{"corpus":"steiner","locus":"GA 13/l03/p079","lang":"en","edition":"RSP1969","edition_basis":null,"is_original":false,"is_default_edition":true,"text":"Now it cannot be denied that many of those who believe in spiritual causes also tend to make confusion worse confounded. They talk too much in vague and general terms. To maintain that a man is the mere sum-total of his inherited characteristics may indeed by like saying that the metallic parts have assembled of their own accord into the watch. Yet it must also be granted that many would-be arguments on behalf of a spiritual world are as though one were to say: “The metallic parts of a watch cannot of themselves join up so as to drive the hands forward; therefore there must be some spiritual entity driving them forward.” As against such a construction, the man who answers: “What do I care for ‘mystical’ being of this kind? I want to know the mechanical construction by means of which the forward movement is in fact produced,” is building on far better ground. The point is not to be vaguely aware that underlying the mechanical contrivance—the watch, in this instance—there is the spiritual entity, the watchmaker. The thing of practical significance is to get to know the thoughts in the mind of the watchmaker—thoughts which preceded the making of the watch. These thoughts are in the mechanism and can be found there.","text_trust":"verbatim","quote_safe":true,"title":"Chapter III: Sleep And Death","site_heading":null,"date":null,"location":null,"word_count":214,"url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/en/ga/13/l03/p079","alignment_confidence":"low","alignment_reason":"count_diverges","two_voice_volume":false,"translation_credit":null,"edition_coverage":{"de":["original"],"en":["AP1972","RSP1969"]},"available_versions":[{"lang":"en","edition":"RSP1969","edition_basis":null,"is_original":false,"is_default_edition":true,"url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/en/ga/13/l03/p079"}],"witness_completeness":{"ratio":1.06,"band":"comparable","note":null,"word_count":16372,"original_word_count":15513,"may_be_abridged":false},"witness_quality":{"translator":{"status":"unknown","warning":"No translator is recorded for this edition. An unattributed translation cannot be weighed as a witness: you cannot tell which hand made the choices in it. Cite the German for anything load-bearing."},"entity_parity":{"status":"not_checkable","note":"No verified paragraph alignment covers this passage, so its names cannot be compared with the German."},"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."}}