The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Chapter I

[ 1 ] The person who reflects on himself soon comes to the realization that, in addition to the self which he embraces with his thoughts, feelings and fully conscious volitional impulses, he carries within himself a second, more powerful self. He becomes aware of how he subordinates himself to this second self as a higher power. At first, however, the human being will perceive this second self as a lower entity compared to the one he embraces with his clear, fully conscious soul being, which is inclined towards the good and the true. And he will strive to overcome this lower entity. But a more intimate self-examination can teach us something else about the second self. If one often looks back in life on what one has experienced or done, one will make a peculiar discovery about oneself. And you will find this experience all the more meaningful the older you get. If you ask yourself: What did you do or say at this or that time in your life?", then it turns out that you have done a whole lot of things that you only really understand at a later age. Seven or eight years ago, or perhaps twenty years ago, you did things that you know for sure: only now, after a long time, do you have the understanding to understand the things you did or said back then. - Many people don't make such self-discoveries because they don't set out to do so. But it is extraordinarily fruitful if a person makes such an introspection into his soul more often. Because from such a moment in which a person becomes aware: You have actually done things in earlier years that you are only now beginning to understand; at that time your mind was not yet mature enough to understand the things you have done or spoken, - from such a moment, in which one makes a discovery of this kind, something like the following sensation of the soul emanates: You feel as if you are sheltered by a good power that rules in the depths of your own being; you begin to gain more and more confidence in the fact that you are actually, in the highest sense of the word, not alone in the world after all, and that all that you understand, all that you are consciously able to do, is basically only a small part of what you accomplish in the world.

[ 2 ] If you make this observation often, you can elevate something that is theoretically very easy to understand to full life practice. It is theoretically easy to see that man could not get very far in life if he had to accomplish everything he has to accomplish with a fully conscious mind, with an intelligence that overlooks all circumstances. To understand this theoretically, one need only consider the following. At what stage of life does man actually perform the most important deeds for his existence? When does he act most wisely towards himself? He does this approximately from birth up to the point in time up to which he can still remember when he looks back in later life on the years of his earthly existence that have passed. If one thinks back to what one did three, four, five years ago and then further and further back, one comes to a certain point in childhood; the recollection goes no further. Parents or other people can tell you what happened before that, but your own memory only goes back as far as a certain point. This is also the point at which a person has learned to feel like a self. In the case of people whose memory does not go beyond the norm of life, there must always be such a point in life. Before this point in time, however, the human soul has done the wisest things to man himself, and never later, when he has come to consciousness, can man do such great and mighty things to himself as he accomplishes in the very first years of his childhood out of subconscious soul reasons. For we know that through his birth man brings into the physical world that which he has brought with him as the fruits of his earlier lives on earth. When a person is born, for example, his physical brain is still a very imperfect tool. The human soul must first work into this tool the finer structures that make it the mediator of all that the soul is capable of. In fact, before it is fully conscious, the human soul works on the brain in such a way that it can become such a tool as is needed to live out all the abilities, dispositions, qualities and so on which are inherent in the soul as the results of its earlier earthly lives. This work on his own body is guided by points of view that are wiser than anything that the human being can later do in himself out of his full consciousness. And even more: during these times, not only must the human being work out his brain plastically, but he must also learn three of the most important things for his earthly existence.

[ 3] First, he learns to orientate his own physicality in space. What this means is something that people today don't actually pay any attention to. It touches on one of the most essential differences between humans and animals. The animal is destined from the outset to develop its equilibrium in space in a certain way; one animal is predestined to be a climber, the other a swimmer and so on. The animal is organized from the outset in such a way that it positions itself correctly in space; and this is the case right up to the most human-like mammals. If zoologists were to reflect on this fact, they would emphasize less that, for example, man and animal have so and so many similar bones and muscles and so on; for this comes much less into consideration than the fact that man does not from the outset have the full disposition for his equilibrium. He must first form them out of his whole being. It is significant that man must work on himself in order to transform himself from a being who cannot walk into one who can walk upright. It is man himself who gives himself his vertical position, his position of equilibrium in space. He brings himself into a relationship with gravity. It will, of course, be easy for a view that does not want to penetrate into the depths of the matter to deny this with apparently good reasons. One can say that man is organized to walk upright just as a climbing animal is organized to climb. A closer look, however, can show that in animals it is the peculiarity of their organization that causes them to stand in space. In humans, however, it is the soul that brings itself into relationship with space and conquers the organization.

