ANIMAL AND GROUP-SOUL
Maurice Wood
(First printed in Star and Furrow, Spring, 1960)
In our everyday dealings with animals it is easy to get into the way of thinking that they see us as we see them. But such is not really the case. If Man had remained in the animal state of percep- tion, he could not have developed his personal ego. For this he must separate himself from his surroundings step back and survey the world apart from himself. The animal remains much more part of his environment: his waking consciousness is more like our dreaming and he does not sleep as soundly as we do. The cat or dog asleep by the fireside will spring into immediate action at the slightest sound in his own line of business.
Man sees the world as composed of so many quite separate objects. He brings all these things together and puts thought into what he sees; he turns it over in his mind and savours it and forms his ideas about it all and acts accordingly. It is a threefold process of thinking, feeling and willing. The animal, looking at the same scene, sees it quite differently. He sees it more as a whole in which there is colour and movement. A bull is enraged by a waving red cloth quite irrespective of its form. Or, again, consider the birds. especially their behaviour at mating time. In the flash and display of the bright colours of their feathers, together with appropriate gestures and movements, something passes between them and some- thing happens, as though a spring had been released. Animals specialise in the use of their senses. With some it may be the sense of sight, others of scent, hearing, touch or speed of limbs, and in this way they may reach a state of perfection in certain directions unobtainable by Man. But they are not free in their actions; they are always bound to the particular kind of feelings and movements which belong to the species, whereas Man, living far more in the external world, has become emancipated in the use and direction of his senses. Moreover he is able to pour will into his actions, which the animal cannot do to the same extent, for man's will is under the influence of his personal ego working in each man individually.
And here is the fundamental difference between man and animal: a man's actions are controlled by his individual ego which works within himself, whilst the animal is guided by the ego of its species or group its Group-soul. And the Group-souls of the animals work from the surrounding universe, from the planets moving through the signs of the Zodiac: they remain in the astral world. An animal regards objects with its astral body, as we do with our ego, and there flows into this astral body whatever forces there are in the Group-soul of its species. In their actions animals display an extraordinary intelligence
a quite wonderful wisdom. We use the word" instinct" to account for some actions of animals and some of our own. We have been brought up on the word, and we use it so often and so freely that instinct has come to be regarded as a sort of agent a thing that tells us what to do in an emergency, or when we are carrying out some routine work that does not require thought. But when we ask. "What is this power we call instinct and how does it work?" neither the biologist nor the chemist can give us a satisfactory answer. No matter how intensively we study sensory experience, or how cleverly we attach responses to different stimuli, physical interpretation by itself is not enough. We always meet that fatal gap-the gap between animal and the natural correlate of its be- haviour. No one can really believe that all the wisdom that is manifest in the making of a bird's nest or a honeycomb or a spider's web for instance, is contained within and comes out of the body of the bird or the bee or the spider. The fact is that intelligence and wisdom are everywhere: the whole universe around us is filled with Beings. And just as Natural Science investigates the physical matter of the earth, Spiritual Science tells us of the Spiritual Beings behind the material the Creators of the material.
Very full information has been given to us by Rudolf Steiner in the ten lectures given at Helsingfors in April, 1912, entitled "The Spiritual Beings in the Heavenly Bodies and the Kingdoms of Nature Here we read of certain Beings of the First Hierarchy- the Spirits of Wisdom. It is the offspring of The Spirits of Wisdom known as the Spirits of the Rotation of Time, that govern what goes on in the kingdoms of nature in rhythunic succession. Everything which takes place rhythmically and in recapitulation is regulated by the Spirits of the Rotation of Time working down through the Third Hierarchy, down through the Nature Spirits, regulating times and seasons affecting life on the earth, such as alteration of night and day, summer and winter, so that plants spring up and die back again; and each species of animal has its own life-span from birth to death.
Quite recently scientists have begun to talk about" internal clocks" in animals and plants, implying some sort of timekeeper with a period of 24 hours, which can act either as an alarm clock by initiating a process every 24 hours, or as a chronometer measuring time continuously. In the Spring (1960) number of The Times "Science Review" there is a report of some research work that is being done on this subject. In ingeniously arranged experiments, the natural rhythms in cockroaches have been stopped and the timing upset. "But," says the report," the search for the physiological mechanism of the internal clock is proving to be one of the more arduous tasks of modern biology... So far the clock has proved singularly refractory." It is recorded in the summing up of experi ments, where certain hormones in the cockroaches were exchanged or interfered with, "the basic mechanism of the clock is as illusive as ever," "These animals develop cancer."
While the Spirits of Wisdom, working in the element of light and colour, have a particular connection with the plant world, it is the Spirits of Movement-Beings of the Second Hierarchy working in the ever-moving element of water that are of special importance for the animals. For, we are told, the Group-souls of the animals are their offspring.
The chief characteristic of the animals, as distinct from plants, is their power of movement. Plants are fixed to a certain position on the earth-they are able with the aid of light to create their own food-whilst the animals, whether herbivores or carnivores, have to move about in search of their food. Ultimately the animals are dependent on the plant for all they eat, so that all animals at some stage of their existence are capable of movement, be it more of less. Movement is their life and sometimes their death too. The hawk, hovering high in the sky, can detect the slightest movement in the grass below and swoops unerringly on its victim. A cat may be sitting within inches of a mouse, but it does not become conscious of it till the little creature moves.
An illustration of the working of the Group-soul is given us in that wonderful and beautiful creation the spider's web. How is it done? A mathematician tells us that his calculations reveal a connection between the form of a spider and the web. He shows how the measurements of the limbs in relation to the body correspond in some way to the distance between the threads of the spiral. He also finds a relation between the angles of the web radii and the angles between the spider's legs. All this may be true, or it may be that the observer has measured the reactions of the sense organs and the response of the muscles influenced by these reactions. In any case it does not give us much help in understanding how the spider spins her web. What it does do, however, is to suggest the idea of the web being projection of the spider in space. The spider a builds up the web out of earthly material but she is met and guided by the Group-soul. The design is brought by the Group-soul out of the Wisdom of the whole universe.
Wisdom and intelligence are everywhere not in the spider, not in the higher animals, not even in Man. We human beings have the gift of sharing in this working of the external powers; we do not contain it in ourselves. We participate in it through our ego. The animals are guided by it through their Group-souls, working in the flesh and muscles under the influence of the astral forces. Having no individual ego they have no self, no recollection of the past, no looking forward to the future and so no time. The animal lives always in the present, in the keeping of his Group-soul.
In the preparation of the above paper the following lectures by Rudolf Steiner have been consulted: "The Spiritual Beings in the Heavenly Bodies and in the Kingdoms of Nature" Hebing- fors 1912. "On the difference between Man and Animal Cosmic Formative Force in the Animal Kingdom".