Martinus: Livets Bog, vol. 5, sect. 1744

1744. What good does one think it would do to ask such beings to serve other living beings at the expense of themselves? Would it not be very much the same as admonishing dumb animals and preaching to them? Is this aspect of the beings' consciousness or temperament not exactly the same as the part of their psyche that stills follows exactly the same instinct as that on which the animals' lives are based? Characteristic for this instinct is that it makes its originator further its life by means of complete selfishness with ruthless exploitation of any reserves it has of brute force and superiority in terms of cunning and ability to camouflage itself. It is an absolutely normal way of living for beings that have no other possibility for furthering their self-preservation, that is to say, for all so-called "animals". These beings have no talents in any part of their psyche or consciousness for any other way of furthering the preservation of their lives. They would perish helplessly if they were prevented from following their animal instinct or drive for self-preservation. It is quite a different matter in the case of the species of beings to which we ourselves belong, which we express as "human beings". These beings have in their psyche not merely the animal instinct but also the beginnings of a talent for quite another way of furthering their lives and self-preservation. This talent is an incipient fellow-feeling mixed with the first incipient feeble forms of intellectuality. It is the emergence of this mixture of fellow-feeling and intellectuality, intelligence or reason that separates the terrestrial human being from the "animal" and turns it into the beginning of an entirely new species of being. That this species of being must therefore have a certain epoch of evolution within which its life is furthered partly by "animal" instinct and the talents based on this, and partly by its incipient "human" tendency and the talents to which this gives rise, ought to be an obvious fact for the developed, objective researcher.