Preparation for the Instructions of the Second and Third Main Levels

§. 60.

We will clearly explain the essential nature of each of these cited existing properties and powers in particular in future instructions. Here, however, we want to highlight that which is required, and must be scientifically presupposed, for a complete knowledge of those properties that must interest the true, seeking, and working person.

§. 61.

Since the subject of this instruction is man, we must also learn to know him in every respect in such a way that we can determine not only his general and specific properties, but also that which essentially and precisely distinguishes him from all other creatures in the nature of things, namely:

§. 62.

Upon viewing the living human being, we perceive:
a, those components which he has in common with the remaining creatures existing below him, and
b, those positive properties which essentially distinguish him from all remaining creatures.

§. 63.

I.

Those properties that constitute man, which fall into our outer senses, and which he has in common with all other realms of nature that are below him:
1, Physical mass with all its relative properties.
2, Organization with all its relative properties, especially the
3, Movement according to laws, and this movement is again
a, either voluntary or
b, involuntary.
And thus, involuntary movement is again either:
$α$) Ending with natural death, or
$β$) continuing even after natural death.
These properties determined in extenso in their full extent define the kinship of man with the mineral and plant kingdoms.

§. 64.

II.

Those properties that constitute man, and which he shares merely with the animal kingdom.
1, Free will.
2, Memory.
3, Power of imagination.

§. 65.

III.

Those most excellent properties of man by which he is essentially distinguished from all other creatures of the three known realms:
1, Acuteness of mind.
2, Power of judgment.
3, Inclination and striving toward greater perfections.
4, The faculty of combination, or that quality of making comparisons regarding a third case between two or more things.
5, The communication of ideas through the power of one or another language, and through the free variety of expression as well as in the mutual free reception and perception thereof.
6, The capacity to be able to correctly abstract the predicates from their subjects. Man alone possesses this so formidable and excellent property. No animal—but also not every human who is not sanae mentis of sound mind—has this ability.

§. 66.

A great error prevails in the whole realm of perverse Kabbalistik Kabbalah, in that it posits, and assumes as an evident principle, that the physical mass of all things is one and the same in its inner nature, without having first precisely determined that which should and can be understood by physical mass and matter, and having correctly specified the same.