{"corpus":"steiner","locus":"GA 174b/1917-05-11/p026","lang":"en","edition":"English","edition_basis":null,"is_original":false,"is_default_edition":true,"text":"Let us take another case: a man who is not exactly lacking in vanity found himself years ago, after first objecting to anthroposophy in general, in this anthroposophy. I was the very last person to have sought out this personality. He presented himself. It turned out that there were many things that did not exactly mean that this personality was striving for completely impersonal goals in our society. That cannot be demanded, of course, so it cannot be criticized if sometimes personal goals are also accommodated to some extent. Sometimes such personal aims are accommodated because in this way many people can be led to what is right after all. And so it happened that at first the person concerned was quite satisfied with us. He wrote a pamphlet, in fact. I even condescended to write an epilogue to it, and the pamphlet was also taken up by our publishing house. He was on good terms with us; we were people who could be talked to. Then the person in question had another work printed, and after this work had had various fates, which are now of no concern to us, he offered it to the Philosophical-Anthroposophical Publishing House again. However, it was impossible to include this work in the Philosophical-Anthroposophical Publishing House. On the first pages of this writing, it says that I had only hinted at certain things about the Christ problem, and that the gentleman in question would like to elaborate on them. I am not saying this out of hurt vanity, although in this case I am being accused of it; but the sentence in which it is attributed to me is a blatant untruth, because the matter mentioned did not take place. Without taking into account the fact that I might have had reason not to go further, things are then elaborated in a way that may remind one of another story that took place, of which this story is at least a miniature version. I will have to come back to this other story as well, and I will do so briefly in a moment. In this writing by the gentleman in question, all kinds of things that I had only said in lectures were simply stated. Dr. Steiner was quite right to take umbrage at this and rejected the manuscript for publication. And because his manuscript was rejected, the man became an opponent. Now, of course, if you are writing an article for a journal, you cannot say: The Anthroposophical Society is fundamentally bad because the Philosophical-Anthroposophical Publishing House rejected my manuscript. That won't do! But that would have been the truth! So, despite the fact that the person concerned has been informed about the matter countless times, the fairy tale about contradictions is invented. The person concerned knows very well what the situation is regarding these contradictions, but he writes newspaper articles about them! What these newspaper articles say is of no significance, because the person concerned did not become an opponent because of this matter. He could have known about this long before he joined. He became an opponent for the stated reason. Some doubt whether one can so easily make the hypothesis: What is afterwards is also causally conditioned by what went before; but it remains conspicuous, nevertheless, that the antagonism of Mr. Max Seiling followed immediately upon the rejection of his writing by our publishing house. Of course it is easy to deny such a thing, to object to it in all sorts of ways, but it is not a matter of what one or the other objects to, but of what the facts are.","text_trust":"verbatim","quote_safe":true,"title":"Ninth Lecture","site_heading":"Soul's Independence and Spiritual Science's Defense Against Slander","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":"1917-05-11","location":null,"word_count":606,"url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/en/ga/174b/1917-05-11/p026","alignment_confidence":"high","alignment_reason":"beads:length","two_voice_volume":false,"translation_credit":{"scope":"unit","status":"established","translator":"Steiner Online Library","identified_edition":"SOL2024","book_title":"The Spiritual Background of Human History","publisher":"Steiner Online Library","publisher_inferred":true,"match_score":1.0,"source_url":"https://www.rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA174b/English/SOL2024/19170511p01.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/174b/1917-05-11/p026"},{"lang":"en","edition":"English","edition_basis":null,"is_original":false,"is_default_edition":true,"url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/en/ga/174b/1917-05-11/p026","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},"authorship":{"kind":"report","is_steiner":null,"speaker":null,"note":"This passage speaks ABOUT Rudolf Steiner in the third person, so it is most likely a report, minutes, or an editorial summary rather than his own words. Verbatim, but confirm the speaker before attributing anything here to him."