122. If we are going to analyse and measure the mental standard of mankind, we must have a "fixed point" in relation to which we can judge the result of our measuring. Such a "fixed point" is to be found in mankind's attitude to the old world impulse. Such an attitude makes us realize that for thousands of terrestrial people this impulse has become outdated, regardless of whether it appears in the form of Buddhism, Islam or Christianity, and quite independently of whether one is born as an Easterner or a Westerner. All over the world there are found people who have grown out of their childish ideas and all that they were brought up to believe; in other words, all people who have advanced beyond the world's present highest forms of religion. That this situation could actually become a fact must be attributed to the great development in the faculties of feeling and intelligence which has taken place over the last century. And it is the above-mentioned people who have been subject to that development, meaning that their consciousness has been enriched by knowledge and experiences which have given birth within them to great fundamental questions which were not of current interest at the time when the religions were being presented by their idealistic founders. Those religions were therefore not adjusted to give answers to these questions. They were adapted to give answers to those questions dealing only with the most important current problems of the time. As the mental standard was very primitive, especially in the field of intelligence, the questions and desires presented, in order to obtain real knowledge, were correspondingly primitive. Therefore, so as not to appear too fanciful or improbable, the religions had to be adapted to the primitive evolutionary level of the people in question. It is now thousands of years since the old world impulse was translated into a religious form. These thousands of years have made an evolutionary mark on the consciousness of mankind in all areas except the forms of religions which have not yet gone through the same change or expansion. Those religions still, in the form of dogmas, occupy only limited and primitive areas, so it is obvious that the most advanced people in life - those most influenced by evolution - must, in large areas of their consciousness, move right outside the scope of religions; indeed, they must even clash with the actual wording of the religions when taken literally, for the original intention behind the world plan was for the wording of religions to be taken symbolically. And the more these new layers of consciousness expand outside religions - especially in connection with technology, science and art - the more disharmony there will be with the wording and with the dogmas themselves. The consequence of this for a large number of terrestrial people is either an entire or a partial liberation from dogmas and a breakaway from religions. And here we see that humanity is appearing in two large main groups. One group consists of the people just mentioned - those who have broken away from religions, dogmas and the old world impulse - while the other, on the contrary, consists of those for whom these very factors still retain their full inspirational power and to whom, therefore, they are still an indispensable blessing. These two large main groups will be defined in Livets Bog as "Group A" and "Group B". The people in the two main groups which make up humanity as a whole, may be further divided into six specific categories. The first three of these belong to Group A, while the remaining three form Group B. Thus, any single terrestrial person can be classified under one or other of these six categories. The people in the categories differ from each other in their individual stages of development, for the latter has not been the same for everybody, but has occurred in such a way that at the present time some appear with too strongly developed feelings in relation to their intelligence, while for others the opposite is the case. However, there are also people in whom these two factors of consciousness are equal and in balance. As it is the question of the mutual relationship between these two prominent factors in the consciousness of the individual which is absolutely decisive for his will-power and his behaviour, his partiality or his impartiality towards this or that, for his religious standards, for what he can believe in and what he cannot believe in, then the seeker of Truth cannot be recommended too strongly to give special attention to the following analysis of the categories, because recognition of the unreasonableness and abnormality of any form of intolerance or ill-will towards people whose thinking and understanding are different will then become alive within him.