animals

65:6.7The lower forms of plant life are wholly re­spon­sive to phys­i­cal, chem­i­cal, and elec­tri­cal en­vi­ron­ment. But as the scale of life as­cends, one by one the mind min­istries of the seven ad­ju­tant spir­its be­come op­er­a­tive, and the mind be­comes in­creas­ingly ad­jus­tive, cre­ative, co-or­di­na­tive, and dom­i­na­tive. The abil­ity of an­i­mals to adapt them­selves to air, wa­ter, and land is not a super­nat­u­ral en­dow­ment, but it is a super­phys­i­cal ad­just­ment.

65:6.8Physics and chem­istry alone can­not ex­plain how a hu­man be­ing evolved out of the primeval pro­to­plasm of the early seas. The abil­ity to learn, mem­ory and dif­fer­en­tial re­sponse to en­vi­ron­ment, is the en­dow­ment of mind. The laws of physics are not re­spon­sive to train­ing; they are im­mutable and un­chang­ing. The re­ac­tions of chem­istry are not mod­i­fied by ed­u­ca­tion; they are uni­form and de­pend­able. Aside from the pres­ence of the Un­qual­i­fied Ab­so­lute, elec­tri­cal and chem­i­cal re­ac­tions are pre­dictable. But mind can profit from ex­pe­ri­ence, can learn from re­ac­tive habits of be­hav­ior in re­sponse to rep­e­ti­tion of stim­uli.

36:5.13The ad­ju­tant mind-spir­its ex­pe­ri­en­tially grow, but they never be­come per­sonal. They evolve in func­tion, and the func­tion of the first five in the an­i­mal or­ders is to a cer­tain ex­tent es­sen­tial to the func­tion of all seven as hu­man in­tel­lect. This an­i­mal re­la­tion­ship makes the ad­ju­tants more prac­ti­cally ef­fec­tive as hu­man mind; hence an­i­mals are to a cer­tain ex­tent in­dis­pens­able to man’s in­tel­lec­tual as well as to his phys­i­cal evo­lu­tion.

42:10.42. Ad­ju­tant-spirit minds. This is the min­istry of a lo­cal uni­verse Mother Spirit func­tion­ing through her seven ad­ju­tant mind-spir­its on the teach­able (non­me­chan­i­cal) level of ma­te­rial mind. On this level ma­te­rial mind is ex­pe­ri­enc­ing: as sub­hu­man (an­i­mal) in­tel­lect in the first five ad­ju­tants; as hu­man (moral) in­tel­lect in the seven ad­ju­tants; as super­hu­man (mid­wayer) in­tel­lect in the last two ad­ju­tants.

70:1.7War­fare per­sists be­cause man is hu­man, evolved from an an­i­mal, and all an­i­mals are bel­li­cose. Among the early causes of war were:

58:2.9Even the com­pass nee­dle is re­spon­sive to this so­lar in­flu­ence since it turns slightly to the east as the sun rises and slightly to the west as the sun nears set­ting. This hap­pens ev­ery day, but dur­ing the height of sun­spot cy­cles this vari­a­tion of the com­pass is twice as great. These di­ur­nal wan­der­ings of the com­pass are in re­sponse to the in­creased ion­iza­tion of the up­per at­mo­sphere, which is pro­duced by the sun­light.

63:6.3The An­don­ites early de­vel­oped a fear of the el­e­ments—thun­der, light­ning, rain, snow, hail, and ice. But hunger was the con­stantly re­cur­ring urge of these early days, and since they largely sub­sisted on an­i­mals, they even­tu­ally evolved a form of an­i­mal wor­ship. To An­don, the larger food an­i­mals were sym­bols of cre­ative might and sus­tain­ing power. From time to time it be­came the cus­tom to des­ig­nate var­i­ous of these larger an­i­mals as ob­jects of wor­ship. Dur­ing the vogue of a par­tic­u­lar an­i­mal, crude out­lines of it would be drawn on the walls of the caves, and later on, as con­tin­ued prog­ress was made in the arts, such an an­i­mal god was en­graved on var­i­ous or­na­ments.

63:2.5But the au­tumn sun was get­ting lower in the sky, and as they jour­neyed north­ward, the nights grew cooler and cooler. Al­ready they had been forced to make use of an­i­mal skins for warmth. Be­fore they had been away from home one moon, An­don sig­ni­fied to his mate that he thought he could make fire with the flint. They tried for two months to uti­lize the flint spark for kin­dling a fire but only met with fail­ure. Each day this cou­ple would strike the flints and en­deavor to ig­nite the wood. Fi­nally, one evening about the time of the set­ting of the sun, the se­cret of the tech­nique was un­rav­eled when it oc­curred to Fonta to climb a near-by tree to se­cure an aban­doned bird’s nest. The nest was dry and highly in­flammable and con­se­quently flared right up into a full blaze the mo­ment the spark fell upon it. They were so sur­prised and star­tled at their suc­cess that they al­most lost the fire, but they saved it by the ad­di­tion of suit­able fuel, and then be­gan the first search for fire­wood by the par­ents of all man­kind.

63:4.1Prim­i­tive man—the An­don­ites—had black eyes and a swarthy com­plex­ion, some­thing of a cross be­tween yel­low and red. Melanin is a col­or­ing sub­stance which is found in the skins of all hu­man be­ings. It is the orig­i­nal An­donic skin pig­ment. In gen­eral ap­pear­ance and skin color these early An­don­ites more nearly re­sem­bled the pres­ent-day Es­kimo than any other type of liv­ing hu­man be­ings. They were the first crea­tures to use the skins of an­i­mals as a pro­tec­tion against cold; they had lit­tle more hair on their bod­ies than pres­ent-day hu­mans.

59:1.4Sud­denly and with­out gra­da­tion an­ces­try the first mul­ti­cel­lu­lar an­i­mals make their ap­pear­ance. The trilo­bites have evolved, and for ages they dom­i­nate the seas. From the stand­point of ma­rine life this is the trilo­bite age.

43:6.4The ar­chi­tec­tural worlds en­joy ten forms of life of the ma­te­rial or­der. On Uran­tia there is plant and an­i­mal life, but on such a world as Eden­tia there are ten di­vi­sions of the ma­te­rial or­ders of life. Were you to view these ten di­vi­sions of Eden­tia life, you would quickly clas­sify the first three as veg­etable and the last three as an­i­mal, but you would be ut­terly un­able to com­pre­hend the na­ture of the in­ter­ven­ing four groups of pro­lific and fas­ci­nat­ing forms of life.