[ 4 ] The second thing that man teaches himself, namely out of the beingness that progresses from embodiment to embodiment as the same, is language. Through it he places himself in a relationship to his fellow human beings which makes him the bearer of that spiritual life which initially permeates the physical world from him. It has often been emphasized with good reason that a person who is placed on a desert island and is not together with other people before he can speak would not learn language. What we inherit, what is implanted for later years, so that it is subject to the principles of heredity, does not depend on man's being with his fellow-men. For example, he is predisposed from the outset by heredity to change his teeth in his seventh year. He could be on a desert island, if only he had the opportunity to grow up, he would change his teeth. But he only learns to speak when his soul being is stimulated as such, as that which is carried from life to life. Man must form the germ for the development of his larynx at a time when he does not yet have his ego-consciousness. Before the time to which he remembers back, he must lay the seed for the formation of his laryngeal development, so that the larynx can become the speech organism.

[ 5] And then there is a third, of which it is less known, that man learns through himself, through that which he carries within himself from embodiment to embodiment. This is life within the world of thought itself. The processing of the brain is undertaken for the reason that the brain is the tool of thought. This organ is still plastic at the beginning of life because man himself must first form it into the instrument of his thinking in the sense of the entity that is carried from life to life. Just as the brain is immediately after birth, so it must become according to the forces inherited from parents, foreparents and so on. But man must express in his thinking what he is as an individual being, according to his previous lives on earth. Therefore, he must transform the peculiarities of his brain, which he has inherited, when - after birth - he has become physically independent of parents, foreparents and so on.

[ 6 ] We see that man accomplishes significant things in the very first years of his life. He works on himself in the sense of highest wisdom. Indeed, if it depended on his wisdom, he could not accomplish what he must accomplish in the first years of his life without his wisdom. Why is all this accomplished from the depths of the soul, which lie beyond consciousness? It happens for the reason that in the first years of his life man is much more connected with his soul, with his whole being, to the spiritual worlds of the higher hierarchies than is the case later. For the clairvoyant who has undergone a spiritual development so that he can follow the real spiritual processes, something tremendously significant is revealed at the point in time at which the human being attains his ego-consciousness in such a way that he can later remember back to this point in time. While what we call the "childlike aura" surrounds the child in the first years of life like a wonderful, human-superhuman power - surrounds it in such a way that this childlike aura, the actual higher part of the human being, has its continuation everywhere into the spiritual world - at that point in time, up to which the human being can remember back, this aura penetrates more into the inner being of the human being. Up to this point in time, man can feel himself as a coherent ego, because that which was previously connected to the higher worlds is then drawn into his ego. From then on, the consciousness connects itself everywhere with the outer world. This does not yet happen in childhood. Then things were for man as if they hovered around him like a dream world. Man works on himself out of a wisdom that is not within him. This wisdom is more powerful, more comprehensive than all later conscious wisdom. This higher wisdom obscures itself for the human soul, which then exchanges consciousness for it. It works out of the spiritual world deep into the physical world, so that through it man can form his brain out of the spirit. It is not wrong to say that even the wisest person can learn from a child. For what works in the child is the wisdom that does not later enter consciousness, and through which man has something like a "telephone connection" to the spiritual beings in whose world he finds himself between death and a new birth. Something from this world still streams into the childlike aura, and the human being is there directly as an individual being subject to the guidance of the whole spiritual world to which he belongs. The spiritual forces from this world still flow into the child. They cease to flow in at the point in time up to which the normal recollection goes. It is these forces that enable man to bring himself into a certain relationship with gravity. It is also these forces that shape his larynx, that form his brain in such a way that it becomes a living tool for the expression of thought, feeling and will.

[ 7 ] What is present to the highest degree in childhood, that man works out of a self that is still in direct connection with higher worlds, remains to a certain extent in later life, even though the circumstances change in the sense indicated. If one feels at a later stage of life that one did or said this or that years ago, which one is only now learning to understand, then one has been guided by a higher wisdom. And only after years have you come to have insight into the reasons behind your behavior. From all this one can feel how, immediately after birth, one had not yet completely escaped the world in which one was before entering physical existence, and how one can actually never escape it. That which one has as one's share of higher spirituality enters physical life and follows one. It is often the case that you feel that what lies within you is not only a higher self that is to be gradually developed, but it is something that is already there and causes you to outgrow yourself so often.

