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Answers of Spiritual Science to the Great Questions of Existence
GA 60

10 November 1910, Berlin

Translated by D. S. Osmond and V. E. Watkin

The Human Soul and the Animal Soul

You may have noticed that the lecture today on “The Human Soul and the Animal Soul” is to be followed by another in a week's time on “The Human Spirit and the Animal Spirit.” The reason why spirit and soul must be dealt with in two separate lectures will not become completely clear until the next lecture has been given. In the meantime let it be emphasized that when life and existence are viewed in the light of spiritual science, the task is in one respect more difficult than it is in modern science as we know it today, where concepts and ideas which—if things are to be truly comprehended—must be kept separate, are thrown together. And it will be realized that the riddles connected with soul and spirit in animal and in man cannot be solved unless the distinction between soul and spirit is clear and unambiguous.

When we speak of “soul” in the sense of spiritual science, the idea of inwardness, of inner experience, is always bound up with this concept. And when we talk of “spirit” with reference to the world around us, we are clear that in everything we can see or with which we can be confronted, there is a manifestation of spirit. Man would find himself involved in a strange self-contradiction were he not to take for granted the presence of spirit in all the phenomena of existence around him. Without falling into disastrous self-contradiction, nobody can have an intelligent grasp of the external world unless he admits that what he eventually finds in his own spirit concerning this external world—the concepts and ideas he acquires in order to understand outer phenomena—has something to do with the things themselves. If when a man believes he has learned anything from the concepts he has formed about the things of the outer world, he will not admit that there lives in these concepts something that is contained in the things themselves, he can never advance to knowledge—if he is to be true to himself and understand the nature of his own acts of cognition. He alone can speak of knowledge in the real sense who says to himself: “What I can ultimately discover and retain, what I can bring to realization in my spirit in acts of knowledge, must be contained, primarily, in the things themselves. And insofar as I take something into my spirit from the things of the world, no matter to which kingdom they belong, then in all kingdoms I must presuppose the existence of spirit.”

This acknowledgment, of course, will not always be forthcoming. But it can only fail to be made when a man has given way to the self-contradiction referred to above. Therefore in speaking of “spirit” we realize that it reveals itself in all worlds, and we try to understand how it pours into, becomes manifest, in these worlds. We speak differently of “soul.” We speak of “soul” when the spiritual—that which we assimilate with our intellect, our reason, and through which we cognize things—when a being experiences the spirit inwardly. We ascribe soul to a being which not only takes in but inwardly experiences spirit, creates out of the spirit. Thus we speak of the soul only when spirit is active in a being confronting us. In this sense we find spirit inwardly creative in man and in animal.

If one clings to current ideas it is easy to disavow many things and above all to disavow the results of spiritual investigation which make it clear that man is not a single-membered but a many-membered being. There are, of course, very many people today—one can well understand this, one can feel with them and discern what is in their minds—who, from their point of view, have reason to be skeptical when it is said as the outcome of spiritual investigation that man must be thought of as composed not only of the physical body that is perceived through the senses and investigated by science, but also of a higher body, the so-called “etheric body” or “life-body”—which is not to be associated with the hypothetical ether of physics. Equally, according to spiritual science, there is a third member of the human being; namely, the astral body; and also a fourth member, the “Ego,” the “I.”

If the existence of these members is not acknowledged, it is extremely easy, from the standpoint of modern scientific research, to deny the validity of what is stated by spiritual science; it is easy because before the validity of these things can be recognized the whole character and method of spiritual-scientific research must to some extent be understood.

To the spiritual investigator himself, these four members of the human being—physical body, etheric or life body, astral body and ego—that is to say, one visible and three invisible, super-sensible, members—are realities because he has developed the faculties slumbering in his soul in such a way that he can perceive the “higher” bodies of man just as ordinary eyes can perceive the physical body. These “higher” members of man are realities, and as invisible members underlie the visible member, the physical body. But although they are perceptible realities only to the spiritual investigator, it may nevertheless be said that thinking can apprehend what is meant when reference is made to these higher members of man's being. In the etheric body the spiritual investigator recognizes the bearer of all the phenomena of life, of the living, in man. Death ensues when the physical body is deserted by the etheric or life body. Therefore the spiritual investigator sees in this etheric or life body that which prevents the physical body from coming under the sway of the physical and chemical forces active in the physical body. The moment death occurs the physical body becomes a combination of purely chemical and physical forces and processes. That the human body during life is extricated from the sway of these chemical and physical processes which take possession of it immediately [after] death occurs, is due to the etheric or life body. During life the etheric body wrenches the chemical and physical substances and forces from their purely physical operations and surrenders them again to these physical activities only at the moment of death.

It is very easy to argue against this, but these arguments fall to the ground when the matter is more deeply understood. Quite apart from the fact that the etheric body is a reality to the spiritual investigator, logical thinking will itself disclose that a living organism is inconceivable without the existence of an etheric or life body. Therefore in spiritual science we ascribe an etheric body also to the plants. We say: Whereas man has still higher super-sensible members—the astral body and the “I”—the plant has only physical body and etheric body; and a mineral, as we see it in the outer world, consists of physical body only.

Of the animal we say that an astral body is membered in the physical body and etheric body—associating with these terms for the time being nothing beyond what has just been said.

In the astral body, the spirit which, in the crystal, for example, produces the structure, becomes inward, inwardly and organically formative. In an animal the sense organs, the functions of the animal soul, arise out of the inner organization itself. Whereas in the mineral the spirit expends itself in elaborating the form, it remains inwardly alive in the animal. And we speak of this inner, living activity, this existence of the spirit within the animal organization itself, as an activity of the astral body. But of man we say that in him the astral body is also permeated by an “I,” an ego, and we shall presently see what significance this has for human life.

What do we really mean when we speak of “spirit”? We ascribe to spirit that reality which we ourselves experience, as it were, in our intelligence. Through our intelligence we execute one thing or another; we bring the forces of different beings into an ensemble. This creative intelligence of ours has a particular characteristic. In that it enters into us in temporal existence, and is a creative force, we form a concept of intelligence, of reason, of creative intelligence, and then we look at the universe around us.—We should have to be very shortsighted before we could possibly ascribe intelligence, all that we call “spirit,” to ourselves alone. The incapacity to penetrate the riddles of existence is due, fundamentally, to the fact that man is nevertheless prone to ascribe intelligence to himself alone and can never answer the question: How comes it that I am able to apply intelligence to existence. But when we look around us and see that the things of space and time manifest in such a way that our intelligence can apprehend the existence of law, then we say: What lives within us as intelligence is also outspread in space and time, is actively at work in space and time. When we look at the lifeless realm of nature, we say that there the spirit is, as it were, frozen into matter, that our intelligence can apprehend, can lay hold of what comes to expression in the forms, in the law-determined workings of matter—and thereby we have in our intelligence a kind of reflection of the spirit weaving and working through the world. If we thus contemplate the spirit in the great universe, and then compare the way in which it is frozen, as it were, in the lifeless realm of existence with the way it confronts us in the animal, we say to ourselves: If we look at any particular animal, we see before us a self-enclosed existence, creative in the same way as the spirit outspread in space and time is creative. And a feeling will dawn in us of why those who knew what they were doing called this spirit working actively in the animal, the “astral body.” They turned their eyes to the great universe through which the stars move in their courses and which men apprehend through their intelligence, and they said: “The spirit lives in the ordering of the universe and in a single animal organism we see a certain conclusion, we see the spirit confined within the space bounded by the animal's skin.” That which is active in the animal and is identical with what is outspread in space and time, they designated as the “astral body” in the animal organism.

Now between a dim feeling of the kinship of what comes to expression in the animal with what is spread out in space and time, and the knowledge resulting from strict investigation carried out by spiritual science, there is a long, long path. But this feeling is a trustworthy guide and it will enable many a man, before he himself is capable of this investigation, to perceive the truth of what the spiritual investigator says. When we observe how this spirit which with wonder and awe we see outspread in time and space, works in the animal, we can say: In the animal we see springing forth from its very organism the spiritual activity which is made manifest in all the laws of spatial and temporal existence. There is no need to study strange or rare phenomena, for those lying close at hand will suffice. A man of discernment need not go far field to perceive how, from the activity of animals, there go forth workings of the spiritual which are also to be discovered in the whole range of existence.—When he sees the wasp building its nest, he says to himself: There I can see intelligence springing forth as it were, from the animal organization itself; the intelligence which I perceive out yonder in the cosmos when I direct my own intelligence to the laws of existence, that same intelligence I perceive in the spirit that is working in the animal organization. Observing the activity of this spirit in the animal organization—no matter where—he will say with truth: This spirit that is active in the animal organization, this inwardness of the spirit in the animal, far surpasses what man is able to produce in the way of intelligence! An example lying near to hand has often been mentioned.—What a long time man has had to wait in the course of his existence before his own intelligence rendered him capable of producing paper! Think of the forces of intelligence which man was obliged to apply and master in his own soul life before he was able to produce paper. You can read in any simple textbook of history what a great event it was when men succeeded in making paper. But the wasps have been able to do it for thousands of years! For what is to be found in the wasps' nest is exactly the same as what man produces as “paper.”

So we see unmistakably that what flows out of man's intelligence in his struggle for existence, springs from the animal organism with full vigour of life. But as people generally go the wrong way to work, they have been indulging for a long time in strange speculation as to whether the animal is intelligent or not intelligent—never noticing that the essential point has been ignored. For the question cannot be whether the animal is or is not intelligent, but whether in all that it accomplishes, the animal unfolds what man can perform only through his intelligence. Then the answer can be given that in the animal there is an inwardly creative and powerful intelligence, operating directly out of animal life. And it will then be possible to have an inkling of what the spiritual investigator observes in the astral body and which he sees inwardly and outwardly active in the animal, in that the intelligence is creative in the organism itself, and creates from out of the organism. The spiritual investigator speaks of the astral body when there are present in the organism, organs which, through their activity, accomplish something that man can accomplish only through his intellect. And we see how this inner, spiritual activity is distributed as it were among the different animals, how it comes out in the faculties and skill of the various animal species. One species can do this, another that—and this is due to differentiation of the astral body in the various animal species.

We come now to consideration of the individual activity of the spirit in the animal organism. This inner working of the spirit in an organism, this experiencing of the spirit in its activity, is what we call soul experience. Now when we study this soul experience without bias or preconceptions, we find that it develops quite differently in man and in the animal. A great deal has been and is still being said on the subject of instinct in the animal and conscious activity in man. It would be well, in this connection, to cling less to words and to keep the real point more in mind—to try to understand the nature of instinct. Our study has already shown that instincts may far outstrip human intelligence, and that the qualities here brought into evidence are not to be connected with the word “instinct” in its ordinary sense. Man is so ready to ask in his infinite pride: “Am I not greatly superior to the animal?” But he would also do well to ask: “In what respect have I remained behind the animal?” Then he would find that he has remained behind the animal in respect of many faculties—faculties which are innate in the animal, but which man, if he is to develop them himself, has to acquire and master by dint of effort.

Man comes into existence at birth as a helpless being, whereas when the animal is born, natural forces abound in its organism and it brings with it as inherited “capital,” as it were, what enables it to live as it has to live. We do not, of course, ignore the fact that, to begin with, the animal too has much to learn.—The chick is able to peck as soon as it is born but cannot at once distinguish between what is good or not good for it, between what it can or cannot digest. But that is only for a short time. The point is that certain faculties of the animal come into evidence in a way which makes it obvious that they lie in the line of heredity, they are truly innate, and they emerge at the proper time. The fact that some faculty does not begin to function until a particular time is no proof that it could have been acquired only after cultivation. The whole organization of animals and also of plants makes it obvious that something which lies in the line of heredity can emerge only when the organization of the being in question has already been in existence for a considerable time. Just as a human being gets his second teeth without having to wait until he himself acquires them by his own efforts, so it is with certain faculties and abilities of the animal. These faculties come into evidence only later, but for all that they belong to heredity. Take the hermit crab as an example. When it has lived for a time it has the urge to search for a snail shell, because the back of its body is too soft to be a firm support. This search for a snail shell in order to have protection for the back of its body is undertaken at a definite time out of the urge of self preservation, but then it occurs with certainty—that is to say, it is innate in the very organization of the hermit crab. Thus the moment the animal comes into existence we can perceive the whole circuit of its life in broad outline; the manner in which the animal is to develop is laid down at the moment of its birth and is then further elaborated. In this process of development and elaboration we recognize the activity of the spirit, and in the way in which the animal participates in the process we recognize its life of soul.

If the expression is not misunderstood, one could call the soul life of the animal an “enjoyment of the spirit within the organism,” and if we keep this idea in mind it will be a great help in characterizing this soul life. But then we shall see—for the time being we will confine ourselves to the higher animals—that this experiencing of spiritual activity by the animal is largely expended inwardly, that it lives itself out inwardly. Soul experience in the animal consists in the hankerings of its organs, in the cravings of its organs—and especially in the activity of those organs that are directed to the inner life. An inkling of how the animal as it were “enjoys” the work of the spirit within it can be gained—although full clarity can be reached only by spiritual investigation—by observing an animal engaged in the process of digestion. While an animal is digesting its food, that is to say, is experiencing the inner activity of the spirit, it has its greatest feelings of well being. In its soul, the animal experiences the inner, bodily reality in which the spirit is directly at work. Thus in the animal kingdom, soul experience is in a certain way bound up with the bodily nature. It is a delightful sight to see a herd of cattle lying down to digest immediately after grazing and to observe the soul life that is kindled in each animal. This experience is even more intense in animals which sink into a kind of digestive sleep. They are then experiencing the activity of the spirit in their organs.

In the animal, the activity of the spirit is closely knit to the organization. In that the spirit has built up a certain sum total of organs, the animal has to bring to expression the manner in which the spirit has worked in and is manifest in the organs; and it is not possible for the animal to go beyond the bounds of the spirit manifesting in the organs. When we observe the outer, psychic life functions, the outer life processes of the animal in this or that species, we see how closely the expressions of soul life are bound up with its inner organization, that is to say, with what has been wrought in the animal by the spirit. If we notice under what conditions an animal shows fear, we can say: When it shows fear, this is due to its particular organization. Again, when an animal shows a tendency to thieve, we can say the same.

What has here been said from the standpoint of spiritual science has been well put in the essay entitled “Is the Animal a Being of Intelligence?” by Zell, a writer of great value in the realm of research into the animal soul. Although this short essay is written from a different standpoint, it gives most useful examples of how psychic experience in animals is bound up with their organization, and it can be taken as confirmation of what the spiritual investigator discovers from quite another side.

