5. Mineral, Plant And Animal Creation

But all this is connected with many other processes—I am speaking briefly of only the most important ones. Many other things were happening. For example, during the period when what I have been describing was taking place, the whole atmosphere was also filled with sulphur in a highly rarefied state. This rarefied sulphur united with other substances and from this union there arose the ‘parents’ as it were of what is present in the ores today as pyrites, as galena, as native sulphide of zinc and so forth. All these substances developed at that time in an earlier form, in a soft, still wax-like consistency, and the body of the Earth was permeated with them. Then, when these metallic ores emerged from the universal albuminous substance and formed the solid crust of the Earth, there was really nothing much else for the metals to do, unless man made some use of them, than to reflect about the past. And indeed we find that they do conjure up for the inner vision, everything that has happened in the Earth’s history. A man in whom these things are cosmic, or at least terrestrial experience, will say to himself: Through having cast away from yourself the primeval plant-form—which has since developed into the later plant-formations—through having cast away from yourself the complicated processes of animal evolution, you have also rid yourself of everything that previously stood in the way of your having a will in your own being as man.