Men are often struck with admiration when they observe the instinctive actions of animals. They ascribe a special sense to animals which mankind either lack completely or they have allowed it to degenerate.
They are perplexed, for example, when they see a horse, a dog or some other animal suddenly refusing to pass a certain place on a road it is accustomed to and which it has perhaps taken daily, and when they subsequently learn that an accident occurred on that very spot shortly afterwards.
Quite often the lives of one or more persons have been saved through such incidents. Many of these cases have been published so that there is no need to go into the matter more deeply here.
Instinct or unconscious presentiment are the terms man has used to describe this characteristic of the animal. Having found a name for a thing men are usually well satisfied, forming some idea in their imagination and accepting it as fact, irrespective of whether they are right or wrong. It is the same with this.
The reason for such actions on the part of an animal, however, is quite a different one. It possesses neither the quality nor the ability of instinct as man understands the word! In such incidents it merely heeds a warning that is given to it. These warnings can be seen quite well by the animal, whereas only a few people are able to observe them.
As I have already explained in one of my earlier lectures, the soul of an animal does not originate in the Spiritual Sphere from which man comes, but from the Animistic Sphere. The elemental beings also originate there: gnomes, elves, nixies, and so on, whose field of activity lies in what men usually call Nature, i.e., water, air, earth and fire. The same applies to other beings which occupy themselves with the development and growth of stones, plants and the like. All these elemental beings originate in another section of the Animistic Sphere to that of the animal souls. However, the mutual homogeneity of their origin provides a greater possibility for them to recognize each other, such that an animal is far better equipped to recognize these elemental beings than is man, whose origin lies in the Spiritual Sphere.
The elemental beings know exactly when and where sudden changes in Nature are about to take place, such as landslides, rocks being dislodged from mountains, trees falling, the caving-in of land undermined by water, the bursting of a dam, sudden water eruptions, volcanic and fire eruptions, tidal waves and floods, earthquakes, and everything else coming within the same category, because they themselves are occupied with the preparation and bringing about of such changes, which men call disasters and catastrophes.
If such a happening is imminent it may well be that an animal or a person approaching the spot is warned by these elementals. They block the way and try, through shouting and vehement motions, to prompt them to return; the animal sees these beings more or less clearly, is startled, its hair bristles, and it energetically refuses to continue, quite contrary to its usual behavior, so that often as an exception even the best-trained animal disobeys its master. This is the reason for the striking behavior of the animal in such cases. Man, however, does not see these elemental beings and very often runs into the danger, thereby perishing or suffering great harm.
For this reason man should pay more attention to animals so that he learns to understand them. Then animals will truly become man’s friends, able to fill gaps and thus be much more useful to him than they have been in the past.