Soul life in the animals is graduated in many variations in the different animals because, in creating the organs, the spirit has in each case given them a particular stamp. But we see that the spiritual activity of creation—which is anchored in the astral body—expends itself in organic formations, in what the animal actually brings with it into the world. In creating these specific formations, the spirit expends itself. The animal brings with it into the world what it is able to bring and what existence allows it to experience. It can go very little beyond this. This is evidence that the spirit has spent itself, has poured itself out, in the fashioning of the organs. In the formation of the organs, however, the species of animal is revealed to us. Therefore to the question: “What is it that the animal enjoys and experiences in its life of soul?” we can answer: From birth until death the animals' experiences are determined by its species.—It experiences in its soul life, and from out of its own organism, what it has been given by the spirit to accompany it into existence.

Goethe was one who reflected deeply about the life of the animals and of man and he wrote these fine words: “The animals are instructed by their organs—so said the men of old. I add to that: men, too, but they have the advantage of being able to instruct their organs afresh.” (Letter to Wilhelm von Humboldt, 17th March, 1802.)

These are words of great profundity. Of what is an animal capable in life? What its organs make possible. And so an animal is nervous, courageous or cowardly, rapacious or gentle, according to how the spirit has poured itself into its organization. The creative activity of the spirit has poured itself into its organization. The creative activity of the spirit in its organs is mirrored in the soul life and soul experiences of the animal. This means that soul experience in the animal is confined within its species; it cannot go beyond the species, the genus; it experiences itself as species, as genus.

Contrast with this, man's life of soul. Man's life of soul as it comes to expression in his willing, his feeling, his thinking, in his cravings, his interests and in his intelligence, is something that when he enters existence at birth is not bestowed upon him by heredity and cannot be passed on by the man himself to his descendants. Far too little attention is paid to this latter fact. Yet it is of infinite importance, a fact upon which all observation of life should be based, and which may be put in somewhat the following way.—As soon as an animal or human being has acquired the power to reproduce his kind, the development of the etheric body is, to a certain point, complete. This etheric body has the power to bequeath what it contains within it to the descendants. But if a human being lives beyond this point he cannot bequeath to his descendants faculties which still remain to be developed. That is obvious. The moment a human being reaches puberty, he possesses all the faculties upon which hereditary transmission depends. Therefore faculties which remain capable of development after the time of puberty cannot be possessed by man in the same way as those which originated in the etheric body and can be transmitted by heredity. This is a cardinal truth of which sight must never be lost.

An important consideration in the study of human life is that from birth to death a man is capable of learning new languages, and what is equally significant is that if a man were to grow upon a distant, uninhabited island, he could not develop this faculty at all. The same applies to the faculty of forming concepts, and the development of the mental picture of the “I.” These are things which have nothing to do with heredity, and which cannot be transmitted by heredity, because they do not belong to the species or genus. In what does not belong to heredity, in faculties that remain capable of development beyond and apart form heredity, man has something that is not conditioned by the species or genus, but belongs to the individuality. And in the faculty of speech, in the possibility of forming ideas, and in the experience of the Ego concept, there lies what man himself so brings into the world that by means of it he instructs his organs afresh, teaching them what they have not yet received, but which they must acquire.

This is a “transaction” between the human being and the spirit, lying beyond the horizon of what he is able to experience. Its results cannot be transmitted nor received into the qualities which lie within the line of heredity. Man unfolds something which cannot flow into the species, which is removed from the species. Insofar as man is a generic being, he has inherited all the faculties accruing to him as a generic being, just as the animal has inherited them; only he does not inherit as much skill, as much spirit, as does the animal. There is still something besides, which man can acquire as individuality. And the life of the spirit connected with these non-inherited qualities, constitutes his soul experiences—which transcend those of the animal. In that man enjoys the fruits of his work and activity insofar as they are acquired in life through qualities that are not inherited, he unfolds a life of soul transcending that of the animal.

Man comes into existence with less skill than the animal. He is less skillful for the reason that the transaction with the spirit cannot be undertaken until some time after birth, whereas in the animal it has already been completed. Thus in its life of soul the animal enjoys what heredity can bequeath to it. That is to say, the soul life of the animal points to the past. And the moment we see the soul life of the animal passing into death, all that the animal can experience through its species also passes into death. Everything that is individual soul experience in the animal is something that has come to it from the past. In its existence the animal expends its life of soul and there is no basis for immortality. On the other hand, what is experienced in the animal soul lives on, ever and again, in the life of the species. Therefore in the sense of spiritual science we speak of a species—soul of the animal, which constantly arises anew, constantly lives on within the species. No one who desires clear concepts can deny the justification of this. The work of the spirit in the animal genus and species is experienced in the single animal individuality. But we see, too, that this experience points to the past, and that the very moment this past is exhausted, when the soul life must go towards death, towards its ending, the sunset glow begins.

It is different when, without preconceived ideas, we observe the soul life of man. There we see that when man is born, something comes with him that has not been expended in his organs; we see how he works further upon his organs, how he really teaches his organs. From this, however, we realize that in his individual life man is in direct interconnection with the spirit; he experiences in his life of soul not only what is transmitted to him by the past, but also what comes from outside to meet him in life, what is presented to him directly as spirit.

Thus man's life of soul is twofold: like the animal, his soul experiences the species to which he belongs as a human being; this he lives out as a being of the past, and it is this that goes forward to death when the spirit withdraws from the organs, when the organs begin to lignify, to wither away. But man's own dealings with the spirit do not belong to his organs; this is something that man has taken into his etheric body independently of the organs. Hence it is something that does not relegate him to the past that is inherited but is a seed for further life. In the measure in which we see that the inner man emancipates himself from his organs, that is to say, becomes individual, in that same measure we can say with logical truth that here we see the immortal part of man crystallize out of the bodily life.

So do we learn to feel that this grows in the human being, whereas in respect of what has been inherited he experiences the past in his life of soul. Thus there grows in man something that goes forward to the future that cannot be absorbed into the line of heredity. This is evident if we observe the life of soul in man and in animal. We see how closely the soul life of the animal is bound to its organism, how closely its faculties and skill, indeed all its experiences, are bound up with its organs and with its inherited characteristics. We can rightly observe the soul life of the animal only when we look for it in the self enjoyment of its bodily nature. That is the essential point. We see very little of the essential nature of an animal by watching the delight it takes in the outer world—but a great deal when we observe how it experiences its own digestion. The highest level of experience in the soul life of an animal lies within the boundaries of the organs. In its soul experiences the animal spends itself within its organization; and what remains to it for its outer life is significant for the animal only insofar as it can be experienced inwardly in its life of soul. It is of course the case—and this is also confirmed by the spiritual investigator—that the heights where the eagle passes its existence do give rise to experiences in its life of soul. But this experience lies in the activity of what lives in its organs and comes to expression within them. In man, soul experience emancipates itself from the inner enjoyment, the inner experiencing of the organs—and man has to pay the price for this. The animal has a certain security in its instincts; it knows which food is harmful and which is good for it. The animal injures itself very much less than it is injured by man. Animals are injured most of all when man keeps them in captivity. But in the freedom of nature, when the animal follows what is innate in its organism, its instincts are unerring, because it is so closely united with its organs. The human being, on the other hand, emancipates himself from his organs; and the consequence is that he can no longer directly adhere to what is good or bad for him. He becomes insecure. And whereas the animal displays passions that are in keeping with its organs, the human being unfolds passions which are possibly far more injurious and are not fitting for his organs. Whereas the spider spins its web with unerring certainty and it would be absurd to talk to it of reasoning, man is obliged to think a great deal before he can perfect any handiwork. For he can make great errors. Man's life of soul has emancipated itself from his bodily nature, but at a cost.

But man can unite with the spirit from the other side; he can receive into his soul what the spirit conveys to him. He is able to receive the spirit without the spirit having first to pour through the organs, through the bodily nature, whereas the animal is dependent upon how the spirit pours into its organs. The animal experiences within itself how the spirit flows into its organs. Man, on the other hand, wrests his organs away form the life of soul and thus experiences the direct inpouring of the spirit into his soul.

Once we have grasped what the spirit really is and how the spirit lives itself out within the soul, these things are of infinite significance. We shall, however, have to wait for the lecture on “Human Spirit and Animal Spirit” before they can be fully clarified. But when we think about the inner life of soul we get a feeling of the difference between man and animal if we contrast the inward bodily life of the animal soul with the outward bodily life of the human soul. Because of this outward bodily life, the human soul can become spiritually more inward. The fact that the human soul can delight in the things of the external world, can take in what the spirit in its external manifestations says to the soul, man owes to the circumstance that his soul has emancipated itself from the bodily nature, has separated from the inward bodily experience of the spirit and has gained the certainty of experiencing the spirit itself at the cost of uncertainty and lack of skill, of imperfectly developed instincts.

It is quite easy to say: How is it possible to speak of an animal “soul,” since “soul” implies the notion of inwardness and man cannot look into the inner life of another being. The people who base themselves on this glib objection are the very ones who refuse to listen to any talk of soul experience, because—so they contend—soul experience can only be “within ourselves” and can therefore be inferred in another being only by analogy. But if these things are taken as they really are and not talked about in the abstract, it is quite clear that the very way a being lives reveals what it actually experiences inwardly. Anyone who refuses to believe that a being lives according to what it experiences inwardly will be incapable of any real observation of the world. Admittedly, without demonstration, there is no absolute guarantee in direct observation that the animal experiences something in its life of soul when it shows pleasure in digesting. But a man who compares things in the world, and does not confine his observation to one phenomenon only, will soon recognize that there are many good reasons for speaking in this way. Once we have acquired a feeling of the difference of soul experience in the animal and in the human being, this feeling and perception will help us to understand the nature of soul life in the animal. Above all we shall feel with greater and greater clarity how man's life of soul is emancipated from spirit as a bodily experience. It is the spirit that creates the organs and works in the organism, building it into what it is, and when we speak of the building of the organs we are speaking of the spirit as it works in the etheric body. When the astral body inserts itself into the organization, this spirit can, under certain preconditions, be experienced in a particular way. If we take seriously what has been said above about physical body, etheric body and astral body, we can say: In human beings and animals the physical body is the lowest member of their being; the etheric body so fashions the chemical and physical substances that they become life processes. The etheric body lives within the physical body, comprises and embraces the chemical and physical processes. In all this lives the astral body, experiencing—as soul experience—everything that is going on in the etheric body. Thus the etheric body is the active, creative principle working on the physical body, and the astral body is that part of the animal or human being which experiences the deeds of the etheric body. Thus the physical body is united with the etheric body in the building up of the organs; and the etheric body is united with the astral body in the inner experiencing of this upbuilding and activity of the organs. Everything in the physical body, the etheric body, and the astral body is mutually related.

Now what is it that evokes soul experience of a particular kind? That which pours, as it were, over the whole inner organization in man and animal. We can best understand this particular kind of experience by observing it in certain circumstances. Is there anyone who is not familiar with the characteristic form of soul experience which is present only while the animal is growing and the size of its organs is increasing and which stops when growth is completed? What expresses itself there in the experience of exuberant energy is connected with certain work that is being performed by the etheric body on the physical body and is an indication that the work is proceeding in the proper way. But what stands out prominently in this condition is always present as a certain feeling of well being in the soul, a feeling of life, of comfort or discomfort; and this depends upon whether the etheric body has or has not command over the physical organization, is able to master it or not. If the etheric body is unable to assert itself properly in the physical organs, this expresses itself in the astral body in a feeling of discomfort. But if the activity of the etheric body can everywhere find access to the physical organs, if that activity can take effect with the help of the physical organs, this engenders the feeling of general well being in men—either in a subtler or cruder form. If indigestion occurs, this can only mean that the etheric body cannot carry out an activity which it ought to carry out. This makes itself manifest in the accompanying discomfort. Or let us suppose someone has so exhausted himself by thinking that the organ of the brain “goes on strike.” In such a case the etheric body is still able to think, but the brain is no longer able to participate. Then the thinking begins to cause headaches; and from there the discomfort spreads into the general feeling of life. This is particularly intensified when the part of the organ that is built up by the etheric body is completely disorganized. We say then: “It is as though the skin cannot expand when outer heat makes it want to expand,” or, “I feel as if a burning brand is being held to my head.” In such a case the etheric body is meeting with resistance. Not being absorbed or seized by external impressions, it then comes up against a physical body to which it is not adjusted, and this expresses itself in the astral body as a feeling of pain.

So we understand “pain” in the astral body by conceiving it as the expression of weakness of the etheric body in relation to the physical body. An etheric body that is in harmony with its physical body works back upon the astral body in such a way that the feeling of well being is an inner experience of health. On the other hand, an etheric body that is at odds with its physical body works back upon the astral body in such a way that pain and discomfort are bound to arise in it. Now we shall be able to realize that because in the higher animals—it will be better to speak of the lower animals in the next lecture—the life of soul is so intimately bound up with the bodily nature, this soul experience will be much more deeply felt—as will also be the case in a disordered body—than it can be in a disordered human body. Because the soul life of man is emancipated from the inner, bodily experience, pain that is merely due to bodily circumstances is far less torturing, it gnaws much less deeply into the soul than in the higher animals. We can also observe that bodily pain in children is a much keener psychic pain than in later life, because in the measure in which the adult human being becomes independent of his bodily organization, he finds in the qualities which arise immediately out of his soul, the means to struggle against bodily pain; whereas the higher animal, being so closely bound up with its bodily nature, feels pain with infinitely greater intensity than man. Those who maintain that human pain can be more intense than pain felt by the animals, are talking without foundation. Pain in the animal is far, far more deep-seated than purely bodily pain in man can ever be.

So we see that in rising above this bodily nature, man draws out something from the innermost depths of his being; namely, his “I”, his ego. That which he does not inherit, which can sustain its existence above and apart from the species, which he must develop more and more through his individuality—that pertains to the ego. It is this that must enter human existence; it cannot be imparted by heredity, for it proceeds from the human individuality which comes from the spiritual realms into existence at birth and after death returns again to the spiritual realms. Therefore we speak of a core of being in man which passes on from life to life, because we can apprehend it in actual existence, provided only that we observe life with unprejudiced eyes.