43:6.5Even the dis­tinc­tively an­i­mal life is very dif­fer­ent from that of the evo­lu­tion­ary worlds, so dif­fer­ent that it is quite im­pos­si­ble to por­tray to mor­tal minds the unique char­ac­ter and af­fec­tion­ate na­ture of these non­speak­ing crea­tures. There are thou­sands upon thou­sands of liv­ing crea­tures which your imag­i­na­tion could not pos­si­bly pic­ture. The whole an­i­mal cre­ation is of an en­tirely dif­fer­ent or­der from the gross an­i­mal species of the evo­lu­tion­ary plan­ets. But all this an­i­mal life is most in­tel­li­gent and ex­qui­sitely ser­vice­able, and all the var­i­ous species are sur­pris­ingly gen­tle and touch­ingly com­pan­ion­able. There are no car­niv­o­rous crea­tures on such ar­chi­tec­tural worlds; there is noth­ing in all Eden­tia to make any liv­ing be­ing afraid.

• know only the past; live in the present

12:5.10Un­spir­i­tual an­i­mals know only the past and live in the pres­ent. Spirit-in­dwelt man has pow­ers of pre­vi­sion (in­sight); he may vi­su­al­ize the fu­ture. Only for­ward-look­ing and pro­gres­sive at­ti­tudes are per­son­ally real. Static ethics and tra­di­tional moral­ity are just slightly super­an­i­mal. Nor is sto­icism a high or­der of self-re­al­iza­tion. Ethics and morals be­come truly hu­man when they are dy­namic and pro­gres­sive, alive with uni­verse re­al­ity.

• selective responses limited to motor level

16:7.2The se­lec­tive re­sponse of an an­i­mal is lim­ited to the mo­tor level of be­hav­ior. The sup­posed in­sight of the higher an­i­mals is on a mo­tor level and usu­ally ap­pears only af­ter the ex­pe­ri­ence of mo­tor trial and er­ror. Man is able to ex­er­cise sci­en­tific, moral, and spir­i­tual in­sight prior to all ex­plo­ration or ex­per­i­men­ta­tion.

16:7.3Only a per­son­al­ity can know what it is do­ing be­fore it does it; only per­son­al­i­ties pos­sess in­sight in ad­vance of ex­pe­ri­ence. A per­son­al­ity can look be­fore it leaps and can there­fore learn from look­ing as well as from leap­ing. A non­per­sonal an­i­mal or­di­nar­ily learns only by leap­ing.

16:7.4As a re­sult of ex­pe­ri­ence an an­i­mal be­comes able to ex­am­ine the dif­fer­ent ways of at­tain­ing a goal and to se­lect an ap­proach based on ac­cu­mu­lated ex­pe­ri­ence. But a per­son­al­ity can also ex­am­ine the goal it­self and pass judg­ment on its worth-while­ness, its value. In­tel­li­gence alone can dis­crim­i­nate as to the best means of at­tain­ing in­dis­crim­i­nate ends, but a moral be­ing pos­sesses an in­sight which en­ables him to dis­crim­i­nate be­tween ends as well as be­tween means. And a moral be­ing in choos­ing virtue is nonethe­less in­tel­li­gent. He knows what he is do­ing, why he is do­ing it, where he is go­ing, and how he will get there.

• do not survive death

36:6.5The life be­stowed upon plants and an­i­mals by the Life Car­ri­ers does not re­turn to the Life Car­ri­ers upon the death of plant or an­i­mal. The de­part­ing life of such a liv­ing thing pos­sesses nei­ther iden­tity nor per­son­al­ity; it does not in­di­vid­u­ally sur­vive death. Dur­ing its ex­is­tence and the time of its so­journ in the body of mat­ter, it has un­der­gone a change; it has un­der­gone en­ergy evo­lu­tion and sur­vives only as a part of the cos­mic forces of the uni­verse; it does not sur­vive as in­di­vid­ual life. The sur­vival of mor­tal crea­tures is wholly pred­i­cated on the evolve­ment of an im­mor­tal soul within the mor­tal mind.

• do not visualize survival after death

68:3.2Prob­a­bly the great­est sin­gle fac­tor in the evo­lu­tion of hu­man so­ci­ety was the ghost dream. Al­though most dreams greatly per­turbed the prim­i­tive mind, the ghost dream ac­tu­ally ter­ror­ized early men, driv­ing these su­per­sti­tious dream­ers into each other’s arms in will­ing and earnest as­so­ci­a­tion for mu­tual pro­tec­tion against the vague and un­seen imag­i­nary dan­gers of the spirit world. The ghost dream was one of the ear­li­est ap­pear­ing dif­fer­ences be­tween the an­i­mal and hu­man types of mind. An­i­mals do not vi­su­al­ize sur­vival af­ter death.

• manner in which man transcends

69:0.1Emo­tion­ally, man tran­scends his an­i­mal an­ces­tors in his abil­ity to ap­pre­ci­ate hu­mor, art, and re­li­gion. So­cially, man ex­hibits his su­pe­ri­or­ity in that he is a tool­maker, a com­mu­ni­ca­tor, and an in­sti­tu­tion builder.

• instinctive exertions are not efforts of design

69:2.5La­bor, the ef­forts of de­sign, dis­tin­guishes man from the beast, whose ex­er­tions are largely in­stinc­tive. The ne­ces­sity for la­bor is man’s paramount bless­ing. The Prince’s staff all worked; they did much to en­no­ble phys­i­cal la­bor on Uran­tia. Adam was a gar­dener; the God of the He­brews la­bored—he was the cre­ator and up­holder of all things. The He­brews were the first tribe to put a su­preme pre­mium on in­dus­try; they were the first peo­ple to de­cree that “he who does not work shall not eat.” But many of the re­li­gions of the world re­verted to the early ideal of idle­ness. Jupiter was a rev­eler, and Bud­dha be­came a re­flec­tive devo­tee of leisure.

• do not build fire

69:6.2Fire build­ing, by a sin­gle bound, for­ever sep­a­rated man from an­i­mal; it is the ba­sic hu­man in­ven­tion, or dis­cov­ery. Fire en­abled man to stay on the ground at night as all an­i­mals are afraid of it. Fire en­cour­aged even­tide so­cial in­ter­course; it not only pro­tected against cold and wild beasts but was also em­ployed as se­cu­rity against ghosts. It was at first used more for light than heat; many back­ward tribes refuse to sleep un­less a flame burns all night.

