{"corpus":"steiner","locus":"GA 123/1910-09-12_02/p028","lang":"en","edition":"English","edition_basis":null,"is_original":false,"is_default_edition":true,"text":"But there were different classes, different kinds of Initiates; aspirants for Initiation were not all of them initiated into everything. To some it was made especially clear what ordeals must be undergone by one who was expected to become a worthy vehicle for a divine Being. And there were others to whom it was made known how a divine Being acts when revealing himself in a man—to put it rather trivially, when revealing himself as a ‘genius’. Again, people fail to perceive to-day that geniuses too show undoubted similarities. Biographies nowadays are not written from the vantage-point of the spirit. If an attempt were made to describe the genius of Goethe, let us say, from such a vantage-point, remarkable similarity would be found, fog example, with the genius of Dante, of Homer, of Aeschylus. But when modern biographies are being written, notes are collected of trivial details in the external lives of such men. That is what interests people. So we have a prolific collection of notes on the life of Goethe but as yet no true presentation of what Goethe really was. Men declare—actually as the outcome of tremendous arrogance—that they are incapable of following the development of genius in the human personality; the tendency is to drag the first, youthful authors of certain poetic works into the limelight and then talk in lordly style about the elemental freshness and originality manifested in their early years, whereas in later life these qualities have been lost and the authors in question have become old. What really lies behind this is that in their arrogance people are willing to understand poets in their youth but are not willing to keep pace with the experiences undergone in later life. Great pride is taken in having remained young; age is despised and people have no inkling that it is not the old who have become ‘old’ but that they themselves have remained children! This is a widespread evil. But as it is so deeply rooted we need not wonder that there is little understanding of the fact that a divine Being can take possession of a human personality and that the way in which such a Being manifests in the different human personalities is fundamentally the same.","text_trust":"verbatim","quote_safe":true,"title":"Lecture XII","site_heading":"Divine Beings Descending: Christ as the Greatest Avatar","site_heading_note":"A heading the site wrote for this unit from a summary of it; not in the edition, and not the words of Rudolf Steiner or of the translator. Cite the unit by its title and locus, never by this heading, and do not quote it.","date":"1910-09-12","location":null,"word_count":374,"url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/en/ga/123/1910-09-12_02/p028","alignment_confidence":"high","alignment_reason":"beads:length","two_voice_volume":false,"translation_credit":{"scope":"unit","status":"established","translator":"Dorothy S. Osmond and Mildred Kirkcaldy","identified_edition":"RSP1965","book_title":"The Gospel of St. Matthew (1965)","publisher":"Rudolf Steiner Press","publisher_inferred":true,"match_score":1.0,"source_url":"https://www.rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA123/English/RSP1965/19100912p02.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/123/1910-09-12_02/p028"},{"lang":"en","edition":"English","edition_basis":null,"is_original":false,"is_default_edition":true,"url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/en/ga/123/1910-09-12_02/p028","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},"other_renderings":{"loci":[{"locus":"GA 123/1910-09-12","ga":"123","lecture":"1910-09-12","kind":"renderings","relation":"another translation or transcription of the same lecture"}],"note":"The same lecture is also served at the loci listed, each with how it relates to this one. They are ONE witness, not independent attestations: quote the rendering you fetched, and do not cite another as corroborating it. Wording differs between translations, so a quotation found in one need not occur in the other."