{"corpus":"steiner","locus":"GA 137/1912-06-08/p015","lang":"en","edition":"English","edition_basis":null,"is_original":false,"is_default_edition":true,"text":"I will ask you to dwell for a little on this thought. Try to imagine that the spinal cord is nothing else than a strange and peculiar brain. It is quite possible to feel it as a brain that has been elongated and has become like a slender staff,—just as we can also see the brain as an inflated spinal cord. It will help us here if we picture man assuming for the moment the same posture in the world as the animals still have today,—that is to say, with his spine not vertically upright but parallel with the surface of the earth. Then you would have a brain that has simply been pulled out into the form of a staff. And now observe the human being as you would then have him before you, parallel with the surface of the earth, his back lying horizontal in space. In this position the spinal cord can very well pass for a kind of brain. And now we note something very strange and remarkable,—namely, that we have again appendages right and left, though of course exceedingly different from the arm appendages we had before. But imagine a condition where man had not developed symmetry as far as he has today (when the two arms are very nearly alike) but here one arm had experienced a peculiar development of its own which distinguished it very clearly from the other. In the present day there is even a tendency—and it is a foolish one!—to discard righthandedness and cultivate an equal left and righthandedness. But imagine now that the left arm were on the contrary to grow into a completely different organ; then it will not seem to you impossible or absurd to refer in the way we shall now do to two other appendages.","text_trust":"verbatim","quote_safe":true,"title":"Lecture VI","site_heading":"The Three Sevenfold Men: Anatomy of Human Mystery","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 Cite the unit by its title and locus, never by this heading, and do not quote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":"1912-06-08","location":null,"word_count":300,"url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/en/ga/137/1912-06-08/p015","alignment_confidence":"low","alignment_reason":"count_diverges","two_voice_volume":false,"translation_credit":{"scope":"unit","status":"not_established","translator":null,"identified_edition":"RSP1964","book_title":"Man in the Light of Occultism, Theosophy and Philosophy","publisher":"Rudolf Steiner Press","publisher_inferred":true,"match_score":1.0,"source_url":"https://www.rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA137/English/RSP1964/19120608p01.html","evidence":null,"reason":"source_says_translator_unknown","note":"The source page itself says the translator is unknown. No translator is established for this lecture: nothing at the level of the lecture names one. Do not attribute this English to a translator, and do not borrow a credit from another lecture of the volume. Cite the German for anything load-bearing."},"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/137/1912-06-08/p015"},{"lang":"en","edition":"English","edition_basis":null,"is_original":false,"is_default_edition":true,"url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/en/ga/137/1912-06-08/p015"}],"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},"paired_german":{"status":"no_paragraph_pairing","note":"No paragraph pairing exists for this paragraph, so no German text is given. The German paragraph of the same number is a different passage or an unestablished one. Read the German unit (german_unit.fetch_unit) and find the place by its content.","german_unit":{"lang":"de","edition":"original","unit_locus":"GA 137/1912-06-08","paragraph_count":69,"fetch_unit":{"ga":"137","lecture":"1912-06-08","lang":"de","edition":"original"},"url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/de/ga/137/1912-06-08","json_url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/ga/137/1912-06-08?lang=de"},"pairing_state":"proposed","verified":false,"nearest_pairs":{"after":{"de":[44],"en":[45,46]}}},"witness_completeness":{"ratio":1.02,"band":"comparable","note":null,"word_count":6229,"original_word_count":6104,"may_be_abridged":false},"witness_quality":{"translator":{"scope":"unit","status":"not_established","translator":null,"identified_edition":"RSP1964","book_title":"Man in the Light of Occultism, Theosophy and Philosophy","publisher":"Rudolf Steiner Press","publisher_inferred":true,"match_score":1.0,"source_url":"https://www.rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA137/English/RSP1964/19120608p01.html","evidence":null,"reason":"source_says_translator_unknown","note":"The source page itself says the translator is unknown. No translator is established for this lecture: nothing at the level of the lecture names one. Do not attribute this English to a translator, and do not borrow a credit from another lecture of the volume. Cite the German for anything load-bearing.","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."}}