9. The Serpent and Fish Symbols

Man went on and on; he took all the animals out of himself and continued to transform the physical body to its present perfection. Thus, in fact, in the most ancient times, the animals separated themselves from the human formation as astral beings - the coarser astral substance, as it were. Later still, the plants separated from the animals, and still later the minerals separated from the plants. The principle is: the lower can form from the higher by falling away. All the beings around us are waste products of human development, human brothers who have fallen behind, fallen out of development and remained behind at a certain stage.