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

And so it came about in the development of Man's Thinking. Little by little, in his life between death and new birth Man evolved and elaborated the faculty which in primeval times had endowed his inner life with Thoughts. In those primeval times, this faculty had been able to behold the Spiritual in things, though it was very like the way man now takes hold of the world in mere sense-perception. For in those days the Physical wore the Spiritual on its surface. To-day, however, this Thinking faculty conserved from the earlier age can only act like sense-perception. The faculty to rise in the act of thought to the spirit gradually declined and died away. And this became fully manifest when in the age of the Spiritual Soul the spiritual world became veiled for Man in complete obscurity. So then it came about that in the nineteenth century the best of the natural scientists, who could not become mere materialists, said to themselves: ‘Nothing remains for us, but to explore that world alone which admits of being explored by the senses and in terms of measure, number and weight. We have however no right to deny the existence of a spiritual world behind this sensible one.’ They were thus indicating that there may be a world of light, unknown to Man, where he is staring into darkness only.