seemed
to me a phenomenon of the scientific age.
Philosophers saw in Haeckel the philosophical
dilettante, who really knew nothing except
the forms of living creatures to which
he applied the ideas of Darwin in the
order in which he had rightly arranged
them, and who explained boldly that nothing
further is required for the forming of
a world-conception than what can be grasped
by a Darwinian observer of nature. Students
of nature saw in Haeckel a fantastic person
who drew from natural-scientific observations
conclusions which were arbitrary.
Since my work required that I should realize
what was the inner temper of thought about
the world and man, about nature and spirit,
as this had been dominant a hundred years
earlier in Jena, when Goethe interjected
his natural-scientific ideas into this
thought, I saw in Haeckel an illustration
of what was then thought in this direction.
Goethe's relation to the views of nature
belonging to his period I had to visualize
inwardly in all its details during my
work. At the place in Jena from which
came the important stimulations to Goethe
to formulate his ideas on natural phenomena
and the being of nature, Haeckel was at
work a century later with the assertion
that he could draw from a knowledge of
nature the standard for a conception of
the world.
In addition it happened that, at one of
the first meetings of the Goethe Society
in which I participated during my work
at Weimar, Helmholtz read a paper on Goethes
Vorahnungen kommender naturwissenschaftlicher
Ideen (the Goethe's prescience of
coming natural scientific ideas). I was
then informed of much in later natural-scientific
ideas which Goethe had "previsioned" by
reason of fortunate inspirations; but
it was also pointed out how Goethe's errors
in this field bore upon his theory of
colour.
When I turned my attention to Haeckel,
I wished always to set before my mind
Goethe's own judgment of the evolution
of natural-scientific views in the century
following that which saw the development
of his own; as I listened to Helmholtz
I had before my mind the judgment of Goethe
by this evolution.
I could not then do otherwise than say
to myself that, if one thought of the
being of nature in the dominant spiritual
temper of that time, that must necessarily
result which Haeckel thought in utter
philosophical naïveté; those who opposed
him showed everywhere that they restricted
themselves to mere sense-perception and
would avoid the further evolution of this
perception by means of thinking."
3.
Writing
in The Theory
of Knowledge Implicit in Goethe's World
Conception, Rudolf
Steiner said:
"A look at the
views of Haeckel, who is certainly the
most significant of the natural-scientific
theoreticians of the present day, shows
us that the objection we are making to
the organic natural science of our day
is entirely justified: namely, that it
does not carry over into organic nature
the principle of scientific contemplation
in the absolute sense, but only the principle
of inorganic nature. When he demands of
all scientific striving that "the causal
interconnections of phenomena become recognized
everywhere," when he says that "if psychic
mechanics were not so infinitely complex,
if we were also able to have a complete
overview of the historical development
of psychic functions, we would then be
able to bring them all into a mathematical
soul formula," then one can see clearly
from this what he wants: to treat the
whole world according to the stereotype
of the method of the physical sciences."
4.
In Steiner's book Philosophy
of Freedom, Haeckel is mentioned:
"Ethical individualism
then, is not in opposition to an evolutionary
theory if rightly understood, but is a
direct continuation of it. It must be
possible to continue Haeckel's genealogical
tree, from protozoa to man as organic
being, without interruption of the natural
sequence, and without a breach in the
uniform development, right up to the individual
as a moral being in a definite sense.
But never will it be possible to deduce
the nature of a later species from the
nature of an ancestral species. True as
it is that the moral ideas of the individual
have perceptibly evolved out of those
of his ancestors, it is also true that
an individual is morally barren if he
himself has no moral ideas."
5.
The theme of the general
accuracy of Haeckel's phylogenic trees
came up often in Steiner's early lectures.
This is one example:
"Theosophical cosmology
is a self-contained whole, derived from
the wisdom of the most developed seers.
If I had a little more time I would be
able to indicate to you how certain natural
scientific facts are conducive to testifying
to the accuracy of this image of the world.
Look at Haeckel's famous phylogenic trees,
for example, in which evolution is materialistically
explained. If instead of matter you consider
the spiritual stages, as Theosophy describes
them, then you can make the phylogenic
trees as Haeckel did - only the explanation
is different."
References:
Ballmer, Karl. "Rudolf
Steiner und Ernst Haeckel." Hamburg:
Im Selbstverlag, 1929.
"Haeckel, Ernest Heinrich." Encyclopedia
Britannica. 1911. 1911Encyclopaedia.org.
24 Jan. 2004. <http://46.1911encyclopedia.org/H/HA/HAECKEL.htm >
"Haeckel, Ernest."
Encyclopedia Britannica 2002 Deluxe Edition.
CD-ROM. New York: Encyclopedia Britannica
, 2002.
"Haeckel, Ernest Heinrich." University of California, Berkeley;
Museum of Palentology online. 24 Jan.
2004. <http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/history/haeckel.html>
Hemleben, Johannes. "Rudolf
Steiner und Ernst Haeckel." Stuttgart:
Verlag Freies Geistesleben, 1965.
Steiner, Rudolf and Marie.
"Correspondence and Documents: 1901-1925."
New York: Rudolf Steiner Press, 1988.
Steiner, Rudolf. The Course
of My Life
Steiner, Rudolf GA233a,
Lecture of January 13th, 1924.
Steiner, Rudolf. "The
Theory of Knowledge Implicit in Goethe's
World Conception." (GA2).
Steiner, Rudolf. "Philosophy
of Freedom".
Steiner,
Rudolf. GA89 Lecture of June 9th, 1904.