Martinus: Livets Bog, vol. 5, sect. 1765

1765. We have now come so far in our study of the terrestrial human psyche that we can see that the terrestrial man and woman constitute something more than a mere male being and female being respectively. There is something in their psyche that the wild animal that has not been affected by people does not have. This "something" is more visible or evident the more developed the being is, while it is present to a lesser extent the more primitive or the closer to the stage of the animal the same being is. It is precisely this "something" that characterises the difference between the animal's psyche and the human being's psyche. It is thus this "something" that results in the fact that the human being is indeed a "human being" and not an "animal". The difference between the "human being" and the "animal" is thus not to any great extent based on the physical or bodily difference. The terrestrial human body is in principle the same as the animal's. Here we are dealing with only a kind of difference in degree, but not a difference in type. The difference between the two types of beings is on the contrary almost exclusively mental in nature. The previously mentioned "something" is thus something purely mental, that is to say, something that has to do with the consciousness alone. While the animal's sphere of consciousness contains only the drive for self-preservation itself with its processes of mating or procreation and the phenomena that belong strictly to these processes, the terrestrial human being's sphere of consciousness on the contrary contains not merely this mating urge, which is of course still the foundation for the survival of the species, but it also contains the beginning of another drive, a drive in the being that will increasingly undermine the drive for self-preservation it inherited from the animal and the phenomena that belong to this. This new drive is a diametrical opposite of the drive for self-preservation and will therefore, as previously mentioned, gradually and quite slowly undermine this. In this way the terrestrial human being becomes a being that differs from the animal in that it is in conflict with itself. The animal, on the contrary, cannot come into any conflict with itself. It can come into conflict only with other beings. Its own being is governed fundamentally by its instinct, which is so developed that it causes the animal to live one hundred per cent in contact with its drive for self-preservation and that which is essential to its life. If the advanced human being wants to live in this way, it will sooner or later get into the mental state or crisis we call "pangs of conscience". The terrestrial human being can thus deviate from the state of the animal and follow other laws than that of the drive for self-preservation or of the animal instinct. It is this new side of the terrestrial human being's nature that separates it from the side of this nature that it otherwise has in common with the animal.