Darwin and Anthroposophy: Two Lenses on the Evolution of the Human Being

Wait… Is That an Ape in My Family Tree?

Let’s face it, everyone knows Darwin. He’s the guy who put apes on the family tree and shook the world with the phrase “survival of the fittest.” But what if that’s only part of the story?

What if evolution isn’t just about physical survival, but also about spiritual growth? What if, alongside DNA and mutation, we carried within us the momentum of a soul evolving over eons? That’s where Anthroposophy enters the chat.

Anthroposophy, a spiritual science founded by Austrian philosopher Rudolf Steiner, offers a refreshingly non-materialist view of life, one that integrates the physical, soul, and spiritual dimensions of the human being. For those who’ve ever felt there’s more to life than molecules and more to education than curriculum, Anthroposophy might just be the missing link you didn’t know you were looking for.

Here’s something I’m compiling from the texts I’ve been reading, in an effort to move beyond a single story and open ourselves to other truly mind-blowing perspectives.

The Mind-Blowing Non-Materialistic Perspective

According to Rudolf Steiner’s spiritual science, the human being, as a spiritual archetype, was present from the beginning of cosmic evolution. Over eons, through successive stages, this archetype descended gradually into denser forms. 

Along the way, various aspects of human nature externalized as kingdoms: 

• the mineral kingdom expresses the physical structure of the human being, its form and substance; 

• the plant kingdom reflects the etheric body, which in anthroposophy refers to the life force or formative energy that enables growth, reproduction, and regeneration; and 

• the animal kingdom reflects the astral body, which is the bearer of sensations, desires, instincts, and inner experience.

The human being bears all of these: a physical body, etheric life forces, and an astral soul, and uniquely carries the ego, or the “I”, which is the spiritual self, the conscious center of identity and moral development. This ego is not merely the psychological ego, but a divine spark, capable of inner freedom and transformation.

But Where’s the Evidence?

Now, for those who bring a healthy skepticism to all things unseen, that’s understandable. Science, after all, has offered us tremendous insight into the workings of the physical world. Its precision and systematic methods are invaluable. But let’s pause here and ask, are there not aspects of our human experience that science still cannot fully explain?

Take, for instance, our world of feelings and desire. Not the chemicals or hormones that can be named but the lived experience of longing, awe, sorrow, and joy. Science identifies and categorizes, but it does not reach their origin.

What about thinking? We say the brain is responsible but is it? Or is the brain a physical organ that reflects or responds to something deeper? Is thought merely a function of neurons, or might the brain be the instrument through which something intangible expresses itself?

And then there’s the experience of “I”, this quiet, persistent sense of being that can observe its own thoughts, emotions, and actions. It’s more than self-awareness; it is the very faculty through which we experience our own consciousness.

Science speaks of body, affect, and cognition. It maps and measures. But it does not, and perhaps cannot, use words like soul or spirit. And yet, haven’t we all touched something of that nature? In meditation, in moments of stillness, or in the biographies of saints and sages. Even in the lives of figures like Mozart or Ramanujan, we hear of music and mathematics arriving fully formed, as if from a higher source, something they didn’t construct but received.

So while we honour the progress of empirical science, perhaps it is time we also honour the questions it has not yet answered. Must we deny the existence of something simply because we cannot yet measure it? Or can we allow ourselves to inquire sincerely, into what lives beyond and within the human being?

Plot Twist: We’re Not Just Hairless Apes

With this ego (the spiritual self), the human being holds the potential to spiritualize the three lower bodies, the physical body (reflected in the mineral kingdom), the etheric life forces (plant kingdom), and the astral soul (animal kingdom), through self-development and conscious evolution. This process leads to the manifestation of:

• Spirit-Self, or Manas in Anthroposophy (not to be confused with the lower mind Manas in Indian Yoga): the spiritualized astral body, a refined capacity for conscious moral imagination, developed through purified thinking.

• Life-Spirit, or Buddhi: the transformation of the etheric body; an awakened heart-intelligence cultivated through love, moral wisdom, and intuitive action.

• Spirit-Man, or Atma: the transformed physical body, infused with spiritually realized will—an instrument of spiritual purpose and conscious action.

(These stages unfold over long periods of time, epochs and incarnations, and reflect the higher potential of human development, as described in spiritual science.)

In this light, Darwin’s observations of form-changing through natural selection are accurate for surface appearances. They describe the outer, biological evolution of species over time. But from an anthroposophical perspective, the true origin and goal of humanity lies in the spirit, not in the ape. The human form is not the end product of a blind evolutionary chain, but the result of a spiritually guided unfolding whose final aim is not physical perfection, but inner transformation and freedom.

“We unfold love in our actions by letting thoughts radiate into the realm of the will; we develop freedom in our thinking by letting what is of the nature of will radiate into our thoughts. … Thus you see how in the human being the two great ideals, freedom and love, grow together.”

— Rudolf Steiner, The Path to Freedom and Love and Their Significance in World Evolution

“Human beings stand at the summit of nature and there feel themselves to be a whole world of nature, where the whole world reaches an awareness of itself in the human being.”

(A paraphrased synthesis of Goethe’s vision, echoed in Steiner’s spiritual science.)

And perhaps it is here, at the summit of nature, that we are called not just to observe the world but to awaken it, within ourselves.

Where I’m Coming From (a.k.a. What Sparked All This Thinking)

1. Rudolf Steiner – The Education of the Child in the Light of Anthroposophy

Read it here

Introduces the role of the ego in transforming the astral, etheric, and physical bodies into Spirit-Self, Life-Spirit, and Spirit-Man.

2. Rudolf Steiner – Practical Advice to Teachers, Lecture 7 (21 August 1919)

Read it here

Discusses the human being’s relation to the animal kingdom and the Goethean insight that animals and plants reach their self-awareness in the human.

3. Rudolf Steiner – Study of Man, Lecture 1 & Lecture 2 (21–22 August 1919)

Lecture 1 | Lecture 2

Explores the human soul, the cycle of birth and death, and the inner activity of sympathy and antipathy as foundations of cognition and will.

Want to engage in conscious self-work? Talk to me. Coach with me. Grow with me.

More from me on my Instagram.