I have tried today to indicate how it can be established from direct experience that we may speak of a being in man who is not inherited but enters human existence from quite another side and when what man inherits is dissolved by death can pass into another spiritual existence. When further principles of spiritual science are understood, this needs no more explanation because spiritual investigation relies on direct vision and can bring from quite another side the proof and evidence for what was intended to be made clear today from experiences of everyday life. But it is also possible for spiritual science so to relate together these everyday experiences that they reveal to us that which can establish in man the hope—based upon observation of facts—of an enduring life of soul that transcends bodily existence.

So we see how observation of existence everywhere confirms the words of Goethe already quoted. Soul experience in the animal is enclosed within the circle of its organs. The organs are everywhere the masters, fashioned by the spirit in order that the animal can experience a soul life in keeping with its organs and is able to make use of them. Man, on the other hand, enters existence in such a way that his organs themselves give him no guidance upon what he must take from life and impress into his life of soul. But just here we find that which gives him his guarantee of immortality, that which is eternal because it cannot originate in heredity.

That is what Goethe meant by the words: “The animal is instructed by its organs, but man has the advantage of being able to instruct his organs afresh.” Anyone who understands this in the right way—that in the course of his existence man is capable of teaching his organs afresh—will say to himself: How a man teaches his organs becomes manifest in the life of soul and here his union with the spirit is revealed, a union that is indissoluble because it does not spend itself and does not come from the past but points the way to, and is the seed for, the future, the means whereby man can attain that which in his soul will engender the power to vanquish the old death in life that is ever and again renewed.

Menschenseele und Tierseele

Vielleicht ist es Ihnen aufgefallen, daß im Anschluß an den heutigen Vortrag hier in acht Tagen ein Vortrag gehalten werden soll über «Menschengeist und Tiergeist», während heute der Gegenstand, über den wir sprechen wollen, «Menschenseele und Tierseele» heißt. Warum das geschehen ist, daß über Geist und Seele in zwei getrennten Vorträgen gesprochen werden soll, kann allerdings erst im nächsten Vortrage vollständig deutlich zutage treten. Vorläufig kann nur darauf aufmerksam gemacht werden: wenn man geisteswissenschaftlich Leben und Dasein betrachtet, hat man es in einer gewissen Beziehung allerdings nicht so leicht wie bei der anderen wissenschaftlichen Betrachtung, die in der Gegenwart üblich ist, wo Begriffe und Ideen, die durchaus zu einer wirklichen Erfassung der Dinge auseinandergehalten werden müssen, eben zusammengeworfen werden. Und wir werden sehen, daß wir mit den Rätseln, die sich auf Seele und Geist bei Tieren und Menschen beziehen, nicht zurechtkommen könnten, wenn wir nicht die Unterscheidung zwischen Seele und Geist klar und sicher machen könnten.

Wenn wir geisteswissenschaftlich, wie es hier geschehen soll, von Seele sprechen, dann ist mit dem Begriff der Seele immer der andere Begriff der Innerlichkeit, des innerlichen Erlebens verbunden. Und wenn wir in bezug auf die uns umgebende Welt vom Geist reden, sind wir uns darüber klar, daß wir in allem, was uns nur erscheinen, entgegen D treten kann, etwas wie eine Offenbarung desGeistes haben. Es ist das auch schon öfter erwähnt worden, daß sich der Mensch in einem sonderbaren Selbstwiderspruch befinden würde, wenn er den Geist nicht voraussetzen würde in allenErscheinungen desDaseins, die ihn umgeben. Nur derjenige Mensch kann eigentlich, ohne in einen sich tötenden Selbstwiderspruch zu kommen, erkennend an die Außenwelt herantreten, der zugibt, daß das, was er in seinem Geiste zuletzt über die Außenwelt findet, was er erkennend sich an Begriffen und Ideen aneignet, um die Außenwelt zu erfassen, mit den Dingen selbst etwas zu tun hat. Wer nicht zugeben wollte — womit er dann von den Dingen ausgeht, wenn er glaubt, in irgendeiner Weise etwas erkannt zu haben, wenn er sich Begriffe von den Dingen gemacht hat —, wer nicht zugeben wollte, daß in diesen Begriffen etwas lebt, was in den Dingen selber ist, der dürfte, wenn er mit sich selbst in Übereinstimmung lebt und sein erkennendes Leben selber logisch auffassen will, gar nicht an das Erkennen schreiten. Nur der kann Erkenntnis als etwas Wirkliches betrachten, der sich sagt: Was ich zuletzt in meinem Geist in der Erkenntnis finden und behalten, gegenwärtig machen kann, das muß zuerst in den Dingen enthalten sein. Insofern ich in meinem Geist von den Dingen etwas hereinnehme, gleichgültig welchem Reiche sie angehören, setze ich in allen Reichen den Geist voraus.

Gewiß, diese Anerkennung, die jetzt ausgesprochen worden ist, wird nicht überall gemacht. Aber sie wird nur dann nicht gemacht, wenn man sich in den charakterisierten Selbstwiderspruch versetzt hat. Deshalb sprechen wir von Geist, indem wir uns klar sind, daß er sich in allen Welten offenbart, und wir suchen zu erkennen, wie er sich in die Welten hineingießt und in ihnen erscheint. Anders sprechen wir, wenn wir von Seele sprechen. Von Seele sprechen wir nur, wenn das Geistige, von dem eben jetzt gesprochen worden ist, das wir als Menschen uns durch unseren Intellekt, durch unsere Vernunft und andere Mittel aneignen, durch die wir die Dinge erkennend durchdringen, in einem Wesen selber innerlich lebt und erlebt wird. Wir sprechen einem Wesen Seele zu, das den Geist nicht nur in sich aufnimmt, sondern das den Geist in sich erlebt und aus dem Geist heraus in sich selber schaffend ist. Also nur dann sprechen wir von Seele, wenn Geist innerlich in einem Wesen ist, das uns entgegentritt. So aber — innerlich schaffend — finden wir den Geist bei Mensch und Tier.

Wie es sozusagen leicht wird, manches andere zu widerlegen — was in dem ersten Vortrag dieser Serie gesagt und gezeigt worden ist —, wenn man sich an landläufige Begriffe hält, ebenso ist es auch kinderleicht, sich über das widerlegend herzumachen, was sozusagen fundamentale Ergebnisse der Geistesforschung sind, die sich darin ausdrücken, daß man auf dem Boden der Geisteswissenschaft innerhalb der menschlichen Natur nicht bloß ein eingliedriges Wesen, sondern eine mehrgliederige Wesenheit unterscheiden muß. Gewiß, es gibt heute noch weite, weite Kreise, welche — und man kann das ganz gut verstehen und sich in solche Menschen hineindenken, kann mit ihnen fühlen und nachempfinden, was sie eigentlich wollen — sozusagen ein Hohngelächter der Hölle anfangen, von ihrem Standpunkt aus mit vollem Recht, wenn von geisteswissenschaftlicher Seite folgendes gesagt wird: Der Mensch muß zusammengesetzt gedacht werden nicht nur aus dem physischen Leib, den man in der äußeren Welt durch die Sinneswahrnehmung sieht, den man anerkennt in der äußeren Wissenschaft und auch untersucht, sondern dem Menschen muß auch zugeschrieben werden ein höherer Leib, der sogenannte Äther- oder Lebensleib, wobei nicht an den hypothetischen Äther der Physik zu denken ist. Ebenso muß, wenn geisteswissenschaftlich gesprochen wird, ein drittes Glied der menschlichen Wesenheit anerkannt werden, der Astralleib, und ein viertes Glied des Menschen, sein Ich. Wenn diese Glieder als etwas Reales anerkannt werden, so ist es vom Standpunkt der gegenwärtigen Forschung außerordentlich leicht zu widerlegen, was so von der Geisteswissenschaft gesagt wird, und zwar deshalb leicht — das kann gerade aus dieser Serie von Vorträgen ersichtlich werden —, weil man in die ganze Art und Weise des geisteswissenschaftlichen Forschens erst einen Blick hineintun muß, um die Berechtigung dieser Dinge anzuerkennen.

Vom Standpunkte des Geistesforschers selbst sind diese vier Glieder der menschlichen Wesenheit — physischer Leib, Ätherleib oder Lebensleib, Astralleib und Ich, das heißt also ein sichtbares und drei unsichtbare, übersinnliche Glieder der menschlichen Wesenheit — Realitäten, weil der Geistesforscher seine Seele in bezug auf die in ihr schlummernden Kräfte in einer solchen Weise entwickelt hat, daß er die höheren Leiber des Menschen so wahrnehmen kann, wie die gewöhnlichen Augen den physischen Leib wahrnehmen. Diese höheren Glieder sind also Realitäten und, insofern sie unsichtbare Glieder sind, gerade dem sichtbaren Glied, dem physischen Leib zugrunde liegend. Aber wenn sie wahrnehmbare Realitäten auch nur für den Geistesforscher sind, so kann man doch sagen, daß sich dem Denken verständlich machen kann, was gemeint ist, wenn von diesen höheren Gliedern der menschlichen Natur gesprochen wird. In dem Ätherleib erkennt der Geistesforscher zunächst eine Realität, den Träger aller Lebenserscheinungen des Menschen. Und der Geistesforscher zeigt, daß der Tod dann eintritt, wenn der physische Leib verlassen wird von seinem Äther- oder Lebensleib. Deshalb sieht der Geistesforscher in dem AÄther- oder Lebensleib dasjenige, was den physischen Leib davor bewahrt, den physischen und chemischen Kräften zu folgen, die ja im physischen Leibe des Menschen tätig sind. In dem Augenblicke, da der Tod eingetreten ist, ist der physische Leib eine nicht mehr mögliche Zusammenfügung von chemischen und physischen Vorgängen. Daß der menschliche Leib zeitlebens herausgerissen ist aus diesen physischen und chemischen Vorgängen, die sich seiner sofort bemächtigen, wenn der Tod eintritt, das verdankt er dem Äther- oder LebensJeib. Mit demselben haben wir etwas gegeben, was die chemischen und physischen Stoffe und Kräfte aus ihrer Wirksamkeit herausreißt und sie erst wieder im Moment des Todes dieser physischen Wirksamkeit übergibt.

Wir haben öfter gesagt, was dagegen eingewendet werden kann, das ist kinderleicht vorzubringen. Aber diese Einwände sind auch solche, die bei einer tieferen Erfassung der Sache wegfallen. Ganz abgesehen davon, daß der Ätherleib für den Geistesforscher eine Tatsache ist, zeigt auch eine wirkliche Logik, daß es unmöglich ist, einen lebendigen Organismus ohne einen solchen Äther- oder Lebensleib zu denken. Einen solchen Ätherleib schreiben wir daher im geisteswissenschaftlichen Sinne auch den Pflanzen zu und sagen: Während der Mensch noch höhere Glieder übersinnlicher Art hat — den astralischen Leib und das Ich —, ist die Pflanze eine Wesenheit, die nur physischen und Ätherleib hat, während ein Mineral nur aus physischem Leib besteht, soweit es sich uns in der Außenwelt darstellt. Treten wir zum Tier heran, so sprechen wir nur davon, daß sich beim Tier in physischen Leib und Ätherleib eingliedert — indem wir uns bei diesem Worte nichts anderes denken wollen, als was jetzt gesagt wird — der Astralleib.

Nun schreiben wir dem Astralleib die Fähigkeit zu, daß dasjenige, was zum Beispiel beim Kristall die Gestaltung hervorruft, also das Geistige, in dem Wesen selber innerlich, organbildend wird. Und wenn wir sehen, daß in einem tierischen Wesen aus der innerlichen Organisation heraus sich die Sinnesorgane, die Funktionen der tierischen Seele aufbauen, so sagen wir: Während beim Mineral sich der Geist erschöpft in der Ausgestaltung der Form, ist er innerlich lebendig im Tier. Dieses Innerlich-lebendig-Sein, dieses Dasein des Geistes innerhalb der tierischen Organisation selber bezeichnen wir als eine Tätigkeit des AstralJeibes. Beim Menschen aber sprechen wir davon, daß dieser Astralleib noch durchdrungen ist von einem Ich-Leib, und wir werden gleich nachher sehen, welche Bedeutung dieser Ich-Leib für das Menschenleben hat.

Was sprechen wir denn dem Geiste eigentlich zu, wenn wir von Geist reden? Wir sprechen ihm dasjenige als Realität, als äußere Wirklichkeit zu, was wir sozusagen in uns selber in unserer Intelligenz erleben. Wir führen durch unsere Intelligenz dieses oder jenes aus, wir bringen die Kräfte der Wesenheiten in ein Zusammenspiel durch unsere Intelligenz. Diese unsere schöpferische Intelligenz hat eine gewisse Art. Indem sie in uns gleichsam in ein zeitliches Dasein tritt, schöpferisch auftritt, bilden wir uns einen Begriff von Intelligenz, von vernünftigem Erleben, von vernunftgemäßem Schaffen, und schauen uns ringsherum das Weltall an. Wir müßten sehr kurzsichtig sein, wenn: wir Intelligenz, alles was wir Geist nennen, nur uns selbst zuschreiben wollten. Das ist gerade die GrundJlage für die Unmöglichkeit, in die Rätsel des Daseins einzudringen, daß der Mensch leicht geneigt ist, das Wesen der Intelligenz nur sich selber zuzuschreiben, und sich gar nicht die Frage beantworten kann: Wie bin ich berechtigt, die Intelligenz auf das Dasein anzuwenden? Wenn wir aber hinausschauen und sehen, daß die Dinge des Raumes und der Zeit sich so aussprechen, daß unsere Intelligenz die Gesetzmäßigkeit umfassen kann, dann sagen wir: Was in uns als Intelligenz lebt, das ist ausgebreitet in Raum und Zeit und wirkt dort in Raum und Zeit. Wenn wir uns umsehen im weiten, toten Naturreich, sprechen wir davon, daß der Geist in diesem weiten, toten Naturreich gleichsam im Stoffe erstarrt ist, und daß wir das, was in den Formen, in der gesetzmäßigen Wirksamkeit des Stoffes sich ausprägt, hereinlassen, auffangen können in unserer Intelligenz, und dadurch in unserer Intelligenz eine Art Spiegelung des die Welt durchwebenden und durchwirkenden Geistes haben.

