The
Soul of the Animal in the Light of Spiritual Science
Berlin, 23 January 1908
Even if the saying “recognise
yourself” which was written above the entrance of a
famous Greek temple remains an everlasting truth, even if this
must also remain the guideline of all thinking, researching and
feeling, nevertheless, the human being soon feels if he
looks impartially at the world and at himself that
self-knowledge is not only contemplating his own ego, but that
he has to receive the true self-knowledge by the view of the
big world and its beings.
We get the right
self-knowledge from our surroundings if we understand them
correctly. Therefore, one also felt always how significant the
knowledge of those creatures must be that are the next on the
stage behind us: the knowledge of the real nature, the inner
life of the animals. If the human being lets the eyes wander
over the plenty of animal forms, every one presents a specific
feature developed in detail. If he looks at himself, he finds,
also with superficial look, everything with himself that he
sees distributed again on the single animals, but harmonised in
a certain way. If he looks at the animal realm outdoors, it may
confuse him as it were, so that he only must separate it to put
it in order. He can do this best of all if he looks at the
animal life in its entirety. However, as many other things of
human knowledge, the human views of the animals were also
dependent on the human feelings in a certain epoch and under
certain conditions.
We already find in our
immediate surroundings that the human beings are different from
these creatures related to them. We realise how the one wants
to see something in the animals that is mental-spiritual as
near as possible to the human beings. On the other side, we
experience others not becoming tired stressing the distance
even of the highest animals to the human beings. We also
realise in which way such a difference expresses itself in the
moral behaviour. We see the one making this or that animal his
dear friend behaving to it almost as a human being, giving it
love, trust, and friendship. On the other side, we see certain
human beings having a quite special reluctance against the one
or the other animal. We realise how someone — like from an
ethical urge — who feels mainly as a researcher points to the
resemblance of the higher animals and their performances to the
human being. Thus, we see apes doing things that remind of the
mental and spiritual qualities of the human being. However,
some people regard the high-developed animals as caricatures of
the human beings, because he sees desires and instincts arising
in a raw, unimproved form, which are weakened in the human
being more or less, so that a kind of shame comes over
him.
We realise that the
materialistic thinking and feeling, in particular in the just
expired epoch, did not get tired stressing again and again that
everything that the human soul can express, for example,
speech, laughter, feelings and moral sensations already exist
as rudiments with the animals. Yes, some people also believe to
notice religious feeling in certain way. Thus, one asserts, any
perfect human quality has gradually developed from qualities of
the animal.
Other ages, which thought
less materialistically, could not make the distance great
enough between the human being and the animal. We find, for
example, a strange view about the animals with Descartes, the
founder of the newer philosophy, whose lifetime from 1596 to
1650 does not lie so far behind us. He denies the animals
everything that makes the human being a human being: reason,
mind, everything that one summarises under the concept of a
reasonable soul. He regards the animal as a kind of an
automaton. Outer stimuli set it in motion, and everything that
appears with the animal is a result of a stimulus. It is almost
in such a way that he regards the animal hardly as something
else than a kind of a higher, very complex machine.
Indeed, he who has an
impartial look at the animal realm round us can easily feel the
difficulties judging the animal and looking, so to speak, into
the inside of a being that is, indeed, related to us but also
distant in certain respect. We realise very soon if no
prejudice blurs our vision that such a view as that of
Descartes cannot maintained. We realise that, indeed, also to
the superficial look those expressions that we call reasonable,
prudent, and mental with the human being also exist in the
animal in a certain way. Many people say, this is the typical
of the animal that its intelligence, its soul is stationary in
a certain way, whereas the human soul is changeable insofar as
we can educate it. Although single persons assert this, one
does not admit this without further ado, even if one looks at
this matter only superficially. We realise looking at the
animals round us how far certain animals closely related to the
human being develop their intelligence. We see what an exact
memory dogs seem to have now and again. We do not need to go
into the subtleties of these matters characterising the animal
soul, but only to sound what most of you have come to know,
either directly or indirectly. Who does not know how long dogs
remember where they have hidden anything anywhere or such. Who
does not know that cats, if they are enclosed in this or that
room, opened the door handle themselves to come out. Yes, it is
not wrong at all if one asserts that the horses who were led
once to the farrier know the way, so that if they lack a
horseshoe they go to the farrier on their own accord. Someone
who observes such things can hardly fail to admit that
concerning certain manifestations of intelligence, certain
mental activities only differences of quality exist between
animal and human being, that there is only a gradual increase
of the abilities of the human soul. Admittedly, many people
become reckless with such things according to a Goethean saying
that one needs only to change a little for this case: where
serious concepts of the animal realm are lacking, the word
instinct appears at the right time.