[ 8 ] All that man can produce in ideals, in artistic creation, but also all that he can produce in natural healing powers in his own body, through which a continuous balancing of the damages of life occurs, all this does not come from the ordinary mind, but from the deeper forces that work in the first years on our orientation in space, on the imprinting of the larynx and on the brain. For the same forces are still at work in the human being later on. When it is often said that external forces cannot help us in cases of damage to life, that our organism must develop the healing powers within itself, we also have in mind an effect of wisdom present in the human being. And furthermore, from the same source come the best powers through which one attains knowledge of the spiritual world, that is, true clairvoyance.

[ 9 ] Now the question is very obvious: Why do the characterized higher powers only have an effect on people in the first years of childhood?

[ 10 ] One half of the answer can easily be given, for it lies in the following. If those higher powers continued to work in the same way, man would always remain a child; he would not attain to full ego-consciousness. He must transfer into his own being what previously worked from outside. But there is a more significant reason that can enlighten even more than what has just been said about the secrets of human life; and that is the following. Through spiritual science it can be learned that the human body, as it is in its present stage of development on earth, must be regarded as something that has become, that has developed from other states into its present form. The connoisseur of spiritual science knows that this evolution has taken place in such a way that various forces have had an effect on the entire being of man; certain forces on the physical body, others on the etheric body, and others on the astral body. The human being has come to its present form through the influence of those entities which we call the Luciferic and the Ahrimanic. Through these forces the human entity has become worse in a certain way than it would have been if only those forces had been at work which come from the spiritual world rulers who want to develop man in a straightforward way. The cause of suffering, illness and even death is to be sought in the fact that, in addition to the beings who develop man in a straight line, there are also the Luciferic and Ahrimanic beings who always interfere with straightforward forward development. There is something in what man brings into existence through birth that is better than what man can make of it in later life.

[ 11 ] The Luciferic and Ahrimanic forces have only little influence on the human being in the first years of childhood; they are essentially only effective in all that man makes of himself through his conscious life. If that part of his being which is better than the other were to remain in full force longer than in the first days of childhood, he would not be able to cope with its effect, because the opposing Luciferic and Ahrimanic forces would weaken his whole being. Man has such an organization in the physical world that he can only bear the direct forces of the spiritual world, which are active in him in the first years of childhood, as long as he is, as it were, childishly soft and malleable. He would break if those forces which underlie orientation in space, the shaping of the larynx and the brain, were still active in a direct way in later life. These forces are so powerful that if they were still at work later, our organism would die under the sanctity of these forces. Man must turn to these forces only for that activity which brings him into conscious connection with the supersensible world.

[ 12 ] From this, however, a thought emerges that has great significance if it is understood correctly. It is expressed in the New Testament with the words: "Unless you become like little children, you cannot enter the kingdoms of heaven!" For what appears to be the highest ideal for man if what is said in the preceding is accepted as correct? It is probably this: to approach more and more what can be called a conscious relationship to the forces that work unconsciously on man in the first years of childhood. - But it must be borne in mind that man would have to collapse under the power of these forces if they were to enter his conscious life without further ado. Therefore, careful preparation is necessary for the attainment of those abilities which bring about a perception of the supersensible worlds. The aim of this preparation is to make the human being capable of bearing what he cannot bear in ordinary life.

[ 13 ] The passage through successive embodiments has its significance for the overall development of the human being. It has passed through successive lives in the past; it continues to progress, and parallel to this the earth also progresses in its development. One day the time will come when the earth will have reached the end of its course; then the earth planet as a physical entity must fall away from the totality of human souls, just as the human body falls away from the spirit at death, when the human soul, in order to continue living, enters the spiritual realm which is appropriate for it between death and a new birth. With this in mind, it must appear as the highest ideal that man has come so far at death that he has acquired all the fruits he can gain from earthly life.

