Knowledge of Soul and Spirit

GA 56 — 23 January 1908, Berlin

Animals Souls in the Light of Spiritual Science

Even if what was written on the famous Greek temple as a call to the innermost being of man remains an eternal truth: Know thyself! — even if this must remain the guiding principle for all thinking, research, and feeling, humans soon realize, when they look at the world and themselves with an unbiased eye, that self-knowledge cannot be solely a matter of looking inward, gazing into one's own inner self, reflecting on oneself, but that true self-knowledge must come to humans through the observation of the greater world and its beings.

That which surrounds us, that which is more or less related to us, connected to us, that which makes us feel superior or inferior, gives us, when we understand it, true self-knowledge in the truest sense of the word. That is why it has always been felt how important it is for human knowledge to know about those creatures that are closest to us on the downward scale: knowledge of the actual nature, the inner life of animals. When humans let their gaze wander over the abundance of animal forms, each one offers them a special feature, developed in detail. When he looks at himself, even with a superficial glance, he finds everything that he sees distributed among the individual animals, but brought into a certain harmony. When he looks at what surrounds him in the animal kingdom outside, it can, in a sense, confuse him, so that he must first separate it in order to bring it into order. He can do this best when he looks at it in the broad context of animal life. But like so much else in human knowledge, human views of animals were also dependent on how people felt and perceived things in a certain age and under certain conditions.

We can already see in our immediate surroundings how differently people relate to these creatures that are related to them. We see how some people want to see in animals something that is as close as possible to humans in terms of soul and spirit. And we see others who never tire of emphasizing the distance between even the highest animals and humans. We also see how such differences are expressed in moral behavior. We see how some people make this or that animal their dear friend in the truest sense of the word, how they treat the animal's services to them almost as if it were a human being, how they give it love, trust, and friendship. On the other hand, we see how certain people have a very particular aversion to one or other animals. We see how, out of an ethical impulse, those who see themselves more as researchers repeatedly point out the similarity between higher animals and their activities and those of humans. Thus, we see monkeys doing things that are reminiscent of the mental and spiritual characteristics of humans. But we also see how some people see in the most highly developed animals something like a caricature of human behavior, seeing in these highly developed animals, in a crude, unvarnished, unrefined form, drives and instincts that are more or less weakened in humans, so that a kind of shame overtakes them. We see how materialistic thinking and feeling, especially in the era just passed, never tired of emphasizing again and again how everything that can express the human soul, everything to which the human soul can rise, is already present in a certain hint in animals, as we see in the expressions of language, laughter, feeling, and moral sensibility. Yes, some even believe that they can find traces of religious feeling in animals in a certain way. So that it is claimed: Everything that man possesses in terms of perfection has gradually developed, merely adding up to individual characteristics that are already present in animals, so that one can actually only regard man as a highly developed, highly evolved animal.

Other eras, which were less materialistic in their thinking, did not know how to make the distance between humans and animals large enough. For example, we find a curious view of animals in Descartes, whose lifetime is not so far behind ours, who lived from 1596 to 1650 and is often called the founder of modern philosophy. He denies animals everything that actually makes humans human: reason, intellect, everything that is summarized under the concept of a rational soul. He regards the animal as a kind of automaton. External stimuli set it in motion, and the effect of stimuli is all that manifests itself in animals. It is thus the case that he regards the animal as little more than a kind of higher, very complicated machine.