Instinct is such a
collective name, a real smorgasbord, in which everything is put
that one does not understand. Admittedly, least people are out
to receive a clear mental picture of these “mystic”
instincts. However, this obliges us to go deeper into these
matters. If we look carefully at the animal, we find certain
mental qualities of the human being, like envy, jealousy, love,
aggressiveness and so on, also in the animal realm, sometimes
to a lower, sometimes to a higher degree than with the human
being. If one considers this, it obliges us to look at the
matter somewhat more exactly. However, very numerous
observations of the animal life were done in manifold ways.
What was not yet known at the time of Descartes is easily
accessible today because the animal realm has been
scientifically investigated in all directions in order to get
to know the human nature. The following may seem absurd, but to
someone who knows the animals it is not at all miraculous. One
made dogs by careful training to point to the right playing
card. I do not want to speak of that man who asserts to have
made his dogs to play at dominoes; if a domino did not match,
they whined. All that are matters that are only an increase of
what each of you knows.
Then we must point to the
fact that particular qualities can be so deeply imprinted on
the animal that they are imprinted not only on the single
animal, but also on its descendants. Certain things, which one
taught any dog, were found again with the descendants but their
parents did not train them anyhow. It is in such a way that,
even if one separated the descendants immediately after birth
from the mother animals, the qualities which one had taught the
parents appeared with the descendants. The outer quality was
imprinted so deeply that it became hereditary and was simply
transferred from the ancestors to the descendants.
However, certain factors
are confronted with all things that may be undeniable, which
must puzzle the human being who wants not to prejudge but to
judge thoroughly. Let us take another example. Two dogs were
used to hunt rats with each other. One wanted to prevent that.
Hence, one closed them in two different rooms. Both rooms were
separated with a closed door. It became apparent that the
smaller dog made itself felt by barking at first. Thereupon the
bigger one succeeded in opening the door handle. Now they were
together and could hunt again collectively. Then one did
something else. One separated them again in two rooms; however,
the door handle was now tied with a string. Again, they were
able to communicate to each other. Now the smaller one was even
cheekier; he found out that one could bite through the string.
Thus, they met and hunted again.
This is an example that
can tempt us to speak of a very extensive intelligence activity
of both animals. However, it has its limits. One closed both
dogs in different rooms once again. However, this time one made
the door handle invisible, while one stretched a cloth over it,
and now they were no longer able to meet each other. We see the
limits sharply drawn. In the latter case it would have been
necessary that one of the dogs would have concluded that there
a door handle must be found. It could not see it; once he could
see everything. Because he could not see it, he did not find
it. We see the sharp limit. Here we can take the starting point
and do research where such a limit is found. We can admire
lower animals concerning their mental qualities. He who has
sense for the lawfulness of nature admires the anthill and the
activity of the ants, the hive and the strange activity of the
bees or, if we go up to higher animals, the dens of the
beavers. — Who does not admire with the lower animals that
which looks similar to memory, to intelligence if we see ants
coming back if they have found a place where they can get
something for their hill and carrying to it repeatedly, also
taking others along to help them taking what is still
lacking.
