I. The Difference Between Man and Animal

There are only quite a few men in these days into whom something of former atavistic conceptions of world reality have penetrated through the general illusive conceptions. When the animal is observed in its whole connection with the development of nature, when its organisation is looked at in relation to the ordering of nature, what exactly is the animal? You see when the old Moon evolution was in existence, in regard to outer organisation there was still no differentiation between the higher animals and man of today. The differentiation is a product of earth evolution only. Man has gone through the normal evolution of the earth, but the animal has not; the animal dried up, as it were, during the Moon evolution. Its organisation does not fit in with earth evolution, whoever has seen into this—in modern times a few people, Hegel among them, have instinctively seen into this—whoever has done so can answer the question: what exactly is the animal in the form of its organisation? Nature becomes sick and the sickness of nature is the animal, especially the higher animal. In the animal organisation there holds sway the sickness of nature, the sickness of the whole earth. This development of disease in the earth, this unhealthy falling back into the old Moon evolution, is the higher animal nature, not so much the lower animals but those that are higher. But this also is something that, in the decisive moment of passing the Guardian of the Threshold, man meets unconsciously unless he wills to do so consciously.