In these lectures, Rudolf Steiner attempted to describe the development of children's consciousness, how children are different from adults, and how the various stages of their development are different throughout childhood. Piaget later did a number of experiments with children to determine how they perceive and think, and how these faculties develop. However, Steiner had already described the development of these stages of consciousness within children, using imaginative pictures of the human organism to show how four human aspects unfold in stages, each one emerging just as the physical body first emerges into the world from the mother. At each stage of development, Steiner describes what is required of the teacher to facilitate the births of the etheric, astral, and I beings of the child, throughout the school years until adulthood.