• have knowledge, but not wisdom

101:6.4The evo­lu­tion­ary type of knowl­edge is but the ac­cu­mu­la­tion of pro­to­plas­mic mem­ory ma­te­rial; this is the most prim­i­tive form of crea­ture con­scious­ness. Wis­dom em­braces the ideas for­mu­lated from pro­to­plas­mic mem­ory in pro­cess of as­so­ci­a­tion and re­com­bi­na­tion, and such phe­nom­ena dif­fer­en­ti­ate hu­man mind from mere an­i­mal mind. An­i­mals have knowl­edge, but only man pos­sesses wis­dom ca­pac­ity. Truth is made ac­ces­si­ble to the wis­dom-en­dowed in­di­vid­ual by the be­stowal on such a mind of the spir­its of the Fa­ther and the Sons, the Thought Ad­juster and the Spirit of Truth.

• do not communicate concepts

109:4.1The higher forms of in­tel­li­gent in­ter­com­mu­ni­ca­tion be­tween hu­man be­ings are greatly helped by the in­dwelling Ad­justers. An­i­mals do have fel­low feel­ings, but they do not com­mu­ni­cate con­cepts to each other; they can ex­press emo­tions but not ideas and ide­als. Nei­ther do men of an­i­mal ori­gin ex­pe­ri­ence a high type of in­tel­lec­tual in­ter­course or spir­i­tual com­mu­nion with their fel­lows un­til the Thought Ad­justers have been be­stowed, al­beit, when such evo­lu­tion­ary crea­tures de­velop speech, they are on the high­road to re­ceiv­ing Ad­justers.

• communicate in limited way, but with little or no personality

109:4.2An­i­mals do, in a crude way, com­mu­ni­cate with each other, but there is lit­tle or no per­son­al­ity in such prim­i­tive con­tact. Ad­justers are not per­son­al­ity; they are preper­sonal be­ings. But they do hail from the source of per­son­al­ity, and their pres­ence does aug­ment the qual­i­ta­tive man­i­fes­ta­tions of hu­man per­son­al­ity; es­pe­cially is this true if the Ad­juster has had pre­vi­ous ex­pe­ri­ence.

• do not experience consciousness of time or self-consciousness

118:3.1Only by ubiq­uity could De­ity unify time-space man­i­fes­ta­tions to the fi­nite con­cep­tion, for time is a suc­ces­sion of in­stants while space is a sys­tem of as­so­ci­ated points. You do, af­ter all, per­ceive time by anal­y­sis and space by syn­the­sis. You co-or­di­nate and as­so­ciate these two dis­sim­i­lar con­cep­tions by the in­te­grat­ing in­sight of per­son­al­ity. Of all the an­i­mal world only man pos­sesses this time-space per­cep­ti­bil­ity. To an an­i­mal, mo­tion has a mean­ing, but mo­tion ex­hibits value only to a crea­ture of per­son­al­ity sta­tus.

• cannot know God, develop language
• do not survive death

130:2.8That af­ter­noon Je­sus and Ga­nid had both en­joyed play­ing with a very in­tel­li­gent shep­herd dog, and Ga­nid wanted to know whether the dog had a soul, whether it had a will, and in re­sponse to his ques­tions Je­sus said: “The dog has a mind which can know ma­te­rial man, his mas­ter, but can­not know God, who is spirit; there­fore the dog does not pos­sess a spir­i­tual na­ture and can­not en­joy a spir­i­tual ex­pe­ri­ence. The dog may have a will de­rived from na­ture and aug­mented by train­ing, but such a power of mind is not a spir­i­tual force, nei­ther is it com­pa­ra­ble to the hu­man will, inas­much as it is not re­flec­tive—it is not the re­sult of dis­crim­i­nat­ing higher and moral mean­ings or choos­ing spir­i­tual and eter­nal val­ues. It is the pos­ses­sion of such pow­ers of spir­i­tual dis­crim­i­na­tion and truth choos­ing that makes mor­tal man a moral be­ing, a crea­ture en­dowed with the at­tri­butes of spir­i­tual re­spon­si­bil­ity and the po­ten­tial of eter­nal sur­vival.” Je­sus went on to ex­plain that it is the ab­sence of such men­tal pow­ers in the an­i­mal which makes it for­ever im­pos­si­ble for the an­i­mal world to de­velop lan­guage in time or to ex­pe­ri­ence any­thing equiv­a­lent to per­son­al­ity sur­vival in eter­nity. As a re­sult of this day’s in­struc­tion Ga­nid never again en­ter­tained be­lief in the trans­mi­gra­tion of the souls of men into the bod­ies of an­i­mals.

• do not experience consciousness of time or self-consciousness

130:4.9Only in de­gree does man pos­sess mind above the an­i­mal level aside from the higher and quasi-spir­i­tual min­is­tra­tions of in­tel­lect. There­fore an­i­mals (not hav­ing wor­ship and wis­dom) can­not ex­pe­ri­ence super­con­scious­ness, con­scious­ness of con­scious­ness. The an­i­mal mind is only con­scious of the ob­jec­tive uni­verse.

• do not experience consciousness of time or self-consciousness

130:7.5An­i­mals do not sense time as does man, and even to man, be­cause of his sec­tional and cir­cum­scribed view, time ap­pears as a suc­ces­sion of events; but as man as­cends, as he pro­gresses in­ward, the en­larg­ing view of this event pro­ces­sion is such that it is dis­cerned more and more in its whole­ness. That which for­merly ap­peared as a suc­ces­sion of events then will be viewed as a whole and per­fectly re­lated cy­cle; in this way will cir­cu­lar si­mul­tane­ity in­creas­ingly dis­place the one­time con­scious­ness of the lin­ear se­quence of events.

• do not experience consciousness of time or self-consciousness

133:7.6My son, I have al­ready told you much about the mind of man and the di­vine spirit that lives therein, but now let me em­pha­size that self-con­scious­ness is a re­al­ity. When any an­i­mal be­comes self-con­scious, it be­comes a prim­i­tive man. Such an at­tain­ment re­sults from a co-or­di­na­tion of func­tion be­tween im­per­sonal en­ergy and spirit-con­ceiv­ing mind, and it is this phe­nom­e­non which war­rants the be­stowal of an ab­so­lute fo­cal point for the hu­man per­son­al­ity, the spirit of the Fa­ther in heaven.

• do not experience consciousness of time or self-consciousness

133:7.8No mere an­i­mal could pos­sess a time self-con­scious­ness. An­i­mals pos­sess a phys­i­o­log­i­cal co-or­di­na­tion of as­so­ci­ated sen­sa­tion-rec­og­ni­tion and mem­ory thereof, but none ex­pe­ri­ence a mean­ing­ful rec­og­ni­tion of sen­sa­tion or ex­hibit a pur­pose­ful as­so­ci­a­tion of these com­bined phys­i­cal ex­pe­ri­ences such as is man­i­fested in the con­clu­sions of in­tel­li­gent and re­flec­tive hu­man in­ter­pre­ta­tions. And this fact of self-con­scious ex­is­tence, as­so­ci­ated with the re­al­ity of his sub­se­quent spir­i­tual ex­pe­ri­ence, con­sti­tutes man a po­ten­tial son of the uni­verse and fore­shad­ows his even­tual at­tain­ment of the Su­preme Unity of the uni­verse.

