be compared with that in which the separate
sounds or letters of a word stand to one another in the physical world. If
we take the word "man," the impression made is due to a consonance of the
letters, m-a-n. There is no impact nor other outer influence passing from
the "m" to the "a," but both letters sound together within "a whole,"
owing to their very nature. This is why observations made in the world of
inspirations can only be compared to reading and the observer sees the
beings of this world like written characters which he must learn and whose
inner relations must reveal themselves to him like a supersensible
writing. Therefore occult science can call cognition through inspiration,
figuratively, the "reading of the secret script." How one may read by this
"secret script" and how one can communicate what has thus been read will
now be made clear by reference to previous chapters in this book. Man's
being was first described as composed of different principles. It was then
further shown how the cosmos in which man is developing, passes through
various conditions; those of Saturn, Sun, Moon, and Earth. The perception
by means of which we are able on the one hand to discern the principles of
the human being, and, on the other, the successive states of the Earth and
its previous transformations, is revealed to the imaginative cognition.
But it is now further necessary that the relations existing between the
Saturn state and man's physical body; between the Sun state and the
etheric body, etc., be understood. It must be shown that even during the
Saturn state the germ of man's physical body came into existence, and that
it has then further developed to its present form during the Sun, Moon,
and Earth periods.

It had to be shown for example, what changes took place in the human being
owing to the separation of the sun from the earth, and also that something
similar again took place in connection with the moon. We had, moreover, to
make plain what contributed to the bringing about of such changes in
mankind as those which took place in the Atlantean era, how they were
manifested in the successive Indian, ancient Persian, Egyptian, and other
periods. The description of this sequence of events is not the result of
imaginative perception, but of inspirational cognition derived from the
reading of the secret script. For such reading, the imaginative
perceptions are like letters, or sounds, although such reading is not
alone