And indeed, anyone who takes an unbiased look at the animal world around us can very easily sense the difficulties in assessing animals and, so to speak, look into the inner workings of a creature that is related to us, but in a certain sense still distant. If we allow our view to be clouded by no prejudice, by no preconceived opinion, we soon see that a view such as that of Descartes cannot hold water. We see that even to the superficial eye, those expressions that we describe in humans as rational, intelligent, and spiritual are in a certain way definitely present in animals. Many say that it is characteristic of animals that their intelligence and soulfulness are in a certain sense stationary, whereas human soulfulness is changeable insofar as we can educate humans. Although this is emphasized by some, even a superficial glance shows that it cannot be readily admitted. When we observe the animals around us, we see how highly intelligent certain animals close to humans can be; we see what a faithful memory dogs sometimes seem to have. We need not go into the subtleties of these things that characterize the animal soul, but only hint at what most of you have experienced, either directly or indirectly, in life. Who does not know how long dogs remember where they have hidden something or the like? Who does not know that cats that have been locked in this or that room have opened the door handle by themselves in order to find their way outside? Yes, it is by no means incorrect to claim that horses that have once been taken to the farrier know the way, so that when they are missing a horseshoe, they go to the farrier of their own accord. Anyone who observes such things can hardly deny that, with regard to certain expressions of intelligence, certain mental activities, there is only a difference in quality between animals and humans, only something like an increase in the mental abilities of humans compared to those of animals. Of course, a large number of people easily deal with such things according to a quote from Goethe, which only needs to be modified slightly for this case: Where serious concepts regarding the animal kingdom are lacking, the word instinct comes into play at the right time. Instinct is such a collective term, a veritable hodgepodge, into which everything that is not understood in earthly life is thrown! Of course, very few people care about obtaining a clear mental image of these mystical instincts, used in the negative sense. But this compels us to delve deeper into these matters. If we observe animals closely, we will see how certain human characteristics, such as envy, jealousy, love, and quarrelsomeness, are also found in the animal kingdom, sometimes to a lesser degree, sometimes to a greater degree than in humans. When we consider this, it compels us to take a closer look at the matter. Now, however, numerous observations of animal life have been recorded in the most diverse ways. What was not yet known to researchers in Descartes' time is now easily accessible, because the animal world has been scientifically examined from all angles in order to understand human nature. It may seem grotesque, but anyone who knows animals will not find it surprising that, through careful training, dogs have been taught to point to the card bearing the number named when they are shown cards with certain numbers, the word for that number is spoken to them, the cards are shuffled and shown to them again, and the number is named in words. I don't want to talk about the man who claims to have taught his dogs to play dominoes properly; if they didn't like a tile, they would whine loudly. These are all things that are just an extension of what each of you already knows.

We must then point out how certain characteristics can be so deeply ingrained in an animal that they are imprinted not only on the individual animal but also on its offspring. Certain things that have been taught to a dog have been found in its offspring, without these offspring having been taught in any way by their own parents. Even when the offspring were removed from their mothers immediately after birth, the characteristics that had been taught to their ancestors appeared in the offspring. The external characteristics that had been taught to them were so deeply ingrained that they became part of the principle of heredity and were simply passed on to the offspring from their ancestors.

However, all these undeniable facts are countered by certain other factors that must make people who want to judge thoroughly rather than hastily pause for thought. Let's take another example: two dogs that had acquired the habit of hunting rats together. The aim was to prevent these two dogs from constantly hunting rats. Therefore, they were locked in two different rooms. The two rooms were separated by a closed door. It turned out that the smaller dog first made itself heard by barking. The larger dog then managed to open the door handle. They were now together and could go hunting together again. Something else was done. They were locked in the two rooms again, but this time the door handle was tied with a rope. They were able to communicate again. And now the smaller one was even cheekier; he figured out that he could bite through the rope. Again, they got together and went hunting again.

This is an example that might lead one to speak of a very advanced level of intelligence in both animals. But there are limits. The two dogs were locked in separate rooms again. This time, however, the door handle was made invisible by covering it with a cloth, and now they could no longer be together. So we see a clear boundary. In the latter case, it would have been necessary for one of the dogs to conclude that there must be a door handle somewhere. He couldn't see it; before, he could see everything. Since he couldn't see it, he didn't think of it. We see the limit clearly. We can take this as a starting point and investigate where such a limit can be found. We can greatly admire and marvel at lower animals in terms of their soulfulness. Anyone who has a sense of the laws of nature will admire the construction of an ant, the activity of an ant, the construction and remarkable activity of bees, or, if we move up to higher animals, the construction that the beaver builds, and so on. Who, when it comes to smaller animals, will not want to admire in all seriousness what resembles memory and intelligence when we see how insects, for example ants or similar insects, once they have found a place where they can get something for their nest, carry what they can carry it back to the nest and keep coming back, taking others with them to help them carry what is still missing.

