If we go back in evolution, we see that materially earlier human beings were more primitive, but in their relationship to Nature or the Godhead they still to a great extent represented the remnants of a past "cosmic consciousness". Such beings cannot possibly imagine that there could not be a living Providence, a divine being or beings behind all the different manifestations in Nature. Thus behind the rolling thunder, behind the tremendous power of the storm, behind the breakers of the sea, as well as in volcanos, rocks and mountains, or behind comets, sun and stars, they see ruling, supernatural spirits. It is inconceivable for them that these realities could be accidental, lifeless or dead events. These beings thus live in greater contact with Providence than the materialistic, civilised human being, who neither believes in, nor can understand, a Providence. That the nature-being cannot understand this Providence in real, scientific or intelligent thought-forms is a natural result. This faculty has long since been put out of action on account of the existing "involution" to which it has been subjected. Its perception of Providence behind all things can be perceived only through its instinct. Its religious perception shows itself only in instinctive presentiments and phenomena. And thus the past remnants of "cosmic consciousness" are evidently the same as what we in daily life call instinct.
      If we go still further back in evolution and look at all the beings that we call animals, we see that this instinct is even more dominant or plays a leading role in their consciousness. It is this instinct or this degenerating "cosmic consciousness" that in manifold ways leads these beings in fields where they, on the physical plane, have not yet developed any scientific awake day-conscious insight. What do you say about the little chicken that starts scraping for corn or seeds the moment it has come out of the egg, or the migratory bird's sure flight thousands of miles around the planet to a desired goal? Can a human being do that? Does it not first have to develop this faculty through laborious study and then support this faculty with compasses or other instruments, measurements and calculations?
      If we go back still further in evolution and look at those forms of life we call "plants", we see that they are totally dominated by instinct or a degenerating "cosmic consciousness". While the other beings, the human beings and the animals, had an incipient, awake day-consciousness, alongside their instinct or dying "cosmic consciousness", the physical life of plant beings, on the contrary, is based exclusively on their instinct. As yet they have no "day-consciousness" on the physical plane. But these beings have nevertheless, through previous existences in the mineral world, reached the physical plane. They have, through an inner desire, gradually become involved in physical material so that they have got a physical organism through which reactions of the influences of external physical Nature begin to arise. And it is through these reactions that the being or plant acquires a greater and greater ability to manifest attraction and desire towards physical material, in which it thus becomes more and more "involved" or "enveloped", becomes an animal, and thereafter a human being, in which form of existence the attraction reaches its culmination in the individual that kills, murders and hates.