I think Deborah hit the nail on the head here:

 

 

"Perhaps this argument is old territory. My understanding of Steiner's views on reincarnation and human development is that individuals incarnate into different racial lineages in order to eventually develop a full depth and range of capacities. [...] I've always understood Steiner to mean that the reincarnating Ego is not bound to any particular racial group but rather chooses to incarnate into different hereditary lineages in order to grow. Why would Steiner then, or anyone else with a similar regard for the function of the races in human development, want to see any of them disappear?"


I'd like to offer several passages from Steiner that explain his conception of the relationship between soul development and race development, and that give an indication of why he taught that obsolete racial forms need to disappear. Steiner's basic view is expressed in Knowledge of the Higher Worlds:

 

 

"For peoples and races are but steps leading to pure humanity. A race or a nation stands so much the higher, the more perfectly its members express the pure, ideal human type, the further they have worked their way from the physical and perishable to the supersensible and imperishable. The evolution of man through the incarnations in ever higher national and racial forms is thus a process of liberation. Man must finally appear in harmonious perfection."

 

 

This notion is spelled out in considerable detail in a number of Steiner's other works. Here is a relevant passage from his book Christus und die menschliche Seele, pages 92-93:

 

 

"If we want to understand this, we must carefully distinguish between race development and soul development. The two must not be confused. A human soul can develop itself in such a way that it incarnates in a particular race within a given incarnation. If it acquires certain capacities in this incarnation, then in a later incarnation it can incarnate in a different race. Thus we can see that within today's European population there are incarnated souls which were incarnated in India, Japan, or China in earlier incarnations. The souls certainly do not remain in the races. Soul development is something quite different from race development. Racial evolution runs its quiet course forwards. Now in the ancient European development it was the case that the souls were transferred into European races because they were not able to cross over into the Asian races; therefore the souls at that time were compelled again and again to incarnate in European races. But they became steadily better and better, and this resulted in the souls eventually passing over into higher races, such that souls which had earlier been incarnated in completely subordinated races developed themselves upwards onto a higher level and were able to incarnate later into the physical descendants of the leading population of Europe. The physical descendants of the leading population of Europe reproduced and multiplied, became more numerous than they were originally, because the souls increased in this direction. They thus incarnated, once they had become better, in the leading population of Europe. This development occurred in such a way that the physical form in which the oldest European population had originally incarnated died out as a physical race, that is, the souls abandoned bodies of a certain form, which then died out. That is the reason why there were fewer and fewer descendants in the subordinate races and more and more descendants in the higher races. Thus the lowest strata of the European population gradually died out. This is a very definite process which we must understand. The souls evolve further, the bodies die away. We must therefore carefully distinguish between soul development and race development. The souls then appear in bodies that descend from higher races."

 

 

Steiner presented this notion, that soul improvement leads to racial advancement, in a variety of contexts, and sometimes offered counter-examples of souls that refused to progress and thus stagnated racially. Here is a passage that expands on this theme:

 

"Everyone who works in this way prepares the ground for the human bodies of the future, for the bodies that souls will later need. There is a word that beautifully expresses this work toward the future, which we will understand when we clarify the difference between soul development and racial development. All of you were once Atlanteans, and these Atlantean bodies looked very different, as I have already described. The same soul that was once in an Atlantean body somewhere is now in your body. But not all bodies have been prepared, in the way yours have been, by a small number of colonists who long ago migrated from the West to the East. Those who remained behind, who bound themselves up with their race, they degenerated, while the advanced ones founded new civilizations. The last stragglers on the way to the east, the Mongols, still retain something of the culture of the Atlanteans. In the same way, the bodies of those people who do not develop themselves in a progressive fashion will continue into the next era and will constitute the Chinese of the future. There will once again be decadent peoples. After all, the souls that inhabit Chinese bodies are those that will once again have to incarnate in such races, because they had too strong an attraction to that race. The souls that are today within you will later incarnate in bodies that come from people who work in the way I have indicated, and who beget the bodies of the future, just as the first colonists from Atlantis once did. And those who cling to the ordinary, who do not want to join with the movement toward the future, they will become fused with their race. There are people who want to stick to the familiar, who want nothing to do with progress; they refuse to listen to those who lead the way beyond the race to newer and newer forms of humanity. The myths have preserved this intention in a wonderful manner. The best way they could portray this is by pointing to one of the greatest ones, who spoke the words: “Whosoever does not leave father and mother, wife and child, brother and sister, cannot be my disciple”; and by depicting, in contrast, the tragedy of the person who says, I want nothing to do with such a leader, and rejects him. How could one express this more clearly than in the image of the person who rejects the leader, and who is incapable of advancing! That is the legend of Ahasver, the Eternal Jew, who sat there and pushed away the greatest leader, Christ Jesus, who wanted nothing to do with evolution, and who therefore must remain in his race, must always reappear in his race. These are myths that have been given to humankind for its eternal memory, so that humankind knows what it is dealing with."