},"attribution_warning":"This passage speaks ABOUT Rudolf Steiner in the third person, so it is most likely a report, minutes, or an editorial summary rather than his own words. Verbatim, but confirm the speaker before attributing anything here to him.","paired_german":{"status":"paired","german":[{"locus":"GA 174b/1917-05-11/p026","passage_number":26,"text":"Nehmen wir einen anderen Fall: Ein Mann, dem es auch nicht gerade an Eitelkeit fehlt, fand sich vor Jahren, nachdem er erst gegen die Anthroposophie allerlei einzuwenden hatte, bei dieser Anthroposophie ein. Ich war der allerletzte, der gerade diese Persönlichkeit geholt hätte. Er fand sich ein. Es zeigte sich mancherlei, das nicht gerade darauf hinauslief, daß diese Persönlichkeit ganz unpersönliche Zwecke in unserer Gesellschaft anstrebte. Das kann man ja auch nicht verlangen, daher kann es auch nicht getadelt werden, wenn man manchmal auch persönlich angestrebten Zwecken schon einigermaßen entgegenkommt. Es wird auch solchen persönlichen Zwecken zuweilen entgegengekommen, weil man gerade auf diesem Umweg manche Menschen doch zum Richtigen führen kann. Und so kam es denn, daß der Betreffende zuerst mit uns recht zufrieden war. Er schrieb nämlich eine Schrift. Ich ließ mich sogar herbei, ein Nachwort dazu zu schreiben, und die Schrift wurde auch aufgenommen in unseren Verlag. Er war gut mit uns; wir waren Leute, mit denen sich reden ließ. Dann ließ der Betreffende eine andere Schrift drucken, und nachdem diese Schrift mancherlei Schicksale gehabt hatte, die uns jetzt nichts angehen, bot er diese wieder dem Philosophisch-Anthroposophischen Verlag an. Es war aber unmöglich, diese Schrift im Philosophisch-Anthroposophischen Verlag aufzunehmen. Auf den ersten Seiten dieser Schrift steht, ich hätte gewisse Sachen über das Christus-Problem nur angedeutet, und der betreffende Herr möchte das Nähere ausführen. Ich sage das wahrhaftig nicht aus gekränkter Eitelkeit, obwohl in diesem Falle mir dies vorgeworfen wird; aber der Satz, in dem sie mir vorgeworfen wird, ist eine dreiste Unwahrheit, denn die Sache, die da erwähnt wird, hat nicht stattgefunden. Ohne Rücksicht darauf, daß ich vielleicht Grund hatte, nicht weiterzugehen, werden dann Dinge weiter ausgeführt in einer Weise, die einen erinnern kann an eine andere Geschichte, die sich zugetragen hat, und von der diese Geschichte wenigstens eine Miniaturausgabe ist. Auf diese andere Geschichte muß ich auch wiederum zurückkommen und werde es nachher kurz tun. In dieser Schrift des betreffenden Herrn wurden allerlei Dinge, die nur in Vorträgen von mir gesagt waren, einfach mitgeteilt. Frau Dr. Steiner nahm mit Recht daran Anstoß und wies diese Schrift für den Verlag zurück. Und der Herr entwickelte sich, weil ihm diese Schrift zurückgewiesen wurde, zu einem Gegner. Nun kann man freilich nicht sagen, wenn man für ein Journal einen Aufsatz schreibt: Die Anthroposophische Gesellschaft ist von Grund aus schlecht, weil mir von dem Philosophisch-Anthroposophischen Verlag meine Schrift zurückgewiesen worden ist. Das geht nicht! Aber das wäre die Wahrheit gewesen! Also, man erfindet — trotzdem der Betreffende unzählige Male über die Sache unterrichtet worden ist — das Märchen über die Widersprüche. Der Betreffende weiß sehr gut, wie es sich mit diesen Widersprüchen verhält, aber er macht darüber Zeitungsartikel! Was in diesen Zeitungsartikeln steht, hat keinerlei Bedeutung, denn Gegner ist der Betreffende nicht geworden wegen dieser Sache. Die Sache hätte er ja längst wissen können, als er eingetreten ist. Gegner ist er geworden aus dem angegebenen Grunde. Manche bezweifeln ja, daß man so ohne weiteres die Hypothese aufstellen darf: Was nachher ist, das ist auch kausal durch das Vorhergehende bedingt; aber auffällig bleibt es immerhin, daß die Gegnerschaft des Herrn Max Seiling unmittelbar auf die Zurückweisung seiner Schrift durch unseren Verlag folgte. Selbstverständlich ist es, daß man eine solche Sache leicht ableugnen kann, daß man allerlei einwenden kann, aber es kommt eben nicht darauf an, was der eine oder andere einwendet, sondern darauf, welches die Tatsachen sind.","text_trust":"verbatim","quote_safe":true,"word_count":564,"url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/de/ga/174b/1917-05-11/p026"}],"english":["GA 174b/1917-05-11/p026"],"method":"length","confidence":"high","correspondence":"established","length_check":{"de_words":564,"en_words":606,"ratio":1.07,"partial":false},"pairing_state":"proposed","verified":false},"witness_completeness":{"ratio":1.02,"band":"comparable","note":null,"word_count":9678,"original_word_count":9444,"may_be_abridged":false},"witness_quality":{"translator":{"scope":"unit","status":"recorded","translator":"Steiner Online Library","identified_edition":"SOL2024","book_title":"The Spiritual Background of Human History","publisher":"Steiner Online Library","publisher_inferred":true,"match_score":1.0,"source_url":"https://www.rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA174b/English/SOL2024/19170511p01.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 174b/1917-05-11/p026"],"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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