anent, lasting,
within the changing inner experiences, begins the dawn of "ego
consciousness."

The sensation of hunger, for instance, cannot give a creature the feeling
of having an ego. Hunger sets in when the recurring causes make themselves
felt in the being concerned, which then devours its food just because
these recurring conditions are present. For the ego-consciousness to
arise, there must not only be these recurring conditions, urging the being
to take food, but there must have been pleasure derived from previous
satisfaction of hunger, and the consciousness of the pleasure must have
remained, so that not only the present experience of hunger but the past
experience of pleasure urges the being to take nourishment.

Just as the physical body falls into decay if the etheric body does not
keep it together, and as the etheric body sinks into unconsciousness if
not illuminated by the astral body, so the astral body would necessarily
allow the past to be lost in oblivion unless the ego rescued the past by
carrying it over into the present. What death is to the physical body and
sleep to the etheric, the power of forgetting is to the astral body. We
may put this in another way, and say that life is the special
characteristic of the etheric body, consciousness that of the astral body,
and memory that of the ego.

It is still easier to make the mistake of attributing memory(2) to an
animal than that of attributing consciousness to a plant. It is so natural
to think of memory when a dog recognizes its master, whom perhaps it has
not seen for some time; yet in reality the recognition is not due to
memory at all, but to something quite different. The dog feels a certain
attraction toward its master which proceeds from the personality of the
latter. This gives the dog a sense of pleasure whenever its master is
present, and every time this happens it is a cause of the repetition of
the pleasure. But memory only exists in a being when he not only feels his
present experiences, but retains those of the past. A person might admit
this, and yet fall into the error of thinking the dog has memory. For it
might be said that the dog pines when its master leaves it, and therefore
it retains a remembrance of him. This too is an inaccurate opinion. Living
with its master has made his presence a condition of well-being to the
dog, and it feels his absence much in the same way in which it feels
hunger. One who does not make these dist