In distinguishing between animals and humans,
we see that animals clearly have DIFFERENCES.

However, with human individuality, it is a matter
of being... ABLE TO DISTINGUISH INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCE
FROM DIFFERENCE THAT IS ACQUIRED *ONLY THROUGH* INDIVIDUALITY.


--| Individual Differences |--- 

...the human form can never be explained by what lies between birth and
death. It cannot build itself up directly out of mere physical substances
and forces. It can only descend from a form like its own that arises as the
result of what has handed itself on by heredity. The physical materials and
forces build up the body during life. The forces of propagation enable
another body, a body with a like form, to proceed from it Ñ that is to say,
one able to be the bearer of the same life body. Each life body is a
repetition of its forebear. Only because it is such does it appear, not in
any chance form, but in that passed on to it by heredity. The forces that
make possible my human form lay in my forefathers.

The spirit of a man also appears in a definite form, and these forms of
spiritual man are the most varied imaginable. In saying this, the word form
is naturally used in a spiritual sense. No two human beings have the same
spiritual form. Observations should be made in this region in a manner just
as quietly and matter-of-factly as they would be made in the physical world.
It cannot be said that the differences in man in spiritual respects arise
only from the differences in their environment and their upbringing. No,
this is by no means the case because two people under similar influences of
environment and upbringing develop in quite different ways. We are,
therefore, forced to admit that they have entered on their paths of life with
quite different dispositions. Here we are brought face to face with an
important fact that sheds light on the nature of man when its full bearing
is recognized.

Anyone who is set upon directing his outlook exclusively towards the side of
material happenings could, indeed, assert that the individual differences of
human personalities arise from differences in the constitution of the
material germs. In view of the laws of heredity discovered by Gregor Mendel
and developed further by others, such a claim can offer much that gives it
the appearance of justification even in scientific judgments. Such judgment
only shows, however, that these people have no insight into the real
relation of man to his experiences. Careful observation shows that external
circumstances affect different people in different ways because of something
that by no means enters immediately into mutual relations with material
development. To the really accurate researcher in this domain it becomes
apparent that what proceeds from the material basis can be distinguished
from what arises through the mutual interaction between a man and his
experiences, although these experiences can only take shape and form through
the participation of the soul itself in this mutual interaction The soul
stands there clearly in relation to something within the external world
that, by virtue of its very nature, cannot be connected with the material
germinal basis.

Men differ from their animal fellow-creatures on earth through their
physical form, but regarding this form they are, within certain limits, like
one another. There is only one human species. However great may be the
differences between races, people, tribes and personalities, as regards the
physical body, the resemblance between man and man is greater than between
man and any animal species. All that finds expression in the human species
is conditioned by the inheritance of descendants from forebears, and the
human form is bound to this heredity. As the lion can inherit its physical
bodily form from lion forebears only, so can man inherit his physical bodily
form only from human forebears.

The physical similarity of men is apparent to our physical eyes, and the
differences of their spiritual forms lie revealed to our unbiased spiritual
gaze. There is one fact that shows this clearly Ñ the existence of a man's
biography. Were a man merely a member of a species, no biography could
exist. A lion or a dove are interesting insofar as they belong to the lion
or the dove species. The separate being in all its essentials has been
understood when the species has been described. It matters little whether
one has to do with father, son or grandson. What they have of interest in
them, father, son and grandson have in common. What a man signifies,
however, is found only in his individuality, not in his being merely a
member of a species. I have not in the least understood the nature of Mr.
Smith of Hoboken if I have described his son or his father. I must know his
own biography. Anyone who reflects on the nature of biography realizes that
regarding the spiritual each man is himself a species.

To be sure, those people who regard a biography merely as a collection of
external incidents in the life of an individual may claim they can write the
biography of a dog in the same way they can that of a man. But anyone who
depicts in a biography the real individuality of a man grasps the fact that
he has in the biography of a single man something that corresponds to the
description of a whole species in the animal kingdom. The point is obviously
not that we can say something in the nature of a biography about an animal Ñ
especially clever ones. The point is that the human biography does not
correspond to a biography of an animal, but to the description of the animal
species. Of course, there will always be people who will seek to refute this
by urging that owners of menageries, for instance, know how single animals
of the same species differ individually from one another. The man who judges
in this way, however shows only that he is unABLE TO DISTINGUISH INDIVIDUAL
DIFFERENCE FROM DIFFERENCE THAT IS ACQUIRED ONLY THROUGH INDIVIDUALITY.


(Rudolf Steiner, *Theosophy*, Chapter 2)

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