There we see the
intelligent activity of animals finding the way back to the
place where they have once picked up something. We realise an
intelligent activity if an ant takes the other along for
helping. One has argued, all that needs to be based on nothing
but a kind of subtle percipience of that which is at the
concerning place. After the ant has perceived the things once
that are at the concerning place, it can move far away, and due
to its subtle sense it is driven again to it, because it just
perceives it. Certain researchers have tried to disprove such
objections. They brought the ants in the headwind direction and
made smell and perception impossible that way, so that they
would not find these matters, if it depended only on
sense-perception. Nevertheless, the animals found the objects
again, so that the researchers seemed entitled to assume that
really a kind of memory exists which the animal drives
repeatedly to the place, which it has kept in mind.
However, there are also
things that must puzzle us in certain respect. We realise that
animals really have a subtle, distinctive gift to perform this
or that. Who gets involved with such subtleties as they appear,
for example, if an insect pupates how there the single threads
are spun after single lines and directions, one can see
something like a kind of geometry in this activity that the
human being attains only after a long, long apprenticeship. The
things are often built so subtly that the human being with his
geometry is even today not so far to be able to copy these
things. There we see, for example, the bee cell showing the
figure of a regular hexagon. Yes, also if such insects have to
modify their dens generally or their activity because these or
those conditions changed, we realise that they do not keep on
building according to an accepted pattern, but that they adapt
themselves often wonderfully to the new conditions. We realise
something like intelligence if such an insect, a caterpillar,
cocoons itself as a chrysalis and is treated then in a certain
way.
Thus, a researcher tried
to find the underlying cause of this matter and observed the
following: he let the concerning caterpillar spin three threads
in its cocoon, and then he took out it and put it into another
weave, which he had taken from an insect that had also spun
single threads. However, he had taken out those threads. There
the animal started again from beginning and span three threads
again. If the animal, after it had spun up to three threads,
was put in a weave from which six threads were taken out and
only the seventh, eighth and ninth threads were there and also
the first, second and third, then the animal started spinning
the fifth, the sixth and seventh ones; then it stopped again.
However, it is strange that the animal, after it had spun six
threads, was placed in a weave in which the first three ones
existed started spinning again the second one and then third,
fourth, fifth and so on. — It behaves as a boy who has learnt a
poem, has recited the three first stanzas, and should say the
seventh now. That applies also to this animal. It saw that
three threads were there; however, it could not be determined
by that. Thus, we see a kind of mechanics prevailing in the
activity of the animal.
We can see this still at
another significant example. The sand digger wasp has a weird
peculiarity: it leaves its cave, searches any insect for
itself; however, it does not bring it directly to the cave, but
leaves it at the entrance of the cave. Then it goes in and
examines the cave whether everything is in order; then it gets
the insect and puts it into it. One can consider this as a very
reasonable process. — However, the matter can also go on in the
following way. Imagine, you commit something naughty towards
the sand wasp, and you take away the prey and lay it down far
from the cave. The animal comes back; it looks and finds again
the prey. Now it goes to the entrance of the cave, goes into it
again, examines the cave once again, and brings in the insect.
— If you do this forty times, the insect does the same
procedure forty times. You realise that the insect cannot
conclude that the cave is in order, that it is not necessary to
look into it. We could increase this example still a thousand
times.
Indeed, our natural
sciences have a time behind themselves when they believed that
it is sufficient if they answered to anybody who questioned
them about these matters to talk about the struggle for
existence, adaptation and the like. As strange it may sound to
an impartial thinker, one said to himself: an animal acquired
these instincts for certain reasons, the animal did not have
these instincts before. However, once such an animal maybe
performed an action that was suitable for its life. Because the
animal performed this suitable action, it could get living
conditions, which were favourable to him. The others that
behaved less suitably became extinct gradually. With those,
which performed favourable actions, such impulses of action
were transmitted; they became habits, desires, and instincts.
You will admit that if we apply this principle that in the
course of the evolution, in the struggle for existence the
animals appropriated suitable instincts, to the animal realm
with impartial look, nevertheless, something becomes obvious.
