Our considerations have made it clear that free formation or self-formation extends not only to the forming of the body but also, and even prevalently, to the forming of a person’s soul. Human beings are spiritual persons because they are free not only with respect to their bodies but also with respect to their souls, and they exercise power over their bodies only to the extent that they exercise power over their souls. The soul’s capability of self-formation is related to what it has in common with the pure spirit and simultaneously to that wherein it differs from the pure spirit. Both the human soul and the pure spirit are conscious or—in the case of the human soul—become conscious of their ego-life and are capable of freely influencing its course. But the human soul differs from the pure spirit in that its free modes of action are not co-extensive with the soul’s total being but are rather an exertion of influence on something that is engaged in a process of evolution, and these free modes of action leave certain traces in the soul by virtue of which the soul attains to its final structural formation and firm contour. The pure spirit, on the other hand, receives its nature as a readymade formal structure, a structure which, while it unfolds in its life, does not undergo any change. The human soul must gradually gain possession of its essence or nature, and its life is the way that leads to that goal. This is why in the case of the human soul formation is possible and necessary. But so that this formation may be free—and not an involuntary occurrence in the manner of the animal soul’s being formed by the natural process of its evolution-the human soul must have self-knowledge and be capable of taking a stand with respect to its own self. It must find itself in a dual sense: It must learn to know itself, and it must come to be what it is destined to be. And freedom has a share in the attainment of both of these ends. But the cognitive finding itself of the human soul, too, has more than one meaning because knowledge and the self are both equivocal terms.