Things in Past and Present in the Spirit of Man

Now, in primeval times when evolution was at another stage, the whole human form was distributed among many animals. When you contemplate that, you can understand that which is, in a very coarse way, looked upon as Darwinism. Mankind had, as it were, prepared itself in so far as that which later on it should develop as an ether body through what was separately formed as in the divisions of today's animal kingdom and at that time appeared entirely different from today's animal kingdom. Today's animal kingdom is no longer that which mankind was able to descend from. It was a quite other animal kingdom from the parts that were spread out in space and which were in the future intended to constitute man's ether body. However, the forces which were spread out in this ancient animal kingdom are in a certain sense extracted, as it were, and today these forces are present in our ether body.