Wenn wir so den Geist im ganzen Weltall verfolgen und ihn jetzt vergleichen, wie er gleichsam in den toten Wesen des Daseins erstarrt ist, mit der Art, wie er uns im Tierreich entgegentritt, dann sagen wir uns: Sehen wir ein einzelnes tierisches Wesen an, so erscheint uns in ihm ein in sich geschlossenes Dasein, das in derselben Art schafft wie der Geist, der ausgebreitet ist in Raum und Zeit. Wir können uns vorläufig ein Gefühl dafür aneignen, warum die Menschen, welche die Gründe dafür wußten, diesen im Tier wirksamen Geist den «Astralleib» nannten. Sie richteten den Blick in die große Welt des Daseins, durch welche die Sterne in ihren Bahnen sich bewegen, die der Mensch durch seine Intelligenz begreift, und sagten sich: In der Gesetzmäßigkeit der ganzen Welt lebt der Geist, und wir sehen einen gewissen Abschluß in einem einzelnen tierischen Organismus, sehen ihn in dem Raum, der durch die tierische Haut begrenzt wird, eingeschlossen. — Was so im Tiere wirkt und gleichartig ist dem, was sich sonst ausbreitet in Raum und Zeit, das bezeichneten sie im einzelnen tierischen Organismus als astralischen Leib.

Ob nun ein dunkles Gefühl, nur eine Ahnung die Verwandtschaft dessen fühlt, was sich da im Tiere ausspricht, mit dem, was in Raum und Zeit ergossen ist, oder ob die auf Geisteswissenschaft beruhende strenge Forschung dies erkennt — zwischen diesem beiden ist ein weiter Weg. Aber das Gefühl ist ein sicherer Führer, und es zeigt manchem, bevor er in das Wesen der Geistesforschung eindringen kann, daß es eine Wahrheit ist, was vom Geistesforscher gesagt wird.

Wenn wir jetzt diesen Geist, den wir bewundern können in seinem Ergossensein in Raum und Zeit, betrachten, wie er wirkt im Tier, dann dürfen wir sagen: Wir sehen an dem Tier, wo wir es auch betrachten, wie aus seiner Organisation die geistige Wirksamkeit heraussprießt, die wir sonst herausholen müssen aus allen Gesetzen des Raum- und Zeitdaseins. Dazu brauchen wir nicht absonderliche Erscheinungen zu betrachten, sondern dazu genügen die allernächstliegenden Erscheinungen. Der sinnige Mensch braucht nicht weit zu gehen, und er wird aus der tierischen Tätigkeit die geistige Wirksamkeit heraussprießen sehen, wie er sie sonst aufsuchen muß in den Weiten des Daseins. Wenn er die Wespe das Wespennest aufbauen sieht, kann er sich sagen: Da sehe ich gleichsam Intelligenz aus der tierischen Organisation heraussprießen. Die Intelligenz, die ich draußen im Weltenall finde, wenn ich meine eigene Intelligenz auf die Gesetze des Daseins anwende, sehe ich in dem an der tierischen Organisation wirksamen Geist. Wenn der Mensch diesen in der tierischen Organisation wirksamen Geist betrachtet — gleichgültig wo er ihm entgegentritt —, dann kann er sich wahrhaft sagen: Zuweilen ist wirklich dieser in der tierischen Organisation wirksame Geist, diese Verinnerlichung des Geistes im Tier weit über das hinaus, was der Mensch in bezug auf Intelligenz zu erschaffen vermag! Wir haben ein naheliegendes Beispiel schon öfter erwähnt. Wie lange hat der Mensch im ‚VerJaufe seines geschichtlichen Daseins warten müssen, bis ihn die eigene Intelligenz dazu befähigte, Papier zu bereiten! Untersuchen wir die Kräfte der Intelligenz, die der Mensch aufwenden und seinem eigenen Seelenleben einverleiben mußte, um Papier bereiten zu können. Sie können in jeder Schulgeschichte nachlesen, was es für ein großes Ereignis gewesen ist, daß der Mensch zur Papierbereitung aufstieg. Nun — die Wespe kann das schon seit Jahrtausenden! Denn das ist ganz dasselbe, was uns im Wespennest entgegentritt, und was der Mensch als Papier herstellt.

So sehen wir förmlich, was der Mensch im Kampf ums Dasein aus seiner Intelligenz herausfließen läßt, in aller Lebendigkeit aus dem tierischen Organismus heraussprießen. Da man die Dinge gewöhnlich am verkehrten Ende anfaßt, so hat man sich lange Zeit hindurch in der sonderbaren Redensart ergangen, ob das Tier intelligent oder nicht intelligent ist, — gar nicht darauf achtend, daß man den Punkt, worauf es eigentlich ankommt, verkannte. Denn die Frage kann nicht lauten, ob das Tier intelligent ist oder nicht, sondern ob das Tier in allem, was es zustande bringt, das entfaltet, was der Mensch nur durch seine Intelligenz kann. Dann wird man sich die Antwort geben, daß in dem Tier innerlich schaffende und waltende Intelligenz ist, die unmittelbar aus dem tierischen Leben heraus wirkt. Man wird sich dann ein Gefühl aneignen von dem, was dem Geistesforscher in dem Astralleib als Wahrnehmung vorliegt und was er innerlich und äußerlich im Tier wirksam sieht, indem die Intelligenz in dem Organismus selber schöpferisch ist und aus ihm heraus schafft. Denn der Geistesforscher spricht vom Astralleib, wenn solche Organe veranlagt sind, durch deren Tätigkeit etwas zustande kommt, was der Mensch nur durch seine Intelligenz vollbringen kann. Und wir sehen auf die verschiedenen Tiere verteilt sozusagen dieses innerliche geistige Wirken, sehen es in den Geschicklichkeiten der einzelnen Arten hervortreten. Die eine Tierart kann dieses, die andere jenes, was wir dann als eine Verschiedenartigkeit des Astralleibes bei den verschiedenen Tierarten ansehen. So sind wir sozusagen dabei, die individuelle Wirksamkeit des Geistes in dem tierischen Organismus zu betrachten. Dieses innerliche Wirken des Geistes in einem Organismus, dieses Sich-Erleben des Geistes in seiner Tätigkeit, das ist es, was wir als seelisches Erleben bezeichnen. Dieses seelische Erleben finden wir nun, wenn wir es vorurteilslos betrachten, in einer ganz verschiedenen Art beim Menschen und beim Tier ausgebildet. Man hat viel gesprochen und spricht heute noch von dem, was in dem Tier Instinkte sind, und was beim Menschen bewußte Tätigkeit ist. Man täte gut, wenn man sich in dieser Beziehung weniger an Worte hielte und mehr die Sache ins Auge faßte, wenn man mehr darauf einginge, das Wesen der Instinkte zu verstehen. Vor allem zeigt die Betrachtung, die wir jetzt gepflogen haben, daß die Instinkte etwas sein können, was weit der Intelligenz des Menschen voraus sein kann, und daß wir die Qualität, die hervorgebracht wird, durchaus nicht auf das Wort Instinkt beziehen dürfen. Der Mensch fragt so leicht — man möchte sagen in seinem universellen Hochmut: Was habe ich vor den Tieren voraus? Vielleicht könnte er auch, wenn er wollte, einmal fragen: Worin bin ich hinter den Tieren zurückgeblieben? Da könnte er finden, daß er vor allem hinter den Tieren in vielen, vielen Verrichtungen und Geschicklichkeiten zurückgeblieben ist, welche wir beim Tier einfach vorfinden, die der Mensch aber, wenn er sie in bezug auf sich selber ausbilden will, sich erst aneignen, erst erlernen muß.

Der Mensch, das ist oft gesagt worden, kommt hilflos durch die Geburt ins Dasein. Das Tier kommt so auf die Welt, daß die Natur ihm aus dem Innern herausstrotzt und daß es als vererbtes Kapital mitbringt, was ihm das Leben so, wie es leben soll, möglich macht. Gewiß, wir wollen nicht verkennen, daß das Tier auch erst manches wird lernen müssen, daß das Küchlein zwar gleich pickt, aber nicht gleich unterscheiden kann zwischen dem, was genießbar ist oder nicht, was verdaubar ist oder nicht. Aber das ist so nur kurze Zeit. Darauf kommt es jedoch an, daß gewisse tierische Fähigkeiten so auftreten, daß wir deutlich sehen, sie liegen in der ganzen Vererbungslinie, sind wirklich angeboren und kommen zu ihrer Zeit heraus. Daß irgendeine Fähigkeit erst zu einer bestimmten Zeit auftritt, ist kein Beweis dafür, daß sie eine anerzogene ist und etwa erst erlernt werden mußte. Die ganze tierische und auch pflanzliche Organisation zeigt, daß etwas, was in der Vererbungslinie liegt, erst auftreten kann, lange nachdem die Organisation des betreffenden Wesens schon da ist. Geradeso wie der Mensch die Fähigkeit, die zweiten Zähne zu bekommen, auch nicht erst erwirbt — er hat sie, wenn auch die zweiten Zähne erst später auftreten —, so treten gewisse Geschicklichkeiten und Fähigkeiten beim Tier auch erst später auf, die aber doch in die Vererbung gehören. Betrachten wir als ein Beispiel dafür den Einsiedlerkrebs. Er zeigt die Eigentümlichkeit, wenn er eine Weile gelebt hat, daß er dazu getrieben wird,einSchneckenhaus aufzusuchen, weil sein Hinterleib zu weich ist und sich so nicht halten kann. Dieses Aufsuchen eines Schneckenhauses, um einen Schutz für seinen Hinterleib zu haben, geschieht in einem bestimmten Zeitpunkt aus Selbsterhaltungstrieb, tritt aber da mit Sicherheit auf, das heißt, es ist seiner Organisation eingeboren. So müssen wir sagen, daß wir den Umkreis des tierischen Lebens in weitestem Maße in dem Augenblick umrissen sehen, wo das Tier ins Dasein tritt, und daß die Art, wie sich das Tier weiterentwickelt, mit dem Augenblick seiner Geburt gegeben ist und dann sich ausgestaltet. In diesem Ausgestalten erkennen wir die Wirksamkeit des Geistes an, und in dem Dabeisein des Tieres bei diesem Ausgestalten erkennen wir das seelische Leben des Tieres,

Man könnte, wenn man wollte und das Wort nicht mißverstünde, das seelische Leben des Tieres nennen ein «Genießen des Geistes innerhalb des Organismus». Man wird im großen Umfange zurechtkommen, wenn man an diesem Begriffe festhält,um das seelische Leben zu charakterisieren. Dann aber wird man sehen — und wir wollen vorläufig bei den höheren Tieren bleiben —, daß dieses Erleben der geistigen Wirksamkeit, dieses seelische Erleben des Tieres in einem hohen Maße sich innerlich erschöpft, daß es sozusagen sich innerlich auslebt. Ja, seelisches Erleben des Tieres liegt in dem Haben seiner Organe, in dem Begehren seiner Organe, namentlich in der Tätigkeit dieser Organe, die auf das innere Leben gerichtet ist. Eine Ahnung davon, was sich allerdings erst im vollen Umfange der Geistesforschung ergibt, wie das Tier sozusagen die Arbeit des Geistes in sich selber genießt, kann der bekommen, der den Blick auf ein in der Verdauung begriffenes Tier richtet. Ein Tier, das verdaut, also die innere Tätigkeit des Geistes in sich erlebt, fühlt darin sein besonderes Wohlbehagen. Das ist seelisches Erleben der inneren Leiblichkeit, in der der Geist unmittelbar wirkt. Und in dieser Weise ist das seelische Erleben an die Leiblichkeit durch die Tierreiche in einer gewissen Weise gebunden. Es ist sogar reizvoll, möchte man sagen, eine Herde Rinder zu betrachten, unmittelbar nachdem sie geweidet hat und sich nun hinlagert und verdaut, und wenn man dann das seelische Leben beobachten kann, das in jedem Tiere vorgeht. Erhöht ist das sogar noch bei denjenigen Tieren vorhanden, die in eine Art Verdauungsschlaf versinken. Dann erleben sie die Wirksamkeit des Geistes in den Organen.

Aber die Wirksamkeit des Geistes ist beim Tier noch eng gebunden an die Organisation. Das Tier hat, indem der Geist eine gewisse Summe von Organen aufgebaut hat, diesen Geist zur Darstellung zu bringen, wie er in den Organen gewirkt hat, wie er sich in den Organen darlebt; es hat keine Möglichkeit, hinauszugehen über das Maß dieses Geistes, wie er sich in den Organen darlebt. Wenn man die äußeren seelischen Lebensfunktionen, die äußeren Lebensvorgänge des Tieres bei dieser oder jener Tiergattung betrachtet, wird man sehen, wie eng an die Organisation des Tieres, also an das, was der Geist an dem Tier gemacht hat, die seelischen Außerungen gebunden sind. Beobachtet man einmal, unter welchen Umständen ein Tier Furcht zeigt, so kann man sagen: Wo es Furcht zeigt, hat es diese eben wegen seiner besonderen Organisation. Und ebenso wenn ein Tier einen Diebessinn zeigt, kann man sagen: es zeigt ihn wegen seiner Organisation.

Was hier geisteswissenschaftlich angeführt ist, das finden Sie schön zusammengestellt in dem Schriftchen des um die Erforschung der Tierseele verdienstvollen Schriftstellers Zell: «Ist das Tier unvernünftig?» Wenn auch das kleine Schriftchen von einem anderen Gesichtspunkt aus geschrieben ist, so ist es doch gut, um Beispiele zu geben, wie das seelische Erleben des Tieres an die Organisation gebunden ist, und es kann geradezu ein Beleg für das sein, was die Geistesforschung von einer ganz anderen Seite herzuholen hat. Deshalb zeigt sich uns das seelische Leben des Tieres bei den verschiedenen Tieren in der verschiedensten Art abgestuft, weil sich der Geist in seinen besonderen Arten seine Organe geschaffen hat. Aber wir sehen, daß das geistige Schaffen, also das, was wir im Astralleib verankert finden, sich erschöpft in Organbildungen, in dem, was die Tiere unmittelbar auf die Welt bringen. In dem Artgemäßen hat es sich erschöpft. Das Tier bringt, was es kann und was es das Dasein erleben läßt, mit auf die Welt. Es kann wenig darüber hinausgehen. Damit zeigt es zugleich, daß sich der Geist in der Organbildung des Tieres erschöpft, sich ausgegossen hat. In der Organbildung liegt uns aber die Art des Tieres vor. Daher können wir die Frage: Was erlebt, was genießt das Tier seelisch? dahin beantworten: Von der Geburt bis zum Tode erlebt es seine Art. Es erlebt dasjenige an seinem eigenen Organismus seelisch, was ihm der Geist mit in das Dasein gegeben hat.

