11. Individual Spirit Beings and the Undivided Foundation of the World: Part 2

You see, therefore, that this was an essential progression from the third, fourth, to the fifth post-Atlantean period. One should keep this matter clearly in view and recognize how this impulse toward freedom must pull itself through all that rules over the fifth post-Atlantean period. It is exactly against the freedom of human feeling (Gemuet) that the antagonist conspires, the antagonist who, as I told you, is like a double accompanying man from some time before birth to death but who must abandon man just before he dies. If one is under this influence that works directly with the double, all sorts of things might emerge that can appear already in the fifth post-Atlantean period. It is not suitable for this period, however, to give man the full possibility of achieving his task. This task consists in the struggle against evil, of transforming evil into good.