Primal Semites

The primal Semites were, according to Rudolf Steiner, the fifth subrace of the ancient Atlantis. In the meantime, the Atlantians had gained great power over the life forces and this fullness of power had been put more and more into the service of personal self-love, especially among the primal Turanians. Something now had to be done to counteract this unwholesome development.

„Such destructive effects could only be stopped by the development of a higher power in man. And that was the power of thinking. Logical thinking has a restraining effect on selfish personal desires. We have to look for the origin of this logical thinking in the fifth sub-race (the primal Semites). The people began to go beyond mere recollection of the past and to compare the various experiences. The power of judgement developed. And according to this power of judgement, the desires, the appetites were regulated. One began to calculate, to combine. One learned to work in thought. Whereas in the past one gave oneself over to every desire, now one first asks whether the thought can also approve the desire. If the people of the fourth subrace rushed wildly to satisfy their desires, those of the fifth began to listen to an inner voice. And this inner voice has a restraining effect on the desires, even if it cannot destroy the demands of the selfish personality.

Thus the fifth subrace has transferred the impulses for action into the human inner being. Man wants to work out with himself in his inner being what he is to do or not to do. But what was thus gained in the power of thought within was lost in the mastery of external forces of nature. With this combining thinking one can only conquer the forces of the mineral world, not the life force. The fifth subrace thus developed thinking at the expense of mastery over the life force. But it was precisely in this way that it produced the seed for the further development of humanity. Now, no matter how great the personality, self-love and even selfishness might become, mere thinking, which works entirely within and can no longer directly give orders to nature, is not able to produce such devastating effects as the misused earlier forces. From this fifth sub-race the most gifted part was selected, and this lived over the decline of the fourth root-race and formed the germ of the fifth, the Aryan race, which has for its task the complete expression of the thinking power with all that belongs to it.“ (Lit.:GA 11, p. 40f)

Literature

• Rudolf Steiner: Cosmic Memory, translated by Karl E. Zimmer, Harper & Row Publishers 1981, ISBN 0-06-067572-1 rsarchive.org

German

• Rudolf Steiner: Aus der Akasha-Chronik, GA 11 (1986), ISBN 3-7274-0110-9 English: rsarchive.org German: pdf pdf(2) html mobi epub archive.org

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