It is rather plausible for some people to say, the ancestors
appropriated something once; then this was transmitted to the
descendants. Those, which did something suitable, survived the
struggle for existence, the others perished. Hence, only those
remained which were equipped with suitable
instincts.
However, if we apply this
to the whole nature, something cannot withstand to such a view,
because one must ask which form of usefulness is the basis of
the instincts of certain insects which seeing a flame plunge
into it and perish. On the other hand, which favourable
adaptation forms the basis of the struggle for existence that
certain domestic animals, for example, horses and bovine
animals behave in the same way? If we herd them out of a fire,
we see them plunging into it repeatedly.
One can also do this
observation. This is the one. Then, however, one also does not
come very far with this instinct principle if one considers
that the animals have acquired qualities and pass on them to
their descendants. If one wants to apply this principle, for
example, to the bees, we must get clear about the following.
You know, one distinguishes the queen, the drones, and the
workers. They all have certain qualities that enable them to
their task in the beehive and in the bee life. During
generations these workers appear with the certain qualities
repeatedly which the drones and the queen do not have. The
question is now: can these attributes be inherited? This is
impossible, because these workers are just those, which are
infertile. Those, which do not have the attributes of the
workers, provide the reproduction. The queen bears workers with
the qualities repeatedly which the queen does not have. Thus,
we realise that the mere materialistic theory of evolution and
that of the struggle for existence are contradictory in many
respects. We could increase these examples thousand fold.
Nevertheless, they all speak for the same.
You find those qualities
which we know as qualities of the human soul anyhow in the
animal realm — if weaker or stronger, that is another question
—, but we find them. We also find certain manifestations of
intelligence, of a certain activity of reason. Is it now — this
is the big question — inevitable to come to the materialistic
explanation that everything that the human being has as
contents of his soul is nothing else as a transformation, a
higher development of that which we find in the animal realm?
Are these related traits in the animal soul and in the human
soul evidence of the fact that the human being is nothing else
as a higher animal? Spiritual science only can answer to this
question and is able to solve it.
Spiritual science looks
impartially at all related traits of the human being and the
animal realm, however, because it does not stop at the outer
sensuous world and goes up to spiritual basis of existence, it
can show the immense gap which opens between human being and
animal. What distinguishes the human being from the animal I
have already emphasised in certain respect in previous talks,
in particular in the last one. Spiritual science would close
the eyes, if it denied the animal the soul. The animal has, in
the sense of spiritual science, a soul as the human being has
one. However, it has this soul in another kind. Already in the
last talk when we considered the view of repeated incarnations
concerning man, woman and child, we could point to the big
difference between the single human being and the single
animal. I repeat briefly: the entire animal species arouses the
same interest in us as the single human individuality does. The
human being is a species for himself as an individuality. The
father, son, grandson, great-grandchild of a lion has so much
with each other in common that we only are interested in the
lion as a species to the same degree as we are interested in
the single human being. Hence, only the single human being has
his biography in the true sense of the word, and this biography
is for the single human being the same as the description of
the species is for the animal.
Already last time, I have
mentioned that certain persons — “dog fathers” or
“cat mothers” — have to argue something. They say,
they could write a biography of their cat or dog just as one of
a human being. However, I have already mentioned that a
schoolmaster demanded from his pupils to write the biography of
their quill. Comparatively one can do everything, but it does
not depend on it. One must look impartially at the matter. If
you really go into the matter, you find that certain details,
certain specific features are always there. A quill also has
specific features by which one can distinguish it from other
quills. However, it does not depend on it. It depends on the
inside value of the concerning being, it depends on the fact
that, indeed, the single being if it has a healthy nature
engages our interest in the same way as the entire animal
species does.