• make no inquiry into purposes of life

160:1.5An­i­mals re­spond nobly to the urge of life, but only man can at­tain the art of liv­ing, al­beit the ma­jor­ity of man­kind only ex­pe­ri­ence the an­i­mal urge to live. An­i­mals know only this blind and in­stinc­tive urge; man is ca­pa­ble of tran­scend­ing this urge to nat­u­ral func­tion. Man may elect to live upon the high plane of in­tel­li­gent art, even that of ce­les­tial joy and spir­i­tual ec­stasy. An­i­mals make no in­quiry into the pur­poses of life; there­fore they never worry, nei­ther do they com­mit sui­cide. Sui­cide among men tes­ti­fies that such be­ings have emerged from the purely an­i­mal stage of ex­is­tence, and to the fur­ther fact that the ex­ploratory ef­forts of such hu­man be­ings have failed to at­tain the artis­tic lev­els of mor­tal ex­pe­ri­ence. An­i­mals know not the mean­ing of life; man not only pos­sesses ca­pac­ity for the rec­og­ni­tion of val­ues and the com­pre­hen­sion of mean­ings, but he also is con­scious of the mean­ing of mean­ings—he is self-con­scious of in­sight.

• communicate in limited way, but with little or no personality

160:2.1There are just two ways in which mor­tals may live to­gether: the ma­te­rial or an­i­mal way and the spir­i­tual or hu­man way. By the use of sig­nals and sounds an­i­mals are able to com­mu­ni­cate with each other in a lim­ited way. But such forms of com­mu­ni­ca­tion do not con­vey mean­ings, val­ues, or ideas. The one dis­tinc­tion be­tween man and the an­i­mal is that man can com­mu­ni­cate with his fel­lows by means of sym­bols which most cer­tainly des­ig­nate and iden­tify mean­ings, val­ues, ideas, and even ide­als.

• Prince’s staff taught

52:2.8Dur­ing this age agri­cul­ture makes its ap­pear­ance. The growth of the fam­ily idea is in­com­pat­i­ble with the rov­ing and un­set­tled life of the hunter. Grad­u­ally the prac­tices of set­tled habi­ta­tions and the cul­ti­va­tion of the soil be­come es­tab­lished. The do­mes­ti­ca­tion of an­i­mals and the de­vel­op­ment of home arts pro­ceed apace. Upon reach­ing the apex of bi­o­logic evo­lu­tion, a high level of civ­i­liza­tion has been at­tained, but there is lit­tle de­vel­op­ment of a me­chan­i­cal or­der; in­ven­tion is the char­ac­ter­is­tic of the suc­ceed­ing age.

• Prince’s staff taught

66:5.42. The board of an­i­mal do­mes­ti­ca­tion and uti­liza­tion. This coun­cil was ded­i­cated to the task of se­lect­ing and breed­ing those an­i­mals best adapted to help hu­man be­ings in bear­ing bur­dens and trans­port­ing them­selves, to sup­ply food, and later on to be of ser­vice in the cul­ti­va­tion of the soil. This able corps was di­rected by Bon.

66:5.5Sev­eral types of use­ful an­i­mals, now ex­tinct, were tamed, to­gether with some that have con­tin­ued as do­mes­ti­cated an­i­mals to the pres­ent day. Man had long lived with the dog, and the blue man had al­ready been suc­cess­ful in tam­ing the ele­phant. The cow was so im­proved by care­ful breed­ing as to be­come a valu­able source of food; but­ter and cheese be­came com­mon ar­ti­cles of hu­man diet. Men were taught to use oxen for bur­den bear­ing, but the horse was not do­mes­ti­cated un­til a later date. The mem­bers of this corps first taught men to use the wheel for the fa­cil­i­ta­tion of trac­tion.

66:5.6It was in these days that car­rier pi­geons were first used, be­ing taken on long jour­neys for the pur­pose of send­ing mes­sages or calls for help. Bon’s group were suc­cess­ful in train­ing the great fan­dors as pas­sen­ger birds, but they be­came ex­tinct more than thirty thou­sand years ago.

66:5.73. The ad­vis­ers re­gard­ing the con­quest of preda­tory an­i­mals. It was not enough that early man should try to do­mes­ti­cate cer­tain an­i­mals, but he must also learn how to pro­tect him­self from de­struc­tion by the re­main­der of the hos­tile an­i­mal world. This group was cap­tained by Dan.

66:5.8The pur­pose of an an­cient city wall was to pro­tect against fe­ro­cious beasts as well as to pre­vent sur­prise at­tacks by hos­tile hu­mans. Those liv­ing with­out the walls and in the for­est were de­pen­dent on tree dwellings, stone huts, and the main­te­nance of night fires. It was there­fore very nat­u­ral that these teach­ers should de­vote much time to in­struct­ing their pupils in the im­prove­ment of hu­man dwellings. By em­ploy­ing im­proved tech­niques and by the use of traps, great prog­ress was made in an­i­mal sub­ju­ga­tion.

• pastoral civilization made possible by

68:5.63. The pas­toral stage. This phase of civ­i­liza­tion was made pos­si­ble by the do­mes­ti­ca­tion of an­i­mals. The Arabs and the na­tives of Africa are among the more re­cent pas­toral peo­ples.

• accidental

69:7.2The do­mes­ti­ca­tion of an­i­mals came about ac­ci­den­tally. The sav­age would hunt herds much as the Amer­i­can In­di­ans hunted the bi­son. By sur­round­ing the herd they could keep con­trol of the an­i­mals, thus be­ing able to kill them as they were re­quired for food. Later, cor­rals were con­structed, and en­tire herds would be cap­tured.

• selective breeding promoted

69:7.3It was easy to tame some an­i­mals, but like the ele­phant, many of them would not re­pro­duce in cap­tiv­ity. Still fur­ther on it was dis­cov­ered that cer­tain species of an­i­mals would sub­mit to man’s pres­ence, and that they would re­pro­duce in cap­tiv­ity. The do­mes­ti­ca­tion of an­i­mals was thus pro­moted by se­lec­tive breed­ing, an art which has made great prog­ress since the days of Dala­ma­tia.

