First we deal with simple things. My own body belongs here. The things of the outside world belong here too.

A hard question:

A singer gives a concert and gets money for it. A teacher sells his lessons. An inventor sells his invention. People even pay for prayers and sermons. So are skills and knowledge things?

We hesitate. We picture a thing as round and solid, like a stone. Skills and knowledge, by contrast, are something inward. The understanding knows only two options: thing or not thing. That is why it does not know how to go on here.

The solution:

Knowledge and skills belong first to the spirit itself. They are nothing external. But the spirit can bring them outside. It can sing, teach, write things down. Then they have an external existence. And then the spirit can give them away like a thing. So they are not things by themselves. They only become things when the spirit expresses them.

A warning example:

In ancient Rome, children counted as things that belonged to the father. He owned them like an object. At the same time he loved them. Here thing and non-thing came together in a wholly false way. That was wrong. And it surely weakened love.

Summary: Skills and knowledge are first something inward. They only become things when we express them and give them away. But human beings must never count as things.