Chapter III

I felt in duty bound at that time to seek through philosophy for the truth. I had to study mathematics and natural science. I was convinced that I should find no relationship between these and myself unless I could place under them a solid foundation of philosophy. But I perceived a spiritual world, none the less, as a reality. In clear vision the spiritual individuality of every one revealed itself to me. This found in the physical body and in action in the physical world merely its manifestation. It united itself with that which came down as a physical germ from the parents. Dead men I followed farther on their way in the spiritual world. After the death of a schoolmate I wrote about this phase of my spiritual life to one of my former teachers, who had been a close friend of mine during my Realschule days. He wrote back to me with unusual affection; but he did not deign to say one word about what I had written regarding the dead schoolmate.