797. The fact that the being has an "I", and that equally there must be a will-directing "something" behind the fellow beings and behind the phenomena of Nature itself, is in itself no speculative phenomenon dreamt up by human beings, having simply sprung out of their imagination or poetic abilities, but here appears to be an actual reality so deeply rooted in existence and in the everyday lives of living beings that eventually they could not avoid having to find a term for it, long before they were able to analyse or understand it with pure intelligence. Indeed, long before they possessed any poetic talent at all, they had to find some way or other of expressing this reality. If it had not existed at all, there would be nothing to express. And human beings would never have had any use for such terms as "I", "Godhead", "gods" or "spirits", these last three expressions being simply terms for the "I" behind Nature. But it has now been established as a fact that human beings have had to find expressions for this reality as far back in their history as they have had terrestrial human day consciousness and, as we have said, even before their poetic talents and intelligence had developed. The terms, "I", "God", "gods" and "spirits" therefore came about solely as absolutely necessary linguistic, practical signs with which one could mark out the will-directing, but imperceptible, centres in one's sense of life as separate from everything that is perceptible. In other words, as signs with which one could mark out for oneself and one's surroundings one's own "self" or one's own individuality and the individualities that, in the form of fellow beings and in the form of Nature, revealed themselves to our senses.