Re-imbodiment of the Spirit and Destiny

The fact that what is here indicated is not so generally noticed as is the change in the “I” through the acquiring of a recollection, is solely due to the circumstance that the recollection unites itself, immediately on being formed, with the soul-life, which man always feels to be his own; but the external effects of the deed are independent of soul-life and work out in consequences which again are something different from what is retained in the recollection. But apart from this it must be admitted that, after a deed has been accomplished, there is something in the world which the ego has sealed with its own character. If one really thinks out what is here being considered, the question must arise as to whether the results of a deed on which the “I” has stamped its own nature might not retain a tendency to return to the “I,” just as an impression preserved in the memory, revives in response to some external inducement. What is preserved in the memory waits for such an inducement. Could not that which has retained the imprint of the “I” in the external world wait also, so as to approach the human soul from without, just as memory, in response to a given inducement, approaches it from within? This matter is put forward here only as a question: for certainly it might happen that the opportunity would never occur, through which the results of a deed, bearing the impress of the ego, could meet the human soul. But that these results do exist, as such, and that, through their presence, they determine the relation of the world to the “I” is seen at once to be a possible conception, when one really follows out in thought the matter before us. In the following considerations, we shall enquire whether there is anything in human life which, starting from this possibility, points to a reality.