He then says that by an unprejudiced view of the crustaceans (e.g., shellfish, oysters, etc.—“invertebrates”), the lower animals represent the principle of the human head in its most primitive form, as they are all head principle. Then he moves to those with a spine (e.g., fish, the “vertebrates”), the middle class of animals, which he says are entirely spine creatures; we might compare these to the human lymph organization—the human being’s middle (circulatory, or fluid) system. Finally, we come to the higher animals, the mammals, whose entire being is dominated by the specially developed organization of the limbs and metabolism, some (such as cows) being a digestive system and others (such as lions or camels) a limb system, both of the same nature as the human being’s lower system, the metabolic-limb system.

This also gives a real insight into the evolution of the human being and animal.

Human development began with something which finally emerged as the head, but this happened during very ancient times when outer conditions of the earth were entirely different from what they are today. There was as yet plenty of time . . . for these early stages . . . to develop into what has become the present head. One can follow this development if one looks at human embryology which shows that, with regard to its head organization, the human being has under-gone a long evolution. The head organization began at a time which is still represented by today’s mollusks. Today’s mollusks, however, are late arrivals in evolution. As they now have to develop under less favorable outer conditions, they cannot achieve the density of the human head, but have to remain at the stage of a soft-bodied animal surrounded by a hard shell. In today’s completely different external conditions they still represent early stages of the human being’s head organization.

He then goes on similarly through the middle and higher classes of animals, then adds, “This point of view will enable you to understand that the current theory of the human being’s descent is correct, but only with regard to the head. For the head does stem from forebears who had a remote resemblance to the lowest animals of today. And yet, these fore-bears were again quite different from our present day crustaceans because these latter creatures have to exist under such different external conditions.”

It is then not difficult to see how both Bible and science can be brought together, for the human being has taken into its “Ark” all of the animal kingdom (Gen 6,19-7,3), and the order of development of the human being and animals accords with that recognized today by geology. (See I-5; the invertebrates appeared two billion years ago, then the first primitive fish 500 million years ago, then the first small and primitive mammals 135 million years ago. We shall see that the order of appearance corresponds to the systems of the human being’s physical being and of its embryological development, but as we shall also see, Steiner does not appear to accept the time frames involved in present geological science.)