},"unit_kind":{"kind":"second_translation","base_unit":"GA 123/1910-09-12","note":"A second English translation of the same lecture as 1910-09-12. The German served under this id repeats the German of 1910-09-12: one German text, to be cited at 1910-09-12.","same_lecture_as":"GA 123/1910-09-12","german_repeats":"GA 123/1910-09-12"},"german_anchor":{"de_prefix":"1910-09-12_02","de_passages":[{"locus":"GA 123/1910-09-12_02/p024","url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/de/ga/123/1910-09-12_02/p024"}],"bead_confidence":"high","pairing_state":"proposed","verified":false,"length_check":{"de_words":391,"en_words":374,"ratio":0.96,"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 123/1910-09-12_02/p024","passage_number":24,"text":"Aber es waren nicht alle in alles eingeweiht. Es gab verschiedene Klassen, Arten von Eingeweihten. So gab es solche, welchen insbesondere klar war, was ein Menschenwesen, das dem Gotte entgegenwachsen sollte, durchzumachen hatte, damit es würdig sein konnte, um den Gott aufzunehmen. Und andere gab es, denen bekannt war, wie sich der Gott verhält, wenn er sich in einem Menschen zeigt, trivial gesprochen, wenn er sich sozusagen als Genie zeigt. Denn das sehen heute auch die Menschen nicht ein, daß die Genien auch etwas ganz Ähnliches zeigen, wenn sie vom Menschen Besitz ergreifen. Aber heute schreibt man ja auch nicht Biographien vom Geiste aus. Denn wenn man etwa den Genius von Goethe vom Geistigen aus beschreiben wollte, würde man eine merkwürdige Ähnlichkeit finden zum Beispiel mit dem Genius Dantes, Homers, Äschylos'. Heute schreibt man aber nicht Biographien vom Geistigen aus, sondern man legt Zettelkästen an, die die Kleinigkeiten in bezug auf das äußere Leben solcher Menschen bezeichnen. Das interessiert die Menschen viel mehr. Und so haben wir heute eine ausgiebige Zettelsammlung in bezug auf das Leben Goethes und noch keine wirkliche Darstellung dessen, was Goethe eigentlich war. Ja, die Menschheit erklärt sich heute in gewisser Beziehung, und tatsächlich mit einem riesigen Hochmute, unfähig dazu, die Evolution des Genies in der menschlichen Persönlichkeit zu verfolgen, und es gibt heute das Bestreben, sagen wit, die allerersten Jugendgestalten einer Dichtung bei unseren großen Dichtern so recht ins Licht zu zerren und besonders groß damit zu tun, daß in diesen Jugendgestalten die Frische und Ursprünglichkeit als etwas Elementares lebt, während in späteren Jahren die Menschen es verloren hätten und alt geworden wären. Aber die wirkliche Tatsache, die dahintersteckt, ist die, daß die Menschen in ihrem Übermut nur die jugendlichen Dichter verstehen wollen und nicht mitgehen wollen mit dem, was die Dichter durchgemacht haben. Die Menschen tun sich ungeheuer viel darauf zugute, daß sie beider Jugend stehenbleiben; den Alten verachten sie und ahnen gar nicht, daß nicht der Alte «alt» geworden ist, sondern daß sie selbst nur Kinder geblieben sind! Das ist ein weitverbreitetes Übel. Aber da es so tief eingewurzelt ist, brauchen wir uns nicht zu wundern, wenn so wenig Verständnis dafür vorhanden ist, daß ein Gotteswesen Besitz ergreifen kann von einer menschlichen Persönlichkeit, und daß das Sich-Ausleben solcher Gotteswesen in den verschiedenen Menschenwesen in den verschiedenen Zeiten im Grunde genommen doch ein gleiches ist.","text_trust":"verbatim","quote_safe":true,"word_count":391,"url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/de/ga/123/1910-09-12_02/p024"}],"english":["GA 123/1910-09-12_02/p028"],"method":"length","confidence":"high","correspondence":"established","length_check":{"de_words":391,"en_words":374,"ratio":0.96,"partial":false},"pairing_state":"proposed","verified":false},"witness_completeness":{"ratio":1.0,"band":"comparable","note":null,"word_count":10733,"original_word_count":10721,"may_be_abridged":false},"witness_quality":{"translator":{"scope":"unit","status":"recorded","translator":"Dorothy S. Osmond and Mildred Kirkcaldy","identified_edition":"RSP1965","book_title":"The Gospel of St. Matthew (1965)","publisher":"Rudolf Steiner Press","publisher_inferred":true,"match_score":1.0,"source_url":"https://www.rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA123/English/RSP1965/19100912p02.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 123/1910-09-12_02/p024"],"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. See witness_completeness for how much of the original this witness holds."}}