Here we see the intelligent activity of animals returning to the place where they once picked something up. We see an intelligent activity, a kind of understanding, in the fact that one ant takes another with it to help. It has been objected that all this is based on nothing more than a kind of subtle perception of what is in the place in question. Once the ant has perceived the things that are in the place in question, it can move far away, and its subtle sensory organ will drive it back again because it perceives this. Certain researchers have endeavored to refute such objections. They have made it impossible for such ants to find these things if it were only a matter of sensory perception by bringing them into the direction of the headwind, thereby making smell and perception impossible. Nevertheless, the animals found the objects again, so that the researchers seemed justified in believing that there was indeed a kind of memory, a kind of recollection, that repeatedly drove the animal back to the place it had memorized.

But there are also things that must make us pause in a certain respect. We see that animals do indeed have a fine, pronounced gift for performing this or that. Anyone who delves into such subtleties, as they become apparent, for example, when, say, an insect pupates, how the individual threads are spun along individual lines and in individual directions, how direction after direction is spun, can see in what the animal does something like a geometry, an arithmetic that humans only develop after a long, long period of learning. Often things are so finely constructed that humans, with their geometry, are still far from being able to imitate them. For example, we see the bee cell constructed in the shape of a regular hexagon. Even when such insects find themselves in a situation where they have to modify their construction or their activity because of certain circumstances, we see that they do not continue to build according to a preconceived template, but often adapt to the circumstances in a wonderful way. Indeed, we see something of an intelligence at work in certain ways of investigating when such an insect, a caterpillar, spins itself into a cocoon and is then treated in a certain way.

A researcher once tried to get to the bottom of this and noticed the following: When he let the caterpillar spin its cocoon and it had spun up to three threads, he took it out and placed it in another web that he had taken from an insect that had also spun individual threads. But he had removed the threads that were already there. The animal then started again from the beginning and spun the three threads again. When the animal, after spinning up to three threads, was placed in a web from which six threads had been removed and only the seventh, eighth, and ninth threads were present, and the first, second, and third were also left in it, the animal began to spin the fifth, sixth, and seventh; then it stopped again. It is strange, however, that after the animal had spun six threads and was placed in a web in which the first three were present, it began to spin the second again, and then the third, fourth, fifth, and so on. It behaves like a boy who has learned a poem, recited the first three verses, and then has to recite the seventh. The same is true of this animal. It saw that the three threads were there, but it could not act accordingly. Thus we see how a kind of mechanism prevails in the animal's activity.

We can also see this in another significant example: there is an insect called the sand wasp. It has a strange peculiarity: it leaves its burrow, searches for any insect, but does not bring it directly into the burrow, instead leaving it at the entrance. It then goes inside and inspects the burrow to see if everything is in order; then it fetches the insect and places it inside. This can be regarded as a very sensible process. — But the matter can also continue in the following way. Imagine that you commit the useless act of taking the prey away from the sand wasp and placing it a long way outside the cave. The animal returns, searches for and finds the prey again. Now it goes back to the entrance of the cave, goes back inside, inspects the cave once more and only then brings the captured insect inside. But if you do this in more detail by taking the insect away from it again, it will bring it back to the cave, go back in, and so on. If you do this forty times, it will repeat the same procedure forty times. You see, in the end, the cave is fine, I don't need to check anymore, the insect won't come. We could multiply this example a thousand times over.