 

(Steiner, Menschheitsentwickelung und Christus-Erkenntnis pp. 186-187)

 

 

Explaining again the function of "lower races", Steiner elsewhere notes that these do not always disappear, if there are still less developed souls that require corresponding physical forms:

 

 

"You might now be inclined to say: Is it not an extremely bitter thought that whole bodies of peoples remain immature and do not develop their capacities; that only a small group becomes capable of providing the germ for the next civilization? This thought will no longer disquiet you if you distinguish between race-development and individual soul-development, for no soul is condemned to remain in one particular race. The race may fall behind; the community of people may remain backward, but the souls progress beyond the several races. If we wish to form a true conception of this we must say that all the souls now living in bodies in civilized countries were formerly incarnated in Atlantean bodies. A few developed there in the requisite manner, and did not remain in Atlantean bodies. As they had developed further they could become the souls of the bodies which had also progressed further. Only the souls which as souls had remained backward had to take bodies which as bodies had remained at a lower stage. If all the souls had progressed, the backward races would either have decreased very much in population, or the bodies would be occupied by newly incoming souls at a low stage of development. For there are always souls which can inhabit backward bodies. No soul is bound to a backward body if it does not bind itself to it. The relation between soul-development and race-development is preserved to us in a wonderful myth. Let us imagine race following race, civilization following civilization. The soul going through its earth mission in the right way is incarnated in a certain race; it strives upward in this race, and acquires the capacities of this race in order next time to be incarnated in a higher one. Only the souls which sink in the race and do not work out of the physical materiality, are held back in the race by their own weight, as one might say. They appear a second time in the same race and eventually a third time in bodies in similarly formed races. Such souls hold back the bodies of the race. This has been wonderfully described in a legend. We know, indeed, that man progresses further in the fulfillment of the mission of the earth by following the great Leaders of humanity who point out the goals to be attained; if he rejects them, if he does not follow them, he must remain behind with his race, for he cannot then get beyond it. Let us think of a personality who has the good fortune to meet a great Leader of humanity, let us suppose such a personality confronting Christ Jesus himself, for example; he sees how all his deeds are evidence for leading humanity forward, but he will have nothing to do with this progress, he rejects the Leader of humanity. Such a personality, such a soul would be condemned to remain in the race. If we follow this thought to its conclusion such a soul would have to appear again and again in the same race, and we have the legend of Ahasuerus who had to appear in the same race again and again because he rejected Christ Jesus. Great truths concerning the evolution of humanity are placed before us in such a legend as this."

(Steiner, The Apocalypse of St. John, pp. 79-81)

 

 

Emphasizing this point, Steiner explains that it is the failure of some souls to climb higher that accounts for the continued existence of otherwise obsolete racial forms alongside the more developed "higher races":

 

 

"People who listen to the great leaders of humankind, and preserve their soul with its eternal essence, reincarnate in an advanced race; in the same way he who ignores the great teacher, who rejects the great leader of humankind, will always reincarnate in the same race, because he was only able to develop the one form. This is the deeper meaning of Ahasver, who must always reappear in the same form because he rejected the hand of the greatest leader, Christ. Thus each person has the opportunity to become caught up in the essence of one incarnation, to push away the leader of humankind, or instead to undergo the transformation into higher races, toward ever higher perfection. Races would never become decadent, never decline, if there weren't souls that are unable to move up and unwilling to move up to a higher racial form. Look at the races that have survived from earlier eras: they only exist because some souls could not climb higher."

 

(Steiner, Das Hereinwirken geistiger Wesenheiten in den Menschen p. 174)


I encourage comment on these passages. I am leaving town in a few hours for a full week and will try to catch up when I return.

 

 

Peter Staudenmaier