{"corpus":"steiner","locus":"GA 122/1910-08-22/p012","lang":"en","edition":"English","edition_basis":null,"is_original":false,"is_default_edition":true,"text":"Now let us try to fmd the outer expression in the sense-world of what we have just been talking about. We have been describing what is in the supersensible—an interweaving of the Spirits of Will, the Thrones, with the Spirits of Form, the Elohim. That is something which lies in the supersensible. But everything super-sensible casts its shadow into the sense-world. What is the shadow in this case? That which in effect constitutes the body, the phenomenal existence, of the Spirits of Will is matter, outspread solid matter. The commonly accepted idea of matter is illusion. When the seer turns his attention to the places where matter is supposed to lead its dubious existence, he does not find the fantastic apparition of physical matter, for that is an empty dream. Matter as conceived by the physicists is pure fantasy. So long as these concepts are merely used as calculating devices it is all right. But when men think that they have discovered something self-existent and real, then they are dreaming. The theories of modern physics are in fact dreams. In so far as physicists take note of facts, describe facts—the real and actual which the eye can see, and what can be deduced from that by calculation—they are dealing with reality. But as soon as they begin to speculate about atoms and molecules, as if these were simply material entities, then they begin to spin a dream-universe; and one which reminds us of Felix Balde's ducats in my Mystery Play, when he says in the temple: “Fancy telling a man from whom you wanted to buy something: ‘I won't pay for it in solid coin, but I promise to condense some ducats out of some mist!’” This crude simile really does give a fair idea of the sort of physical theory that gaily assumes whole universes to have been constructed out of cosmic mist. It is pure fantasy to take the existence of atoms, as envisaged today, to be real. So long as atoms are looked upon merely as counters, or shorthand notes for what the senses actually show, we remain on solid ground. If one wants to penetrate behind the sense-perceptible basis, then one has to rise to the spiritual, and then one reaches the living movement of a basic substance which is none other than the body of the Thrones, permeated by the activity of the Spirits of Form. And how is that projected into our sense-world? In the sense-world it becomes the expanse of solid matter, but matter which is at no stage amorphous. The amorphous, the formless, only results from the fact that all existence which tends towards form gets crushed or ground down. None of the dust which we find in the world is dust by natural tendency. It is stuff which has been worn away. Matter has the tendency to take form, to become crystalline. Solid matter tends towards the form of the crystal. So we can say that it is the substance of the Thrones and of the Elohim which compresses itself into our sense-existence to become revealed as the solid matter we see around us. In the act of making manifest what we call matter, it announces itselfas the essential Being of the Thrones; in so far as this basic substance takes on form, takes on shape, it announces itself as the external revelation of the Elohim.","text_trust":"verbatim","quote_safe":true,"title":"6. Elementary Existence and the Spiritual Beings behind it. Jahve-Elohim","site_heading":null,"date":"1910-08-22","location":null,"word_count":565,"url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/en/ga/122/1910-08-22/p012","alignment_confidence":"high","alignment_reason":"beads:length","two_voice_volume":false,"translation_credit":{"scope":"unit","status":"established","translator":"Dorothy Lenn and Owen Barfield","identified_edition":"RSP1982","book_title":"Genesis","publisher":"Rudolf Steiner Press","publisher_inferred":true,"match_score":1.0,"source_url":"https://www.rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA122/English/RSP1982/19100822p01.html","evidence":"lecture_page_line","publisher_note":"The publisher is inferred from the edition code in this lecture's source URL, not stated by the source page. The translator IS verified for this lecture: its own source names the translator (evidence: the lecture's page, rsarchive's lecture list, or the cover of the book it was published in), and that page's text was matched against this unit (see match_score and source_url). Cite the translator with confidence; attribute the publisher only as probable."},"edition_coverage":{"de":["original"],"en":["English"]},"available_versions":[{"lang":"de","edition":"original","edition_basis":null,"is_original":true,"is_default_edition":true,"url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/de/ga/122/1910-08-22/p012"},{"lang":"en","edition":"English","edition_basis":null,"is_original":false,"is_default_edition":true,"url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/en/ga/122/1910-08-22/p012","paragraph_aligned":true}],"record":{"record_type":"unknown","scope":"volume","note":"How this text was taken down (shorthand transcript, listeners' notes or manuscript) is not on record here. Unknown is not an assurance of a stenogram: check the edition's own notes before resting an argument on one word.","evidence":null,"evidence_translation":null,"evidence_source":null},"german_anchor":{"de_prefix":"1910-08-22","de_passages":[{"locus":"GA 122/1910-08-22/p013","url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/de/ga/122/1910-08-22/p013"}],"bead_confidence":"high","pairing_state":"proposed","verified":false,"length_check":{"de_words":612,"en_words":565,"ratio":0.92,"partial":false},"correspondence":"established","note":"English passage numbering is edition-relative, so the same number need not name the same paragraph in the German. The German original passage(s) above are the edition-invariant anchor — fetch them (lang='de') to verify wording before quoting across editions."