However, our natural science has gone through a period where, when questioned about these things, it believed it could get by with words such as “struggle for existence,” “adaptation,” and the like. As strange as it may sound to some unbiased thinkers, it was said that an animal acquired these instincts for certain reasons; in the past, the animal did not have these instincts at all. But at some point, such an animal may have performed an action that was beneficial to its life. By performing this beneficial action, the animal was able to bring itself into living conditions that were favorable to it. The others, who behaved less appropriately, gradually perished. Those who performed favorable actions passed on such impulses to act; they became habits, drives, and what we see in the realm of instincts. You will admit that if we apply this principle, that in the course of evolution, in the struggle for existence, animals have acquired purposeful instincts, with an unbiased view of the animal world, many things become apparent. It is quite plausible for some to say: the ancestors acquired something at one time; this was then passed on to their descendants. Those who did something useful survived the struggle for existence, the others perished. Therefore, only those equipped with useful instincts remained.

However, if we apply this to the whole of nature, there are many things that cannot stand up to such a view, for one must ask what form of expediency underlies the instincts of certain insects which, when they see a flame, throw themselves into it and perish. Or what adaptation favorable to the struggle for existence underlies the fact that certain domestic animals, such as horses and cattle, behave in the same way? When we lead them out of the fire, we see them throwing themselves back into it again and again. This observation can also be made. That is one thing.

But then, in another respect, one does not get very far with this instinct principle when one considers that animals have acquired characteristics and pass them on to their offspring, bequeathing them. If we want to apply this principle to bees, for example, we must be clear about the following. As you know, a distinction is made between the queen, the drones, and the worker bees. They all have certain characteristics that enable them to perform their roles in the hive and in bee life. Generation after generation in the life of bees, these worker bees with specific characteristics appear again and again, characteristics that the drones and the queen do not have. Now the question arises: Can these characteristics be inherited? That is impossible, because these worker bees are precisely those that are infertile. The business of reproduction is carried out by those who do not have the characteristics of worker bees. Again and again, the queen gives birth to worker bees with characteristics that the queen does not have. Thus, we see that the purely materialistic theory of descent and the theory that speaks of the struggle for existence contradict each other in many ways and must inevitably lead to contradictions. We could multiply these individual examples from animal life a thousandfold, but we do not want to. After all, no matter how many you multiply them, they all speak for the same thing.

The characteristics that we know as characteristics of the human soul can be found in some form in the animal kingdom—whether weaker or stronger is another question—but we find them. We also find certain expressions that can be regarded as expressions of intelligence, as expressions of a certain rational activity. Is it now — and this is the big question — necessary to arrive at the materialistic explanation that everything that man has as the content of his soul is nothing more than a transformation, a higher form of what we find in the animal world? Are these related traits in the animal soul and in the human soul proof that man is nothing more than a kind of higher animal? The answer to this question can only be given and resolved by Spiritual Science.

Spiritual Science takes an unbiased view of all the related traits in humans and in the animal world, but since it goes beyond what the outer sensory world offers, since it goes to the spiritual foundation of existence, it is able to show the enormous gulf that opens up between humans and animals. What distinguishes humans from animals has already been emphasized in previous lectures, particularly in the last one. Spiritual Science would be closing its eyes if it denied that animals have souls. In the sense of Spiritual Science, animals have a soul just like humans. But they have this soul in a different way. Already in the last lecture, when we considered the mental image of repeated earthly lives in relation to man, woman, and child, we were able to point out the great difference between the individual human being and the individual animal. To repeat this briefly: The very extent of interest that the individual human being arouses in us in its development from birth to death, the very same extent of interest is aroused in us by the entire animal species. As an individuality, the human being is a species unto itself. What we have in the lion, for example, as father, son, grandson, great-grandson, has so much in common that we are only interested in the lion as a species or type, as this particular type, to the same extent that we are interested in the individual human individuality, in the individual human being. Therefore, in the true sense of the word, only the individual human being has a biography, and this biography is for the individual human being exactly the same as the description of the species is for the animal. Last time, it was mentioned that certain people — “dog fathers” or “cat mothers” — have something to object to. They say that they could write a biography of their cat or dog just as they could of a human being. But I have already mentioned that a schoolteacher asked the children to write the biography of their pen! Comparatively speaking, you can do anything, but that's not the point. You have to look at the matter impartially. And if you really get into it, you will find that certain details, certain peculiarities are always there. A quill pen also has peculiarities that distinguish it from other quill pens. But that's not the point. What matters is the inner value of the being in question; what matters is that, if it has a healthy nature, the individual being captures our interest in the same way as the entire animal species.

