Translations:Benutzer:Arian/Klett-Mini-Test/1156/en

What comes forth, therefore, from the digestive activity of animals receives its fertilising force through the particular character of the soul-nature. As was said of plants: "Living substance fertilises living substance" — so beyond this it holds for animals: "Soul-nature fertilises soul-nature." This matter was treated at length in the chapter "The Soul-Organisation or the Astral Body of the Agricultural Organism" (p. 111 ff.). The soul-nature of ruminants, and here in particular that of cattle, brings the fertilising force to its highest level on the plane of pure nature-working (see ch. "The Cow"). To understand fertilising force as the sum-effect of individual so-called nutrients springs from a theory no longer questioned. Whereas to seek the fertilising value — as has been emphasised more than once — in the "composer" (the goat, the sheep, or the cow), out of whose essential nature the substances arrange themselves into just this order and no other, breaks through the materialist barriers and frees the eye for questions directed toward the reality of life, soul, and spirit. When one pursues these questions, it proves itself: the fertilising value is the higher, the more in keeping with their essential nature the animals are kept, fed, tended, and bred. All of this sets in motion, out of the being of the domestic animals, forces that fertilise. The farm shaped into an organism fulfils these conditions.