• one of first great advances

81:2.3The first four great ad­vances in hu­man civ­i­liza­tion were:

• gave living tools to primitive man
• one of first great advances

81:2.10In the prema­chine age the only way in which man could ac­com­plish work with­out do­ing it him­self was to use an an­i­mal. Do­mes­ti­ca­tion of an­i­mals placed in his hands liv­ing tools, the in­tel­li­gent use of which pre­pared the way for both agri­cul­ture and trans­porta­tion. And with­out these an­i­mals man could not have risen from his prim­i­tive es­tate to the lev­els of sub­se­quent civ­i­liza­tion.

81:2.11Most of the an­i­mals best suited to do­mes­ti­ca­tion were found in Asia, es­pe­cially in the cen­tral to south­west re­gions. This was one rea­son why civ­i­liza­tion pro­gressed faster in that lo­cal­ity than in other parts of the world. Many of these an­i­mals had been twice be­fore do­mes­ti­cated, and in the And­ite age they were re­tamed once again. But the dog had re­mained with the hunters ever since be­ing adopted by the blue man long, long be­fore.

81:2.12The And­ites of Tur­kes­tan were the first peo­ples to ex­ten­sively do­mes­ti­cate the horse, and this is an­other rea­son why their cul­ture was for so long pre­dom­i­nant. By 5000 B.C. the Mes­o­po­ta­mian, Tur­kes­tan, and Chi­nese farm­ers had be­gun the rais­ing of sheep, goats, cows, camels, horses, fowls, and ele­phants. They em­ployed as beasts of bur­den the ox, camel, horse, and yak. Man was him­self at one time the beast of bur­den. One ruler of the blue race once had one hun­dred thou­sand men in his colony of bur­den bear­ers.

64:1.7The groups go­ing west be­came less con­tam­i­nated with the back­ward stocks of mu­tual an­ces­tral ori­gin than those go­ing east, who min­gled so freely with their re­tarded an­i­mal cousins. These un­pro­gres­sive in­di­vid­u­als drifted south­ward and pres­ently mated with the in­fe­rior tribes. Later on, in­creas­ing num­bers of their mon­grel de­scen­dants re­turned to the north to mate with the rapidly ex­pand­ing An­donic peo­ples, and such un­for­tu­nate unions un­fail­ingly de­te­ri­o­rated the su­pe­rior stock. Fewer and fewer of the prim­i­tive set­tle­ments main­tained the wor­ship of the Breath Giver. This early dawn civ­i­liza­tion was threat­ened with ex­tinc­tion.

85:3.1Prim­i­tive man had a pe­cu­liar and fel­low feel­ing for the higher an­i­mals. His an­ces­tors had lived with them and even mated with them. In south­ern Asia it was early be­lieved that the souls of men came back to earth in an­i­mal form. This be­lief was a sur­vival of the still ear­lier prac­tice of wor­ship­ing an­i­mals.

36:2.17Sphere Num­ber Four and its trib­u­tary satel­lites are de­voted to the study of the evo­lu­tion of crea­ture life in gen­eral and to the evo­lu­tion­ary an­tecedents of any one life level in par­tic­u­lar. The orig­i­nal life plasm of an evo­lu­tion­ary world must con­tain the full po­ten­tial for all fu­ture de­vel­op­men­tal vari­a­tions and for all sub­se­quent evo­lu­tion­ary changes and mod­i­fi­ca­tions. The pro­vi­sion for such far-reach­ing projects of life meta­mor­pho­sis may re­quire the ap­pear­ance of many ap­par­ently use­less forms of an­i­mal and veg­etable life. Such by-prod­ucts of plan­e­tary evo­lu­tion, fore­seen or un­fore­seen, ap­pear upon the stage of ac­tion only to dis­ap­pear, but in and through all this long pro­cess there runs the thread of the wise and in­tel­li­gent for­mu­la­tions of the orig­i­nal de­sign­ers of the plan­e­tary life plan and species scheme. The man­i­fold by-prod­ucts of bi­o­logic evo­lu­tion are all es­sen­tial to the fi­nal and full func­tion of the higher in­tel­li­gent forms of life, not­with­stand­ing that great out­ward dishar­mony may pre­vail from time to time in the long up­ward strug­gle of the higher crea­tures to ef­fect the mas­tery of the lower forms of life, many of which are some­times so an­tag­o­nis­tic to the peace and com­fort of the evolv­ing will crea­tures.

124:6.14Je­sus was pro­foundly im­pressed by the tem­ple and all the as­so­ci­ated ser­vices and other ac­tiv­i­ties. For the first time since he was four years old, he was too much pre­oc­cu­pied with his own med­i­ta­tions to ask many ques­tions. He did, how­ever, ask his fa­ther sev­eral em­bar­rass­ing ques­tions (as he had on pre­vi­ous oc­ca­sions) as to why the heav­enly Fa­ther re­quired the slaugh­ter of so many in­no­cent and help­less an­i­mals. And his fa­ther well knew from the ex­pres­sion on the lad’s face that his an­swers and at­tempts at ex­pla­na­tion were un­sat­is­fac­tory to his deep-think­ing and keen-rea­son­ing son.

126:5.11At one time Je­sus faintly hoped that he might be able to gather up suf­fi­cient means, pro­vided they could col­lect the con­sid­er­able sum of money due his fa­ther for work on Herod’s palace, to war­rant un­der­tak­ing the pur­chase of a small farm. He had re­ally given se­ri­ous thought to this plan of mov­ing his fam­ily out into the coun­try. But when Herod re­fused to pay them any of the funds due Joseph, they gave up the am­bi­tion of own­ing a home in the coun­try. As it was, they con­trived to en­joy much of the ex­pe­ri­ence of farm life as they now had three cows, four sheep, a flock of chick­ens, a don­key, and a dog, in ad­di­tion to the doves. Even the lit­tle tots had their reg­u­lar du­ties to per­form in the well-reg­u­lated scheme of man­age­ment which char­ac­ter­ized the home life of this Naz­a­reth fam­ily.

64:4.7Mam­malian life had been lit­tle changed by the great glacier. These an­i­mals per­sisted in that nar­row belt of land ly­ing be­tween the ice and the Alps and, upon the re­treat of the glacier, again rapidly spread out over all Eu­rope. There ar­rived from Africa, over the Si­cil­ian land bridge, straight-tusked ele­phants, broad-nosed rhinoceroses, hye­nas, and African li­ons, and these new an­i­mals vir­tu­ally ex­ter­mi­nated the saber-toothed tigers and the hip­popota­muses.