This is initially only a logical reference to what Spiritual Science now presents to you as a peculiarity of the so-called animal soul. In spiritual science, we speak of the individual soul in humans and of a group, species, or type soul in animals. This means that we attribute to the entire animal type, the entire animal species, as soul, exactly the same thing that we attribute to the individual human being, that which is contained in the individual human being, in his skin. We seek the soul of the human being within him, within the human being; as spiritual scientists, we seek the soul of the animal outside the animal, however grotesque that may seem. Precisely because we focus closely on appearances, we are led to consider higher planes than the physical plane. I have pointed out that just as there is light, color, and brilliance around the blind person, so too is there a spiritual world around the human being who has only physical perceptions, a world in which spiritual beings exist. The moment the spiritual organs of perception or cognition are opened, he sees a new world of facts and beings around him, just as someone who was born blind and has had an operation can see, so that light, color, and brilliance, which he could not perceive before but which were nevertheless present around him, appear to him as a new world.

The individual soul of the human being has descended from a higher world into the physical body. It is not physical, but it has descended into the physical world. It glows through and spiritualizes the body. The animal soul, which is a kind of type or generic soul, cannot be found at all in the physical world as a soul, as an individual creature. But when human beings' spiritual eyes are opened, they encounter the animal soul. They encounter it as a self-contained creature, just as they find the individual human soul in each individual human being when they get to know that person. We call the world that opens up immediately when the first organs of perception are opened the astral world, for reasons that we will discuss in the following lectures.

Just as we find self-contained human individualities in the physical world, we find self-contained beings of a soul nature within the astral world, only entire groups of animals — groups of animals of the same kind — belong to these group souls. If I am to clarify this by means of a comparison, imagine that I am standing in front of you, and in front of me is a wall so that you cannot see me, a wall with holes large enough for me to put my ten fingers through. You then see ten fingers, but you do not see me. However, you know from experience that there must be a person somewhere to whom these fingers belong. If you break through the wall, you discover the person. The spiritual researcher has a similar relationship to the higher world. He sees different but similarly shaped animal individuals in the physical world, such as lions, tigers, monkeys, and so on. For him, these are individual animals that do not belong to a common physical body, but to a common soul being. The wall that covers these soul beings is simply the boundary wall between the physical and astral worlds. It does not matter where the individual lions are, whether one is in Africa or in Europe, in European menageries. Just as the connecting lines from my ten fingers lead to the human being, so the individual connecting lines of the individual animals lead to the species soul. Wherever Spiritual Science has existed, humans and animals have been distinguished in such a way that it has become clear that what is still in a spiritual world for the animal, in a supersensible world, and what it extends like an arm into the physical world in its manifestation, has been drawn into the human body. The fact that humans take possession of this in their individuality is the higher development of humans, so that we need not be surprised when individual animals show us intelligent expressions. Just as you now see intelligent expressions in my hands when they are stretched through the wall, seeing how they grasp this or that, so you can also see how individual bees, individual animals in general, do this or that. But the actual perpetrator has not descended into the physical world at all. The perpetrator uses the animal like an organ, like a limb that he extends into the physical world.

