kingdom, we must realize that the animal, by having the main axis of
its body in the horizontal direction, has a relationship to the
gravity-levity fields of the earth different from those of both man and
plant. As a result, the single animal body shows the sphere-radius
polarity much less sharply. If we compare the different groups of the
animal kingdom, however, we find that the animals, too, bear this
polarity as a formative element. The birds represent the spherical
(dry, saline) pole; the ruminants the linear (moist, sulphurous) pole.
The carnivorous quadrupeds form the intermediary (mercurial) group. As
ur-phenomenal types we may name among the birds the eagle, clothed in
its dry, silicic plumage, hovering with far-spread wings in the heights
of the atmosphere, united with the expanses of space through its
far-reaching sight; among the ruminants, the cow, lying heavily on the
ground of the earth, given over entirely to the immensely elaborated
sulphurous process of its own digestion. Between them comes the lion -
the most characteristic animal for the preponderance of heart-and-lung
activities in the body, with all the attributes resulting from that.

Within the scope of this book it can only be intimated briefly, but
should not be left unmentioned for the sake of those interested in a
further pursuit of these lines of thought, that the morphological mean
between radius and sphere (corresponding to Mercurius in the alchemical
triad) is represented by a geometrical figure known as the
'lemniscate', a particular modification of the so-called Cassinian
curves.2

1 For further details, see the writings of G. Adams and L. Locher-Ernst
who, each in his own way, have made a beginning with applying
projective geometry on the lines indicated by Rudolf Steiner. Professor
Locher-Ernst was the first to apply the term 'polar-Euclidean' to the