od, the time when man leads a
purely psychic existence, is when the earth's surface is turned away from
the sun. Now it must not, of course, be imagined that in that far-off time
the earth's motion around the sun was like its present motion. The
conditions were still utterly different. But even at this early point it
is helpful to realize that the motions of the celestial bodies are a
consequence of the mutual relations of the spiritual beings inhabiting
them. Spiritual-psychic causes produce in the celestial bodies positions
and motions which permit the manifestation of spiritual conditions on the
physical plane.)

If our gaze were turned upon the earth during its night period, its body
would appear like a corpse. For it consists to a great extent of the
decaying bodies of those human beings whose souls are in another state of
existence. The organized watery and aeriform structures of which human
bodies were formed become disintegrated, and dissolve into the rest of the
earth's substance. Only that part of man's body which was formed from the
very beginning of the earth evolution by the co-operation of fire and the
human soul, and which subsequently became denser and denser, continues to
exist as an insignificant looking embryo. Now when the day period begins,
the earth once more participates directly in the sun influence, and human
souls press forward into the sphere of physical life. They come in contact
with the embryos, and cause them to spring up and assume an external form,
which appears like an image of man's psychic being. Something like a
delicate fertilization then takes place between the human soul and the
bodily embryo.

The souls thus embodied now begin once more to attract the aeriform and
watery substances and incorporate them in their own bodies. Air is
expelled and absorbed by the organized body,--the first beginning of that
which later appears as the respiratory process. Water too is absorbed and
expelled; the nutritive process in its original form has begun. But these
processes are not yet perceived as external ones. A kind of external
perception takes place in the soul only by means of the already
characterized kind of fertilization. Here the soul vaguely feels its
awakening to physical existence when it comes in contact with the embryo
which is held toward it from the earth. It then feels something which may
be put into words thus: "This is my form." And such a feeling, which might
even be called