tly there were among the human descendants
some whose souls came from without and who appeared on earth for the first
time since its very earliest periods, and there were others whose souls
had continually incarnated on the earth. In subsequent periods of earthly
evolution the number of young souls appearing for the first time grows
ever smaller and smaller, and the reincarnated souls become more and more
numerous; yet for long ages the human race was composed of the two types
of beings conditioned by these facts.

Henceforth man on earth felt himself united with his forefathers through
the group-ego which he had in common with them. On the other hand, the
experience of the individual ego was all the stronger in the disembodied
state between death and a new birth. The souls which entered human bodies
from celestial space were in a different position from those which had one
or more earthly lives behind them. The former, as souls entering upon the
physical earth-life, brought with them only the conditions to which the
higher spiritual world and their experiences outside the sphere of earth
had subjected them. The others had, by their actions in former lives,
added conditions of their own. The fate of the first was determined only
by facts lying outside of the new earth-conditions; that of the
reincarnate souls is also determined by what they themselves have done in
former lives under earthly conditions. Individual human Karma makes its
first appearance simultaneously with reincarnation.

Because the human etheric body was withdrawn from the influence of the
astral body in the manner above indicated, the generative faculty was not
included in the sphere of human consciousness, but was under the sway of
the spiritual world. When the time had come for a soul to descend to
earth, procreative impulses arose in the human being. The entire process,
to a certain degree was veiled in mysterious obscurity as far as earthly
consciousness was concerned. The consequences of this partial separation
of the etheric from the physical body were felt during earthly life also.
The qualities of the etheric body were capable of being especially
heightened by spiritual influence. In the life of the soul this expressed
itself through a special perfection of memory. Independent logical thought
was at this period only in its most rudimentary stage in man; on the other
hand, the faculty of memory was almost unlimited. Externally it appeared
as tho