I. The Waking of the Human Soul and the Forming of Destiny

When, out of that existence which is called the pre-earthly, the human being first grows through the germinal state into the physical-earthly life, we then see how in his physical existence the spiritual nature, which is at first hidden, begins to assert itself Out of the physical body; how the child sleeps, as it were, into the physical-earthly world. We see that the life of the child in its relation with the surrounding world is still a kind of dreaming; that it only gradually awakes. Threefold, however, do we find is that which the child manifests at especially conspicuous points in the stages of this awaking. Indeed, something of this threefoldness is observed with that intimate joy, that devoted love, with which one who is in the full sense a human being always observes a child. But the full significance of this threefoldness really becomes clear to one only when it is possible through spiritual science to observe the spiritual life in the physical-corporeal existence. This threefoldness is the learning to walk, learning to speak, learning to think. You know that the human being passes through this threefoldness in an age like the springtime of life. Such is this meaningful order of occurrence. We shall soon see why it must be this meaningful succession. It can, as a matter of fact, be different, but the succession according to nature is just this.