What the things reveal in this re-birth did not previously belong to them. There, without, stands the tree. I take it up into my consciousness. I throw my inner light upon that which I have thus conceived. The tree becomes in me more than it is outside. That in it which finds entrance through the gate of the senses is taken up into a conscious content. An ideal replica of the tree is within me, and that has infinitely more to say about the tree than what the tree itself, outside, can tell me. Then, for the first time there shines out from within me, towards the tree, what the tree is. The tree is now no longer the isolated being that it is out there in space. It becomes a link in the entire conscious world that lives in me. It links its content with other ideas that are in me. It becomes a member of the whole world of ideas that embraces the vegetable kingdom; it takes its place, further, in the series of all that lives. Another example: I throw a stone in a horizontal direction away from me. It moves in a curved line and after some time falls to the ground. I see it in successive moments of time in different places. Through observation and reflection I acquire the following: During its motion the stone is subject to different influences. If it were subject only to the influence of the impulse which I imparted to it, it would go on flying for ever in a straight line, without altering its velocity. But now the earth exerts an influence upon it. It attracts the stone towards itself. If, instead of throwing the stone, I had simply let it go, it would have fallen vertically to earth; and its velocity in doing so would have constantly increased. From the mutual interaction of these two influences arises that which I actually see. Let us assume that I could not in thought separate the two influences, and from this orderly combination put together again in thought what I see: in that case, the matter would end with the actual happening. It would be mentally a blind staring at what happened; a perception of the successive positions which the stone occupies. But in actual fact, matters do _not_ stop there. The whole occurrence takes place twice. Once outside, and then my eye sees it; then my mind causes the whole happening to repeat itself again, in a mental or conscious manner. My inner sense must be directed upon the mental occurrence, which my eye does not see, and then it becomes clear to that sense that I, by my own inner power, awaken that occurrence as a mental one.