5. Mineral, Plant And Animal Creation

In this changed environment man was able to cast away other elements from himself and these are the successors of the earlier plants and animals. The later plant-forms now gradually developing were rooted in substance that was still very soft. Out of the earlier reptilian and lizard-like creatures, animals with a more complicated structure developed, the impressions of which modern geology can still discover. Nothing at all of the earliest animal creatures of which I have spoken can be found. It was not until the later epoch, when—for a second time as it were—man cast out more complicated structures, that the conditions I have been describing were present: cloud-masses continually forming and dissolving, viridescence (greening) appearing and then fading away, soft animal-like structures which, however, were real animals; at times they contracted and had a life of their own, and soon again lost identity in the general life of the Earth. All these developments resulted in greater solidification.