nstance when an object falls to
the ground, and a sleeping man does not discern what has really happened
but perceives it in the form of a picture; let us say he thinks that a
shot has been fired. However, the pictures in the Moon-consciousness are
not arbitrary, as is the case with such dream-pictures; although they are
symbols, not representations, yet they correspond with outer events. A
definite outer event can call up only one definite picture. The Moon-being
is therefore in a position to regulate his conduct by means of these
pictures, as present-day man does by means of his perceptions. We must
nevertheless be careful to notice that conduct, regulated by perception,
is governed by choice whereas action, under the influence of the pictures
we have described, takes place as if prompted by some dim instinct.

It is by no means as though only outer physical processes become
perceptible through this picture-consciousness, but it is through the
pictures that the spiritual beings, who rule behind the physical facts
together with their activities, become likewise perceptible. Thus the
Lords of Personality become visible, so to speak, in the phenomena of the
animal-plant kingdom; the Sons of Fire appear behind and in the
mineral-plant beings; and the Sons of Life appear as beings whom man is
able to imagine unconnected with anything physical,--whom he sees, as it
were, as etheric-psychic organisms.

Though these pictures of the Moon-consciousness were not representations,
only symbols of outer things, they nevertheless had a much more important
effect on the inner nature of man than the images now caused by
perception. They were able to set the whole inner being into motion and
activity. The inner processes were moulded in conformity with them. They
were genuine formative forces. Man's being became what those formative
forces made it; it became, to a certain extent, a representation of the
events of its consciousness.

The further evolution progresses in this manner, the more it results in a
deeply incisive change in man's being. The power issuing from the pictures
in the consciousness gradually becomes unable to extend over the whole
human bodily frame, which divides into two parts, or two natures. Members
are formed subject to the shaping influence of the picture-consciousness,
and they become to a great extent a copy of that life of imagination in
the way just described. Other organs escape such an influence. They are