159. Intolerance originates from tendencies in the animal consciousness, and constitutes the strongest "guardian of the threshold". Every individual showing intolerance is really a representative of the animal kingdom - in other words, still belonging to the kingdom of beasts of prey, snakes and amphibians.
      Intolerance means that a person releases indignation or hatred towards another person because the latter appears to have a different concept, a different attitude to life, different ideals and consequently an alien kind of behaviour. And when that indignation comes to be released, it is to some degree due to an illusion on the part of the person concerned, for he cannot himself recognize as intolerance his own ill-will and resulting behaviour, but on the contrary, sees it as an expression of anger or resentment which is justified - indeed, even "holy" and therefore seen as "justice". So this illusion will become the dictating factor behind that individual's will, and consequently behind his behaviour. The highest power behind an individual's behaviour is not therefore his will, but, on the contrary, the forces of spirit and of consciousness in action behind the will, and these culminate in that factor we call a "concept". So normally an individual's concept dictates his will. But as a concept can be either right or wrong and can also be at many different stages on a long scale between these two extremes - which can be expressed respectively as "reality" and "unreality" - then the individual's release of will-power will be dictated more or less rightly or wrongly according to whichever stage of the scale his concepts belong. As those forces of consciousness are identical with the basic reason for forming the will of the individual and consequently influencing his ways of behaviour, then it is of immense importance that the individual attains the beginning of an insight into these forces controlling the will and by this means is able to judge the actions of his neighbour on their real, cosmic basis and so become tolerant and understanding. And it is precisely because of this that in this chapter we have tried to give the seeker of Truth the first beginning of an insight into those forces. We have already characterised those forces as "intelligence" and "feeling". In Symbol No. 3 we have also shown how specific types of human beings are created by these two factors according to their combination in people's consciousness. So we have seen that those factors may be combined in three different ways, of which the first constitutes an equal balance of intelligence and feeling, the second too much feeling in relation to intelligence, and the third too much intelligence in relation to feeling. We have shown these three forms in two development zones, one of which is a little more advanced than the other. These two zones have been defined as Group A and Group B, and the three forms of combinations constitute the above-mentioned three categories within each group. By this we have realised how the specific balance between individuals' intelligence and feeling governs their consciousness and ways of behaviour, enabling us to separate them into those categories and sections.