812.
It is true that the animal does not consciously sense the principle of individuality or the principle of the I but acts to the very highest degree in contact with it.
It does, however, have a certain degree of "feeling of ownership".
It senses its mate, its offspring, its nest or burrow as something it is itself at one with, as something it is prepared to defend in one way or another with all its abilities and strength, just as it would its own bodily organism.
Its "sense of ownership" has not yet been as clearly defined and as completely registered linguistically as it is in the human being, with the result it cannot be conscious of or express this sense in all its nuances to the extent that we are able to enjoy doing on a daily basis.
But even though the animal is therefore conscious only of the feeling of its I in the form of its feeling of ownership, and is furthermore not linguistically conscious of this feeling, its life and appearance is nevertheless a totally undisguised manifestation of the seeds of the all-dominating, awake day-conscious sense of I that is evident in the human being.
This is the animal's feeling of ownership at a more advanced or evolved state.
That the sense of the I is not equally apparent in all beings does not mean that this sense in itself has had an absolute beginning and is now hastening towards its culmination, and will thereafter come to its complete destruction or conclusion, but is entirely due to the rhythmic form of movement we have become familiar with in "Livets Bog" as the "spiral", and which rests entirely on the "principle of perspective", or is a consequence of the contrasting phenomena on which all sensory perception depends.
This principle will, as we have said, be elucidated later in
"Livets Bog".
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