If we take this as a basis, many things in this world are explained to us. It is precisely in such a matter that you can see again and again: for most people today, the spiritual eyes, the higher organs of knowledge, are not open. So you cannot convince yourself that there are animal souls in the spiritual world that send their much finer organs down into individual animals. But you can say something else to yourself. You can assume that the seemingly crazy ideas of the seers are true, and if we take them hypothetically, then something in this world becomes explainable, something comprehensible. Now, let us consider one of the examples based on this assumption. Let us say, for example, that we take the sand wasp, which, as the executive organ, fetches its prey, places it in front of the nest, then goes in and fetches it again. Intelligence underlies this, even if it is not the same intelligence that underlies the intelligence of the index finger. If, in an individual case, the animal could stray from its course of action, could order be maintained, as it were, by the “central authority,” by the species soul? No! Only because intelligence resides in the central authority, in the species soul, and is not left to the individual animal in each case, is it possible for wisdom to reign throughout the animal kingdom. Up there, where the species soul is, wisdom reigns. Therefore, wherever this species soul comes into play, wherever modifications must occur in response to external conditions, we see that it does indeed occur. But when it comes to the spirit of the animal corresponding to the intentions of the species, the animal is as if in a collective mass. If you leave it up to each individual soldier to do or not do what he wants, how could anything uniform, any uniform undertaking, come about? Is it not necessary that, precisely because of unity, the individual must do the wrong thing? Think these thoughts through, and you will find that the apparent contradiction resolves itself, even where the fly throws itself into the flame and meets its death. In the individual, this leads to death, but in the larger picture, it benefits the species.

Thus we see abilities and characteristics spread out above the animals, wisdom and intelligence. We also see wisdom underlying human beings. Animals have it too. Ask about memory: human beings have it. Ask about animals, and you have to reverse the question and say that animals “have” memory, animals “have” imagination. Animals are possessed by imagination, possessed by memory. Animals are part of a higher being that has memory and imagination. Animals are driven by the wise group soul behind them, which is not inside the individual animal. What about the taming of animals and the like? You can explain this very well under these conditions. We practice one hand as a single hand. By practicing it as a single hand, we must stage certain activities of our central organ. But in addition, the hand must be practiced, and when the hand is practiced, the practice sticks to the hand as a habit. Thus, when we care for and train the individual animal, we can know that this individual animal, just like the individual limb, progresses in a certain way. However, it has a retroactive effect on the central authority. It turns out that it penetrates so deeply into the soul of the species that such characteristics, which have become habitual, reappear in the offspring without further ado. This is not the case with humans. In humans, such individual things are not easily inherited because in humans the generic is overshadowed, or rather, outshone by the individual.

From such premises, we can survey the course of human and animal development all the better. Today, the theory of descent is already close to bankruptcy. What was claimed not long ago, that the individual human being is close to the most highly developed mammals, is now being disputed again by serious researchers. It is said that it is impossible for humans to be descendants of apes. But the opposite can also be claimed, because we still share certain abilities with many lower apes, so that certain researchers take the view that the ancestor from whom humans descended no longer lives. Natural science still cannot accept the view that apes have degenerated while humans have evolved. Spiritual Science not only conceives of this ancestry, but also knows how to investigate it with reference to the animal type or species souls and the human individual souls. If we go back from today's higher mammals and humans, we do indeed arrive at a common ancestor. But this ancestor was not an animal in today's sense. This ancestor was much closer to humans than it was to today's animals. The real ancestors we have to look for are, in a sense, the generic or archetypal souls of humans and animals.

Who would deny this who looks at human life with an unbiased eye? Go back and further back in human development, or look at certain people today, so-called savages, who have remained at a lower stage of development: must we not see much more typical species characteristics in them than in developed civilized people? The further back we go in time, the less human beings are individual beings. Yes, individuality has only just developed in human beings, and we can look forward to times in the future when human beings will have even more individual traits. Human beings are on the way from being generic or typical beings to becoming more and more individual beings. Today they are in the middle. If we go back to the origins of the human race, we find entire groups of people whose individual members did not have a pronounced sense of self, whose sense of tribe and family was far greater than their sense of individuality. The individual was also easily sacrificed to the interests of the tribe or the species. In short, if we go further and further back in time, we come to recognize that humans also had a group soul, so that in ancient times, in times of the distant past, we also recognize the human soul as a group soul, similar to the animal soul of today. But the human soul had found another possibility. How did it find this other possibility that the animal soul does not have? The animal soul, so to speak, fixed, hardened, and solidified its individual characteristics earlier than the human soul. And since it had solidified them, the animals were no longer capable of education; they remained at the old stage. If we go back to the monkey, we must say that the individual monkey species is based on a group soul that cast its characteristics into a fixed form too early. Therefore, it could no longer develop the characteristics cast into physical forms. In terms of the physical body, humans were still finely formed, soft beings that were still capable of change. The group soul of humans has preserved what it could still do in terms of educational capacity and capacity for transformation. With its longing to form a physical body, it did not bring itself down as early as the group souls of today's animals. The human soul has waited until now, when a more comprehensive life on earth was possible for it. Thus, the animal group souls could not use the bodies of animals to enter them in the same way that the human soul entered the physical body of humans. The human body has retained the ability to become more perfect; it has the potential to become a dwelling place, a temple for the higher individuality, in which supersensible intelligence can also live.

