II. The Human Soul before the Dawn of the Michael Age

This Thought-construction that takes place in Man is a forward step in Man's self-knowledge. Viewed in its supersensible aspect, the matter lies as follows: The spiritual powers whom we may call by the name of ‘Michael,’ ruled Ideas in the spiritual Cosmos. Man realized these Ideas within him, inasmuch as his own soul participated in the life of the Michael-world. This realization of the life of Ideas has now become his own personal concern; and this has brought about a temporary separation of Man from the Michael-world. Along with the inspired thoughts of earlier ages, Man had received at the same time the spiritual substance of the world. Now that this inspiration has ceased, and Man begins of his own action to construct his thoughts, he is thrown back upon the perceptions of his senses to give these thoughts a substance. So that Man at first could not do otherwise than fill his newly acquired inner spiritual life with a material substance. He acquired inner spiritual life with a material substance. He ‘fell’ into the materialist view of things in that same age which carried his own inner spiritual being to a stage higher than those preceding it.