Concerning the Nature of Pain, Suffering, Joy, and Bliss

GA 107/1908-10-27/p004 ·1908-10-27 · English LowLow alignmentMost translators re-paragraphed Steiner substantially. The locus identifies the same chapter or section, but paragraph-N to paragraph-N mapping is loose. For exact-quotation precision, compare with the German.
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When we ask psychologists who are experienced in matters connected with the human soul, what explanation they have for the simplest form of pain, we find, particularly in the present time, that these psychologists say rather queer things. They made a strange discovery, for they found out that the only way of explaining pain is to add to the different senses, to the sense of smell, of sight, of hearing, a new sense the sense of pain, so that the human being perceives pain through this sense in the same way in which he perceives the light through his eyes and sounds through his ears. They say that man feels pain because he has a sense of pain. External experience does not give us any foundation in support of the existence of a sense of pain; nevertheless science, setting out from pure observation, is not in any way averse to accepting it, in fact, it invents a sense of pain.

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Cite: GA 107/1908-10-27/p004 · edition English