Therefore, we do not find abilities such as supersensible memory, supersensible imagination, and intelligence in animals, but above animals. But we find the spiritual placed within human beings; it has entered into human beings. Therefore, we need not be surprised that when we trace back the history of the world, we find a time when animals had long been walking around on our earth, while we can only trace humans back to the Tertiary or the ancient Diluvium. Geology does not go any further. The human soul waited to incarnate after the animals had already become physical. The human body crystallized out of the spiritual. Animal bodies hardened earlier than human bodies hardened out of their group soul. In ancient times, when the animal group souls had already hardened, these souls were still imperfect. They could therefore only form imperfect stages. Only later did the human group soul become individualized, and then these individuals were born on our earth. This also helps us understand why the animal kingdom appears to us as a fragmented human being. In ancient times, the group soul that was called upon to develop formed certain group souls; it built animal forms. It could not go any further. Others developed their characteristics. We should not be surprised that the being that waited the longest descended the latest, showing the greatest complexity, but also the greatest harmony in the confluence of what is spread out in the animal world. That is why Goethe was able to say so beautifully: When human beings look out into nature and perceive what is fragmented in nature outside, and summarize and process it into what is measure and order within themselves, it is as if nature were at the summit of becoming and admiring itself.

Thus, in human beings, the animal kingdom has become individualized; in human beings, the characteristics of the animal world are united in a single entity. Thus, we see the divine spirit in the succession of animal forms. Each animal form is a one-sided representation of the divine spirit. But a harmonious, all-round expression of this is the human being. That is why Paracelsus, out of this awareness, was able to say what is still so difficult to understand: when we look out into the animal world, each animal is like a letter to us, and the human being is the word composed of the individual letters. — This is a wonderful comparison for the relationship between animals and humans. Goethe familiarized himself much more thoroughly with the individual animal forms. He said to himself: When we look at the animal and study its form, we can see how the divine creation lives out in the greatest diversity, in a broad picture; then we can see the original idea itself, which branches out into its most diverse forms in the most diverse animals.

One need not be as grotesque as Oken, who said that every single organ of the human being is like an animal species, and he really pointed to individual human organs. For example, he said that the octopus gave us the tongue. He had a vague idea about this — since he was not a spiritual scientist — and expressed it in this grotesque form. Goethe, on the other hand, found that just as a human thought is distributed across different species, each animal is based on the original type, only in animals the individual organ that harmoniously interacts with humans comes out one-sidedly. Goethe says: Let's take a lion and compare it with a horned or antlered animal. The same original idea underlies both. But the lion has a certain power that forms teeth. The same power that forms teeth in the lion forms antlers in the antlered animal. Therefore, no antlered animal can grow a full set of teeth in its upper jaw. That is why Goethe looks for the deficiency on the other side in the animal.

In the womb of nature, the animal itself is created perfectly. All limbs are arranged according to eternal laws, and the corresponding form secretly preserves the archetype. And the archetype, which was already created in the most imperfect being, which represents the soul in the most imperfect animal, attains its most perfect form in humans as the bearer of the individual soul. Therefore, humans have not only been given form like animals, but humans themselves bring this archetype to life in creative thoughts. It is reflected in them, not only in form and shape, but also in its expression. When we see this mental image presented to us, Goethe says, following this progression to the heights: Rejoice, highest creature of nature, that you are able to grasp within yourself the great thought according to which the sequence of beings has been formed up to you.