This is only a logical
tip at first to that which spiritual science indicates as a
peculiarity of the animal soul. In spiritual science, we regard
the human being as an individual soul, whereas the animals have
group-souls. A group-soul is the same as the individual soul of
the single human being with the exception that spiritual
science searches the human soul in the human being and the
animal soul without the animal, as absurd as it may seem. Just
because we go exactly into the phenomena, we are led even more
to the consideration of higher levels than the physical level
is. I called your attention to the fact that just as round a
blind person light, colour and shine exist, around the human
being who has only physical perception a spiritual world exists
in which spiritual beings are. When the spiritual organs of
perception or knowledge are opened, he sees a new world of
facts and beings, like someone who was born blind and could be
operated is able to see, so that light, colour and shine appear
to him as a new world which he could not perceive
before.
The individual human soul
has descended from a higher world to the physical body. It is
not physical, but it has descended to the physical world. It
inspires and spiritualises the body. One cannot find the animal
soul that is a group-soul, a type soul as an individual soul in
the physical world. However, when the spiritual eyes of the
human being are opened, we meet the animal soul. Then you meet
this as a self-contained creature as you find the human soul in
the human being. We call that world which presents itself
immediately if the first cognitive organs are opened astral
world, namely for reasons we talk about in the following
talks.
As well as we find
self-contained human individualities in the physical world, we
find self-contained beings of mental kind within the astral
world, only entire groups of animals — groups of homogenous
animals — belong to these group-souls. If I should make that
clear by a comparison, imagine that I stand before you, before
me a wall is, so that you cannot see me, a wall with holes so
large that I could push my ten fingers through them. Then you
see ten fingers, you do not see me. From your experience,
however, you know that somewhere a human being must be to whom
these fingers belong. If you broke through the wall, you would
discover the human being. The relation of the spiritual
researcher to the higher world is similar to that.
He sees in the physical
world various, but homogenous animals, as for example lions,
tigers, monkeys etc. These single animals do not belong to a
common physical body but to a common soul being. The wall that
hides this soul being is simply the boundary wall between the
physical and the astral worlds. Wherever the single lions are
whether in Africa or in European zoos, it does not depend on
it. Just as the connecting lines of my ten fingers lead to the
human being, also the connecting lines of the single animals
lead to the group-soul. Wherever spiritual science existed, one
distinguished human being and animal in such a way that one got
clear about the fact that that has entered the body which is
for the animal still in a spiritual world and which manifests
like stretching an arm down to the physical world. The human
being takes possession of it in his individuality in his higher
development, so that one does not need to be surprised if the
single animals show expressions of intelligence. As well as you
see intelligent expressions also in my hands if you see them
seizing this or that, you can also see the single bees, single
animals generally, doing this or that. However, the real
culprit has not descended at all to the physical world. The
culprit uses the animal like an organ, like a limb that he
stretches out to the physical world.
If we take this as basis,
many things become understandable to us in this world. You can
recognise just in such a thing again: the spiritual eyes, the
organs of higher knowledge of the most human beings are not
open. They cannot convince themselves of the fact that in the
spiritual world self-contained animal souls exist that send
much subtler organs down into the single animals.
However, you can still
say something else to yourselves. You can assume that the quite
crazy ideas of the seers are true, and if we take them
hypothetically, the world here becomes somewhat explicable,
comprehensible to us. Now, let us look at one of the examples
concerning this requirement. We take that sand wasp which as an
executive organ gets the prey, lays it before the nest, goes
in, and gets it again. Intelligence forms the basis of that,
even if not the same intelligence as that of the forefinger. If
now in a single case the animal could also stray in the action,
could the order be maintained as it were by the “central
authority,” by the group-soul? No! Only because the
intelligence is with the central authority, with the group-soul
and is not left to the single animal in the particular case,
only thereby it is possible that wisdom rules in the entire
animal realm. Up there where the group-soul is wisdom rules.
