ory_ is formed of the ancestor with whom the soul feels itself to be
at one. This memory passes through the line of descendants in the form of
a consciousness possessed in common. The ego thus flows down through the
generations.

At this stage of evolution man, during his life on earth, was conscious of
himself as an independent being. He felt the inner fire of his etheric
body to be combined with the external fire of the earth. He could feel the
heat that was streaming through him as his own ego. In those heat
currents, interwoven with life, are to be found the first beginnings of
the circulation of the blood. But in what flowed into him as air, he did
not exactly feel as his own being. Indeed, it was the forces of the higher
beings we have described that were working in that air. But still there
was left to him, within the air that flowed through him, that part of the
active forces which belonged to him by virtue of his previously formed
etheric powers. He was master in one part of those air currents. And to
that extent, it was not only the higher beings who were shaping him, but
he himself. He formed the air parts of his being in accordance with the
images of his astral body. While air was thus flowing into his body from
without, a process which became the basis of respiration, part of the air
was formed within him into an organism which became fixed and was the
basis of the subsequent nervous system. Thus man at this period was
connected with the external earth by heat and air.

On the other hand, he was not conscious of the introduction within himself
of the solid element of the earth. Although it contributed to his own
embodiment, he could not perceive directly what was being supplied but
could only do so through a dim consciousness in the image of the higher
beings who were active in the process. In the same kind of picture-form,
as an expression of the beings above him, man had previously perceived the
introduction of the fluid element into the earth. Through the
densification of his earthly form the pictures have now undergone a change
in his consciousness. The solid element has been mixed with the fluid.
This incoming of the solid element must also be seen to be the work of
higher beings operated from without. It is no longer possible for the
human soul to have the power of directing the supply for that supply has
now to serve his body, which is being built up from without. He would
spoil its form if he were t