9:6.3Mind grav­ity can op­er­ate in­de­pen­dently of ma­te­rial and spir­i­tual grav­ity, but wher­ever and when­ever the lat­ter two im­pinge, mind grav­ity al­ways func­tions. When all three are as­so­ci­ated, per­son­al­ity grav­ity may em­brace the ma­te­rial crea­ture—phys­i­cal or mor­ontial, fi­nite or ab­so­nite. But ir­re­spec­tive of this, the en­dow­ment of mind even in im­per­sonal be­ings qual­i­fies them to think and en­dows them with con­scious­ness de­spite the to­tal ab­sence of per­son­al­ity.

133:0.3One day while rest­ing at lunch, about half­way to Tar­en­tum, Ga­nid asked Je­sus a di­rect ques­tion as to what he thought of In­dia’s caste sys­tem. Said Je­sus: “Though hu­man be­ings dif­fer in many ways, the one from an­other, be­fore God and in the spir­i­tual world all mor­tals stand on an equal foot­ing. There are only two groups of mor­tals in the eyes of God: those who de­sire to do his will and those who do not. As the uni­verse looks upon an in­hab­ited world, it like­wise dis­cerns two great classes: those who know God and those who do not. Those who can­not know God are reck­oned among the an­i­mals of any given realm. Man­kind can ap­pro­pri­ately be di­vided into many classes in ac­cor­dance with dif­fer­ing qual­i­fi­ca­tions, as they may be viewed phys­i­cally, men­tally, so­cially, vo­ca­tion­ally, or morally, but as these dif­fer­ent classes of mor­tals ap­pear be­fore the judg­ment bar of God, they stand on an equal foot­ing; God is truly no re­specter of per­sons. Al­though you can­not es­cape the rec­og­ni­tion of dif­fer­en­tial hu­man abil­i­ties and en­dow­ments in mat­ters in­tel­lec­tual, so­cial, and moral, you should make no such dis­tinc­tions in the spir­i­tual broth­er­hood of men when as­sem­bled for wor­ship in the pres­ence of God.”

88:1.5When an­i­mals be­came fe­tishes, there en­sued the taboos on eat­ing the flesh of the fe­tish an­i­mal. Apes and mon­keys, be­cause of re­sem­blance to man, early be­came fe­tish an­i­mals; later, snakes, birds, and swine were also sim­i­larly re­garded. At one time the cow was a fe­tish, the milk be­ing taboo while the exc­reta were highly es­teemed. The ser­pent was revered in Pales­tine, es­pe­cially by the Phoeni­cians, who, along with the Jews, con­sid­ered it to be the mouth­piece of evil spir­its. Even many mod­erns be­lieve in the charm pow­ers of rep­tiles. From Ara­bia on through In­dia to the snake dance of the Mo­qui tribe of red men the ser­pent has been revered.

59:2.1The pe­ri­odic phe­nom­ena of land el­e­va­tion and land sink­ing char­ac­ter­is­tic of these times were all grad­ual and non­spec­tac­u­lar, be­ing ac­com­pa­nied by lit­tle or no vol­canic ac­tion. Through­out all of these suc­ces­sive land el­e­va­tions and de­pres­sions the Asi­atic mother con­ti­nent did not fully share the his­tory of the other land bod­ies. It ex­pe­ri­enced many in­un­da­tions, dip­ping first in one di­rec­tion and then an­other, more par­tic­u­larly in its ear­lier his­tory, but it does not pre­sent the uni­form rock de­posits which may be dis­cov­ered on the other con­ti­nents. In re­cent ages Asia has been the most sta­ble of all the land masses.

59:2.2350,000,000 years ago saw the be­gin­ning of the great flood pe­riod of all the con­ti­nents ex­cept cen­tral Asia. The land masses were re­peat­edly cov­ered with wa­ter; only the coastal high­lands re­mained above these shal­low but wide­spread os­cil­la­tory in­land seas. Three ma­jor in­un­da­tions char­ac­ter­ized this pe­riod, but be­fore it ended, the con­ti­nents again arose, the to­tal land emer­gence be­ing fif­teen per cent greater than now ex­ists. The Caribbean re­gion was highly el­e­vated. This pe­riod is not well marked off in Eu­rope be­cause the land fluc­tu­a­tions were less, while the vol­canic ac­tion was more per­sis­tent.

59:2.3340,000,000 years ago there oc­curred an­other ex­ten­sive land sink­ing ex­cept in Asia and Aus­tralia. The wa­ters of the world’s oceans were gen­er­ally com­min­gled. This was a great lime­stone age, much of its stone be­ing laid down by lime-se­cret­ing al­gae.

59:2.4A few mil­lion years later large por­tions of the Amer­i­can con­ti­nents and Eu­rope be­gan to emerge from the wa­ter. In the West­ern Hemi­sphere only an arm of the Pa­cific Ocean re­mained over Mex­ico and the pres­ent Rocky Moun­tain re­gions, but near the close of this epoch the At­lantic and Pa­cific coasts again be­gan to sink.

59:2.5330,000,000 years ago marks the be­gin­ning of a time sec­tor of com­par­a­tive quiet all over the world, with much land again above wa­ter. The only ex­cep­tion to this reign of ter­res­trial quiet was the erup­tion of the great North Amer­i­can vol­cano of east­ern Ken­tucky, one of the great­est sin­gle vol­canic ac­tiv­i­ties the world has ever known. The ashes of this vol­cano cov­ered five hun­dred square miles to a depth of from fif­teen to twenty feet.

59:2.6320,000,000 years ago the third ma­jor flood of this pe­riod oc­curred. The wa­ters of this in­un­da­tion cov­ered all the land sub­merged by the pre­ced­ing del­uge, while ex­tend­ing far­ther in many di­rec­tions all over the Amer­i­cas and Eu­rope. East­ern North Amer­ica and west­ern Eu­rope were from 10,000 to 15,000 feet un­der wa­ter.

59:2.7310,000,000 years ago the land masses of the world were again well up ex­cept­ing the south­ern parts of North Amer­ica. Mex­ico emerged, thus cre­at­ing the Gulf Sea, which has ever since main­tained its iden­tity.

59:2.8The life of this pe­riod con­tin­ues to evolve. The world is once again quiet and rel­a­tively peace­ful; the cli­mate re­mains mild and equable; the land plants are mi­grat­ing far­ther and far­ther from the seashores. The life pat­terns are well de­vel­oped, al­though few plant fos­sils of these times are to be found.