Hence, we also see where this group-soul comes into question
where modifications must take place concerning the outer
conditions that it also happens there. However, if it depends
on the fact that the spiritual of the animal corresponds to the
intentions of the species, there the animal is like in a whole
mass. If you leave to every single soldier what he wants to do
or to let, how could anything uniform, a uniform enterprise
come about there? Is it not necessary that just because of the
unity the single one must do the wrong? Reflect about these
thoughts, and then you find that the ostensible contradiction
clears itself even where the fly rushes in the flame and finds
its death. In the single case, this leads to death, however, on
a large scale it is useful to the species.
Thus, we see abilities
and qualities, wisdom and intelligence, spread out upon the
animals. We also see the human being based on wisdom. The
animal has it, too. Ask for memory, the human being has it. Ask
with the animal, there you must reverse the matter and say,
memory “has” the animal, imagination
“has” the animal. The animal is possessed by
imagination, is possessed by memory. The animal is a limb of a
higher being that has memory and imagination. The wise
group-soul standing behind it that is not within the single
animal pushes the animal.
What about the taming of
animals and the like? You can explain this to yourselves under
these premises very well. We practise a hand as a single hand.
While we practise it, we must perform certain activities of our
central organ. However, the hand must be practised, and when it
is practised, the practice sticks as a habit to the hand. Thus,
we can know if we maintain and educate the single animal that
this single animal advances like the single limb in certain
way. However, it reacts on the central authority. It seems to
go so deeply into the group-soul that the qualities, which have
become habits, appear in the descendant again without further
ado. This does not apply to the human being in such a way. With
the human being such single things are not passed on just like
that because with the human being the individual overshadows
the type, or better said, outshines it.
We can well survey the
human and the animal evolutions from such requirements. Today
the descent theory is rather near to bankruptcy. Serious
researchers deny what one has still claimed before short time
that the single human being is close to the most advanced
mammals today. One says that it is impossible that the human
being is a descendant of the monkeys. The opposite can also be
asserted, because we have certain abilities with many lower
monkeys in common, so that certain researchers stand on the
point of view that the ancestor from whom the human being
descended does no longer live. The natural sciences cannot yet
bring themselves to accept the point of view that the monkey
itself has descended, but that the human being has
ascended.
Spiritual science not
only imagines this descent, but it knows how to investigate it
relating to the animal type-souls or group-souls and the human
individual souls. However, if we go back from the higher
mammals and from the human being, we come to a common ancestor.
However, this was no animal in the today's sense. This ancestor
was much closer to the human being than he was similar to a
today's animal. Those real ancestors whom we have to search are
in certain way group-souls of the human being and of the
animals.
Who would deny this who
surveys the human life impartially? Go back further and further
in the human development, or look at the today's savages who
have stopped on a low stage of development: do we not see
something even more typical with them than with the developed
civilised human beings? The further we go back in time, the
less the human being is an individual being. Certainly, the
individual has only developed in the human being, and we await
future times when the human being has still much more
individual traits. The human being is on the way from a type
being to a more and more individual being. Today he stands in
the middle. If we go back to the origin of the human race, we
find entire groups of human beings whose single limbs have no
distinctive consciousness of their self with whom the tribal
feeling, the family feeling was far bigger than the feeling of
the single individual. The single individual was sacrificed in
favour of the interests of the tribe or the group. Briefly, we
must award a group-soul to him if we go back further, so that
we recognise the human soul as a group-soul in ancient times
like the today's animal soul.
However, the human soul
had found the other possibility. In what way did it find this
other possibility that the animal soul does not have? The
animal soul retained, so to speak, earlier than the human soul,
its single traits and hardened them. Because it had hardened
them, the animals were no longer able of development; they
stopped on the old stage. If we go back to the monkey, we must
say, a group-soul that poured its qualities in the firm form
too early is the basis of the single simian species. Hence, it
could no longer develop the qualities poured in physical forms.
The human being was still a subtler and more malleable being in
relation to the physical body that could still be transformed.
