IV. Body, Soul and Spirit

The Spirit-self is a revelation of the spiritual world within the “I,” just as from the other side sensations are a revelation of the physical world within the “I.” In what is red, green, light, dark, hard, soft, warm, cold, one recognises the revelations of the corporeal world; in what is true and good, the revelations of the spiritual world. In the same sense in which the revelation of the corporeal world is called sensation, let the revelation of the spiritual be called intuition.[^4] Even the most simple thought contains intuitions, for one cannot touch it with the hands or see it with the eyes; its revelation must be received from the spirit through the “I.” If an undeveloped and a developed man look at a plant, there lives in the “I” of the one something quite different from that which is in the “I” of the other. And yet the sensations of both are called forth by the same object. The difference lies in this, that the one can form far more perfect thoughts about the object than can the other. If objects revealed themselves through sensation alone, there could be no progress in spiritual development. Even the savage is affected by Nature; but the laws of Nature reveal themselves only to the thoughts, fructified by intuition, of the more highly developed man. The stimuli from the outer world are felt even by the child as incentives to the will; but the commandments of the morally good disclose themselves to him only in the course of his development, in proportion as he learns to live in the spirit and understand its revelations.