THE ENVIRONMENT OF MAN
The theory established decades ago that the environment moulds the man, and hence also his intelligence, or that man is a product of his environment, is again today very much the subject of lively discussion. Some say that man, whether gifted or not, brings everything with him ‘from the cradle’, others that the environment is all, it endows man or it does not endow him; he cannot become better if conditions do not permit it.
To solve these questions we must seek to discover what happens before birth, for the moment of earthly birth is not a suitable starting-point for our consideration, since the individual soul does not, as is often assumed, come into being only in the space of time between procreation and birth.
It is already in existence, and may even have had many earth-lives. But how does the soul come into the earthly body? In no other way than through incarnation! Soon after procreation the human soul with the spirit as core, which is awaiting an incarnation in the beyond, stays in the vicinity of the mother-to-be, and enters the child’s body about the middle of
