Changes

In the instinct to make contact (first by touch and then by visual "touch" of another being) the inborn ''Thou'' is very soon brought to its full powers, so that the instinct ever more clearly turns out to mean mutual relation, "tenderness." But the instinct to "creation," which is established later (that is, the instinct to set up things in a synthetic, or, if that is impossible, in an analytic way—through pulling to pieces or tearing up), is also determined by this inborn ''Thou'', so that a "personification" of what is made, and a "conversation", take place. The development of the soul in the child is inextricably bound up with that of the longing for the ''Thou'', with the satisfaction and the disappointment of this longing, with the game of his experiments and the tragic seriousness of his perplexity. Genuine understanding of this phenomenon, which is injured by every attempt to lead it back into more confined spheres, can only be promoted if, during its observation and discussion, its cosmic and metacosmic origin is kept in mind. For it reaches out from the undivided primal world which precedes form, out of which the bodily individual who is born into the world, but not yet the personal, actualised being, has fully emerged. For only gradually, by entering into relations, is the latter to develop out of this primal world.

In the instinct to make contact (first by touch and then by visual "touch" of another being) the inborn ''Thou'' is very soon brought to its full powers, so that the instinct ever more clearly turns out to mean mutual relation, "tenderness." But the instinct to "creation," which is established later (that is, the instinct to set up things in a synthetic, or, if that is impossible, in an analytic way—through pulling to pieces or tearing up), is also determined by this inborn ''Thou'', so that a "personification" of what is made, and a "conversation", take place. The development of the soul in the child is inextricably bound up with that of the longing for the ''Thou'', with the satisfaction and the disappointment of this longing, with the game of his experiments and the tragic seriousness of his perplexity. Genuine understanding of this phenomenon, which is injured by every attempt to lead it back into more confined spheres, can only be promoted if, during its observation and discussion, its cosmic and metacosmic origin is kept in mind. For it reaches out from the undivided primal world which precedes form, out of which the bodily individual who is born into the world, but not yet the personal, actualised being, has fully emerged. For only gradually, by entering into relations, is the latter to develop out of this primal world.

T{{sc|hrough the}} ''Thou'' a man becomes ''I''. That which confronts him comes and disappears, relational events condense, then are scattered, and in the change consciousness of the unchanging partner, of the ''I'', grows clear, and each time stronger. To be sure, it is still seen caught in the web of the relation with the ''Thou'', as the increasingly distinguishable feature of that which reaches out to and yet is not the ''Thou''.  But it continually breaks through with more power, till a time comes when it bursts its bonds, and the ''I'' confronts itself for a moment, separated as though it were a ''Thou''; as quickly to take possession of itself and from then on to enter into relations in consciousness of itself.  

T{{sc|hrough the}} ''Thou'' a man becomes ''I''. That which confronts him comes and disappears, relational events condense, then are scattered, and in the change consciousness of the unchanging partner, of the ''I'', grows clear, and each time stronger. To be sure, it is still seen caught in the web of the relation with the ''Thou'', as the increasingly distinguishable feature of that which reaches out to and yet is not the ''Thou''.  But it continually breaks through with more power, till a time comes when it bursts its bonds, and the ''I'' confronts itself for a moment, separated as though it were a ''Thou''; as quickly to take possession of itself and from then on to enter into relations in consciousness of itself.