It is possible to learn through occult science, that the human body, as it exists at its present stage of evolution, must be regarded as having arrived at its present form under different circumstances. It is known to the occultist that this evolution was effected by means of the working of various forces on the sum-total of man’s being; certain forces worked on the physical body, others on the etheric, others on the astral body. Human nature has arrived at its present form through the action of those beings whom we call the Luciferic and Ahrimanic. By their means it has, in a certain way, become worse than it need have been if those forces only had been active within it which proceed from the spiritual rulers of the cosmos who desire to evolve man along straight lines. The causes of sorrow, disease and even of death are to be sought in the fact that, besides the beings who are evolving man in a straight line forwards, there are also ruling the Luciferic and Ahrimanic spirits, who are continually crossing the line of straightforward, progressive development. There is something in what man brings into existence at birth, which is better than what he can make out of it in later life. This is so, because the Luciferic and Ahrimanic forces have but little influence over man during early childhood; they are virtually only operative in what man makes out of himself by his conscious life. If he were to retain in full force beyond early childhood that part of his being which is better than the rest, he would be unable to endure its influence, because his whole being is weakened by the opposite forces of Lucifer and Ahriman. Man’s organism in the physical world is so constituted that it is only when he is, so to speak, as soft and pliable as a child, that he can endure within him those direct forces of the spiritual world which operate within him during early childhood. He would be shattered, if during his later life there were still directly working in him those forces which underlie the faculty of equilibrium in space, and the formation of the larynx and the brain. Those forces are so tremendous that, if they were to go on working, our organism would pine away under the influence of their holiness. Man must only have recourse to such forces for the purpose of that kind of activity which brings him into conscious connection with the supersensible world.