and indeed all hereditary factors, to individual factors in development. For Steiner, human individuality is centered in a person's unique biography, and he believed that an individual's experiences and development are not bound by a single lifetime or the qualities of the physical body. Steiner occasionally characterized specific races, nations and ethnicities in ways that have been deemed racist by critics. This includes descriptions by him of certain races and ethnic groups as flowering, others as backward, or destined to degenerate or disappear. He presented explicitly hierarchical views of the spiritual evolution of different races, including—at times, and inconsistently—portraying the white race, European culture or Germanic culture as representing the high point of human evolution as of the early 20th century, although he did describe them as destined to be superseded by future cultures. Throughout his life Steiner consistently emphasized the core spiritual unity of all the world's peoples and sharply criticized racial prejudice. He articulated beliefs that the individual nature of any person stands higher than any racial, ethnic, national or religious affiliation. His belief that race and ethnicity are transient and superficial, and not essential aspects of the individual, was partly rooted in his conviction that each individual reincarnates in a variety of different peoples and races over successive lives, and that each of us thus bears within him or herself the heritage of many races and peoples.Eugen Blume, "Joseph Beuys". In Kugler and Baur, Rudolf Steiner in Kunst und Architektur, , p. 186 Toward the end of his life, Steiner predicted that race will rapidly lose any remaining significance for future generations. In Steiner's view, culture is universal, and explicitly not ethnically based, and he vehemently criticized imperialism. In the context of his ethical individualism, Steiner considered "race, folk, ethnicity and gender" to be general, describable categories into which individuals may choose to fit, but from which free human beings can and will liberate themselves. The racism of Anthroposophy is spiritual and paternalistic (i.e. benevolent), while the racism of fascism is materialistic and often malign. Judaism During the years when Steiner was best known as a literary critic, he published a series of articles attacking various manifestations of antisemitism and criticizing some of the most prominent anti-Semites of the time as "barbaric" and "enemies of culture"."Hammer und Hakenkreuz – Anthroposophie im Visier der völkischen Bewegung", Südwestrundfunk, 26 November 2004 Steiner also suggested that Jewish cultural and social