59:2.9This was the great age of in­di­vid­ual an­i­mal or­gan­is­mal evo­lu­tion, though many of the ba­sic changes, such as the tran­si­tion from plant to an­i­mal, had pre­vi­ously oc­curred. The ma­rine fauna de­vel­oped to the point where ev­ery type of life be­low the ver­te­brate scale was rep­re­sented in the fos­sils of those rocks which were laid down dur­ing these times. But all of these an­i­mals were ma­rine or­gan­isms. No land an­i­mals had yet ap­peared ex­cept a few types of worms which bur­rowed along the seashores, nor had the land plants yet over­spread the con­ti­nents; there was still too much car­bon diox­ide in the air to per­mit of the ex­is­tence of air breathers. Pri­mar­ily, all an­i­mals ex­cept cer­tain of the more prim­i­tive ones are di­rectly or in­di­rectly de­pen­dent on plant life for their ex­is­tence.

59:2.10The trilo­bites were still promi­nent. These lit­tle an­i­mals ex­isted in tens of thou­sands of pat­terns and were the pre­de­ces­sors of mod­ern crus­taceans. Some of the trilo­bites had from twenty-five to four thou­sand tiny eye­lets; oth­ers had aborted eyes. As this pe­riod closed, the trilo­bites shared dom­i­na­tion of the seas with sev­eral other forms of in­ver­te­brate life. But they ut­terly per­ished dur­ing the be­gin­ning of the next pe­riod.

59:2.11Lime-se­cret­ing al­gae were wide­spread. There ex­isted thou­sands of species of the early an­ces­tors of the corals. Sea worms were abun­dant, and there were many va­ri­eties of jel­ly­fish which have since be­come ex­tinct. Corals and the later types of sponges evolved. The ceph­a­lop­ods were well de­vel­oped, and they have sur­vived as the mod­ern pearly nau­tilus, oc­to­pus, cut­tle­fish, and squid.

59:2.12There were many va­ri­eties of shell an­i­mals, but their shells were not then so much needed for de­fen­sive pur­poses as in sub­se­quent ages. The gas­tropods were pres­ent in the wa­ters of the an­cient seas, and they in­cluded sin­gle-shelled drills, peri­win­kles, and snails. The bi­valve gas­tropods have come on down through the in­ter­ven­ing mil­lions of years much as they then ex­isted and em­brace the mus­sels, clams, oys­ters, and scal­lops. The valve-shelled or­gan­isms also evolved, and these bra­chiopods lived in those an­cient wa­ters much as they ex­ist to­day; they even had hinged, notched, and other sorts of pro­tec­tive ar­range­ments of their valves.

59:2.13So ends the evo­lu­tion­ary story of the sec­ond great pe­riod of ma­rine life, which is known to your ge­ol­o­gists as the Or­dovi­cian.

74:8.5Away from the in­flu­ences of Dala­ma­tia and Eden, man­kind tended to­ward the be­lief in the grad­ual as­cent of the hu­man race. The fact of evo­lu­tion is not a mod­ern dis­cov­ery; the an­cients un­der­stood the slow and evo­lu­tion­ary char­ac­ter of hu­man prog­ress. The early Greeks had clear ideas of this de­spite their prox­im­ity to Mes­o­po­ta­mia. Al­though the var­i­ous races of earth be­came sadly mixed up in their no­tions of evo­lu­tion, nev­er­the­less, many of the prim­i­tive tribes be­lieved and taught that they were the de­scen­dants of var­i­ous an­i­mals. Prim­i­tive peo­ples made a prac­tice of se­lect­ing for their “totems” the an­i­mals of their sup­posed an­ces­try. Cer­tain North Amer­i­can In­dian tribes be­lieved they orig­i­nated from beavers and coy­otes. Cer­tain African tribes teach that they are de­scended from the hyena, a Malay tribe from the lemur, a New Guinea group from the par­rot.

90:4.3The more prim­i­tive tribes greatly feared the sick, and for long ages they were care­fully avoided, shame­fully ne­glected. It was a great ad­vance in hu­man­i­tar­i­an­ism when the evo­lu­tion of shaman­craft pro­duced priests and med­i­cine men who con­sented to treat dis­ease. Then it be­came cus­tom­ary for the en­tire clan to crowd into the sick­room to as­sist the shaman in howl­ing the dis­ease ghosts away. It was not un­com­mon for a woman to be the di­ag­nos­ing shaman, while a man would ad­min­is­ter treat­ment. The usual method of di­ag­nos­ing dis­ease was to ex­am­ine the en­trails of an an­i­mal.

49:3.5On the non­breath­ing worlds the an­i­mal species are rad­i­cally un­like those found on the at­mo­spheric plan­ets. The non­breath­ing plan of life varies from the tech­nique of ex­is­tence on an at­mo­spheric world; even in sur­vival their peo­ples dif­fer, be­ing can­di­dates for Spirit fu­sion. Nev­er­the­less, these be­ings en­joy life and carry for­ward the ac­tiv­i­ties of the realm with the same rel­a­tive tri­als and joys that are ex­pe­ri­enced by the mor­tals liv­ing on at­mo­spheric worlds. In mind and char­ac­ter the non­breathers do not dif­fer from other mor­tal types.

46:7.2On Je­ru­sem you will be amazed by the ag­ri­cul­tural achieve­ments of the won­der­ful sporna­gia. There the land is cul­ti­vated largely for aes­thetic and or­na­men­tal ef­fects. The sporna­gia are the land­scape gar­den­ers of the head­quar­ters worlds, and they are both orig­i­nal and artis­tic in their treat­ment of the open spaces of Je­ru­sem. They uti­lize both an­i­mals and nu­mer­ous me­chan­i­cal con­trivances in the cul­ture of the soil. They are in­tel­li­gently ex­pert in the em­ploy­ment of the power agen­cies of their realms as well as in the uti­liza­tion of nu­mer­ous or­ders of their lesser breth­ren of the lower an­i­mal cre­ations, many of which are pro­vided them on these spe­cial worlds. This or­der of an­i­mal life is now largely di­rected by the as­cend­ing mid­way crea­tures from the evo­lu­tion­ary spheres.

59:5.5When the seas were at their height, a new evo­lu­tion­ary de­vel­op­ment sud­denly oc­curred. Abruptly, the first of the land an­i­mals ap­peared. There were nu­mer­ous species of these an­i­mals that were able to live on land or in wa­ter. These air-breath­ing am­phib­ians de­vel­oped from the arthro­pods, whose swim blad­ders had evolved into lungs.

59:6.2This age was one of great life im­pov­er­ish­ment. Thou­sands of ma­rine species per­ished, and life was hardly yet es­tab­lished on land. This was a time of bi­o­logic tribu­la­tion, the age when life nearly van­ished from the face of the earth and from the depths of the oceans. To­ward the close of the long ma­rine-life era there were more than one hun­dred thou­sand species of liv­ing things on earth. At the close of this pe­riod of tran­si­tion less than five hun­dred had sur­vived.

