nt-animals now in the Sun, just as there is humanity there. But those
other creatures are still endowed with their own laws of being. They
therefore feel like strangers in their environment. They came upon the
scene with a nature but little in harmony with their surroundings. But as
they have become etheric, the activity of the Lords of Wisdom may also
extend to them. Everything which has come from the Moon into the Sun now
becomes pervaded with the forces of the Lords of Wisdom. Hence what is
developed out of the Sun-Moon organism during this period of evolution may
be called in occult science the "Cosmos of Wisdom."

When, therefore, after an interval of rest, our Earth system appears as
the successor of this Cosmos of Wisdom, all the beings newly emerging on
the earth, developing out of their Moon-germs, prove to be filled with
wisdom. And this is the reason why earthly man when contemplating the
things around him, is able to discover the wisdom concealed in their inner
nature. The wisdom in each leaf of a plant, in every bone in animal and
man, in the marvelous structure of the brain and heart, fills us with
admiration. If man requires wisdom to understand things, and therefore
gathers wisdom from them, this shows that there is wisdom in the things
themselves. For however much man might have striven to understand things
by means of wise perceptions, he could not draw wisdom from them unless it
had first been put into them. He who tries by means of wisdom to
understand things, assuming at the same time that wisdom had not first
been concealed within them, may just as reasonably believe that he can
empty water out of a glass into which it has not first been poured. As
will be shown later in this book, the Earth is the "old Moon" risen again.
And it appears as an organism full of wisdom, because it was permeated by
the Lords of Wisdom and their forces during the epoch that has been
described.

It will easily be understood that this description of the Moon condition
could take account only of certain temporary forms of evolution. It was
necessary to pause at certain things in the progress of events, and single
them out for delineation. It is true that this kind of description gives
only isolated pictures, and it may be deplored for this reason, that in
the foregoing account the evolutionary scheme was not brought down to a
system of precise and definite concepts. But in the face of such an
objection it may be well to po