Einer, der viel, viel nachgedacht hat über das Leben der Tiere und des Menschen, und der aus einem tiefen Bewußtsein heraus gesprochen hat, nämlich Goethe, hat das schöne Wort geprägt: «Die Tiere werden durch ihre Organe beJehrt, sagten die Alten; ich setze hinzu: die Menschen gleichfalls, sie haben jedoch den Vorzug, ihre Organe dagegen wieder zu belehren.»

Damir ist ein ungeheuer tiefes Wort gesprochen. Was kann ein Tier im Leben? Was seine Organe ihm möglich machen, das kann ein Tier. Und so ängstigt sich ein Tier, ist mutig oder feige, raubsüchtig oder sanftmütig, wie sich der Geist in seine Organisation ergossen hat. Es spiegelt sich in dem seelischen Erleben des Tieres das Schaffen des Geistes in den Organen. Damit aber ist das seelische Erleben des Tieres auch eingeschlossen in seine Gattung, es kann nicht heraus aus der Gattung, aus der Art, es genießt sich als Gattung, als Art.

Stellen wir das seelische Leben des Menschen dagegen. Dieses seelische Leben oder, wir könnten besser sagen dieses seelische Erleben des Menschen, wie es sich in des Menschen Wollen, Fühlen und Denken darlebt, wie es sich in des Menschen Begehrungen, Interessen, in seiner Intelligenz darlebt, ist etwas, was in dem Augenblick, wo der Mensch durch die Geburt ins Dasein tritt, nicht durch das gegeben ist, was er durch die Vererbung hat, es ist etwas, was der Mensch auch selber nicht durch die Vererbung an seine Nachkommen abgeben kann. Auf den letzteren Umstand wird eigentlich viel zu wenig gesehen. Aber es ist eine ganz unendlich wichtige Tatsache, die eigentlich aller Betrachtung des Lebens zugrunde liegen sollte, und die man etwa in folgender Weise ausdrücken kann. In dem Moment, wo ein tierisches, ein menschliches Wesen die Fähigkeit erlangt hat, seinesgleichen hervorzubringen, da ist in ihm das, was wir vorhin den Ätherleib genannt haben, bis zu einem gewissen Punkte abgeschlossen. Dieser Ätherleib trägt die Fähigkeit in sich, das, was er in sich hat, auf die Nachkommen zu vererben. Entwickelt sich nun der Mensch über diesen Zeitpunkt hinaus, wächst er darüber hinaus, so kann er das, was noch zu entwickelnde Fähigkeiten über diesen Zeitpunkt bleiben, nicht vererben. Das ist eine Selbstverständlichkeit. Der Mensch muß in dem Augenblick, wo er geschlechtsreif ist, alle die Fähigkeiten an sich haben, welche die Vererbbarkeit bedingen. Also kann er die Fähigkeiten, die über den Zeitpunkt der Geschlechtsreife hinaus entwickelbare Fähigkeiten bleiben, nicht als solches haben, was in den Ätherleib zurücktritt, was vererbbar ist. Das ist eine Kapitalwahrheit, die durchaus berücksichtigt werden muß.

Das ist ja gerade das Bedeutsame in der Betrachtung des Menschenlebens, daß der Mensch von der Geburt bis zum Tode fähig ist, neue Sprachen zu lernen, und daß es ebenfalls etwas so Bedeutsames ist, was hier auch schon erwähnt worden ist, daß der Mensch, wenn er auf einer fernen, einsamen Insel aufwachsen würde, überhaupt sich nicht entwickeln könnte. Ebenso steht es mit der Fähigkeit der Begriffsbildung und der Entwickelung der Ich-Vorstellung. Das sind Dinge, die mit der Vererbung nichts zu tun haben, die der Mensch aber auch nicht an die Vererbung abgeben kann, weil sie nicht zur Art und Gattung gehören. Was nicht zum Vererbbaren gehört, was Entwickelungsfähigkeiten bleiben über die Vererbung hinaus, mit dem hat der Mensch etwas, was nicht in seiner Art, in der Gattung bedingt ist, sondern das der Individualität angehört. Und gerade in der Fähigkeit der Sprache, in der Möglichkeit der Begriffsbildung und in dem Erleben der Ich-Vorstellung liegt das, was sich der Mensch so in die Welt hereinbringt, daß er durch dieses — umgekehrt — wieder seine Organe belehren und präparieren muß, daß er sie darin belehrt, was sie noch nicht mitbekommen haben, was sie aber haben sollen.

Das ist eine Auseinandersetzung des Menschen mit dem Geiste außerhalb dessen, was Vererbung sein kann. Das ist eine Auseinandersetzung in einer solchen Weise, daß die Erfolge dieser Auseinandersetzung nicht vererbbar sind, nicht in die Eigenschaften, die in der Vererbungslinie liegen, aufgenommen werden können. Der Mensch entwickelt etwas, was nicht in das Gattungsmäßige einfließen kann, was dem Gattungsmäßigen enthoben ist. Insofern der Mensch ein Gattungswesen ist, hat er alle Fähigkeiten, die ihm als Gattungswesen zukommen, geradeso vererbt, wie sie das Tier vererbt hat. Nur vererbt man ihm nicht soviel Geschicklichkeit, nicht soviel. Geist, wie man dem Tier vererbt; sondern man läßt noch etwas übrig, was er sich als Individualität aneignen kann. Und das Leben des Geistes in bezug auf die nicht vererbbaren Eigenschaften ist das über das Tier hinausgehende menschliche seelische Erleben. Indem der Mensch die Produkte seiner Arbeit und Tätigkeit genießt, insofern sie durch nicht vererbbare Eigenschaften im Leben erworben werden, entwickelt er ein seelisches Leben, das über das tierische Leben hinausgeht.

So tritt der Mensch ungeschickter ins Dasein als das Tier. Der Mensch ist ungeschickter, da das Tier jene Auseinandersetzung, welche der Mensch erst nach der Geburt mit dem Geiste zu pflegen hat, schon vorher gehabt hat und fertig geworden ist. So genießt das Tier in seinem seelischen Erleben dasjenige, was ihm vererbt werden kann;das heißt, das seelische Leben des Tieres weist auf die Vergangenheit hin. Und in dem Augenblick, wo wir das seelische Erleben des Tieres in den Tod sinken sehen, sehen wir das, was das Tier von sich als Gattung erleben kann, mit in den Tod versinken. Alles, was am Tier individuell ist, indem es Seelisches erlebt, erlebt es als etwas, was es überkommen hat, was ihm von der Vergangenheit zugekommen ist. Es erschöpft im Leben das seelische Leben. Und es ist kein Anhaltspunkt da für eine Unsterblichkeit. Dagegen sehen wir, was das Tier seelisch erlebt, immer wieder und wieder im Gattungsleben weiterleben. Daher sprechen wir beim Tier, wenn wir geisteswissenschaftlich sprechen, von einer Gattungsseele, die in der Gattung stets von neuem aufersteht, in der Gattung stets weiterlebt. Und niemand, der in klaren Begriffen leben will, kann verkennen, welche Berechtigung dieser Satz hat. Was der Geist in der tierischen Art und Gattung schafft, das sehen wir in der einzelnen tierischen Individualität erlebt werden. Wir sehen aber auch, daß dieses Erleben auf das Vergangene hinweist und daß es in dem Augenblick, wo das Vergangene erschöpft ist, wo das seelische Erleben sich dem Tod zuneigt, zu Ende gehen muß, daß die Abendröte damit beginnt.

Anders ist es, wenn wir unbefangen das menschliche seelische Leben betrachten. Da sehen wir in dem Sinne, wie es vorhin charakterisiert worden ist, daß der Mensch, indem er mit der Geburt ins Dasein tritt, etwas miterhält, was sich noch nicht in seinen Organen erschöpft hat. Wir sehen, wie er weiter an seinen Organen arbeitet, wie er wirklich seine Organe belehrt. Daran sehen wir aber, daß der Mensch in einer unmittelbaren Weise im individuellen Leben mit dem Geist in Wechselwirkung steht. Der Mensch erlebt seelisch nicht nur das, was ihm sozusagen von der Vergangenheit überliefert ist, sondern auch dasjenige, was ihm im Leben entgegentritt, was von außen an ihn herantritt, was unmittelbar als Geist sich ihm darstellt.

So zerfällt des Menschen seelisches Leben in zwei genau voneinander zu trennende Glieder: einmal in das, was er als Seelisches so wie ein Tier erlebt. Was er von der Art, der Menschen-Art, mitbekommen hat, das lebt er als ein Wesen der Vergangenheit aus, das dem Tode entgegengeht, wo sich der Geist aus den Organen zurückzieht, wo die Organe zu verholzen, zu verdorren beginnen. Was aber eigene Auseinandersetzung ist mit dem Geist, das gehört nicht den Organen, das ist etwas, was der Mensch unabhängig von den Organen in seinen Ätherleib aufgenommen hat. Das ist daher etwas, was nicht in die Vergangenheit, die vererbt ist, den Menschen hineinverweist, sondern was unmittelbarer Same für das Weiterleben ist. In dem Maße, als wir sehen, daß des Menschen Innerlichkeit sich von den Organen losreißt, das heißt individuell wird, in dem Maße können wir logisch davon sprechen, daß wir das Unsterbliche des Menschen seelisch sich herauskristallisieren sehen aus dem leiblichen Leben. So lernen wir fühlen, daß dieses gerade im Menschen wächst, während er in bezug auf das Vererbte das Vergangene seelisch erlebt. So wächst im Menschen etwas der Zukunft entgegen, von dem wir sagen müssen, daß es nicht in die Vererbungslinie aufgenommen werden kann. Das zeigt sich aber auch, wenn wir unbefangen das seelische Leben bei Mensch und Tier beobachten. Sehen wir nur einmal, wie das seelische Erleben beim Tier eng an die Organisation gebunden ist, wie eng die Geschicklichkeit eines Tieres, das ganze Erleben des Tieres an seine Organe und an die vererbten Merkmale gebunden ist. So recht können wir das seelische Leben des Tieres nur betrachten, wenn wir es im Selbstgenuß seiner Leiblichkeit belauschen. Das ist das Wesentliche. Wir merken das Wesentliche eines Tieres sehr wenig, wenn wir darauf sehen, wie es sich an der Außenwelt freut, wohl aber dann, wenn wir beobachten, wie es seine eigene Verdauung erlebt. Man muß innerhalb der Grenzen seiner Organe stehenbleiben, wenn man das Höchste des seelischen Erlebens beim Tier haben will. Das Tier erschöpft sich geradezu innerhalb seiner Organisation in seinem seelischen Erleben, und was es nach außen noch übrig hat, ist doch für das Tier nur insofern bedeutsam, als es sich im inneren Seelischen des Tieres ausleben kann. Gewiß, es ist vorauszusetzen und zu sagen und durch die Geistesforschung auch zu dokumentieren, daß der Adler seelisches Erleben an der Höhe hat, in der er sein Dasein hat. Aber er hat es in der Betätigung, in dem, was in seinen Organen lebt, was innerhalb seiner Organe zum Ausdruck kommt. Beim Menschen löst sich das seelische Erleben von dem innerlichen Genießen los, von dem innerlichen Sich-Erleben. Das muß der Mensch, wenn man so sagen darf, auch büßen. Beim Tier ist eine gewisse Instinktsicherheit vorhanden, das Tier weiß, welche Nahrungsmittel ihm schaden, welche ihm nützen. Das Tier verdirbt sich viel weniger, als es durch den Menschen verdorben wird. Es wird höchstens verdorben, wenn der Mensch die Tiere in Käfigen zusammenhält. Aber in der freien Natur, wenn das Tier dem folgt, was seiner Organisation eingeboren ist, entfaltet es eine große Instinktsicherheit, weil es mit seinen Organen verbunden bleibt. Der Mensch dagegen löst sich von seinen Organen los. Die Folge davon ist, daß er jetzt nicht mehr unmittelbar dem folgen kann, was für ihn gut oder schlecht ist. Er wird unsicher. Und während die Tiere Leidenschaften zeigen, welche mit den Organen zusammenfallen, zeigt der Mensch Leidenschaften, die vielleicht sehr viel verwüstender sind und gar nicht mit seinen Organen zusammenfallen. Während die Spinne mit Sicherheit ihr Netz baut und es unsinnig wäre, ihr von Logik zu reden, muß sich der Mensch gar sehr bedenken, wenn er seine Bauten zusammenfügen soll. Da kann er sehr irren.Das seelische Leben des Menschen hat sich losgelöst, hat sich von der Leiblichkeit emanzipiert. Das muß der Mensch aber auch büßen.

Dagegen kann sich der Mensch aber auch wieder nach der anderen Seite mit dem Geist verbinden und in die Seele aufnehmen, was ihm derGeist vermittelt. Er ist fähig, Geist aufzunehmen, ohne daß dieser sich erst durch die Organe, durch die Leiblichkeit ergießen muß, während das Tier darauf angewiesen ist, wie sich der Geist in die Organe ergießt. Das Tier erlebt in sich den Geist, wie er in die Organe einfließt. Der Mensch dagegen reißt seine Organe von dem Seelischen los und erlebt unmittelbar das Einfließen des Geistes in seine Seele. Diese Dinge sind, wenn man wirklich hinter die Bedeutung des Geistes gekommen ist und hinter die Art, wie sich der Geist in der Seele auslebt, von einer unendlichen Bedeutung.Eine vollständige Klarheit wird sich uns erst heute über acht Tage bei dem Vortrag «Menschengeist und Tiergeist» ergeben. Aber gerade wenn wir das Seelische, das Innere betrachten, bekommen wir einGefühl für den Unterschied zwischen Mensch und Tier, wenn wir gegenüberstelJen die leibliche Innerlichkeit der tierischen Seele der leiblichen Außerlichkeit der menschlichen Seele. Dafür kann die menschliche Seele geistig innerlicher werden. Daß sie sich freuen kann an den Dingen der Außenwelt, daß sie dringen kann zu dem, was äußerlich erscheint, was als Geist zu der Seele spricht, das verdankt der Mensch allerdings dem Umstande, daß sich seine Seele von der Leiblichkeit emanzipiert hat, sich von dem innerlichen Erleben des Geistes getrennt hat — und die Sicherheit, den Geist selbst zu erleben, sich mit einer Unsicherheit und Ungeschicklichkeit, ja Unvollendetheit in den Instinkten erkauft hat.