69:7.1To start with, the en­tire an­i­mal world was man’s en­emy; hu­man be­ings had to learn to pro­tect them­selves from the beasts. First, man ate the an­i­mals but later learned to do­mes­ti­cate and make them serve him.

69:7.4The dog was the first an­i­mal to be do­mes­ti­cated, and the dif­fi­cult ex­pe­ri­ence of tam­ing it be­gan when a cer­tain dog, af­ter fol­low­ing a hunter around all day, ac­tu­ally went home with him. For ages dogs were used for food, hunt­ing, trans­porta­tion, and com­pan­ion­ship. At first dogs only howled, but later on they learned to bark. The dog’s keen sense of smell led to the no­tion it could see spir­its, and thus arose the dog-fe­tish cults. The em­ploy­ment of watch­dogs made it first pos­si­ble for the whole clan to sleep at night. It then be­came the cus­tom to em­ploy watch­dogs to pro­tect the home against spir­its as well as ma­te­rial en­e­mies. When the dog barked, man or beast ap­proached, but when the dog howled, spir­its were near. Even now many still be­lieve that a dog’s howl­ing at night be­to­kens death.

69:7.5When man was a hunter, he was fairly kind to woman, but af­ter the do­mes­ti­ca­tion of an­i­mals, cou­pled with the Cali­gas­tia con­fu­sion, many tribes shame­fully treated their women. They treated them al­to­gether too much as they treated their an­i­mals. Man’s bru­tal treat­ment of woman con­sti­tutes one of the dark­est chap­ters of hu­man his­tory.

• fish were first vertebrates

59:4.3The ma­rine life of this age was very di­verse due to the early species seg­re­ga­tion, but later on there was free com­min­gling and as­so­ci­a­tion of all these dif­fer­ent types. The bra­chiopods early reached their cli­max, be­ing suc­ceeded by the arthro­pods, and bar­na­cles made their first ap­pear­ance. But the great­est event of all was the sud­den ap­pear­ance of the fish fam­ily. This be­came the age of fishes, that pe­riod of the world’s his­tory char­ac­ter­ized by the ver­te­brate type of an­i­mal.

• fish were first vertebrates

59:4.9250,000,000 years ago wit­nessed the ap­pear­ance of the fish fam­ily, the ver­te­brates, one of the most im­por­tant steps in all pre­hu­man evo­lu­tion.

• crustaceans were ancestors of first vertebrates

59:4.10The arthro­pods, or crus­taceans, were the an­ces­tors of the first ver­te­brates. The fore­run­ners of the fish fam­ily were two mod­i­fied arthro­pod an­ces­tors; one had a long body con­nect­ing a head and tail, while the other was a back­bone­less, jaw­less pre­fish. But these pre­lim­i­nary types were quickly de­stroyed when the fishes, the first ver­te­brates of the an­i­mal world, made their sud­den ap­pear­ance from the north.

• frogs were ancestors of land vertebrates

60:0.2The clos­ing epochs of the pre­ced­ing era were in­deed the age of frogs, but these an­ces­tors of the land ver­te­brates were no longer dom­i­nant, hav­ing sur­vived in greatly re­duced num­bers. Very few types out­lived the rig­or­ous tri­als of the pre­ced­ing pe­riod of bi­o­logic tribu­la­tion. Even the spore-bear­ing plants were nearly ex­tinct.

64:4.12Dur­ing these spir­i­tu­ally dark ages the cul­ture of su­per­sti­tious man­kind reached its low­est lev­els. The Ne­an­derthalers re­ally had no re­li­gion be­yond a shame­ful su­per­sti­tion. They were deathly afraid of clouds, more es­pe­cially of mists and fogs. A prim­i­tive re­li­gion of the fear of nat­u­ral forces grad­u­ally de­vel­oped, while an­i­mal wor­ship de­clined as im­prove­ment in tools, with abun­dance of game, en­abled these peo­ple to live with less­ened anx­i­ety about food; the sex re­wards of the chase tended greatly to im­prove hunt­ing skill. This new re­li­gion of fear led to at­tempts to pla­cate the in­vis­i­ble forces be­hind these nat­u­ral el­e­ments and cul­mi­nated, later on, in the sac­ri­fic­ing of hu­mans to ap­pease these in­vis­i­ble and un­known phys­i­cal forces. And this ter­ri­ble prac­tice of hu­man sac­ri­fice has been per­pet­u­ated by the more back­ward peo­ples of Uran­tia right on down to the twen­ti­eth cen­tury.

85:3.2Early men revered the an­i­mals for their power and their cun­ning. They thought the keen scent and the farsee­ing eyes of cer­tain crea­tures be­to­kened spirit guid­ance. The an­i­mals have all been wor­shiped by one race or an­other at one time or an­other. Among such ob­jects of wor­ship were crea­tures that were re­garded as half hu­man and half an­i­mal, such as cen­taurs and mer­maids.

85:3.3The He­brews wor­shiped ser­pents down to the days of King Hezekiah, and the Hin­dus still main­tain friendly re­la­tions with their house snakes. The Chi­nese wor­ship of the dragon is a sur­vival of the snake cults. The wis­dom of the ser­pent was a sym­bol of Greek med­i­cine and is still em­ployed as an em­blem by mod­ern physi­cians. The art of snake charm­ing has been handed down from the days of the fe­male shamans of the snake love cult, who, as the re­sult of daily snake bites, be­came im­mune, in fact, be­came gen­uine venom ad­dicts and could not get along with­out this poi­son.

85:3.4The wor­ship of in­sects and other an­i­mals was pro­moted by a later mis­in­ter­pre­ta­tion of the golden rule—do­ing to oth­ers (ev­ery form of life) as you would be done by. The an­cients once be­lieved that all winds were pro­duced by the wings of birds and there­fore both feared and wor­shiped all winged crea­tures. The early Nordics thought that eclipses were caused by a wolf that de­voured a por­tion of the sun or moon. The Hin­dus of­ten show Vishnu with a horse’s head. Many times an an­i­mal sym­bol stands for a for­got­ten god or a van­ished cult. Early in evo­lu­tion­ary re­li­gion the lamb be­came the typ­i­cal sac­ri­fi­cial an­i­mal and the dove the sym­bol of peace and love.

85:3.5In re­li­gion, sym­bol­ism may be ei­ther good or bad just to the ex­tent that the sym­bol does or does not dis­place the orig­i­nal wor­ship­ful idea. And sym­bol­ism must not be con­fused with di­rect idol­a­try wherein the ma­te­rial ob­ject is di­rectly and ac­tu­ally wor­shiped.