The group-soul of the human being retained something of its
changeability. It did not bring down itself with its longing
for forming a physical body as early as the group souls of the
today's animals. The human soul waited up to the time when a
more comprising life on earth was possible for it. Thus, the
animal group-souls could not use the bodies of the animals to
enter them as the human soul entered the physical body of the
human being. The human body retained the ability to become more
perfect, it can be a dwelling place, a temple for the higher
individuality in which then also supersensible intelligence can
live.
Hence, we do not find
abilities like supersensible memory, supersensible imagination,
and intelligence in the animals, but above the animals.
However, we find the spiritual put in the human being; it has
entered the human being. Hence, we need not be surprised that
we find a point in time tracing back the evolution of the world
when animals walked about on our earth for a long time, while
we can trace back the human being only until the Tertiary or
the Diluvium
(now: Pleistocene).
In geology, one cannot
trace back the human being farther. The human soul waited with
its embodiment, after the animals had become physical. The
human body crystallised from the spiritual. The animal bodies
hardened sooner than the human bodies did. In the ancient
times, when already the animal group-souls hardened, these
souls were still imperfect. Hence, they could form imperfect
stages only. Later on, the human group-soul was individualised,
and then these individuals were born on our earth. Thus, we
also understand why the animal realm appears to us like a
disassembled human being. In ancient times, the group-soul that
was destined to develop formed certain group-souls; it built
animal forms. Then it was not able to advance. Others have
developed its qualities. We must not be surprised that the
being that waited longest, descended latest, shows the biggest
complexity, but also the biggest harmony in the confluence of
that which is spread out in the animal realm. Therefore, Goethe
could say so nicely, if the human being looks out at nature and
perceives what is disassembled in nature outdoors, and
summarises and processes it to that which is measure and order
in him, it is as if nature is at the summit of her becoming and
admires herself.
The animal realm became
individual in the human being that way, in the human being the
qualities of the animal realm are combined in a unity. We see
the divine spirit in the succession of the animal forms. Any
animal creation is a one-sided representation of the divine
spirit. However, a harmonious, general expression of it is the
human being. Therefore, Paracelsus could say out of this
consciousness what is still hard understood: if we look out at
the animal realm, any animal is to us like a letter, and the
human being is the word which is composed of the single
letters. — This is a wonderful comparison of the relationship
of the animals to the human being. Goethe got to know the
single animal forms much more thoroughly. He said to himself,
if we look at the animal and study its form, we can realise how
in the biggest variety the divine creating is active; then we
can see the original thought that is distributed in most
different forms among the most different animals.
One needs not be as
absurd as Oken (Lorenz O., originally Okenfuß, 1779–1851,
German naturalist) was who said, every human organ is as an
animal species, and he really pointed to single human organs.
He says of the cuttlefish that it became the tongue. He had
brought a dark notion — because he was no spiritual scientist —
in this absurd form. Against it, Goethe found that in such a
way, as a thought of the human being is distributed among the
different types, the original type forms the basis of any
animal, only the single organ that intervenes in harmonious
kind with the human being appears one-sided with the animal.
Goethe says, let us take a lion, and compare it to a horned or
antlered animal. The same original thought forms the basis
there. However, the lion has a certain power, which forms
teeth. The same power forming teeth with the lion forms the
antlers with the antlered animal. Hence, an antlered animal
cannot have a complete range of teeth in the upper jaw. Hence,
Goethe searches the lack on the other side in the
animal.
In the womb of nature,
the animal itself is made perfect. All limbs form according to
everlasting principles, and the suitable form retains the
prototype secretly. The prototype that was already created in
the most imperfect being, which the soul represents in the most
imperfect animal, attains the most perfect figure in the bearer
of the individual soul, in the human being. Therefore, the form
was bestowed not only on the human being like on the animals,
but the human being makes this prototype alive in himself in
creative thoughts. In him, the thought is reflected not only
according to its form and figure but also to its
manifestation.
While we see this thought
represented, Goethe says, pursuing this gradual evolution to
its height, be glad, highest creature of nature that you can
grasp the great idea in your inside that the order of the
creatures has developed up to you.
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