Now, however, the process of condensing the earth’s substance continues. To the watery element is added the solid or “earthly” substance (“earthly” in the sense of occult science). And when this happens man also, during his earth period, begins to incorporate the earthly element in his body. As soon as this incorporation begins, the forces which the soul brings with it out of the disembodied state, no longer have the same power as before. Previously, the soul had fashioned its body out of the igneous, aeriform, and watery elements, in accordance with the tones which resounded and the light-pictures which played around it. The soul cannot do this with regard to the solidified form. Other forces now interpose to shape it. What is left behind of man, when the soul withdraws from the body, is not 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.