religion
Out of context: Reply #890
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Special importance attaches to one point connected with the progress of the Lemurian development, in consequence of the mode of life which was pursued by the women. They developed, by this way of living, special human powers. The unity of their imaginative power with Nature became the basis of a higher development of the imaginative life. Through their senses they drew into themselves the forces of Nature, and allowed these to react on their souls. Thus were the germs of memory formed. And with memory there entered into the world the capacity to form the first and very simplest of moral conceptions. The culture of the will in the masculine element brought, at the outset, no development of the mind. Man followed instinctively either natural impulses or influences emanating from the Initiates. Womankind gave birth to the first conceptions of “good and evil.” Here they began on the one hand to love that which made a special impression on their imaginative life, and on the other hand to hate its opposite. While the rule exercised by the masculine element was directed more to the external effect of the powers of will, to the management of natural powers, in the feminine element there arose at the same time an impulse through the feelings, through the inner personal human powers. He only can comprehend the development of mankind correctly who realizes that the first steps forward in the sphere of imagination were made by women. The development of habits dependent on the meditative, imaginative life, on the cultivation of memory which formed the nucleus of a life of order, of a sort of moral life, came from this side. Whereas man perceived and employed natural forces, woman became the first interpreter of these. It was a new and special mode of life that here arose — that of Thought. This mode had something far more personal than that of men. Now we must understand that this feminine mode was itself really a kind of clairvoyance, even though it differed from the magic of the will on the part of man. Woman was, in her soul, responsive to another kind of spiritual power, — to such as appealed more to the element of feeling, and less to the spiritual element to which man was subjected. There emanated thus from men an influence which was more naturally divine, from women one that was more psychically divine.