},"paired_german":{"status":"paired","german":[{"locus":"GA 122/1910-08-22/p013","passage_number":13,"text":"Und jetzt versuchen wir, im Sinnesdasein den äußeren Ausdruck dessen zu finden, was wir eben ausgesprochen haben. Wir haben beschrieben, was im Übersinnlichen ist, ein Durcheinanderweben der Geister des Willens, der Throne, und der Geister der Form, der Elohim. Das liegt im Übersinnlichen. Aber alles Übersinnliche wirft sein Schattenbild herein in unsere Sinneswelt. Wie stellt sich das dar? Das, was substantiell sozusagen der Leib, die \\Wesenhaftigkeit der Geister des Willens ist, das ist die sich ausbreitende Materie, die feste Materie. Was gewöhnlich als Materie angesehen wird, ist Illusion. Die Vorstellungen, die man sich bildet von Materie, sind Maja. In Wahrheit findet der Seher, wenn er sich sozusagen in die Gebiete begibt, wo Materie spuken soll, nicht die phantastische Vorstellung der physikalischen Materie, denn das ist ein leerer Traum. Der Begriff der Materie, von dem die sogenannte naturphilosophische Physik spricht, ist nur eine Vorstellung, eine Schwärmerei, eine Phantasterei. Solange man dabei bleibt, das als eine Rechnungsmünze zu haben, ist es gut. Wenn man aber damit glaubt etwas Wesenhaftes zu treffen, dann träumt man. Und so - träumt im Grunde genommen die Physik heute, wo sie in ihren Theorien von Materie spricht. Da, wo sie Tatsachen konstatiert, wo sie Tatsachen beschreibt, das Reale, Wirkliche, da redet sie von Wahrheit, wenn sie beschreibt, was das Auge sehen kann und was man feststellen kann mit der Rechnung. Wo sie aber anfängt zu spekulieren von Atomen, von Molekülen und so weiter, die nichts anderes sein sollen als gewisse Dinge, die materielles Dasein haben, da fängt sie an, einen Weltentraum zu spinnen, demgegenüber wir wirklich sagen müssen, es verhält sich so, wie in unserem Mysteriendrama Felix Balde im Tempel ankündigt, wenn er sagt: Wenn man irgendwo etwas kaufen wollte und sagte, mit festem Gelde bezahle ich Dich nicht; ich verspreche Dir, daß ich aus irgendeinem Nebel heraus Dukaten bilden werde, es wird sich schon verdichten zu Dukaten! — In diesem groben Vergleich kann man wirklich jene Illusion der physikalischen Theorie wiedergeben, die ganze Weltenbaue aus Urweltnebeln willig hinnimmt, wenn das sogenannte Weltanschauungsbedürfnis bezahlt werden soll mit den Münzen, die die Wissenschaft auf diesem Gebiete gerne ausgeben möchte. Mit einer Phantastik hat man es zu tun, wenn man das atomistische Dasein, wie man es heute im Auge hat, für ein reales hält. Solange man damit Abkürzungen, Rechnungsmünzen meint für das, was die Sinne zeigen, so lange steht man auf realem Boden. Durchdringt man diesen Boden des Sinnlichen, dann muß man zum Geistigen vorschreiten, dann kommt man auf das Wesen und Weben einer Grundsubstanz, die aber nichts anderes ist als die Leiblichkeit der Throne, die durchsetzt wird von der Tätigkeit der Geister der Form. Und wie stellt sich das, wie projiziert sich das in unsere Sinnenwelt herein? Nun, da haben wir ausgebreitet die feste Materie, die aber auf keiner Stufe ein Amorphes ist. Das Amorphe, das Gestaltlose wird nur dadurch hervorgerufen, daß im Grunde genommen alles Dasein, das nach der Form drängt, zersprengt, zermalmt wird. Alles, was wir gleichsam als staubartiges Dasein antreffen im Weltenbau, hat gar nicht die Anlage, staubartig zu sein. Das ist zermürbtes Dasein. Die Materie als solche hat den Drang, sich zu gestalten. Alles Feste hat den Drang, kristallinisch zu sein. Was feste Materie ist, drängt nach Kristallgestalt, drängt nach Form. So also können wir sagen: Was wir nennen das Substantielle der Throne und der Elohim, das drängt herein in unser sinnliches Dasein, indem es sich uns ankündigt als das sich ausbreitende Feste. Dadurch, daß sich überhaupt so etwas manifestiert, was wir materielles Dasein nennen, kündigt es sich an als \"Wesenhaftigkeit der Throne. Dadurch, daß es gestaltet erscheint, daß gleichsam in dieser Grundsubstanz immer Gestalten geformt werden, kündigt es sich an als äußere Offenbarung der Elohim.","text_trust":"verbatim","quote_safe":true,"word_count":612,"url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/de/ga/122/1910-08-22/p013"}],"english":["GA 122/1910-08-22/p012"],"method":"length","confidence":"high","correspondence":"established","length_check":{"de_words":612,"en_words":565,"ratio":0.92,"partial":false},"pairing_state":"proposed","verified":false},"witness_completeness":{"ratio":0.95,"band":"comparable","note":null,"word_count":5876,"original_word_count":6153,"may_be_abridged":false},"witness_quality":{"translator":{"scope":"unit","status":"recorded","translator":"Dorothy Lenn and Owen Barfield","identified_edition":"RSP1982","book_title":"Genesis","publisher":"Rudolf Steiner Press","publisher_inferred":true,"match_score":1.0,"source_url":"https://www.rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA122/English/RSP1982/19100822p01.html","evidence":"lecture_page_line","publisher_note":"The publisher is inferred from the edition code in this lecture's source URL, not stated by the source page. The translator IS verified for this lecture: its own source names the translator (evidence: the lecture's page, rsarchive's lecture list, or the cover of the book it was published in), and that page's text was matched against this unit (see match_score and source_url). Cite the translator with confidence; attribute the publisher only as probable."},"entity_parity":{"status":"ok","checked_against":["GA 122/1910-08-22/p013"],"missing_from_translation":[],"present_only_in_translation":[],"bead_confidence":"high","note":"Every load-bearing name in the German counterpart appears in this English passage. That is a check on NAMES only: a translation can keep every name and still reverse who acts on whom, change a number, or soften a claim. Read the German for anything you intend to rest an argument on."},"note":"quote_safe certifies the bytes of this text. This block is about the translation as a WITNESS: who made it, and whether it carries the same names as the original. 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