XVII. What is seen on looking back into Man's previous Lives between Death and the new Birth (I)

The Hierarchy of Primeval Powers regard it as their especial task to lead over into one common human form all these pre-men, whose soul-life corresponded also to their one-sided formation. They take Man over from the hands of the Exusiai. In Thought, the Exusiai had already made out of the multifariousness of Man a unity. But with them this unity was still an Ideal form, a World-Thought-form. From this, the Archai shaped the ether-form, but in such a way that in this ethereal form were ready-contained the forces for the future development of the physical form.