IX. Errors of Spiritual Research

Some will find this strange because one can also have a biography of animals. It should not be denied that a mother dog can give a biography of her dogs, a mother cat a biography of her cats. But that is not the point. A teacher can also ask children to present the biography of their pens. But what is biographical in the individual is only found in humans. The concept of the species only makes sense in the case of humans if one lives in an abstract philosophy. On the other hand, the ideal in the human being is not exhausted in the species. What adheres to the human being through the people, the tribal characteristics, belongs to him in a different direction than to the animal. This species-like quality is even stripped away from the ideal; in the true sense of the word, one cannot even speak of it. At the beginning of the development of the earth, man was entirely a generic being, but in that lay the idea that individuals would all become ideal, so that the generic aspect plays a secondary role in man.