2. Spiritual Science as Preparation for a New Etheric Vision

You have often heard that two successive incarnations of a human being do not succeed each other in an arbitrary way but that when the human being has passed through death and out of one earthly life he returns to a new earthly life only when it affords him the opportunity to learn something new about the earth and to unite this with his soul life. This can be understood, of course, only by one who does not limit his study of the evolution of the earth to a period extending over a few centuries or millenia. Only one who surveys the whole evolution of the earth is in a position to comprehend things in the right way. Regarding outer physical conditions, we shall learn to comprehend, even if we limit ourselves to outer sources, that the very countenance of the earth has changed during the course of relatively short periods of time.