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surrounded by an astral envelope just as the present earth is surrounded by an envelope of air.
It is in this astral envelope (atmosphere) that the astral men live and whence they act upon their ether
likenesses. The astral human souls create organs in their ether likenesses and produce a human ether
life in them. Within the whole earth there exists only one condition of matter, the refined living ether.
In theosophical books this first humanity is called the first (the Polarean) root race.
The further development of earth takes place in such that from the one condition of matter there
develop two. A denser substantiality is secreted, so to speak, and leaves a thinner one behind. The
denser substantiality resembles our present air; the thinner one is that which causes chemical elements
to develop from previously undifferentiated substance. Along with these, a remainder of the previous
substantiality, the living ether, continues to exist. Only a part of it is transformed into the so-called
material conditions.
We now are dealing with three substances within the physical earth. While the astral human beings in
the envelope of earth previously acted only upon one kind of substantiality, they must now act upon
three. They act upon them in the following way: That which has become airlike at first resists their
activity. It does not accept everything which is rudimentarily present in the complete astral men. As a
consequence, astral humanity must divide itself into two groups. One group works on the air-like
substantiality and creates in it a likeness of two other substantialities; it can create a likeness of itself
which consists of the living ether and of the other kind of ether which brings the elementary chemical
substances into being. This ether will here be called the chemical ether.
This second group of astral men has acquired its higher capacity, however, only by separating from
itself a part of the astral nature  the first group  and condemning it to a lower kind of labor. Had it
retained within itself the forces which accomplish this lower labor, it could not have risen higher
itself. here we are dealing with a process which consists in the development of the higher at the
expense of something else, which is separated from it.
Within the physical earth the following picture now presents itself. Two kinds of entities have come
into being First, entities which have an airlike body on which the astral being belonging to it is
working from the outside. These beings are animal-like. They form a first animal realm on earth.
These animals have shapes which, were they to be described here, would strike mankind of today as
very peculiar.
Their shape  one must keep in mind that this shape is based only on an airlike substance  does not
resemble any of the animal forms existing now. At most they have a remote similarity to the shells of
certain snails and mussels which exist today. Beside these animal forms the development of physical
man progresses. The astral man, who has now ascended higher, produces a physical likeness of
himself which consists of the two kinds of matter, of the life ether and of the chemical ether. One thus
deals with a man who consists of the astral body and is working himself into an ether body which in
turn consists of two kinds of ether: life ether and chemical ether.
Through the life ether this physical likeness of man is endowed with the capacity to reproduce itself,
to cause beings of its own kind to emerge from it. Through the chemical ether it develops certain
forces which are similar to the present forces of chemical attraction and repulsion. Thereby this
likeness of man is in a position to attract certain substances from the environment and to combine
them with itself, secreting them again later by means of the repelling forces. These substances, of
course, can only be taken from the animal realm described above, and from the realm of man. This
constitutes a beginning of nutrition. Thus these first likenesses of man were eaters of animals and of
men.
Besides these beings, the descendants of the earlier beings, composed merely of life ether, continue to
exist, but they become atrophied, since they have to adapt to the new terrestrial conditions. After they
have undergone many transformations, the unicellular animal beings develop from them, and also the
cells which later make up the more complicated living organisms.
The following process then takes place. The airlike substantiality divides itself into two, of which one
becomes denser, watery, while the other one remains airlike. The chemical ether also divides itself
into two conditions of matter; one of them becomes denser and forms that which we shall here call the
light ether. It endows the entities which possess it with the gilt of luminosity. On the other hand, a
portion of the chemical ether continues to exist as such.
We are now dealing with a physical earth which is composed of the following kinds of matter: water,
air, light ether, chemical ether. and life ether. In order that the astral entities can act on these kinds of
matter, another process takes place by which the higher develops at the expense of the lower, which
becomes separated from it. Thereby physical entities of the following kind are produced. First, those
whose physical body consists of water and air. Now coarse astral entities which have been split off,
act on these. Thus a new group of animals of coarser materiality than the earlier ones is produced.
Another new group of physical entities has a body which consists of air and light ether mixed with
water. These are plantlike entities, which however are very different in form from the plants of today.
Finally, the third new group represents man of that period. His physical body consists of three kinds
of ether: the light ether, the chemical ether, and the life ether. If one considers that descendants of the
old groups also continue to exist, one can judge what a variety of living beings there already were at
that stage of terrestrial existence.
There now follows an important cosmic event. The sun is extruded. Thereby certain forces simply
leave the earth. These forces are composed of a part of what hitherto had existed on earth in the life
ether and in the chemical and light ether. These forces, so to speak, were withdrawn from the earth. A
radical change thereby took place among groups Of terrestrial beings which previously had contained
these forces within themselves.
They all suffered a transformation. Those which have been called plant beings above, first suffered
such a transformation. A part of their light ether forces was taken from them. They could then develop
as organisms only when the force of light, which had been withdrawn from them, acted upon them
from the outside. Thus the plants came under the influence of the sunlight.
Something similar happened with human bodies. From then onward, their light ether also had to act
together with the light ether of the sun in order to be capable of life. But not only those beings
themselves which lost the light ether were affected; the others were affected too. For in the world
everything interacts. Those animal forms, too, which did not contain light ether themselves had
previously been irradiated by their fellow beings on earth and had developed under this irradiation.
Now they also came under the immediate influence of the external sun.
The human body in particular developed organs receptive to the sunlight, that is, the first rudiments of
human eyes.
The consequence of the extrusion of the sun was a further material densification of the earth. Solid
matter developed from fluid; likewise the light ether separated into another kind of light ether, and [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]