8. The Super-Sensible Human Being I

Something else. So in humans we are not only dealing with evolution, but also with devolution, with regression. And precisely because humans are more regressed than animals, they can become the bearers of the spiritual-soul. Everything I have said so far is essentially connected with something else. Anyone who can truly observe how animals express what — already according to observation — must be the organ of imagination, the organ of perception, of feeling, that is, the forward-facing parts of the animal organization, will find that what is expressed in form is expressed objectively. They will find that everything located at the front of the animal organism has to do with the life of imagination, perception, and feeling, and that everything located at the back has to do with the element of will. The two sides are, of course, connected again. Because the animal is placed in its equilibrium, it has, in a sense, side by side what the human being has one above the other: the will organization on the one hand and the intellect and instinct organization on the other. This creates a completely different connection in the animal between everything intellectual, everything imaginative, and everything that concerns the will. In humans, the organs of imagination are superimposed on the organs of will. This creates an inner contact between the organs of will and imagination. Anyone who knows how to observe the soul life will see that this human life of imagination is characterized by the fact that the will extends into it. Study the problems of attention and you will see that the will exerts its power there. This gives rise to the capacity for abstract thinking, which animals cannot have because their imagination lies alongside the will and not above it. Conversely, the will and the life of imagination exert their influence on each other, so that the will is also influenced by the imagination. It is only because the organs of the will belong to the subconscious that the will itself is expressed only as in sleep consciousness. In the state of sleep consciousness, human beings experience the actual process of the will in the same way as the other processes of sleep consciousness. This also highlights the unique connection between imagination and will that is peculiar to human beings: the life of imagination, which in animals is always in a dull, dreamlike state, is illuminated by the will. And likewise, the life of will in animals is much more intimately connected with the life of imagination; animals feel a much deeper connection with their will. This in turn means that in humans, the free life of feeling relates to the life of imagination and will in a completely different way, expressing itself much more deeply than in animals. In animals, the life of feeling rests in the organism; it is, in a sense, only a formal expression of the life of thought. On the other hand, the life of feeling in animals is only inhibited or uninhibited will, depending on whether it can achieve something or not. This is expressed in its entire life. Precisely because of this, it is much more connected with the entire external world.