The Road of Life
The article: Mental Prisons
Chapter 18
What the terrestrial human being knows and does not know
The terrestrial human being, when it is a matter of the plant kingdom, knows perfectly well that it is no use getting angry with a thistle because it is not a rose: but nevertheless, when it is comes to his fellow beings and surroundings, he insists that everything and everyone should be roses and lilies.
He does not understand that these beings and surroundings are only the plant kingdom or the world of flowers in a more advanced form in evolution, and that here, where the plants appear in animal form, in flesh and blood, there must be a profusion of colours and structures just as inevitably as in the vegetable forms of the plant kingdom.
It is true that colour and structure in the animal "plants" (animals and terrestrial human beings) are more of an internal sort than in the vegetable plants, which have their entire colouring externally and physically.
In the animal "plants" evolution has long since transformed these external, physical colours into internal, more or less physically invisible colouring.
This invisible colouring is what we call the thought-world of the being and the psyche or the so-called "character" or "morality" manifesting itself through this being.
So today's morality in animal beings is the same as external, physical colours or colouring in vegetable beings or plants.
But even if these external colours of the plant have become something psychical, something mental, and so not directly visible in the animal being, one must not therefore infer that they have become standardized, determining that the psyche or morality of the animal beings should be identical, like soldiers in ranks or figures cast in the same form.
The animal beings show exactly the same profuse variation in psyche or morality as the plants or vegetable beings display in their external colour and structure.
And just as the colours and structure of plants are natural and a matter of course for each individual species, so too are the mental colour and structure, in the form of morality, of every individual species natural and a matter of course.
But it is here that the uninitiated terrestrial human being comes into conflict with life.
While he can perfectly well see the external colours and structure of plants and finds these natural and a matter of course, he cannot, however, always see that the particular mental structure or morality of his fellow beings, which are the colour and structure of the plant on a higher plane, are just as natural and equally a matter of course.
It is here very difficult, if not completely impossible, for such a being to see that a morality or view of life that differs from his own should be just as natural and just as much a matter of course as his is.
He does not yet understand that the beings, even if they have the same physical exterior, must nevertheless psychically or mentally still be "roses" and "thistles", "lilies" and "dandelions", and so on.
He believes that because his fellow beings have the same kind of physical body as he has, they should also have the same kind of character or mentality as that by which he lives or is dominated.
And it is here that he insists that the "lion" should be as gentle as a "lamb", indeed altogether insists that all other terrestrial human beings should be like himself.
He thinks that one's view of life and one's morality are exclusively acts of will.
He does not understand that it is only the morality of our own step we can live up to by virtue of our will, while it would be totally impossible for us to live up to a morality belonging to a step above our own on the ladder of evolution.
In order to live up to the morality of this step, evolution is necessary.