[ 14 ] Now those powers by which man is not equal to those others which act upon him in his childhood come from the earthly organism. Once this itself has fallen away from the human being, man must, if he is to have reached his goal, have come so far that he can in fact devote himself with his whole being to the forces which are at present only active in childhood. The purpose of development through the successive lives on earth is thus to gradually make the whole man, and thus also the conscious part, the expression of the forces which, under the influence of the spiritual world, rule over him unconsciously in the first years of life. The thought that takes possession of the soul from such contemplations must fill it with humility, but also with a true awareness of human dignity. It is the thought: Man is not alone; something lives in him that can always provide him with proof: Man can rise above himself, to something that is already growing beyond him at present and that will grow from life to life. This thought can take on ever more definite and definite form; it then provides something tremendously reassuring and uplifting; but it also permeates the soul with corresponding humility and modesty. - In this sense, what does man have within himself? Truly a higher, a divine person, by whom he can feel vividly imbued, saying to himself: He is my guide within me.

[ 15 ] From such points of view, the thought easily enters the soul that with everything one can do, one should seek harmony with that in the human being which is wiser than the conscious intelligence. And the directly conscious self points to an expanded self towards which everything that is false pride and everything that is arrogance in the human being can be eradicated and fought against. This feeling develops into another, which opens up a correct understanding of the way in which man is presently imperfect; and this feeling allows us to recognize how he can become perfect once the more comprehensive spirituality that rules in him is allowed to have the same relationship to his consciousness that it has to the unconscious life of the soul in the first years of childhood.

[ 16 ] Even if the recollection in life is often such that it does not go back as far as the fourth year of childhood, one may nevertheless say that the influence of the higher spiritual realm in the above sense goes through the first three years of life. At the end of this period the human being becomes capable of connecting the impressions of the outside world with his ego conception. It is true that this coherent ego-imagination can only be counted back as far as the recollection reaches. But it must be said that essentially the recollection reaches back to the beginning of the fourth year of life; it is only at the beginning of the clear ego-consciousness that it is so weak that it remains unnoticeable. Therefore it can be said that those higher forces which determine the human being in the childhood years can be effective through three years. The human being in the present middle earth organization is thus organized in such a way that he can only absorb these forces for three years.

[ 17 ] If a human being were now standing before us, and if it could be brought about by any world powers that the ordinary I would be removed from this human being - one would therefore have to assume: it could be achieved to remove this ordinary ego, which has gone through the embodiments with the human being, from the physical body, etheric body and astral body - and one could then bring into the three bodies such an ego that works in connection with the spiritual worlds - what would have to happen to such a human being? After three years his body would have to break up! Something would have to happen through the karma of the world so that the spiritual being, which is connected with the higher worlds, could not live in this body for more than three years. Only at the end of all earthly lives will the human being be able to have that within himself which allows him to live longer than three years with that spiritual being. But then the human being will also say to himself: "It is not I, but this higher being in me, which has always been there, that is now working in me. - Until then, he cannot yet say that, but at most this: he feels this higher being, but he has not yet come to bring it to full life in himself with his real human ego.

[ 18 ] If a human organism were to be placed in the world at some time in the middle years of earth's existence, which in a later year of life would be freed from its ego by certain world powers, and instead would take into itself that ego which otherwise only works in the first three years of childhood, and which would be connected with the spiritual worlds in which man is between death and a new birth: how long could such a man live in earthly life? - About three years; for then something would have to occur through the karma of the world which would destroy the human organization in question.

[ 19 ] What was presupposed here, however, was there in history. The human organism, which stood at the Jordan at John's baptism, when the I of Jesus of Nazareth departed from the three bodies, contained after the baptism in full conscious manifestation that higher human self which otherwise, unconsciously to man, works with worldly wisdom on the child. But this necessitated that this self, which was connected with the higher spiritual world, could only live for three years in the corresponding human organism. The facts then had to proceed in such a way that after three years the earthly life of the being was over.

[ 20 ] The external events that occurred in the life of Christ Jesus are to be understood in such a way that they are conditioned by the internal causes that have been set apart. They present themselves as the external expression of these causes.

[ 21 ] Thus the deeper connection is given between that which is the leader in man, that which shines into our childhood as in twilight, that which always works beneath the surface of our consciousness as that which is our best, and between that which once entered into the whole evolution of mankind so that it could be three years in a human shell.

[ 22 ] What is shown in this "higher" I, which is connected with the spiritual hierarchies, and which entered the human body of Jesus of Nazareth in time, so that his entry is symbolically represented under the signature of the descending spirit in the form of the dove with the words: "This is my beloved Son, today I have begotten him!" (for that is what the words were originally called)? If you look at this image, you have the highest human ideal before you. For it means nothing other than that in the story of Jesus of Nazareth we are told: The Christ is recognizable in every human being! And even if there were no gospels and no tradition to say that a Christ once lived, - one would learn through knowledge of human nature that the Christ lives in man.

