222. In the present chapter we are beginning to see that terrestrial people are creatures who have so far advanced in evolution in the animal kingdom that, apart from being able to experience purely physical manifestations and phenomena by virtue of the physical body, they can begin, by virtue of the incipient spiritual body, to develop an ability to experience realities which are not of a physical but of a mental nature. When an individual can calculate mentally that seven plus eight equals fifteen, that calculation constitutes a mental function. This mental function is made up of putting together existing memory pictures already present in the consciousness so that they will be able to constitute a certain combination. This combination thus becomes a new creation. Seven and eight were the same as two existing memory pictures in the individual's consciousness - in other words two "mental objects". Each of these two objects had its special "shape" or "character". The first "mental object" was a special character expressed by the concept "seven" while the second was a special character expressed by the concept "eight". If these two characters are put together into a single unit, which can be done only by the body of intelligence, there arises a new mental character. And it is this mental character's particular "contours" which are expressed by the concept "fifteen". Every attainment of results through calculation without physical help of any kind consists thus of a purely mental function because it is based solely on a new creation in material which is made up of recollections and which cannot be grasped by the hand or any other physical means or factors. When an individual looks at a picture and is able to understand what it represents, this function is a combined physical and mental process. Looking at a physical picture would not in itself give the individual any understanding whatsoever if he had no memory material previously seen from related or similar realities expressed in the picture which he could connect with the reaction in his consciousness brought about by physical sight and through which there could arise a recognition. Understanding of any kind is in this way synonymous with, or based upon, recognition. If an individual witnesses some reality for which he has not corresponding memory material, no recognition can be built up in his mind and therefore an understanding of that reality would be an absolute impossibility. The experience would in this case enter the individual's mind only as an undefined nuance of feeling pleasantness or unpleasantness, in the same way as experience of life shapes itself for the most primitive animals or for those living beings whose body of intelligence has not yet begun to function. If two persons are faced with writing which can be read by the one but not by the other, then for the latter the writing is only a physical experience in that he is only able to grasp its physical appearance but not the shades of meaning or mental factors which it is expressing, because his consciousness possesses no memory material at all to help him recognize the mental significance of the writing, and therefore he is unable to read it. For the one who can read that writing it is not a physical experience alone but also a mental one, because through a previous experience of the meaning of the characters he has an experience in his mind in the form of memory pictures so that he can profitably use them to recognize the mental significance of the writing in the new physical experience - which is the same as being able to read it. Every form of mental function or conscious experience is thus based on the faculty of recognition and this again on the memory material conditioned by previous experiences. The kind of reading referred to here is the same as a combined physical and mental process. But all conscious physical experiences are based on this psycho-physical process. All physical phenomena and all objects such as trees, houses, towns, seas, rivers, animals and so forth, constitute in reality "characters" or physical expressions of mental realities which the living being is more or less able to "read", an ability which is just the same ability as to experience life. The faculty of "reading" life's own "characters" will depend on what memory material one possesses and in which areas the released faculty of recognition or ability to analyse is strongest. Where we meet with material things and have no related or corresponding memory pictures, we can only experience the purely physical, which means that everything we meet with on the material plane and do not understand is a purely physical experience. The understanding of an experience can exist only on the basis of a mental process. And we have to go to the lowest stages of the animal kingdom to find living beings with physical experiences in pure essence - meaning undefined experiences of the pleasant and the unpleasant as actualities. These experiences are based on dominating gravity energy and primitive feeling energy through which the first forms of sensory experience are brought about. These sensory experiences also deposit their memory pictures in the individual's mind, but these are sensory memories or memories of feeling. Due to these sensory memories and to the individual's bodies of bliss and instinct there grows a primitive spiritual function which still in many cases in animals and in certain human beings appears as "psychic manifestations". But this kind of psychic manifestation dies out according to how much the embryonic bodies of feeling and intelligence are developing, thus giving the individual a basis for receptivity for cosmic sight. It is in this primitive psychic zone that the human being's religiousness begins, which, in connection with "divine suggestion" is the fundamental evolutionary factor reaching as far as the zones immediately before the forecourt to the Great Birth where people begin to experience a basic intelligent knowledge or science. With the growth of this knowledge the human being enters accordingly further and further into the clear daylight of a new world. And so little by little he leaves the darkness of that world of vague sensing, of belief and dogma and accordingly steps into an open world of knowledge. As mentioned before, it is to this world that earthly science constitutes the periphery.