Lecture IV

If we now look into the environment of the human being and consider first the animal world, we find in the animal world a consciousness that does not rise to thinking, to a life of thought, but that is developed actually in a sort of living dream life. We can form a picture of what reveals itself in the soul life of the animal through a study of our own dream life. The soul life of the animal is entirely a dreaming. The animal's soul life thus is much more actively at work on the organism than the soul life of man, which is more free of the organism through the clarity of the conceptual life. The animal actually dreams. Just as our dream pictures, those dream pictures that we form during waking consciousness, stream upward as feelings, so is the soul life of the animal based mainly on feeling. The animal actually does not have a soul life penetrated by the clear light of thought. What therefore takes place in us between the etheric body and the astral body is essentially what is taking place in the animal. It forms the animal's soul life, and we can understand animal life if we can picture it as proceeding from the soul life.