entirely out of consideration any
effect of heat received through external bodies, and to realize merely the
inner experience which comes from saying the words: "I feel warm," "I feel
cold." That inner experience is the only thing capable of giving an idea
of what Saturn was during its period of evolution described above. It
would have been possible to pass right through the portion of space it
occupied; no gas would have been there to exercise pressure, no solid or
liquid body from which light-impressions could have come; but at every
point of space occupied, one would have felt inwardly, without any
external impression: "Here there is such and such a degree of heat."

In a cosmic body of this character there are no conditions for the animal,
vegetable, and mineral organisms of to-day.(9) The beings whose sphere of
action was this Saturn, were at quite a different stage of evolution from
that of the present inhabitants of the earth who are perceptible to the
senses. In the first place there were beings there who had no physical
body like that of contemporary man. We must also guard against thinking of
man's present physical embodiment, when mention is made of a "physical
body" in this connection. We should instead carefully distinguish between
the physical and the mineral body. A physical body is one governed by the
physical laws which are now observable in the mineral kingdom. Now man's
present physical body is not only ruled by those physical laws, but is
also permeated with mineral matter. There can be no question as yet on
Saturn of a physical-mineral body of this kind. There is only a physical
bodily form, governed by physical laws; but these laws are manifested only
through the agency of heat.

Therefore the physical body is a fine, subtle, ethereal heat body; and the
whole of Saturn consists of such heat bodies. They are the beginnings of
the present physical-mineral human body. The latter has been formed out of
the former, because there have become incorporated with the original body
the more recently formed gaseous, liquid, and solid substances.

Among the beings of which we are now speaking, who, besides man, were
inhabitants of Saturn, there were, for instance, some which did not need a
physical body at all. The lowest principle of their nature was an etheric
or vital body. On the other hand, they had one principle higher than the
human principles. Man's highest principle is the Spirit-Man (Atma); these
bei