Es ist ziemlich leicht, zu sagen: Wie kann man überhaupt von einer tierischen Seele reden, da «Seele» den Begriff der Innerlichkeit in sich schließt, und da im Grunde genommen in das Innere eines anderen Wesens der Mensch zunächst nicht hineinschauen kann? Auf diesen leichtfüßigen Einwand stützen sich ja gerade die, welche es überhaupt verbieten wollen, über seelisches Erleben zu sprechen, weil seelisches Erleben nur in uns erlebt werden kann und daher im Grunde genommen bei anderen Wesen nur durch Analogie erschlossen werden kann. Aber wenn man nicht in ganz abstrakter Weise solche Dinge hinspricht, sondern die Dinge nimmt, wie sie sind, dann muß man sagen: Wie sich ein Wesen darlebt, darin zeigt es, was es unmittelbar innerlich erlebt. Und wer nicht glauben will, daß sich ein Wesen unmittelbar darlebt nach dem, was es innerlich erlebt, der wird überhaupt für eine Weltbetrachtung taub sein. Wir haben ja gewiß in der unmittelbaren Beobachtung keine rechte Garantie, wenn wir nicht nachweisen — was noch geschehen soll, um zu zeigen, wie man geisteswissenschaftlich die Sachen dokumentieren soll —, daß das Tier wirklich etwas Innerlich-Seelisches erlebt, wenn es in der Verdauung behaglich sich darlebt. Aber wer die Dinge in der Welt vergleicht und nicht nur eine Sache betrachtet, der wird schon sehen, daß recht viel Gründe vorhanden sind, um in dieser Weise über das Innere zu sprechen. Und wenn man sich dann ein Gefühl von dem Unterschied des seelischen Erlebens im Tier und im Menschen verschafft hat, so wird man auch sein Fühlen und sein Empfinden über das SeeJische des Tieres in einer richtigen Weise ausdehnen können. Man wird dann vor allen Dingen immer mehr und mehr ein Gefühl dafür erhalten, wie beim Menschen sich das Seelische emanzipiert von dem, was innerlich-leiblich erJebter Geist ist. Der Geist ist es, der die Organe schafft, der in der Organisation wirkt und dieselbe so aufbaut, wie sie ist. Und wir sprechen vom Geist, der im Ätherleib wirkt, wenn wir vom Aufbauen der Organe sprechen. Dieser Geist, der da innerlich erlebt wird, kann nun, wenn der Astralleib sich einschiebt in die Organisation, unter gewissen Voraussetzungen in einer ganz besonderen Weise erlebt werden. Wenn wir das ernst nehmen können, was vorhin über den physischen Leib, Ätherleib und Astralleib ausgesprochen wurde, so können wir uns sagen: Der physische Leib ist bei den Menschen und Tieren zunächst das unterste Glied ihrer Wesenheit. Der Ätherleib ist der, welcher die chemischen und physischen Stoffe so formt, daß sie Lebensprozesse werden. Dadurch lebt der Ätherleib in dem physischen Leibe darinnen, faßt in sich, umspannt die chemischen und physischen Prozesse. In alledem lebt wieder der Astralleib und erlebt im AÄtherleib als seelisches Erleben alles, was im Ätherleib vorgeht. So ist also der Ätherleib der Tätige, der Schaffende am physischen Leib, und der Astralleib ist der die Taten des Ätherleibes seelisch erlebende Teil einer tierischen oder menschlichen Wesenheit. So ist der physische Leib mit dem Ätherleibe in dem Aufbauen der Organe verbunden — und der Ätherleib ist verbunden mit dem Astralleib in dem innerlichen Erleben dieses Aufbauens und dieser Tätigkeit der Organe. So haben wir alles, was im physischen Leib, Ätherleib und Astralleib sich darstellt, in gegenseitigen Bezug zueinander zu stellen.

Was ruft denn nun ein ganz besonderes seelisches Erleben hervor? Dasjenige, was sich bei Mensch und Tier über die gesamte innere Organisation ausgießt. Dieses besondere seelische Erleben können wir am besten dann fassen, wenn wir es in einem gewissen Zustand erfassen. Wer kennt denn nicht jene eigentümliche Art des seelischen Erlebens, die nur vorhanden ist, solange das Tier wächst, seine Organe vergrößert, und die aufhört, wenn das Wachstum abgeschlossen ist? Was sich da in dem Erleben ausdrückt von strotzender Kraft, das ist verbunden mit einem gewissen Arbeiten des Ätherleibes am physischen Leib, und es ist der Ausdruck dafür, daß dieses Arbeiten in gehöriger Weise vor sich geht. Was wir aber in diesem Zustande hervorheben können, das ist immer vorhanden als ein gewisses Wohlgefühl der Seele, als ein Lebensgefühl, als Behaglichkeit oder Unbehaglichkeit, und das kommt davon her, wie der ÄtherJeib bezwingt oder nicht bezwingt, mächtig oder ohnmächtig ist gegenüber der physischen Organisation. Ist er nicht imstande, sich wirklich in den physischen Organen zur Geltung zu bringen, so kommt das in der astralischen Organisation, in dem Unbehagen, zum Ausdruck. Wenn aber der Ätherleib in seiner Tätigkeit überall an die physischen Organe herankann, wenn alles, was Tätigkeit werden soll, wirklich mit Hilfe der physischen Organe ausgeführt werden kann, dann ruft dies das weiteste Wohlgefühl im Menschen hervor. Man kann es im Feineren und im Gröberen spüren. Wenn der Magen verdorben ist, was heißt das anders, als daß der Ätherleib eine Tätigkeit, die er sonst ausführen soll, nicht ausführen kann? Das gibt sich dann in dem damit verbundenen Unbehagen kund. Oder nehmen wir an, es hat sich jemand mit seinem Denken so weit abgemüht, daß das Organ des Gehirns nicht mehr mit will. Der Ätherleib kann dann wohl noch denken, aber das Gehirn kann nicht mehr mit. Da fängt das Denken an, Kopfschmerzen zu machen. Und davon geht das Unbehagen aus im allgemeinen Lebensgefühl. Das erfährt seine besondere Steigerung, wenn der Teil, der vom Ätherleib aufgebaut ist, eine völlige Störung erfährt. Dann sagen wir: Uns ist, wie wenn die Haut, die vom Ätherleib aufgebaut ist, sich nicht dehnen kann, wenn sie durch äußere Hitze sich dehnen will, oder: Es ist mir, als wenn ich einen brennenden Pfahl daranhalte.Dann trifft der Ätherleib auf einen Widerstand eben auf. Der Ätherleib, der vom äußeren Eindruck nicht verzehrt, nicht ergriffen wird, ist dann auf einen physischen Leib getroffen, zu dem er nicht paßt. Das drückt sich im astralischen Leib als Schmerzgefühl aus.

So haben wir den Schmerz im astralischen Leibe begriffen, indem wir ihn als den Ausdruck für eine Ohnmacht des Ätherleibes gegenüber dem physischen Leib zu erfassen verstehen. Ein Ätherleib, der mit seinem physischen Leib zurechtkommt, wirkt auf seinen Astralleib so zurück, daß in diesem Behagen gesundes inneres Erleben auftritt. Ein Ätherleib, der dagegen nicht mit seinem physischen Leib zurechtkommt, wirkt so auf den Astralleib zurück, daß in demselben Schmerz und Unbehagen auftreten muß. Jetzt werden wir einsehen können, wie gerade bei den höheren Tieren — von den niederen Tieren werden wir besser das nächste Mal sprechen, weil da das seelische Erleben so innig an die Leiblichkeit gebunden ist — dieses seelische Erleben auch in die gestörte Leiblichkeit sich viel tiefer hineinleben wird, als es sich beim Menschen in die gestörte Leiblichkeit hineinleben kann. Weil sich das seelische Leben des Menschen von dem inneren leiblichen Erleben so emanzipiert, deshalb ist beim Menschen ganz gewiß gegenüber dem höheren Tier der Schmerz, der durch die bloßen leiblichen Verhältnisse herbeigeführt wird, kein so peinigender und in der Seele fressender als beim Tier. Wir können das noch bei Kindern beobachten, wie leiblicher Schmerz noch ein viel größerer seelischer Schmerz ist als in den späteren Jahren, weil der Mensch in dem Maße, als er von der leiblichen Organisation unabhängig wird, in den Eigenschaften seiner Seele, die ihm unmittelbar aus der Seele kommen müssen, auch die Mittel findet gegen den leiblichen Schmerz, während das höhere Tier, das so eng an seine Leiblichkeit gebunden ist, auch mit alledem, was Schmerz bedeutet, in einem unendlich. viel höheren Maße zusammenhängt als der Mensch. Das alles sind auf nichts basierende Redensarten, welche davon sprechen, daß beim Menschen ein Schmerz höher sein könnte als beim Tier. Der Schmerz ist beim Tier ein viel tieferer und viel mehr seelenerfüllend, als es beim rein leiblichen Schmerz für den Menschen der Fall sein kann.

So sehen wir, daß sich der Mensch in der Erhebung über das Leibliche etwas herausholt in bezug auf das Tiefste seines Wesens aus seiner Innerlichkeit selbst. Was sich der Mensch da herausholt, das bezeichnen wir als sein eigentliches Ich. Was er nicht vererbt, was sich über den Verlauf des Gattungsmäßigen erhalten kann, was er durch seine Individualität immer mehr ausbilden muß, nennen wir gebunden an sein Ich. Das ist es, was in das Menschendasein hineinkommen muß — da es nicht durch die Vererbung gegeben werden kann — als von der menschlichen Individualität kommend, was mit der Geburt aus den geistigen Reichen ins Dasein tritt, was nach erfolgtem Tode dem Geistigen wieder zurückgegeben wird. Wir reden deshalb von einem von Leben zu Leben durch immer wiederkehrendes Dasein gehenden menschlichen Wesenskern, weil wir ihn im unmittelbaren Dasein erfassen können, wenn wir das Leben nur vorurteilslos betrachten.

Ich habe heute in einer Art versucht, aus der unmittelbaren Erfahrung heraus einen kleinen Hinweis auf das zu geben, was es begründet, daß man im Menschen von einer Wesenheit sprechen kann, die nicht vererbt ist, sondern die von ganz anderer Seite her in das Menschenleben eintritt, und die wieder, wenn der Mensch das, was in ihm vererbt ist, mit dem Tode aufgelöst sieht, nach dem Tode in ein anderes, geistiges Dasein eintreten kann. Ich habe das in einer Weise heute gezeigt, wie es, wenn weitere Voraussetzungen der Geisteswissenschaft gemacht worden sind, im Grunde genommen nicht mehr gezeigt zu werden braucht, weil die Geistesforschung auf der unmittelbaren Anschauung fußt und noch von ganz anderer Seite her die Beweise und Belege für das bringen kann, was heute aus dem unmittelbaren Erleben des Alltags heraus veranschaulicht werden sollte. In der Geisteswissenschaft liegen aber auch die Möglichkeiten, die Erlebnisse des Alltags so zu gruppieren, in Beziehung zu bringen, daß sie uns zeigen, was in dem Menschen eine auf die Beobachtung der Tatsachen gestützte Hoffnung auf ein dauerndes, über das leibliche Dasein hinausgehendes Leben der Seele begründen kann. So sehen wir, wie eine Beobachtung des Daseins überall das erwähnte Goethe-Wort beweist. Das tierische seelische Erleben ist ein solches, das wir eingeschlossen sehen in den Kreis der tierischen Organe. Wir sehen überall die Organe als die Meister, die der Geist geformt hat, damit sich das Tier nach Maßgabe der Organe seelisch erleben und ihrer bedienen kann. Und wir sehen den Menschen in bezug auf dasjenige hilflos ins Dasein treten, worüber ihm seine Organe keine Richtung geben, was er aus dem Leben heraus seinem seelischen Erleben einprägen muß. Aber gerade in dem letzteren finden wir das, was des Menschen Anwartschaft auf Unsterblichkeit bedeutet, was ewig ist, weil es nicht auf Vererbung zurückgeführt werden kann. Das ist es, was Goethe meinte mit dem Satz: Das Tier werde durch seine Organe belehrt; der Mensch aber hätte den Vorzug, seineOrgane wieder belehren zu können. Und wer in richtiger Weise diesen letzten Satz auffaßt, daß der Mensch im Verlaufe seines Daseins fähig ist, seine Organe wieder zurückzubelehren, der wird sich sagen: In dem Umkreise des seelischen Lebens, wo sich darstellt, wie der Mensch seine Organe belehrt, zeigt sich die Verbindung, welche der Mensch mit dem Geiste eingeht, und die unaufJöslich sein muß, weil sie sich nicht erschöpft und aus der Vergangenheit kommt, sondern in die Zukunft hinweist und der Same für sie ist, durch welche der Mensch wirklich erreichen kann, was in seinem seelischen Erleben innerlich bilden wird die Kraft, durch die er in stets neuen Leben den alten Tod besiegen kann.

The Human Soul and the Animal Soul

You may have noticed that, following today's lecture, another lecture is to be given here in eight days' time on “Human Spirit and Animal Spirit,” whereas today's topic is “Human Soul and Animal Soul.” Why this is so, why spirit and soul are to be discussed in two separate lectures, will only become fully clear in the next lecture. For the time being, we can only point out that when we consider life and existence from a spiritual scientific perspective, it is not as easy as it is in other scientific approaches that are common today, where concepts and ideas that must be kept separate in order to truly understand things are simply thrown together. And we will see that we would not be able to cope with the mysteries relating to the soul and spirit in animals and humans if we could not make a clear and certain distinction between soul and spirit.

When we speak of the soul in spiritual science, as we shall do here, the concept of the soul is always connected with the other concept of inner life, of inner experience. And when we speak of spirit in relation to the world around us, we are aware that in everything that appears to us, contrary to C, we have something like a revelation of spirit. It has often been mentioned that human beings would find themselves in a strange self-contradiction if they did not presuppose spirit in all the phenomena of existence that surround them. Only those who admit that what they ultimately find in their spirit about the outside world, what they cognitively acquire in terms of concepts and ideas in order to grasp the outside world, has something to do with things themselves, can actually approach the outside world cognitively without falling into a self-contradiction that kills them. Those who do not want to admit this — who then start from things when they believe they have recognized something in some way, when they have formed concepts of things — who does not want to admit that something lives in these concepts that is in the things themselves, should not proceed to cognition at all if they live in harmony with themselves and want to understand their cognitive life logically. Only those who say to themselves: What I ultimately find and retain in my mind in cognition, what I can make present, must first be contained in things, can regard cognition as something real. Insofar as I take something from things into my mind, regardless of which realm they belong to, I presuppose the mind in all realms.