[ 23 ] Recognizing the forces at work in man in infancy means recognizing the Christ in man. The question now arises: Does this realization also lead to the recognition of the fact that this Christ really once dwelt on earth in a human body? Without referring to any documents, this question can be answered in the affirmative. For a real visionary self-knowledge leads the present human being to recognize that forces can be found in the human soul which emanate from this Christ. In the first three years of childhood these forces work without the human being doing anything. In later life they can work if the person seeks the Christ within himself through inner contemplation. Just as man currently finds the Christ within himself, he has not always been able to do so. There were times when no inner contemplation could lead a person to Christ. That this is so is again taught by seeric knowledge. In the interim between the past, when man could not find the Christ within himself, and the present, when he can find him, lies the earthly life of Christ. And this earthly life itself is the reason why man can find the Christ within himself in the manner indicated. Thus the earthly life of Christ proves itself for the visionary insight without all historical documents.

[ 24 ] One might think that the Christ said: I want to be such an ideal for you humans that, raised into the spirit, represents to you that which is otherwise fulfilled in the physical. In the first years of life, man learns to walk physically out of the spirit; that is, man shows himself his way for life on earth out of the spirit. He learns to speak, that is, to shape the truth out of the spirit, - or in other words: man develops the essence of truth out of the sound in the first three years of his life. And the life that man lives on earth as an ego-being also receives its organ of life through what is formed in the first three years of childhood. Thus man learns to walk bodily, that is, to find "the way", he learns to represent "truth" through his organism, and he learns to express "life" out of the spirit in the body. No more meaningful reinterpretation of the words: "Unless you become like little children, you cannot enter the kingdoms of heaven" seems conceivable. And it must be considered a significant word that the I-entity of Christ is expressed in this way: "I am the way, the truth and the life!" Just as the higher spiritual forces shape the childhood organism - unconsciously - in such a way that it becomes the bodily expression of the way, the truth and the life, so the human spirit gradually becomes the conscious bearer of the way, the truth and the life by interpenetrating itself with the Christ. In this way, in the course of becoming earthly, it makes itself into that power which reigns in it in childhood, without being the conscious bearer.

[ 25 ] Such words as those of the Way, the Truth and the Life are capable of opening the doors of eternity. They sound to man from the depths of his soul when self-knowledge becomes a true, essential one.

[ 26 ] In a twofold sense, such contemplations open up the prospect of the spiritual guidance of man and humanity. As a human being, one finds Christ in oneself through self-knowledge as the guide to whom one can always reach since Christ's time on earth, because he is always in man. And furthermore, if you apply to the historical documents what you have recognized without them, you will find the true nature of these documents. They express something historically that reveals itself through itself within the soul. They are therefore to be counted among that guidance of humanity which is to bring about the soul's direction towards itself.

[ 27 ] If the eternal mood of the words: "I am the way, the truth and the life!" is understood in this way, then one can feel that it is unjustified to ask: Why does man, when he has already gone through many embodiments, enter into existence again and again as a child? For it turns out that this apparent imperfection is a perpetual reminder of the highest that lives in man. And one cannot be reminded often enough - at least every time at the beginning of a life - of the great fact of what man actually is in terms of his essence, which underlies all earthly existence but is not affected by the imperfections of this existence.

[ 28 ] It is not good to define much in spiritual science or theosophy or in occultism in general, to speak much in terms of concepts. It is better to characterize and try to evoke a sense of what really is. Therefore, an attempt should also be made here to evoke a sense of what characterizes the first three years of human life and how this relates to the light that radiates from the cross on Golgotha. This feeling means that an impulse runs through human evolution of which one can rightly say that Paul's words must become truth through it: "Not I, but the Christ in me!" One only needs to know what man really is, and one can proceed from such knowledge to an insight into the nature of Christ. But when one has come to this idea of Christ through the true contemplation of humanity and knows that Christ is best discovered when one first seeks him in oneself, and when one then goes back to the biblical documents, only then does the Bible gain its great value. And there is no greater, but also no more conscious appreciator of the Bible than a person who has found the Christ in the sense indicated. It is conceivable that a being, let us say an inhabitant of Mars, would come down to earth who had never heard of the Christ and his work. Such a Martian would not understand much of what has taken place here on earth; much of what interests people today would not interest him. But he would be interested in what is the central impulse of earth evolution: the Christ idea as it expresses the essence of man himself! - Anyone who has understood this will then recognize the Bible all the more; for he will find what he has previously seen in himself expressed in it in a wonderful way and will then say to himself: I do not need to be educated to a special appreciation of the Gospels, but stand before them as a fully conscious person, and through what I have recognized through spiritual science, they appear to me in all their greatness.

