at would be wise government among humans, actually going beyond anything present-day humanity knows. Ants are divided into three groups—workers, males and females. It can be shown that the workers are very clever, the females less clever and the males quite stupid. Everything in the heap is skilfully organized—the way they transport the things needed for their building and to breed their young, go on forays, and so on. If all such things call for soul activity in human state affairs, we cannot say animals lack soul. People have always thought it was enough to speak of instinct, but they never try to think what instinct really is.
We must now also consider the other side and not fail to realize that there is a fundamental difference between the things an animal achieves by its powers of soul and the things a human being achieves by them. A definite fact, which may serve us as an example. Travellers would often find that when they had lit a fire to ward off the cold and then went away, apes would come to warm themselves by the fire. No ape was ever seen to gather more wood to keep the fire going, however. It does not make this connection, and this is of eminent significance. It cannot add something new by using its own mental faculties, such as stoking a fire, and so on.
To understand the animal soul we must make this difference from the human soul our starting point. Another difference between the animal and the human soul is that you can write a biography of every human being but not of every animal. This is most important. If you consider your own interest in the different life forms, you will find that the interest you have in an individual human being is the same as for a whole group of animals of the same species. If you think of a lion, your feelings for the lion grandfather, father, son and grandson are exactly the same. Such an approach would seem absolutely frivolous if applied to human beings. Yes, the owner of a dog may say he can write a biography of his dog, but this means nothing. You can also write the biography of a steel nib or about differences in the life of a darning needle and a sewing needle. That is merely a transfer of ideas. Just as one whole animal species differs from another, so does a single human being differ from others. A common soul lives in the whole group of animals. Just as your ten fingers are part of your hands, so are all wolves part of the wolf group soul.
Now we also need to consider the human soul more closely. It was not as individual in earlier times as it is today. There was a point in human evolution when man was much closer to a group soul. A hundred years after Christ, Tacitus gave a description of individual German tribes in his Germania. All members of a group felt they belonged together, though there were, of course, differences, everything happening by degrees in human evolution. All who belonged to a group saw themselves to be the same. Markedly individual facial features are a sign that the individual soul is more removed from the group soul. You still see more or less the same facial features among savages. We have to remember the fact that marked facial features prove that the individual nature is influencing the bodily configuration. This will be increasingly the case as human beings continue to evolve. A time will come when national characteristics disappear completely. With a soul incarnating now in one nation, now in another, national differences will vanish, with everyone immediately always looking just like himself the more his individual nature has come through. In earlier times, when people still married within the tribe, its members would hold together like the fingers on a hand, with one avenging the dishonour done to another as though it had been done to him. This cohesion is gradually disappearing, and the greater the union, the more general the unity of human beings, the more individual will souls and characters be. So you do not get a mishmash but the more the differences fall away, the greater the individuality.
Where do human group souls differ from a