Certainly, this recognition that has now been expressed is not made everywhere. But it is only not made when one has placed oneself in the self-contradiction that has been characterized. Therefore, we speak of spirit, being clear that it reveals itself in all worlds, and we seek to recognize how it pours into the worlds and appears in them. We speak differently when we speak of the soul. We speak of the soul only when the spiritual, which has just been spoken of, which we as human beings acquire through our intellect, through our reason and other means by which we penetrate things through recognition, lives and is experienced inwardly in a being itself. We attribute soul to a being that not only takes in the spirit, but experiences the spirit within itself and is creative within itself out of the spirit. So we only speak of soul when spirit is inwardly present in a being that confronts us. But in this way — inwardly creative — we find spirit in both humans and animals.

Just as it is easy, so to speak, to refute many other things — as was said and shown in the first lecture of this series — if one adheres to common concepts, it is just as easy to refute what are, so to speak, fundamental results of spiritual research, which are expressed in the fact that, on the basis of spiritual science, one must distinguish within human nature not merely a single-membered being, but a multi-membered entity. Certainly, there are still wide, wide circles today who — and one can understand this very well and empathize with such people, can feel and sympathize with what they actually want — begin, so to speak, a mocking laughter from hell, from their point of view with full justification, when the following is said from the spiritual scientific side: Human beings must be thought of as composed not only of the physical body, which can be seen in the outer world through sensory perception, which is recognized in outer science and also investigated, but human beings must also be attributed with a higher body, the so-called etheric or life body, whereby one should not think of the hypothetical ether of physics. Likewise, when speaking from a spiritual scientific point of view, a third member of the human being must be recognized, the astral body, and a fourth member of the human being, the I. If these members are recognized as something real, it is extremely easy from the standpoint of current research to refute what spiritual science says, and it is easy — as can be seen from this series of lectures — because one must first take a look at the whole nature of spiritual scientific research in order to recognize the validity of these things.

From the standpoint of the spiritual researcher himself, these four members of the human being — the physical body, the etheric body or life body, the astral body, and the I, that is, one visible and three invisible, supersensible members of the human being — are realities, because the spiritual researcher has developed his soul in relation to the powers slumbering within it in such a way that he can perceive the higher bodies of the human being just as ordinary eyes perceive the physical body. These higher members are therefore realities and, insofar as they are invisible members, they underlie the visible member, the physical body. But even if they are perceptible realities only to the spiritual researcher, one can still say that it is possible to understand what is meant when we speak of these higher members of human nature. In the etheric body, the spiritual researcher first recognizes a reality, the bearer of all human life phenomena. And the spiritual researcher shows that death occurs when the physical body is abandoned by its etheric or life body. Therefore, the spiritual researcher sees in the etheric or life body that which prevents the physical body from following the physical and chemical forces that are active in the physical body of the human being. At the moment of death, the physical body is no longer a possible combination of chemical and physical processes. The fact that the human body is torn out of these physical and chemical processes throughout its life, which immediately take hold of it when death occurs, is due to the etheric or life body. With it, we have given something that tears the chemical and physical substances and forces out of their effectiveness and only returns them to this physical effectiveness at the moment of death.

We have often said that it is child's play to raise objections to this. But these objections are also ones that disappear when the matter is understood more deeply. Quite apart from the fact that the etheric body is a reality for the spiritual researcher, real logic also shows that it is impossible to conceive of a living organism without such an etheric or life body. In the spiritual scientific sense, we therefore also attribute such an etheric body to plants and say: While human beings have higher members of a supersensible nature — the astral body and the I — plants are beings that have only a physical and etheric body, while minerals consist only of a physical body, as far as we can see in the external world. When we turn to animals, we speak only of the astral body being incorporated into the physical body and etheric body — by which we mean nothing other than what has just been said.

Now we attribute to the astral body the ability to form, for example, the crystal, that is, the spiritual element within the being itself, internally, forming organs. And when we see that in an animal being, the sense organs, the functions of the animal soul, are built up from the inner organization, we say: While in minerals the spirit is exhausted in the formation of the form, it is inwardly alive in animals. We describe this inner aliveness, this existence of the spirit within the animal organization itself, as an activity of the astral body. In humans, however, we say that this astral body is still permeated by an ego body, and we will see shortly what significance this ego body has for human life.

What do we actually attribute to the spirit when we speak of spirit? We attribute to it as reality, as external reality, what we experience, so to speak, within ourselves in our intelligence. Through our intelligence we carry out this or that, we bring the forces of the beings into interaction through our intelligence. This creative intelligence of ours has a certain nature. As it enters into our temporal existence, as it acts creatively, we form a concept of intelligence, of rational experience, of rational creation, and we look around us at the universe. We would have to be very short-sighted if we wanted to attribute intelligence, everything we call spirit, only to ourselves. This is precisely the basis for the impossibility of penetrating the mysteries of existence, that human beings are easily inclined to attribute the essence of intelligence only to themselves and cannot answer the question: How am I justified in applying intelligence to existence? But when we look out and see that the things of space and time express themselves in such a way that our intelligence can comprehend their laws, then we say: What lives in us as intelligence is spread out in space and time and acts there in space and time. When we look around us in the vast, dead realm of nature, we speak of the spirit in this vast, dead realm of nature as being, as it were, frozen in matter, and that we can let in and capture in our intelligence what is expressed in the forms, in the lawful activity of matter, and thus have in our intelligence a kind of reflection of the spirit that interweaves and permeates the world.

When we trace the spirit throughout the universe in this way and now compare it, as it were, frozen in the dead beings of existence, with the way it appears to us in the animal kingdom, we say to ourselves: When we look at a single animal being, we see in it a self-contained existence that creates in the same way as the spirit that is spread out in space and time. We can provisionally acquire a feeling for why people who knew the reasons for this called the spirit active in animals the “astral body.” They looked at the great world of existence, through which the stars move in their orbits, which man understands through his intelligence, and said to themselves: The spirit lives in the laws of the whole world, and we see a certain conclusion in a single animal organism, see it enclosed in the space bounded by the animal's skin. — What works in animals and is similar to what otherwise spreads out in space and time, they designated in the individual animal organism as the astral body.

Whether it is a vague feeling, only a premonition, that senses the relationship between what is expressed in the animal and what is poured out in space and time, or whether rigorous research based on spiritual science recognizes this — there is a long way between the two. But feeling is a sure guide, and it shows many people, before they can penetrate into the essence of spiritual research, that what is said by spiritual researchers is true.

If we now consider this spirit, which we can admire in its outpouring into space and time, how it works in animals, then we can say: Wherever we look at animals, we see how spiritual activity springs from their organization, something we otherwise have to extract from all the laws of space and time. We do not need to look at unusual phenomena to see this; the most obvious phenomena are sufficient. The sensible person need not go far to see spiritual activity springing forth from animal activity, which he would otherwise have to seek in the vastness of existence. When he sees the wasp building its nest, he can say to himself: Here I see, as it were, intelligence springing forth from the animal organization. The intelligence that I find out there in the universe, when I apply my own intelligence to the laws of existence, I see in the spirit at work in the animal organization. When the human being observes this spirit at work in the animal organization — no matter where he encounters it — he can truly say to himself: Sometimes this spirit active in the animal organism, this internalization of the spirit in the animal, is far beyond what man is capable of creating in terms of intelligence! We have often mentioned an obvious example. How long did man have to wait in the course of his historical existence before his own intelligence enabled him to prepare paper! Let us examine the powers of intelligence that humans had to apply and incorporate into their own soul life in order to be able to prepare paper. You can read in any school history book what a great event it was when humans rose to the level of paper preparation. Well — wasps have been able to do this for thousands of years! For what we encounter in a wasp's nest is exactly the same as what humans produce as paper.

Thus we see literally what humans, in their struggle for existence, allow to flow out of their intelligence, sprouting in all its vitality from the animal organism. Since people usually approach things from the wrong end, they have long indulged in the strange habit of discussing whether animals are intelligent or not, without realizing that they are missing the point. For the question cannot be whether animals are intelligent or not, but whether animals, in everything they accomplish, develop what humans can only do through their intelligence. Then we will answer that animals have an inner intelligence that creates and rules, working directly from animal life. One will then acquire a feeling for what the spiritual researcher perceives in the astral body and what he sees as effective internally and externally in the animal, in that intelligence is creative in the organism itself and creates out of it. For the spiritual researcher speaks of the astral body when such organs are present whose activity brings about something that humans can only accomplish through their intelligence. And we see this inner spiritual activity distributed among the various animals, so to speak, and see it emerge in the skills of the individual species. One animal species can do this, another that, which we then regard as a difference in the astral body of the various animal species. So we are, so to speak, in the process of observing the individual activity of the spirit in the animal organism. This inner activity of the spirit in an organism, this experience of the spirit in its activity, is what we call spiritual experience. When we look at this soul experience without prejudice, we find that it is developed in a very different way in humans and animals. Much has been said, and is still being said today, about what are instincts in animals and what are conscious activities in humans. It would be good to focus less on words and more on the matter itself in this regard, to try to understand the nature of instincts more deeply. Above all, the observation we have just made shows that instincts can be something far ahead of human intelligence, and that we should not relate the quality that is produced to the word “instinct” at all. Humans are so quick to ask—one might say in their universal arrogance—what advantage they have over animals. Perhaps, if they wanted to, they could also ask: in what ways have they fallen behind animals? He might find that he lags behind animals in many, many tasks and skills that we simply find in animals, but which humans, if they want to develop them for themselves, must first acquire and learn.

It has often been said that humans come into existence helpless at birth. Animals come into the world with nature bursting forth from within them, bringing with them inherited capital that enables them to live as they should. Of course, we should not overlook the fact that animals also have to learn many things; that although a chick pecks immediately, it cannot immediately distinguish between what is edible and what is not, what is digestible and what is not. But that is only for a short time. What matters, however, is that certain animal abilities appear in such a way that we can clearly see that they lie in the entire line of inheritance, are truly innate, and emerge in their own time. The fact that a certain ability only appears at a certain time is no proof that it is an acquired ability and had to be learned first. The entire animal and plant organization shows that something that lies in the hereditary line can only appear long after the organization of the creature in question is already there. Just as humans do not first acquire the ability to grow their second teeth—they have it, even if the second teeth only appear later—certain skills and abilities in animals also only appear later, but they are nevertheless part of heredity. Let us consider the hermit crab as an example of this. After living for a while, it exhibits the peculiarity of being driven to seek out a snail shell because its abdomen is too soft and cannot support itself. This search for a snail shell to protect its abdomen occurs at a certain point in time out of a self-preservation instinct, but it occurs with certainty, meaning it is innate to its organization. So we must say that we see the scope of animal life outlined to the greatest extent at the moment when the animal comes into existence, and that the way in which the animal develops is determined at the moment of its birth and then takes shape. In this unfolding, we recognize the activity of the spirit, and in the animal's presence during this unfolding, we recognize the animal's soul life.

If one wanted to and did not misunderstand the word, one could call the soul life of the animal a “enjoyment of the spirit within the organism.” One can get by to a large extent if one sticks to this concept to characterize the soul life. But then one will see — and let us stick to the higher animals for the time being — that this experience of spiritual activity, this soul experience of the animal, is to a large extent exhausted internally, that it lives itself out internally, so to speak. Yes, the animal's soul experience lies in the possession of its organs, in the desires of its organs, namely in the activity of these organs, which is directed toward inner life. An inkling of what, however, only becomes apparent in the full scope of spiritual research, namely how the animal enjoys, so to speak, the work of the spirit within itself, can be gained by observing an animal in the process of digestion. An animal that is digesting, that is, experiencing the inner activity of the spirit within itself, feels a special sense of well-being. This is the soul's experience of inner physicality, in which the spirit acts directly. And in this way, the soul's experience is bound to physicality in a certain way through the animal kingdom. It is even fascinating, one might say, to watch a herd of cattle immediately after they have grazed and are now lying down and digesting, and then to observe the soul life that is going on in each animal. This is even more heightened in those animals that sink into a kind of digestive sleep. Then they experience the activity of the spirit in their organs.

But the activity of the spirit in animals is still closely bound to their organization. The animal, in that the spirit has built up a certain sum of organs, has to represent this spirit as it has worked in the organs, as it lives in the organs; it has no possibility of going beyond the measure of this spirit as it lives in the organs. If one considers the external soul functions, the external life processes of the animal in this or that species, one will see how closely the soul expressions are bound to the animal's organization, that is, to what the spirit has made of the animal. If one observes the circumstances under which an animal shows fear, one can say: Where it shows fear, it does so precisely because of its particular organization. And likewise, when an animal shows a sense of thievery, one can say: it shows it because of its organization.

What is presented here from a spiritual scientific perspective can be found beautifully compiled in the booklet by Zell, a writer who has made a valuable contribution to the study of the animal soul: “Is the animal irrational?” Even though this little book is written from a different point of view, it is still good for giving examples of how the animal's soul experience is linked to its organization, and it can be seen as proof of what spiritual research has to offer from a completely different angle. That is why the soul life of animals appears to us to be graded in different ways in different animals, because the spirit has created its organs in its particular species. But we see that spiritual creation, that is, what we find anchored in the astral body, is exhausted in organ formation, in what animals bring directly into the world. It has exhausted itself in what is appropriate to the species. The animal brings into the world what it can do and what allows it to experience existence. It can do little beyond that. In doing so, it shows at the same time that the spirit has exhausted itself in the formation of the animal's organs, that it has poured itself out. But in organ formation we have the nature of the animal before us. Therefore, we can answer the question: What does the animal experience, what does it enjoy spiritually? From birth to death, it experiences its nature. It experiences spiritually in its own organism what the spirit has given it in existence.

Someone who thought a great deal about the lives of animals and humans, and who spoke from a deep consciousness, namely Goethe, coined the beautiful phrase: “Animals are guided by their organs, said the ancients; I would add: humans likewise, but they have the advantage of being able to teach their organs in return.”

This is an immensely profound statement. What can an animal do in life? An animal can do whatever its organs enable it to do. And so an animal is fearful, courageous or cowardly, predatory or gentle, depending on how the spirit has poured itself into its organization. The workings of the spirit in the organs are reflected in the animal's spiritual experience. But this also means that the animal's spiritual experience is confined to its species; it cannot escape its species, its kind; it enjoys itself as a species, as a kind.

