Translations:Benutzer:Arian/Klett-Mini-Test/489/en

Among the groups named, the evolutionary current of head-formation reaches its completion in the birds; it takes hold of the whole animal, including breast and metabolism. From this arises the question: is there not something prefigured in an earlier stage of evolution — in the invertebrate-worm-like animals, in the fishes and birds and in the fourth group, the insects — something brought to premature completion, that is spoken of in the progress of evolution in the Apocalypse of John as the «threefold animal» of eagle, lion, bull and a fourth that bears a human countenance? Rudolf Steiner characterises the three animals — eagle (head), lion (breast), bull (metabolism) — as representatives of three streams of development out of spirit, which come together in the human being into a higher whole. And is there not in the strict, morphological and functional threefoldness of the insect form — a threefoldness that has, admittedly, congealed prematurely into form — a gathering of the evolutionary streams of the invertebrates, the fishes and the birds, such as shows itself in future-open developmental capacity in the confluence of the eagle, lion and bull streams within the form of the human being?