ot only an embryo to be fanned into life by the returning soul,
but a structure containing in itself reanimating power. The soul, at its
departure, not only leaves its image behind on earth but sends down some
of its animating power into that image.

Now on its reappearance on earth the soul alone no longer suffices to
awaken the image to life; reanimation must take place in the image itself.
The spiritual beings influencing the earth from the sun now uphold the
reanimating force that is in the human body, even though man himself is
not upon the earth. Thus, during its incarnation, the soul is not only
sensible of the sounds and light-pictures floating around, in which it
feels the beings next above it, but, through receiving the earthly
element, it comes under the influence of those still higher beings who
have taken up their abode on the sun. Previously, man felt that he
belonged to the psycho-spiritual beings with whom he was united when free
from the body. His ego was still within them. Now that ego confronts him
during physical incarnation, quite as much as everything else which is
around him during that period. Independent images of the psycho-spiritual
being of man were henceforth on the earth. These structures, in comparison
with the present human body, were of a finer material. For the earthly
part mixed with them only in its finest state, much in the same way as
when man of the present day absorbs the finely distributed substances of
an object through his organ of smell. Human bodies were like shadows. But
as they were distributed over the whole earth they came under earth
influences, which varied in their nature on different parts of the earth's
surface. Whereas formerly bodily images corresponded to the human soul
animating them, and on that account were essentially alike over the whole
earth, differences now appeared between human forms. In this manner the
way was prepared for what appeared later as differences of race.

When the human body became independent, the previous close union of the
earth-man with the psycho-spiritual world was to a certain extent
dissolved. Henceforth, when the soul left the body, the latter, in a way,
continued to live. If evolution had gone on advancing in this manner, the
earth would have hardened under the influence of its solid elements. To
the eyes of the seer who looks back on those conditions, human bodies,
when abandoned by their souls, appear to become more and more solid