Let us compare this with the spiritual life of human beings. This spiritual life, or rather, this spiritual experience of the human being, as it is expressed in human volition, feeling, and thinking, as it is expressed in human desires, interests, and intelligence, is something that, at the moment when the human being comes into existence through birth, is not given by what he has inherited. it is something that human beings themselves cannot pass on to their descendants through heredity. Far too little attention is actually paid to the latter circumstance. But it is an infinitely important fact that should actually underlie all consideration of life, and which can be expressed in the following way. At the moment when an animal or human being has acquired the ability to produce its own kind, what we previously called the etheric body is, to a certain extent, complete within it. This etheric body has the ability to pass on what it has within itself to its descendants. If a human being develops beyond this point, if they grow beyond it, they cannot pass on the abilities that remain to be developed beyond this point. That is self-evident. At the moment when a person reaches sexual maturity, they must possess all the abilities that determine heritability. Therefore, they cannot possess the abilities that remain developable beyond the point of sexual maturity as such, which recede into the etheric body and are heritable. This is a fundamental truth that must be taken into account.

This is precisely what is significant in the consideration of human life, that from birth to death human beings are capable of learning new languages, and that it is also significant, as has already been mentioned here, that if human beings were to grow up on a distant, lonely island, they would not be able to develop at all. The same applies to the ability to form concepts and develop the idea of the self. These are things that have nothing to do with heredity, but which human beings cannot pass on to their offspring because they do not belong to their species or genus. What is not hereditary, what remains as developmental abilities beyond heredity, is something that human beings have that is not determined by their species or genus, but belongs to their individuality. And it is precisely in the ability to speak, in the possibility of forming concepts, and in the experience of the concept of the self that what human beings bring into the world lies, so that they must, in turn, teach and prepare their organs, instructing them in what they have not yet learned but should have learned.

This is a confrontation between humans and the spirit outside of what can be inherited. It is a confrontation in such a way that the successes of this confrontation cannot be inherited, cannot be incorporated into the characteristics that lie in the line of inheritance. Humans develop something that cannot flow into the generic, that is removed from the generic. Insofar as human beings are creatures of their species, they have inherited all the abilities that belong to them as creatures of their species, just as animals have inherited them. However, they do not inherit as much skill, not as much spirit, as animals inherit; instead, something is left over that they can acquire as individuals. And the life of the spirit in relation to the non-hereditary characteristics is the human spiritual experience that goes beyond that of animals. By enjoying the products of his work and activity, insofar as they are acquired in life through non-hereditary characteristics, man develops a spiritual life that goes beyond animal life.

Thus, humans enter existence more clumsily than animals. Humans are more clumsy because animals have already had and completed the struggle that humans must cultivate with the spirit after birth. Thus, animals enjoy in their soul experience what can be inherited by them; that is, the soul life of animals points to the past. And at the moment when we see the soul experience of the animal sink into death, we see what the animal can experience of itself as a species sink into death with it. Everything that is individual about the animal, in that it experiences the soul, it experiences as something that has been handed down to it, that has come to it from the past. It exhausts its soul life in life. And there is no indication of immortality. On the other hand, we see what the animal experiences in its soul living on again and again in the life of the species. Therefore, when we speak in spiritual scientific terms, we speak of a species soul in animals, which is constantly resurrected in the species and lives on in the species. And no one who wants to live in clear terms can fail to recognize the validity of this statement. What the spirit creates in the animal species and genus, we see experienced in the individual animal individuality. But we also see that this experience points to the past and that it must come to an end at the moment when the past is exhausted, when the soul experience approaches death, when the evening glow begins.

It is different when we look impartially at human soul life. Here we see, in the sense characterized earlier, that when a human being enters into existence at birth, he or she receives something that is not yet exhausted in his or her organs. We see how he or she continues to work on his or her organs, how he or she really teaches his or her organs. From this we see that human beings interact directly with the spirit in their individual lives. Human beings experience not only what has been handed down to them from the past, so to speak, but also what they encounter in life, what approaches them from outside, what presents itself to them directly as spirit.

Thus, the soul life of the human being falls into two distinct parts: first, what he experiences as soul life, just like an animal. What he has learned from the human species, he lives out as a being of the past, approaching death, where the spirit withdraws from the organs, where the organs begin to lignify and wither. But what is one's own engagement with the spirit does not belong to the organs; it is something that the human being has taken into their etheric body independently of the organs. It is therefore something that does not refer the human being to the past, which is inherited, but is the immediate seed for continued life. To the extent that we see that the inner life of the human being detaches itself from the organs, that is, becomes individual, to that extent we can logically speak of seeing the immortal part of the human being crystallize out of physical life. In this way we learn to feel that this is growing within the human being, while he experiences the past spiritually in relation to what has been inherited. Thus something grows within the human being toward the future, something of which we must say that it cannot be incorporated into the line of inheritance. But this also becomes apparent when we observe the spiritual life of humans and animals with an open mind. Let us just consider how closely the soul experience in animals is linked to their organization, how closely the dexterity of an animal, the whole experience of the animal, is linked to its organs and inherited characteristics. We can only really observe the soul life of the animal when we eavesdrop on it in the self-enjoyment of its physicality. That is the essential point. We notice very little of the essence of an animal when we look at how it enjoys the outside world, but we do notice it when we observe how it experiences its own digestion. One must remain within the limits of its organs if one wants to experience the highest level of spiritual experience in animals. The animal exhausts itself within its own organization in its soul experience, and what it has left for the outside world is only significant for the animal insofar as it can live out its inner soul life. Certainly, it must be assumed and stated, and also documented through spiritual research, that the eagle has a spiritual experience at the height at which it exists. But it has this experience in its activity, in what lives in its organs, in what is expressed within its organs. In humans, spiritual experience is detached from inner enjoyment, from inner self-experience. Humans must, so to speak, pay for this. Animals have a certain instinctive certainty; they know which foods harm them and which benefit them. Animals spoil themselves much less than they are spoiled by humans. At most, they are spoiled when humans keep them in cages. But in the wild, when animals follow what is innate to their organization, they develop a great instinctive certainty because they remain connected to their organs. Humans, on the other hand, detach themselves from their organs. The result is that they can no longer directly follow what is good or bad for them. They become uncertain. And while animals display passions that coincide with their organs, humans display passions that are perhaps much more destructive and do not coincide with their organs at all. While the spider builds its web with certainty and it would be absurd to talk to it about logic, humans have to think very carefully when they want to put their buildings together. They can make big mistakes. The spiritual life of humans has detached itself, emancipated itself from physicality. But humans also have to pay for this.

On the other hand, however, humans can also connect with the spirit on the other side and absorb into their soul what the spirit conveys to them. They are capable of absorbing spirit without it first having to pour through the organs, through physicality, whereas animals are dependent on how the spirit pours into the organs. Animals experience the spirit within themselves as it flows into the organs. Humans, on the other hand, detach their organs from the soul and experience the Spirit flowing directly into their soul. Once we have truly grasped the meaning of the Spirit and the way in which the Spirit lives out its life in the soul, these things are of infinite importance. We will only gain complete clarity on this in eight days' time during the lecture “Human Spirit and Animal Spirit.” But it is precisely when we consider the soul, the inner being, that we gain a sense of the difference between humans and animals, when we contrast the physical inwardness of the animal soul with the physical outwardness of the human soul. In return, the human soul can become more spiritually inward. The fact that it can rejoice in the things of the outer world, that it can penetrate to what appears outwardly, what speaks to the soul as spirit, is due to the fact that the human soul has emancipated itself from physicality, separated itself from the inner experience of the spirit — and has purchased the certainty of experiencing the spirit itself with uncertainty and clumsiness, even incompleteness in the instincts.

It is quite easy to say: How can one even speak of an animal soul, since “soul” implies the concept of inner life, and since, basically, humans cannot initially see into the inner life of another being? This light-footed objection is precisely what those who want to forbid any talk of spiritual experience base their argument on, because spiritual experience can only be experienced within ourselves and can therefore, in essence, only be inferred in other beings by analogy. But if we do not speak of such things in a completely abstract way, but take things as they are, then we must say: the way a being lives itself out shows what it experiences directly within itself. And anyone who does not want to believe that a being lives itself out directly according to what it experiences within itself will be completely deaf to a world view. We certainly have no real guarantee in direct observation if we do not prove — which is still to be done, in order to show how things should be documented in spiritual science — that the animal really experiences something inner and soul-like when it lives comfortably in digestion. But anyone who compares things in the world and does not just look at one thing will see that there are quite a few reasons to speak about the inner life in this way. And once one has gained a sense of the difference between the soul experience in animals and in humans, one will also be able to expand one's feelings and perceptions about the soul life of animals in the right way. Above all, one will then increasingly gain a feeling for how, in humans, the soul emancipates itself from what is spirit experienced inwardly and physically. It is the spirit that creates the organs, that works in the organization and builds it up as it is. And we speak of the spirit working in the etheric body when we speak of the building up of the organs. This spirit, which is experienced internally, can now, when the astral body intervenes in the organization, be experienced in a very special way under certain conditions. If we can take seriously what was said earlier about the physical body, etheric body, and astral body, we can say to ourselves: The physical body is initially the lowest link in the chain of human and animal beings. The etheric body is what shapes the chemical and physical substances so that they become life processes. In this way, the etheric body lives within the physical body, encompasses and embraces the chemical and physical processes. In all this, the astral body lives again and experiences everything that happens in the etheric body as a soul experience. Thus, the etheric body is the active, creative part of the physical body, and the astral body is the part of an animal or human being that experiences the actions of the etheric body as a soul experience. Thus, the physical body is connected to the etheric body in the building up of the organs — and the etheric body is connected to the astral body in the inner experience of this building up and this activity of the organs. Thus, we have to place everything that manifests itself in the physical body, etheric body, and astral body in mutual relation to one another.

What, then, evokes a very special soul experience? That which pours out over the entire inner organization of humans and animals. We can best grasp this special soul experience when we perceive it in a certain state. Who is not familiar with that peculiar kind of spiritual experience that is only present while the animal is growing, its organs enlarging, and that ceases when growth is complete? What is expressed in this experience of bursting energy is connected with a certain working of the etheric body on the physical body, and it is the expression of this working proceeding in the proper manner. But what we can emphasize in this state is always present as a certain feeling of well-being of the soul, as a feeling of life, as comfort or discomfort, and this comes from how the etheric body conquers or does not conquer, is powerful or powerless in relation to the physical organization. If it is unable to really assert itself in the physical organs, this is expressed in the astral organization, in discomfort. But if the etheric body can reach all the physical organs in its activity, if everything that is to become activity can really be carried out with the help of the physical organs, then this evokes the greatest sense of well-being in the human being. One can feel this in both subtle and gross ways. If the stomach is upset, what does this mean other than that the etheric body cannot perform an activity that it is otherwise supposed to perform? This then manifests itself in the associated discomfort. Or let us suppose that someone has strained their thinking to such an extent that the brain organ no longer wants to cooperate. The etheric body may still be able to think, but the brain can no longer keep up. That is when thinking begins to cause headaches. And this causes discomfort in our general attitude to life. This is particularly intensified when the part that is made up of the etheric body experiences a complete disturbance. Then we say: It is as if the skin, which is made up of the etheric body, cannot stretch when it wants to stretch due to external heat, or: It is as if I am holding a burning stake against it. Then the etheric body encounters resistance. The etheric body, which is not consumed or affected by external impressions, then encounters a physical body to which it does not fit. This is expressed in the astral body as a feeling of pain.

Thus, we have understood pain in the astral body by comprehending it as the expression of the etheric body's powerlessness in relation to the physical body. An etheric body that is in harmony with its physical body has such an effect on its astral body that a healthy inner experience arises in it. An etheric body that is not in harmony with its physical body, on the other hand, has such an effect on the astral body that pain and discomfort must arise in it. Now we can see how, especially in higher animals — we will talk about lower animals next time, because there the soul experience is so closely bound to the physical body — this soul experience will also penetrate much more deeply into the disturbed physical body than it can in humans. Because the soul life of humans is so emancipated from inner physical experience, pain caused by mere physical conditions is certainly not as agonizing and soul-consuming for humans as it is for animals. We can still observe this in children, how physical pain is still a much greater spiritual pain than in later years, because as humans become independent of their physical organization, they also find in the qualities of their soul, which must come directly from the soul, the means to combat physical pain, while higher animals, which are so closely bound to their physicality, are connected to everything that pain means to an infinitely greater degree than humans. All these are empty phrases that suggest that pain could be greater in humans than in animals. Pain in animals is much deeper and much more soul-filling than can be the case with purely physical pain in humans.

Thus we see that in elevating themselves above the physical, humans draw something out of their innermost being in relation to the deepest part of their nature. What humans draw out in this way is what we call their true self. What they do not inherit, what can be preserved over the course of the species, what they must develop more and more through their individuality, we call bound to their self. This is what must enter into human existence — since it cannot be given through heredity — as coming from human individuality, what enters into existence at birth from the spiritual realms, what is returned to the spiritual after death. We therefore speak of a human core that passes from life to life through recurring existence, because we can grasp it in immediate existence if we view life without prejudice.

Today I have attempted, in a way, to give a small indication, based on immediate experience, of what justifies speaking of a being in human beings that is not inherited, but enters human life from a completely different source, and which, when the human being sees what is inherited in him dissolved with death, can enter into another, spiritual existence after death. I have shown this today in a way that, once further prerequisites of spiritual science have been established, will basically no longer need to be shown, because spiritual research is based on direct observation and can provide evidence and proof from a completely different source for what was to be illustrated today from the direct experience of everyday life. Spiritual science also offers the possibility of grouping and relating everyday experiences in such a way that they show us what can give rise to a hope, based on the observation of facts, for a lasting life of the soul beyond physical existence. Thus we see how an observation of existence everywhere proves Goethe's words mentioned above. The animal soul experience is one that we see enclosed within the circle of animal organs. Everywhere we see the organs as the masters that the spirit has formed so that the animal can experience itself spiritually and make use of them in accordance with the organs. And we see human beings entering into existence helpless in relation to that which their organs do not give them direction for, which they must imprint on their spiritual experience from life itself. But it is precisely in the latter that we find what constitutes man's claim to immortality, what is eternal because it cannot be traced back to heredity. This is what Goethe meant when he said: The animal is taught by its organs; but man has the advantage of being able to teach his organs again. And anyone who correctly understands this last sentence, that in the course of his existence man is capable of teaching his organs again, will say to himself: in the sphere of spiritual life, where it is shown how man teaches his organs, the connection that man enters into with the spirit is revealed, and which must be indissoluble, because it is not exhausted and comes from the past, but points to the future and is the seed through which human beings can truly achieve what will form inwardly in their soul experience: the power through which they can conquer old death in ever new life.