The Sons of Fire now work upon the etheric body. Under their influence the movement of forces in that body becomes more and more an inner function of life. What then results finds physical expression in a circulation of fluids and in phenomena of growth. The gaseous substances have become condensed into liquid substances; we may speak of a kind of nutritive process, in the sense that what is received from without becomes transformed and elaborated within. Perhaps if we think of something intermediate between nutrition and respiration in the present meaning of the terms, we may get an idea of what then happened in this respect. The nutritive matter was drawn from the animal-plant kingdom by the human being. We must think of those animal-plants as floating or swimming—or even lightly attached in an element surrounding them, as the lower animals of the present time live in water, or land animals in air. Yet the element is neither water nor air in the present sense, but something midway between the two, a kind of thick vapour in which most heterogeneous substances move hither and thither, as though dissolved in currents flowing in all directions. The animal-plants appear only as condensed regular forms of this element, often differing little physically from their environment. The process of respiration exists alongside of the process of nutrition. It is not as it is upon the earth, but like a drawing in and a streaming out of heat. To clairvoyant observation it is as though during those processes, organs opened and closed, through which a warming current passed in and out, and through which airy and watery substances were also carried in and out. And since man’s nature at this stage of evolution already possesses an astral body, respiration and nutrition are accompanied by feelings, so that a sort of pleasure ensues when materials which promote the upbuilding of man’s nature are taken in from without. Aversion is caused if injurious substances flow in, or even if they merely approach. Just as during the Moon evolution the respiratory and the nutritive processes were closely connected, as has been described, so was the process of perception in close connection with reproduction. No immediate effect was produced on any of the senses by the things and beings in the environment of Moon humanity. Perception was, on the contrary, of such a nature that the presence of things and beings called up pictures in the dull, dreamy consciousness. These pictures were much more closely connected with the real nature of the environment than the present sense-perceptions, which record in colour, sounds, smell etc., so to speak, only the outside of things and beings.