[ 29 ] It is probably not too much to say that there will come a time when one will be of the opinion: The people who, through spiritual science, have come to appreciate the contents of the Gospels in the right way, will recognize in them leading writings of mankind in a sense that will do more justice to these writings than has been done to them up to the present time. Mankind will first learn to recognize what lies in these profound documents through the knowledge of the nature of man himself. One will then say to oneself: If one finds in the Gospels that which belongs to the essence of man, then this must have entered through men into the documents which they wrote on earth, so that it must be especially true of the authors of these documents what one must say to oneself about one's own life when one truly reflects - the older one gets, the more so. We have done many things that we only understand many years later. The writers of the Gospels can be seen as people who wrote from the higher self that works on people in their childhood years. Thus the Gospels are written works that originate from the wisdom that shapes man. Man is a revelation of the spirit through his body; the Gospels are such a revelation through the Scriptures.

[ 30 ] Under such conditions, the concept of inspiration regains its good meaning. Just as higher powers work into the brain in the first three years of childhood, so powers from the spiritual worlds were imprinted into the souls of the Gospel writers, out of which the Gospels were written. - Such a fact expresses the spiritual guidance of humanity. Mankind must be truly guided if persons are at work within it who write documents out of the same forces from which man himself is wisely formed. - And just as the individual says or does things which he only understands at a later age, so the whole of humanity has produced mediators in the writers of the Gospels, who in their writings provided revelations which can only gradually be understood. The further mankind advances, the more and more the understanding of these documents will be found. Man can feel the spiritual guidance within himself; humanity as a whole can feel it in those persons who work in the manner of the Gospel writers.

[ 31 ] The concept of human leadership gained in this way can now be extended in some respects. Suppose a person has found disciples, some people who profess to be with him. Such a person will easily realize through genuine self-knowledge that the very fact that he has found confessors gives him the feeling that what he has to say does not come from him. It is rather the case that spiritual forces from higher worlds want to communicate themselves to the confessors, and these find in the teacher the appropriate tool to reveal themselves.

[ 32 ] The thought will occur to such a person: When I was a child, I worked on myself through forces that worked in from the spiritual world, and that which I can now give as my best must also work in from higher worlds; I must not regard it as belonging to my ordinary consciousness. Yes, such a man may say: something demonic, something like a demon - but the word "demon" taken in the sense of a good spiritual power - works through me from a spiritual world on the confessors. - Socrates, of whom Plato tells us that he spoke of his "demon" as that which guided and directed him, felt something like this. Many attempts have been made to explain this "demon" of Socrates. But it can only be explained if one accepts the idea that Socrates could feel something like the above. Then one can also understand that during the three to four centuries that the Socratic principle was at work in Greece, a mood came into the Greek world through Socrates that could have a preparatory effect for another great event. The mood that man, as he stands, is not the whole of that which projects in from higher worlds, this mood continued to have an effect. The best in whom this mood was present were those who later best understood the word: "Not I, but the Christ in me! "For they were able to say to themselves: Socrates was still speaking as if of a demonic agent from higher worlds; the Christ ideal makes it clear what Socrates was talking about. But Socrates could not yet speak of Christ, because in his time no one could yet find the Christ-entity within himself.

[ 33 ] There again we feel something of the spiritual guidance of humanity: nothing can be placed in the world without preparation. Why did Paul find the best followers in Greece? Because the ground had been prepared there by Socratism through the marked mood. This means that what happens later in the development of mankind leads back to events that had an effect earlier, and which made people ready to allow the later to have an effect on them. Do we not feel how far the guiding impulse that runs through human evolution reaches, and how it places the right people at the right moment where they are needed for evolution? In such facts, the guidance of humanity is generally expressed first of all.

[ 34 ] In the transition from childhood to later human age, the viability of the human organism is maintained because it can change during this time. In later life it can no longer change; therefore it cannot continue to exist with that self.